EUGENE – On a Friday night in March 2020, Landon Payne returned to his Eugene home high on meth, panicked and paranoid. He’d been clean for three years, but now, after using methamphetamine again, he believed people wanted to kill him.  His wife wanted to help. Angie Payne knew Landon[Read More…]

Michael Mastagni starts his day at Five Mile Ranch northeast of Beatty. (JOE SIESS/Herald and News) KLAMATH FALLS – In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Michael and Katie Mastagni saddled up for another long day of tracking down their cattle over landscape scorched by the Bootleg Fire. As the[Read More…]

KLAMATH FALLS – Judy Shanks starts her shift at Basin Ambulance at 5 a.m. each morning. She likes to start and finish work early, so she can return to her Malin home in the afternoon and tend to her livestock. But lately, rather than saddling up and going for a[Read More…]

KLAMATH FALLS – The nation’s largest wildfire torched more dry forest in Oregon and forced the evacuation of a wildlife research station Monday as firefighters had to retreat from the flames for the ninth consecutive day due to erratic and dangerous fire behavior. Firefighters were forced to pull back as[Read More…]

BAKER CITY – The Oregon Government Ethics Commission voted unanimously Friday, June 11 to make a preliminary finding that Bill Harvey, chairman of the Baker County Board of Commissioners, violated state ethics laws last year. A member of the Ethics Commission, Sean O’Day, told Harvey, who participated in the meeting[Read More…]

BEND – A recent study that draws heavily on Deschutes County found an “overwhelming consensus” among law enforcement officers that Oregon’s marijuana laws are poorly written and confusing. As a result, this perception has even led some local officers to stop enforcing marijuana laws altogether, according to the February report[Read More…]

KLAMATH FALLS – The federal Bureau of Reclamation announced Wednesday that Klamath Project’s A Canal will remain closed for the 2021 irrigation season, meaning that irrigators’ initial allocation of 33,000 acre-feet of water has been reduced to zero. Agency staff were seen lowering concrete bulkheads into the canal’s headworks early[Read More…]

BEND – Two cultural icons converged in Bend on Saturday when the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile parked in front of the last Blockbuster video rental store on Earth. The Wienermobile, the rolling orange and yellow symbol of Oscar Mayer hot dogs, pulled into the Blockbuster parking lot off Third Street to[Read More…]

PORTLAND — Finding locally grown fresh food Oregon just became easier. Oregon Taste, a public service project of nonprofit James Beard Public Market, announced the launch of OregonTaste.com, a searchable online directory of the state’s locally grown fresh food. The website allows area consumers to connect to Oregon’s local fresh[Read More…]

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Oregon have been on high alert for the past several months, as hate crimes and violence against those communities have increased nationally. Their fears were further realized Tuesday when eight people — including six Asian American women — were killed in a series of[Read More…]