Page 8A
NATION/WORLD
East Oregonian
BRIEFLY
Stolen truck kills
four in Stockholm
STOCKHOLM (AP) —
A hijacked beer truck plowed
into pedestrians at a central
Stockholm department
store on Friday, killing four
people, wounding 15 others
and sending screaming
shoppers fleeing in panic
in what Sweden’s prime
minister called a terrorist
attack.
A nationwide manhunt
was launched and one person
was arrested following the
latest use of a vehicle as a
weapon in Europe.
Nearby buildings were
locked down for hours in
the heart of the capital —
including the country’s
parliament — and the main
train station and several large
malls were evacuated.
“Sweden has been
attacked,” Prime Minister
Stefan Lofven said in a
nationally televised press
conference. “This indicates
that it is an act of terror.”
Later Friday night,
Lofven laid a bouquet of
red roses and lit a candle
near the site of the attack.
Officials announced flags at
government offices would
fly at half-mast Saturday to
honor the victims.
Judge drops two
non-capital charges
in 9/11 case
MIAMI (AP) — A
military judge has dismissed
two of eight charges
against five prisoners at the
Guantanamo Bay detention
center who are charged in the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Army Col. James Pohl
accepted a defense argument
that the statute of limitations
has run out on the charges.
Friday’s ruling strikes the
charges of attacking civilian
objects and destruction of
property.
The defendants still
face more serious charges,
including nearly 3,000 counts
of murder in violation of the
law of war for their alleged
roles planning and aiding
the terrorist attack of Sept.
11, 2001. They could get the
death penalty if convicted.
Attorney Alka Prahdan
said the defense will argue
to strike three of the more
serious charges including
terrorism at a May pretrial
hearing at the U.S. base in
Cuba.
Michigan boy, 11,
hangs himself after
social media prank
DETROIT (AP) — Tysen
Benz was at home when
he saw social media posts
indicating that his 13-year-old
girlfriend had committed
suicide. The posts were a
prank, but the 11-year-old boy
apparently believed them.
Moments later, his
mother found him hanging
by the neck in his room in
Marquette, Michigan. Now
a prosecutor is pursuing
criminal charges against a
juvenile accused of being
involved in the scheme,
which Katrina Goss described
as “a twisted, sick joke.”
Goss described her son
as appearing “fine” just 40
minutes before she found
him.
Using a cellphone he
bought without his mother’s
knowledge, Tysen on March
14 was reading texts and
other messages about the
faked suicide and decided
he would end his life too, his
mother said.
Demand booming
on college campuses
for creative writing
NEW HAVEN, Conn.
(AP) — Some credit the
rise of social media. Others
attribute it to a flourishing
culture of self-expression.
Whatever the reason, colleges
across the United States are
seeing a boom in demand for
courses on creative writing.
Colleges are adding
writing programs to
accommodate interest in
what has become the rarest of
fields in the humanities — a
sector that is growing, rather
than losing students to
science and technology.
The number of schools
offering bachelor’s degrees
in creative writing has
risen from three in 1975
to 733 today, according to
the Association of Writers
& Writing Programs, an
industry group based at
George Mason University in
Virginia.
“Most of them are aware
that this probably is not going
to be their career. At least,
I hope they’re aware,” said
David Galef, of Montclair
State University in New
Jersey. “They’re interested in
doing something they feel is
creative.”
HERMISTON: City council
meeting is Monday, 7 p.m.
Continued from 1A
Morgan emphasized earlier in
the week that the chamber has
done a “great job” of running
the conference center, the
opening of a new, larger event
center at the Eastern Oregon
Trade and Event Center has
caused the city to re-examine
where the conference center
fits into the community.
The conclusion the city has
reached is that the “synergy”
between the two venues will
likely work best when EOTEC
is holding larger, more
profitable events while the
conference center functions
more as a community center
with smaller, local events and
recreational classes.
“Unfortunately,
that
creates a bad position for the
Chamber, whose compen-
sation is partially tied to the
profitability of the Conference
Center,” according to the
agenda packet, which stated
that pushing more for-profit
events to EOTEC would
“hamstring” the chamber’s
ability to bring in as much
event revenue as it has in the
past.
More information about
the plan that will be discussed
Monday can be found in the
agenda packet for the April
10 at www.hermiston.or.us/
citycouncil-meetings.
The agenda for Monday
also includes a request to allow
city staff to pursue a $300,000
grant from the Federal Avia-
tion Administration to update
the city’s master plan for the
Hermiston Municipal Airport.
The state would provide the
$30,000 in matching funds
needed, reducing the local
contribution to approximately
$3,300.
Monday’s city council
meeting is 7 p.m. at city hall,
180 NE Second Street.
———
Contact Jade McDowell
at jmcdowell@eastoregonian.
com or 541-564-4536.
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Saturday, April 8, 2017
Seattle mayor denies sex abuse claims
SEATTLE (AP) — Ed
Murray led a long campaign
to
legalize
same-sex
marriage in Washington
state, toiled for nearly two
decades as a state lawmaker
and won his
biggest personal
political victory
in 2013 when he
unseated Seattle’s
incumbent mayor
by promising the
ultra-liberal city to
raise the minimum
hourly wage to
Murray
$15.
Just as he
took on a role
as a high-profile critic of
President Donald Trump and
prepared to launch a re-elec-
tion campaign, Murray was
hit Thursday with a political
bombshell — accusations
from three men that Murray
sexually abused them in the
1980s.
On Friday, Murray held
a brief news conference to
deny allegations in a lawsuit
by one man, saying “they
were very painful for me. It
was painful for my husband.”
Through a spokesman he has
also denied the allegations
by the other men.
He said he will not step
down and is sticking to
re-election campaign plans
but refused to
answer reporters’
questions, saying
the case “is now a
legal matter that is
in the courts.”
Murray’s
spokesman, Jeff
Reading, previ-
ously suggested
unnamed Murray
enemies
were
behind the claims.
“It is not a coincidence
that this shakedown effort
comes within weeks of the
campaign filing deadline,”
Reading said.
Calls to city coun-
cilmembers earlier for
Friday for comment about
the mayor and what impact
the allegations could mean
for his political future went
unreturned.
Murray, 61, grew up in
working class neighbor-
hoods in and around Seattle
as one of seven children in
an Irish Catholic family and
became one of the state’s
most prominent political
figures.
“Things have never come
easily to me in life, but I
have never backed down and
I will not back down now,”
Murray told reporters in
remarks that lasted less than
two minutes.
As a young man, he
considered joining the
priesthood and spent a year
at a seminary in 1976 before
studying sociology at the
University of Portland, a
private Catholic institution.
Murray ended up working
a paralegal with public
defender lawyers in Portland
before returning to Seattle
and joining the vanguard
of the gay rights movement
in the 1980s, serving as
campaign manager for Cal
Anderson, a Seattle state
senator who was the state’s
first openly gay member.
Anderson,
Murray’s
mentor, died in 1995.
Murray failed in his bid to
win Anderson’s seat, but
he was appointed to fill the
legislative seat of the state
representative who won the
state senate campaign.
During his 18 years as
a state lawmaker, Murray
was the prime sponsor of
Washington’s gay marriage
law, spearheaded an effort
to protect LGBTQ youth in
public schools and led the
state’s push to ban discrim-
ination based on sexual
orientation.
“As a legislator, Ed was a
warrior for core Democratic
values,” said state Sen.
Reuven Carlyle, a fellow
Seattle Democrat. “He was
unquestionably a tough
negotiator with an eye on the
long game for progress.”
The 2013 mayoral race
was a bruising campaign that
focused on whether Murray
would be more liberal and
effective than incumbent
Mike McGinn, a fellow
Democrat, in the notoriously
difficult city to govern
because of competing
liberal factions and an older,
established political order
resistant to change.
SCHOOL: Helix closest to reaching the 40-40-20 goal
Continued from 1A
of another of Kitzhaber’s
education initiatives — the
now-defunct Oregon Educa-
tion Investment Board.
As an aspiration, Mulvi-
hill said 40-40-20 was the
right call, a goal that made
sure no student was left
behind in the quest for high
school graduation.
In more realistic terms,
Mulvihill said 40-40-20
would be all but impos-
sible to achieve. He said
one of the main successes
of 40-40-20 is it made
educators rethink how they
approached graduation.
While certain metrics and
benchmarks were already
well established — kinder-
garten readiness, third grade
literacy, on-track for grad-
uation — 40-40-20 made
teachers and administrators
consider
post-graduation
outcomes.
Through programs like
Eastern Promise, Mulvihill
said he thought educators
were doing a good job in
trying to reach the 40 percent
threshold for students with
bachelor’s degrees. He said
the next strep was having
the state’s education system
up its career technical
education offerings, which
would contribute toward
the 40 percent of students
with two-year degrees and
vocational certificates.
Mulvihill said he would
be in favor of keeping
40-40-20 as an aspirational
framework, even if 100
percent graduation isn’t
attainable.
On both sides of the grad-
uation rate spectrum, local
superintendents provided a
mixed assessment of 40-40-
20.
Overseeing a public
school system with a grad-
uation rate that has hovered
around the low 70s in recent
years, Umatilla School
District
superintendent
Heidi Sipe didn’t know how
doing away with 40-40-20
would affect her district
because of differing expec-
tations.
While the state might
scrutinize a school district’s
four-year graduation rate to
see how it meets 40-40-20,
Sipe said Umatilla schools
are less concerned with
how long it takes for an
individual student.
“If that student needs six
years, so be it,” she said.
Sipe said the district
is also keen to support
students in whatever career
path they choose, regardless
of what ratio it creates, from
a student who wants to jump
directly into the workforce
to a kid who eventually
wants to earn a Ph.D.
If the state wants districts
to graduate 100 percent of
their seniors and report their
post-graduation progress,
Sipe said the state needs to
supply the money and the
tools to do it.
While the state does track
students who attend in-state
colleges and universities, it
doesn’t follow students who
have left the state to attend
school.
Sipe said that’s a problem
for a community near the
Oregon-Washington border,
especially since many
Umatilla students choose
to cross the river the attend
Columbia Basin College in
Pasco or Washington State
University Tri-Cities.
Evans, the legislator who
has proposed axing 40-40-
20, said underfunding is
another problem with the
goal. He told The Oregonian
that the state’s education
system would need another
billion dollars per year to
make 40-40-20 a reality.
The
Helix
School
District would seem to be
the closest to reaching the
40-40-20 goal as any district
in the state.
With its strong commu-
nity support and small class
sizes, Helix’s five-year
graduation rate has been
100 percent four out of the
past five years.
Although he expects
all 15 students in Helix’s
current senior class to grad-
uate on time, Helix super-
intendent Darrick Cope
said there’s still challenges
to continuing the district’s
perfect rate.
If a credit-deficient
senior transfers to Helix or
one student fails a class,
Cope said staff would be
hard-pressed to keep the
graduation rate unblem-
ished.
Cope also brought up
the issue of underfunding,
comparing it to how the
state is struggling to figure
out how to fund Measure
98, a ballot measure that
mandates the establish-
ment and expansion of
career technical education
and drop-out prevention
programs.
“I don’t even have a
template to access the
money,” he said.
Due to Helix’s small
class sizes, Cope said the
district is able to unofficially
track how their students do
after high school.
He said their college
attendance numbers are
probably lower than they
have been historically, but
that’s only because more
students are taking a gap
year or two to work a job
before setting off for college.
He expects that many recent
Helix alums will be enrolled
in college within five years
of graduating.
Whether 40-40-20 goes
away or not is still up in the
air. After a public hearing
March 22, the bill is still
being considered in the
Legislature’s
education
committee.
———
Contact Antonio Sierra
at asierra@eastoregonian.
com or 541-966-0836.
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