A11
B USINESS
THE BULLETIN • WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2021
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BRIEFING
Oregon lawmakers
urged not to hike
food safety fees
Farmers, processors
and grocers are encourag-
ing Oregon lawmakers to
restore food safety fund-
ing with general tax reve-
nues rather than sharply
increase maximum fees
on their industries.
In 2017, the Legisla-
ture shifted more of the
responsibility for funding
the state’s food safety in-
spection program to reg-
ulated businesses, such as
dairies, egg handlers, bak-
eries and grocery stores.
Their license fees now
represent 75% of the
program’s funding, up
from 60% before the fee
structure was changed.
The balance comes from
the state’s general fund,
which comes from taxes
on individuals and com-
panies.
The state Department
of Agriculture, which
oversees food safety, is
now asking lawmakers to
“reverse the downward
trend” in the program’s
budget by hiking maxi-
mum license fees by 15%
in mid-2022 and another
15% in mid-2023.
Biden extends ban
on foreclosures
President Joe Biden is
extending a ban on hous-
ing foreclosures to June
30 to help homeowners
struggling during the
coronavirus pandemic.
The moratorium on
foreclosures of federally
guaranteed mortgages
had been set to expire on
March 31. On his first day
in office, Biden had ex-
tended the moratorium
from Jan. 31. Census Bu-
reau figures show that al-
most 12% of homeown-
ers with mortgages were
late on their payments.
The White House says
the coordinated actions
announced Tuesday
by the Departments of
Housing and Urban De-
velopment, Veterans Af-
fairs and Agriculture also
will extend to June 30
the enrollment window
for borrowers who want
to request a pause or
reduction in payments
and will provide up to six
additional months of for-
bearance for borrowers
who entered forbearance
on or before June 30 of
last year.
Tuesday’s actions do
not address a federal
moratorium through
March 31 on evictions of
tenants who’ve fallen be-
hind on rent.
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NASA enlists universities,
companies to help design ...
BY GARY ROBBINS
The San Diego Union-Tribune
S
AN DIEGO — NASA
has given the University
of California, San Diego,
$5.8 million to help develop
electric-powered flying taxis,
a form of ride sharing that has
been envisioned for decades
but is struggling to get beyond
the concept stage.
UCSD will lead a group of
universities and companies in
creating software tools to de-
sign small fleets of vertical take-
off-and-landing aircraft that
are quieter, safer, cleaner and
more efficient and affordable
than helicopters.
Customers would go to con-
veniently located taxi stands,
where they could hail a ride
with a smartphone app and
join other passengers in get-
ting quickly transported signif-
icant distances in areas where
ground traffic is often con-
gested.
Some taxis might be pilotless,
flying automated, preset routes.
The concept — also known
was urban air mobility — is
p
CRUDE OIL
$60.05 +.58
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GOLD
$1,797.20 -24.40
— Bulletin wire reports
SILVER
$27.32 ...
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EURO
$1.2115 -.0016
FLYING TAXIS?
largely meant for sprawling ar-
eas such as Los Angeles, which
has some of the nation’s worst
traffic. Air taxis also could shut-
tle riders between places like
San Diego International Air-
port and such outlying cities as
Oceanside and Escondido.
A “90-minute ground com-
mute to a downtown workplace
could be reduced to a 15-min-
ute air taxi flight,” said John
Hwang, a UCSD mechanical
and aerospace engineering, said
in a statement.
See Taxis / A12
Dreamstime
NASA enlists universities, companies to help design flying taxis.
Canada’s cruise ban puts
SEASON IN DOUBT
BY EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
T
he Alaska cruise season — an important
source of revenue for the Port of Asto-
ria — could be in jeopardy after Canada
banned cruise ships with more than 100 pas-
sengers until March 2022 because of the coro-
navirus pandemic.
In a statement, the Canadian government
said the ban was necessary to focus on vaccine
rollout amid new variants of the virus.
“Temporary prohibitions to cruise vessels
and pleasure craft are essential to continue to
protect the most vulnerable among our com-
munities and avoid overwhelming our health
care systems,” said Omar Alghabra, the min-
ister of transportation in Canada. “This is the
right and responsible thing to do.”
U.S. maritime law requires foreign-flagged
cruise ships visiting multiple domestic ports
to stop in another country during each cruise.
Canada provides the stopover for cruise ships
shuttling between the West Coast and Alaska.
As of last week, the port still had 17 cruise
ships scheduled to dock in Astoria through
the year, starting with the Celebrity Eclipse
on May 4. Ten spring cancellations have so far
cost the port an estimated $314,000 in revenue.
Canceling the rest of the season could cost an-
other $500,000.
“I anticipate that we will have more cancel-
lations if the CDC (Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention) guidelines don’t change
and the COVID situation doesn’t change,” Sue
Transue, the port’s terminal manager, recently
See Cruise / A12
The Rega
Regatta is riding out
the coronavirus pandemic
at the Port of Astoria.
Bitcoin price over
$50K for first time
The seemingly un-
stoppable rise of Bitcoin
continued Tuesday with
the cost of a single unit
of the digital currency ris-
ing above $50,000 for the
first time.
The price of Bitcoin has
risen almost 200% in the
last three months, and
its volatility was on dis-
play Tuesday. After rising
above $50,600, it fell back
to $48,674 at 11:15 a.m.
Pacific time.
Bitcoin is rallying as
more companies signal
the digital currency could
eventually gain wide-
spread acceptance as a
means of payment. The
vast majority of those
who have acquired Bit-
coin have treated it as
a commodity, like gold,
with few places accepting
it in exchange for goods
or services.
Companies have
been leery because of
Bitcoin’s volatility and its
use by parties who want
to avoid the traditional
banking system for a myr-
iad of reasons.
n
Hailey Hoffman/The Astorian
Young inventor makes coding fun
BY GINA RICH
Special To The Washington Post
When Samaira Mehta was 6
years old, her father played a prank
on her.
“He showed me basically some-
thing on his computer which had
one button and a command which
said, ‘Press this if you’re beautiful.’
And he told me to give it a try,” she
said.
As Samaira hovered her mouse
pointer over the command, the but-
ton disappeared.
Intrigued, Samaira asked her dad
how he did it. He explained that
he’d used something called coding,
using a programming language to
get a computer to do something.
That lighthearted moment inspired
Samaira to develop a passion for
computer science. Now age 12, she
is founder and chief executive of
CoderBunnyz, a business that aims
to make coding fun for everyone.
After her dad’s prank, Samaira
was eager to learn coding tricks.
Her father recommended a website
with practice exercises. Scrolling
Vaccine delays
leave grocery
workers feeling
expendable
BY ALEXANDRA OLSON, DEE-ANN DURBIN
AND ANNE D’INNOCENZIO
The Associated Press
Coder Bunnyz via The Washington Post
Samaira Mehta, who is 12, became interested in coding at age 6. Her friends
didn’t share her enthusiasm. She thought a game might convince them that
learning to code can be fun. So she invented a board game called CoderBunnyz.
down the page, Samaira saw the
words “make your own app.” She
tried following the instructions but
made so many mistakes that “it
made my whole screen just look
red,” she said. Frustrated, she gave
up.
See Coding / A12
As panicked Americans cleared super-
markets of toilet paper and food last spring,
grocery employees gained recognition as
among the most indispensable of the pan-
demic’s front-line workers.
A year later, most of those workers are
waiting their turn to receive COVID-19
vaccines, with little clarity about when that
might happen.
A decentralized vaccine campaign has
resulted in a patchwork of policies that dif-
fer from state to state, and even county to
county in some areas, resulting in an incon-
sistent rollout to low-paid essential workers
who are exposed to hundreds of customers
each day.
See Grocery / A12