After 92 years, the Oregon Daily Emerald newspaper is going away. What's next? Find out. Continue reading →

Commentary by Matt Barry The recommendations from a federal advisory body recommending against screening healthy men for prostate cancer distill many of the difficult decisions confronting our nation’s health system. The guidelines pit facts versus feelings, rational decision-making versus the human element, and the sheer variability in how individuals respond to different treatments. I should know. If those recommendations to scrap the standard prostate cancer test had been in place 18 months ago, the likely result would be my death five to 10 years from now. As a career health policy professional and as someone who just finished treatment for prostate cancer, the divide for me is very real. According to the new guidelines, I should never have been diagnosed in the first place as ... Continue reading →

The population of Spokane, Washington is 195,526. It is the 105th biggest city in the United States. Even before the recession, in 2008, 34,000 people in Spokane lived below the poverty line—a little more than 17 percent of the population. That’s about the same as it was in Washington D.C. at the time. The poverty rate was 11 percent in Seattle and Portland. Spokane is sometimes called the biggest city between Seattle and Minneapolis, but this is only true if you ignore everything below Wyoming, including Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix, and at least four cities in Texas. This is really just another way of saying nobody much lives in Montana or the Dakotas. My grandfather arrived in Spokane in the 1930s, on a freight ... Continue reading →

"This is the first time I've seen it like this," says Onzchhu Sherpa, 31. Starting on the night of May 18 and going through the 20th, roughly 300 climbers, guides, and Sherpas crowded onto upper slopes of Everest's Southeast Ridge. From the 19,000-foot shoulder of a neighboring peak, where I was watching, Everest appeared to be lit up like a Christmas tree with the headlamps of climbers converging from the mountain's north and south sides.Onzchhu, Dawa Dendi Sherpa, and Temba Sherpa, along with their clients from outfitter Happy Feet had started out from the South Col, at 7,900 meters, at 8:30 P.M. on the 18th. Among their clients was Shriya Shah, a 33-year-old Canadian citizen who was originally from Nepal. Also climbing on the same ... Continue reading →

At least three climbers have died while descending from the summit of Mount Everest. One of three climbers was confirmed to be Eberhard Schaaf, 61, from Aachen in Germany, who was climbing with the Eco Everest Expedition to remove decades-old rubbish from the mountain.The other climbers were confirmed as Shriya Shah, a 32-year-old Nepal-born woman living in Canada, and Song Won-Bin, a South Korean.A Chinese climber and his Nepali guide remain missing on the mountain.Gyanendra Shresth, an official from Nepal’s Mountaineering Department described how a strong wind storm swept the mountain late on Saturday after otherwise favourable conditions.Ang Tshering Sherpa, chief of the Asian Trekking company that organised the expedition confirmed Schaaf’s death."Schaaf died at the south summit of Sagarmatha due to altitude sickness," he ... Continue reading →

How JPMorgan Is Like Enron About Jonathan Weil Jonathan Weil joined Bloomberg News as a columnist in 2007, and his columns on finance and accounting won Best in the Business awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in 2009 and 2010. More about Jonathan Weil Put this one in the category of the famous quote often credited to Mark Twain: "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Last week when JPMorgan Chase & Co. warned investors about a $2 billion trading loss at its chief investment office, it also disclosed it had been using a faulty model to determine the unit's so-called value at risk. For me at least, the story conjured up memories of a similar tale at Enron ... Continue reading →