News Stories Tue., May 29, 2018

A fire pushed by winds moved from the Warm Springs Forest Products site toward highway 26 and the Deschutes River Bridge late yesterday.  Limited visibility and work by fire fighters slowed down Memorial Day traffic for a time.  Warm Springs fire management dispatched crews to manage the fire.  Strong directional winds have stoked the ongoing burning at the former mill site before.

UNDATED (AP) — Starbucks will close more than 8,000 stores nationwide Tuesday to conduct anti-bias training, the next of many steps the company is taking to try to restore its tarnished image as a hangout where all are welcome. After the arrests of two black men in Philadelphia last month at one of its stores, the coffee chain’s leaders apologized and met with the two men, but also reached out to activists and experts in bias training to put together a curriculum for its 175,000 workers.

State regulators say Oregon produced enough recreational cannabis last year to supply every adult resident with more than 5 ounces (140 grams) of legal marijuana. The Bend Bulletin reports there were more than 1 million pounds (453,592 kilograms) in the state’s supply chain. Data provided by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission says only 108,000 pounds (45,359 kilograms) of usable recreational marijuana were sold last year at the retail level, leaving over 891,000 pounds in the pipeline to be stored for later sales or used in the manufacture of concentrates and edibles. With more cannabis being grown than consumed, growers have dropped wholesale prices and some are scaling back production or getting out of the market.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Talks are scheduled to begin this week in Washington, D.C., to modernize the document that coordinates flood control and hydropower generation in the United States and Canada along the 1,200-mile Columbia River. Northwest politicians have been pushing for years to renegotiate the Columbia River Treaty between the two countries. The lawmakers are particularly keen to eliminate a so-called “Canadian Entitlement” they contend is too favorable to Canada. The State Department announced last week that talks to revise the 1964 treaty would be held today and tomorrow. In addition to hydropower and flood control, the existing treaty provides benefits such as irrigation, municipal and industrial water, navigation and recreation. But environmental groups and tribes contend it doesn’t do enough to help endangered salmon runs. There are some 150 hydroelectric projects on the Columbia and its tributaries. Those dams are blamed for decimating what were once some of the world’s greatest salmon runs.  The U.S. government has said the new talks should include environmental goals, such as increasing stream flows to benefit salmon.