OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
A8
Hamley: Owners
reach agreement on
sale of businesses
Continued from Page A1
hearing the afternoon of
Aug. 7 at the bankruptcy
court in Portland. That’s a
hearing for Woodfi eld and
other parties to explain to
the judge why the court
should approve their plan.
Neither Woodfi eld nor
Pearce returned calls seek-
ing comment.
After the sale closes,
Woodfi eld and Pearce have
to work with the Hamley
bookkeeper to calculate
and pay all company debts,
and bankruptcy Judge Peter
McKittrick or a third-party
arbitrator gets to settle any
disputes that arise during
that process.
Until then, according to
the deal, the management
of the Hamley companies
remains status quo, with
Woodfi eld overseeing the
steak house and Pearce in
charge of the western store.
The two former business
partners also consented to
the winning bidder appoint-
ing new managers of the
Hamley businesses. And
Woodfi eld agreed Pearce
“may remain involved in
some capacity” in Hamley
operations after the sale.
Wealthy fi nancier
charged with molesting
dozens of girls
fl ee if released.
His lawyers argued that
the sex-crime allegations
had been settled in 2008
NEW YORK — In a with a plea agreement in
startling reversal of for- Florida that was overseen by
tune, billionaire fi nancier Alexander Acosta, who was
Jeffrey Epstein was charged the U.S. attorney in Miami
Monday with sexu-
at the time and is
ally abusing dozens
now Trump’s labor
of underage girls in
secretary.
a case brought more
“This is ancient
than a decade after
stuff,” Epstein attor-
he secretly cut a deal
ney Reid Weingar-
with federal pros-
ten said in court,
ecutors to dispose
calling the case
Epstein
of nearly identical
essentially a “redo”
allegations.
by the government.
The 66-year-old hedge
But U.S. Attorney Geof-
fund manager who once frey Berman of New York
socialized with some of the said that the non-prosecu-
world’s most powerful peo- tion agreement that spared
ple was charged in a newly Epstein from a heavy prison
unsealed federal indictment sentence a decade ago is
with sex traffi cking and binding only on federal
conspiracy during the early prosecutors in Florida, not
2000s. He could get up to 45 on authorities in New York.
years in prison if convicted.
The alleged victims
The case sets the stage “deserve their day in court,”
for another #MeToo-era Berman said. “We are proud
trial fraught with questions to be standing up for them by
of wealth and infl uence. bringing this indictment.”
Epstein’s powerful friends
Epstein was accused in
over the years have included the indictment of paying
President Donald Trump, underage girls hundreds
former President Bill Clin- of dollars in cash for mas-
ton and Britain’s Prince sages and then molesting
Andrew.
them at his homes in Palm
Prosecutors said the Beach, Florida, and New
evidence against Epstein York from 2002 through
included a “vast trove” of 2005.
hundreds or even thousands
He “intentionally sought
of lewd photographs of out minors and knew that
young women or girls, dis- many of his victims were
covered in a weekend search in fact under the age of 18,”
of his New York City man- prosecutors said. He also
sion. Authorities also found paid some of his victims
papers and phone records to recruit additional girls,
corroborating the alleged creating “a vast network of
crimes, and a massage room underage victims for him
still set up the way accusers to sexually exploit,” prose-
said it appeared, prosecutors cutors said.
said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney
Epstein,
who
was Alex Rossmiller said that
arrested Saturday as he while there is some overlap
arrived in the U.S. from between the Florida and
Paris aboard his private New York cases, one of the
jet, was brought into court counts is based entirely on
Monday in a blue jail uni- New York victims.
form, his hair disheveled,
Federal authorities said
and pleaded not guilty. He new accusers have come
was jailed for a bail hearing forward since Epstein’s
next Monday, when prose- arrest, and they urged other
cutors plan to argue that the possible victims to contact
rich world traveler might the FBI.
By MICHAEL R. SISAK
AND JIM MUSTIAN
Associated Press
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
Townhall: Merkley fi elds questions in Boardman
Continued from Page A1
while they waited for their
hearing. The program had
a near 100% success rate
in getting families to show
up to court, but was can-
celed by the Trump admin-
istration for reasons Merk-
ley said he hasn’t been able to
determine.
He said the federal gov-
ernment needed to provide
the resources to get people
of all ages seeking asylum
through the hearing process
much more quickly. The vast
majority of people who seek
asylum are turned away, he
said — only about 20,000
people were granted asylum
last year.
“Regardless of whether
they win or lose we should
still treat them with dignity
in between,” he said.
He also said the country
needed to stop turning away
unaccompanied minors at
the border, leaving them at
the mercy of sex traffi ckers
and other bad actors.
Others at Saturday’s town
hall were concerned about
children who are strug-
gling in America’s education
system.
Maureen McGrath, direc-
tor of Umatilla Morrow
Head Start, asked about fed-
eral initiatives on the horizon
for early childhood educa-
tion. Rick and Susan Scheib-
ner, who both work for
Hermiston School District,
described children coming
to school with more mental
health problems and more
trauma than a decade ago.
Susan said she saw econom-
ically stressed parents mak-
ing tough choices, and the
effect on their children.
Merkley said the fed-
eral government needed to
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Senator Jeff Merkley speaks during a town hall at the SAGE Center in Boardman. Merkley
used the time to address community concerns regarding Social Security, refugees and ed-
ucation.
directly invest in education
but also help families by cut-
ting wasteful spending and
focusing on basics such as
health care and housing.
He said when he was
growing up his family pur-
chased a home worth the
equivalent of two years of his
father’s salary as a mechanic.
Today the same type of home
in the same town costs fi ve
to six times a mechanic’s
annual salary, he said.
“It isn’t that the families in
my neighborhood changed,
it’s that the economics have
changed,” he said.
Merkley also said he was
a proponent of a combined
effort of state and federal
spending to serve more chil-
dren with early childhood
education programs like
Head Start. He said research
showed that investments
in a child’s formative years
paid off many times over
when they became a more
productive member of soci-
ety and avoided trouble like
incarceration.
Attendees at Saturday’s
town hall also asked about
keeping Social Security sol-
vent, taking away subsi-
dies for fossil fuels, prevent-
ing foreign interference in
elections, slowing climate
change and holding power-
ful tech companies like Face-
book accountable.
Merkley said if the gov-
ernment removed the cap
on the level of wages subject
to the Social Security tax or
placed a Social Security tax
on capital gains the program
would be solvent for many
decades into the future with
money for increased benefi ts.
He
expressed
sup-
port for incentivizing clean
energy and energy-effi -
ciency upgrades to homes
and agreed with the citizen
who advocated removing
the subsidies for oil and gas
companies.
Merkley said he sup-
ports passage of the bipar-
tisan DETER Act, which
lays out stiff sanctions for
any foreign country found
meddling in the United
States’ elections. Beyond
foreign interference, he
feels Congress has a duty to
tackle problems he believes
are eroding the country’s
democracy.
“We’re seeing a lot of ger-
rymandering, a lot of voter
suppression and intimida-
tion and a lot of dark money
in campaigns,” he said. “It’s
got to be a real priority to
take those on.”
Big earthquakes raise
interest in West Coast
warning system
By JOHN ANTCZAK
AND CHRISTOPHER
WEBER
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — The
powerful Mojave Desert
earthquakes that rocked Cal-
ifornia ended a years-long
lull in major seismic activ-
ity and raised new interest
in an early warning system
being developed for the West
Coast.
The ShakeAlert system
is substantially built in Cal-
ifornia and overall is about
55% complete, with much
of the remaining installation
of seismic sensor stations to
be done in the Pacifi c North-
west, said Robert de Groot of
the U.S. Geological Survey.
Areas that have the
appropriate number of sen-
sors include Southern Cal-
ifornia, San Francisco Bay
Area and the Seattle-Tacoma
region, de Groot said.
The system does not pre-
dict earthquakes. Rather, it
detects that an earthquake
is occurring, rapidly calcu-
lates expected intensity lev-
els and sends out alerts that
may give warnings ranging
from several seconds to per-
haps a minute before poten-
tially damaging shaking
hits locations away from the
epicenter.
Depending on the dis-
tance, that could be enough
time
to
automatically
slow trains, stop industrial
machines, start generators,
pull a surgical knife away
from a patient or tell students
to put the “drop, cover and
hold” drill into action.
For alerts to be useful,
delivery has to be timely,
and that’s a problem with
current cellphone technol-
ogy. For cellphone delivery,
the USGS ultimately intends
to use the same system that
delivers Amber Alerts, send-
ing signals to everyone in
reach of cellphone towers in
defi ned areas where damag-
ing shaking is expected.
Pilot programs involv-
ing select users have been
underway for several years.
In October, the USGS
announced the system was
ready to be used broadly by
businesses, utilities, schools
and other entities following a
software update that reduced
problems such as false alerts
AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez
Members of the National Guard load water onto an SUV in
the aftermath of an earthquake on Sunday outside Trona
High School in Trona, Calif.
typically caused by a big
quake somewhere in the
world being misidentifi ed as
a local quake.
Currently, the only mass
public notifi cation is pos-
sible through a mobile app
developed for the city of Los
Angeles and functional only
within Los Angeles County.
The ShakeAlertLA app
did not send alerts for last
week’s two big quakes, but
offi cials said it functioned
as designed because the
expected level of shaking in
the LA area — more than
100 miles from the epicen-
ters— was below a trigger
threshold.
Thresholds for alerting
are important because Cali-
fornia has daily earthquakes.
“Imagine getting 10
ShakeAlerts on your phone
for really small earthquakes
that may not affect you,” de
Groot said. “If people get
saturated with these mes-
sages it’s going to make peo-
ple not care as much.”
In the Mojave Desert
on Monday, rattled resi-
dents cleaned up and offi -
cials assessed damage in
the aftermath of Thurs-
day’s magnitude 6.4 earth-
quake and Friday’s magni-
tude 7.1 quake centered near
Ridgecrest.
President Donald Trump
on Monday declared an
emergency exists in Califor-
nia because of the quakes,
paving the way for federal
aid. The declaration autho-
rized the Federal Emer-
gency Management Agency
to
coordinate
disaster
relief efforts.
The EO’s Biggest
Special Publication of the Year
COMING September 4th, 2019
Trust your advertising dollar to a company that has been in the publishing business for more than a century.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Proven Distribution network of 20,000 magazines
Distributed in the East Oregonian, Hermiston Herald, Wallowa County Chieftan, Blue Mountain Eagle, LaGrand Observer and Baker City Herald.
Available in Hotels, Motels and RV Parks and Pendleton Chamber of Commerce.
Collectible High Gloss Magazine
Trust your advertising dollar to a company that has been in the Round-Up Business for years.
Early bird advertising rates available now, reserve your space now!
Angela Treadwell
541-966-0827
atreadwell@eastoregonian.com
Rowan Treadwell
541-278-2670
rowan@eastoregonian.com
Grace Bubar
541-276-2214
gbubar@eastoregonian.com
Jeanne Jewett
541-564-4531
jjewett@hermistonherald.com
Audra Workman
541-564-4538
aworkman@eastoregonian.com