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• Sep 18, 2013
Drug traffickers are doing big business up and down the West Coast. When you go by freeway, you’re driving a Silk Road of sorts for heroin, meth and cocaine. This export industry is evolving. Drug experts say heroin is back on the rise, fueled in part by prescription drug abuse. This week, in a series we call Border to Border Drugs, we’re reporting on drug trafficking rings that rely on every freeway in the West. In part two of the series, correspondent Chris Lehman reports on how the supply side of this business may change, but the demand remains strong.
Oregon lawmakers have approved a bill requiring life insurance companies to cover deaths from terrorist attacks.
Credit Chris Lehman / KLCC
Some companies started to exclude terrorism from their policies after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth, said he hopes Oregon never experiences an attack on that scale. But he said there’s always the potential for smaller terrorist attacks in the future.
“This is one of those bills that we shouldn’t have to pass, but we are going to pass, I hope, Evans said before the House floor vote. Because we know better.”
The bill would not apply to people who die as a result of a terrorist attack they initiated.
SALEM â Members of the House Judiciary Committee dusted off a seldom-used rule this week to force a hearing for Baileyâs Bill.
Officially named Senate Bill 649, Baileyâs Bill increases penalties for criminal sexual contact with an underage victim if the offender is the victimâs teacher. Currently, a coach convicted of sexual abuse in the third degree receives harsher penalties than a teacher who commits the exact same crime. The legislation is named for Weston-McEwen High School student Bailey Munck, who testified on March 25 to the Oregon Senateâs judiciary committee, telling of sexual abuse in 2019 during a volleyball road trip by Andrew DeYoe, an English teacher and scorekeeper for the volleyball team.
Credit Chris Lehman / KLCC
As the coronavirus pandemic unfolded last year, Oregon lawmakers voted to give renters the freedom to delay paying their rent. They extended that grace period again last winter, but it expires at the end of June.
Senate Bill 282 would extend it again, through the end of February. Rep. Wlnsvey Campos, D-Aloha, said people who are still struggling with employment setbacks need more time to catch up.
“I ask that we set aside the myth that the majority of renters aren’t doing everything they can to pay their rent, and instead focus on supporting Oregon’s tenants and landlords by passing this bill, said Campos.