Oregon, Eugene | featured news

SALEM — The Obama Administration has awarded Oregon a $20 million grant for the state’s effort to improve early-childhood education. Gov. John Kitzhaber’s office announced the grant on Thursday.

PORTLAND — The Department of Environmental Quality holds the last of three public hearings Thursday evening in Portland on the Ambre Energy plan to export coal through Oregon to Asia.

EUGENE — Keith Jin got tired of his dog Pebble scratching the door when he wanted to go out or come back inside his home in Eugene. So Jin installed a doggy doorbell. There’s one inside and one outside, just the right height for Pebble to push with his nose.

EVERETT — A spokesman for Allegiant Air says it remains interested in flying from Paine Field. The spokesman, Carl Zablotny, says the airport fits its business model of bringing residents of smaller cities to vacation destinations such as Las Vegas and Hawaii.

Mention the name of jazz legend Dave Brubeck, and for many the first word association is “Take Five,” the title of the smash instrumental tune that Brubeck’s quartet released in 1959.

Lane County Sheriff’s Deputy Drew Wattier, who was seriously injured in a hit-and-run accident in Los Cabos, Mexico, on Friday, was cleared for air medical transport to a trauma center in San Diego this afternoon, the sheriff’s office said.

Lane County will try to take the temperature of voters to see if they would support paying additional taxes to at least patch up a portion of the county’s crumbling public safety system.

Arson investigators have been called in to probe an early morning fire that destroyed a home under construction in southwest Eugene. A spokeswoman for the Eugene Police Department said the cause of the fire appears to be suspicious and police are treating it as possible arson.

A Lane County jury began deliberations late this afternoon in the attempted murder trial of Francisco Mario Ochoa, accused of deliberately running down his estranged wife’s fitness trainer, then crashing his pickup truck into her car seconds after she dove out of his path on March 14.

A man involved in Eugene’s first known gang murder, and regarded by police as a prison gang leader, faces a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Beau Heleman Flynn, 34, was charged Monday in Eugene federal court. He is scheduled for arraignment here Dec.