Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 20, 2018)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2018 School construction project wins key permit in Seaside ‘We are thrilled to have that behind us’ By R.J. MARX The Daily Astorian Columbia Memorial Hospital The planned CMH Health and Wellness Park. SEASIDE — It was a good week for the Seaside School District. Despite cloudy skies and periodic rain, hundreds turned out to celebrate a pub- lic groundbreaking for the new middle and high school campus in the Southeast Hills. Perhaps even better news came for the district with a permit approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. School district project manager Jim Henry made the announcement at Tuesday’s meeting of the school dis- trict’s board. The district received and business manager Justine Hill signed the permit and mailed it back with the $10 check, he said. “We are thrilled to have that behind us.” The Army Corps’ prelim- inary review, delivered in April, indicated the project, designed to move endangered schools out of the tsunami zone, would adversely affect essential fish habitat. “Approval was granted with the condition we need to finalize the stream mitigation solution on Neawanna Creek within 90 days,” Henry said Wednesday. Superintendent Sheila Roley thanked the public offi- cials and contractors who “helped solve problems in a thoughtful and creative way in adjusting to the permit schedule.” Hospital plans new health and wellness park The Daily Astorian R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian Project manager Jim Henry at the public groundbreaking ceremony Sept. 15. Behind him are architect Dan Hess, Seaside Mayor Jay Barber, U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici and state Sen. Betsy Johnson. The district originally pre- sented plans to the Corps for on-site remediation which would have resulted in the permanent placement of almost 4,800 cubic yards of soil, concrete and stone within 0.16 acre of wetland and more than 2,000 lin- ear feet of stream considered essential fish habitat. When the Corps failed to sign off on that plan, the dis- trict offered a “compensatory mitigation” proposal off-site to provide an environmental easement on property behind the district bus barn on U.S. Highway 101. The goal was to provide protection for waters downstream to make Autopsy: Man shot 9 times by campus police in Portland By GILLIAN FLACCUS Associated Press PORTLAND — Two campus security officers at Portland State University fired 17 times at a legally armed black man who was trying to break up a fight and struck him nine times, kill- ing him, according to a report released Wednesday. Oregon State Medical Examiner Dr. Rebecca Mil- lius ruled the death of Jason Washington, 45, a homicide, the report shows. Washington was struck in the chest, back, abdomen and legs and had graze wounds from a bullet that glanced off his head, she said. A grand jury ruled on Sept. 13 that PSU Officers James Dewey and Shawn McKenzie should not face criminal charges in the June 29 shooting. Washington, a Navy vet- eran and Postal Service employee, had been out drinking with friends when his group got into a confron- tation with another group out- side a bar called the Cheer- ful Tortoise just off campus in downtown Portland. A lengthy report released last week by the Portland Police Bureau, as well as foot- age pulled from the officers’ body-worn cameras, show Washington had a gun in his right pocket when he tried to come to a friend’s assistance during a fight. Officers later found a legal permit to carry a concealed weapon in the dead man’s wallet. The footage from Dew- ey’s camera shows the cam- pus police officer rolling up to a fight on a street on the fringes of the university campus. Dewey exits his patrol vehicle and a man at the scene says several times, “He pulled a gun on us! He pulled a gun!” as he points to Wash- ington, who appears to be try- ing to keep his friend from a fight. At that point, Washing- ton’s visibly intoxicated friend breaks away and begins punching another man until he is kicked by a third person in the head and knocked out. As Washington tries to pull the man away from his unconscious friend, Dewey grabs Washington’s arm from behind and tells him to back away from the fight. A black object that appears to be a gun is visible protruding from Washington’s right hip pocket at that moment in Dewey’s body camera video. Washington stumbles backward and falls to the ground as someone says, “He’s got a gun!” Washington gets up, takes several steps away from Dewey and turns to face the two officers as they shout at him to drop the gun. The medical examiner’s report quotes one of the offi- cers as yelling, “Do not pick up the gun!” just before the officers fired 17 shots “in very quick succession.” A witness told several media outlets immediately after the shooting that she saw the gun fall out of Washing- ton’s pocket when he fell, and he was shot after he picked it up. It’s unclear from the angle of both body camera videos, however, whether Washing- ton is holding the gun when he is shot. Toxicology reports show Washington had a blood-alco- hol content of more than three times the legal driving limit. His wife, Michelle Wash- ington, has said she will file a lawsuit in her husband’s death. Portland State Universi- ty’s president has hired two independent firms, one to examine the school’s policy of arming campus police and another to conduct its own investigation into the shoot- ing. Students are planning a rally later this month to press the school to disarm its cam- pus police. PSU decided to arm its campus security officers in 2014 despite concerns raised by students. up for potential impacts at the new school site. The off-site mitiga- tion along Neawanna Creek behind the bus barn, above the high-water mark, is to improve the habitat along the creek. “The district’s bus barn and adjacent properties to the south are on Neawanna Creek and have enough front- age that we can do vegetative cleanup there,” Henry said at an earlier meeting. “We’re working with the Necanicum Watershed Council to make sure we have the right strat- egy for mitigation.” To complete the work for the Corps, the district will need a survey for the ease- ment agreement, an inva- sive species removal plan, approved species planting plan and erosion control plan to have in place while the work is being done, Henry said Wednesday. Hoffman Construction will implement the mitigation work, both on-site and off- site. They have yet to finalize their schedule. The final building permit will be submitted to the city on Sept. 28. Bids for the next construc- tion phases are underway, Henry added, including bids for the building’s roof, metal siding, interior and site work. Columbia Memorial Hospital is planning a park, picnic area and walking labyrinth on its main cam- pus along Exchange Street to promote health and wellness. The CMH Health and Wellness Park is under con- struction between the main hospital and the Knight Can- cer Collaborative, a can- cer treatment center recently opened in partnership with Oregon Health and Science University. “The CMH Health and Wellness Park is a part of our strategic initiative to enhance the patient and caregiver experience, pro- viding a place to inspire wellness,” Erik Thorsen, CEO of the hospital, said in a news release. “Through this space, we hope to sup- port and encourage outdoor activity, rest and relaxation for our caregivers, patients and their family members.” A walking path lined with plants, shrubs and trees winds around the labyrinth. A singular trail leads to the middle in between more shrubbery. The park will also include picnic areas and a bocce ball court. “For years, patients and caregivers suggested that we create healing outdoor spaces to walk in,” Thorsen said. “Once we finished building the Cancer Collab- orative, we realized that the greenspace between build- ings offered the perfect opportunity. We’re really excited for the CMH Health and Wellness Park to open and I hope that it gets a lot of use.” The park was designed by MacDonald Environ- mental Planning of Portland. Construction is being over- seen by Al Jacques of CM Services Co. Construction is expected to finish by the end of fall. Wyden: Senate targeted by hackers By FRANK BAJAK AND RAPHAEL SATTER Associated Press Foreign government hack- ers continue to target the per- sonal email accounts of U.S. senators and their aides — and the Senate’s security office has refused to defend them, a law- maker says. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore- gon, said in a Wednesday let- ter to Senate leaders that his office discovered that “at least one major technology com- pany” has warned an unspec- ified number of senators and aides that their personal email accounts were “targeted by foreign government hack- ers.” Similar methods were employed by Russian military agents who leaked the con- tents of private email inboxes to influence the 2016 elections. Wyden did not specify the timing of the notifications, but a Senate staffer said they occurred “in the last few weeks or months.” The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. But the senator said the Office of the Sergeant at Arms, which oversees Senate secu- rity, informed legislators and staffers that it has no authority to help secure personal, rather than official, accounts. “This must change,” Wyden wrote in the letter. “The November election grows ever closer, Russia continues its attacks on our democracy, and the Senate simply does not have the luxury of fur- ther delays.” A spokeswoman for the security office said it would have no comment. Wyden has proposed leg- islation that would allow the security office to offer dig- ital protection for personal accounts and devices, the same way it does with official ones. His letter did not provide addi- tional details of the attempts to pry into the lawmakers’ digital lives, including whether law- makers of both parties are still being targeted. Google and Microsoft, which offer popular private email accounts, declined to comment. The Wyden letter cites pre- vious Associated Press report- ing on the Russian hacking AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin A Capitol Hill staffer uses a smartphone inside the Rus- sell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. group known as Fancy Bear and how it targeted the per- sonal accounts of congres- sional aides between 2015 and 2016. The group’s pro- lific cyberspying targeted the Gmail accounts of current and former Senate staffers, including Robert Zarate, now national security adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Jason Thielman, chief of staff to Montana Sen. Steve Daines, the AP found. The same group also spent the second half of 2017 laying digital traps intended to look like portals where Senate offi- cials enter their work email credentials, the Tokyo-based cybersecurity firm TrendMi- cro has reported. Microsoft seized some of those traps, and in September 2017 apparently thwarted an attempt to steal login creden- tials of a policy aide to Mis- souri Sen. Claire McCaskill , the Daily Beast discovered in July. Last month, Micro- soft made news again when it seized several internet domains linked to Fancy Bear, includ- ing two apparently aimed at conservative think tanks in Washington. Such incidents “only scratch the surface” of advanced cyberthreats faced by U.S. officials in the admin- istration and Congress, accord- ing to Thomas Rid, a cyberse- curity expert at Johns Hopkins University. Rid made the state- ment in a letter to Wyden last week . “The personal accounts of senators and their staff are high-value, low-hanging tar- gets,” Rid wrote. “No rules, no regulations, no funding streams, no mandatory train- ing, no systematic security support is available to secure these resources.” Attempts to breach such accounts were a major fea- ture of the yearlong AP inves- tigation into Fancy Bear that identified hundreds of senior officials and politicians — including former secretaries of state, top generals and intelli- gence chiefs — whose Gmail accounts were targeted. The Kremlin is by no means the only source of worry, said Matt Tait, a Uni- versity of Texas cybersecu- rity fellow and former British intelligence official. “There are lots of coun- tries that are interested in what legislators are thinking, what they’re doing, how to influ- ence them, and it’s not just for purposes of dumping their information online,” Tait said. In an April 12 letter released by Wyden’s office, Adm. Michael Rogers — then director of the National Security Agency — acknowl- edged that personal accounts of senior government offi- cials “remain prime targets for WANTED Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500 exploitation” and said that offi- cials at the NSA and Depart- ment for Homeland Security were discussing ways to bet- ter protect them. The NSA and DHS declined to offer further details. Guarding personal accounts is a complex, many-layered challenge. Rid believes tech compa- nies have a sudden responsi- bility to nudge high-profile political targets into better dig- ital hygiene. He said he did not believe much as been done, although Facebook announced a pilot program Monday to help political campaigns pro- tect their accounts, including monitoring for potential hack- ing threats for those that sign up. Boosting protection in the Senate could begin with the distribution of small chip- based security devices such as the YubiKey, which are already used in many secure corporate and government environments, Tait said. Such keys supplement passwords to authenticate legitimate users, potentially frustrating distant hackers. Cybersecurity experts also recommend them for high- value cyber-espionage targets including human rights work- ers and journalists. “In an ideal world, the Ser- geant at Arms could just have a pile of YubiKeys,” said Tait. “When legislators or staff come in they can (get) a quick cybersecurity briefing and pick up a couple of these for their personal accounts and their official accounts.” Clatsop Post 12 POW/MIA DAY Baked Potato Bar with all the trimmings & Cake Friday, Sept. 21 ST 4 pm until gone 8. 00 $ 6PM “Karaoke Dave” ASTORIA AMERICAN LEGION Clatsop Post 12 1132 Exchange Street 325-5771
