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o en re acin - ear-o so are
The 10 percent mythHumans use100percent of their brain, despite the common misconcept ion.A3
Plus: Offshorewind
fal'mS —As they create artificial reefs, seals appear to be figuring out how to usethemto their advantage for food.A3 PIII'e Wa'tel' —It's great to drink in more waysthan one: Bend's soft water is one reason Bend's beer is good, too.GO!
By Hillary Borrud The Bulletin
The city of Bend is poised to take a huge technological leap from the era of keywords and keyboards to mice and graphiJoe Kline/The Bulletin
Betsy Tucker, an accounting tech in the City of Bend's Finance Department, inputs data into the city's software Thursday at City Hall in Bend. The software is about 20 years old and will soon be replaced in a multimillion dollar upgrade.
cal interfaces. Department of Information
everything from cutting employee paychecks to the look of residents' utilitybills. Budget cuts prompted the
city to put off replacing its existing business management software, which is now ap-
Technology employees plan
proximately20 years old. City IT Manager Randy James said
to purchase new multimillion
Wednesday that learning to
dollar software to replace an outdated system involved in
use the old software can be a challenge for new city employ-
ees who are used to clicking on icons in applications on their smartphones and personal computers. eYou have to get up to speed with moving away from the mouse-based navigation to more keyboard," James said. "So there's a significant hurdle, particularly for folks that never got used to using that." SeeSoftware/A6
Prolongedexecutions
— Arizona's was the third this year; a change in thedrugs usedmay beto blame.A6
Nuclear study —Plants are warned on external threats.Al
And a Wed exclusiveDog gets madwhenyou pet another? At least onescientist thinks it really is jealousy. beedbenetie.cem/extras
EDITOR'SCHOICE
Hepatitis C dI'Ug spllce
raiseshard questions Ryan Brennecke/The Bulletin
By Jason Millman
A portion of the forest charred by the Two Bulls Fire, which burned 6,908 acres northwest of Bend last month, is visible from Awbrey Butte.
The Washington Post
Months before Gilead Sciences'breakthrough hepatitis C treatment came on the
market, Oregon Medicaid official Tom Burns started
worrying about how the state could afford to cover every enrollee infected with
Can financial servicessavethe post office?
the disease. He figuredthe cost might reach $36,000
By Lindsay Wise
offices across the country to
per patient.
McClatchy Washington Bureau
reach consumers who are underserved by banks.
Then the price for the drug was released last December: $84,000 for a 12weektreatment course.
WASHINGTON — Lawmak-
would have to spend $360 millionto provide its Med-
ers and government officials looking for a way to save the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service are considering a proposal that would make check cashing, small loans, prepaid cards
At that price, the state
BENDLA PINE
icaid beneficiaries with
and other financial services
the drug called Sovaldi, just slightlyless than the $377 million the Medicaid program spent on all prescription drugs for about
available at post offices. The plan, which was floated this year in a special report by the Postal Service's Office of Inspector General, would use
600,000 members in 2013. It potentially would be a
the far-flung network of post
In the report, the inspector
vigorous debate — in Washington's policymaking circles.
Warren said the post office was an ideal venue to provide
Without a new source of funding, the Postal Service
affordable financial products
general suggested that post offices could fill a gap left by the dwindling number of bank branches in low-income rural areas and inner cities, generating an estimated $8.9 billion in additional revenue. As the Postal Service strug-
might soon be forced to end
gles to remake itself in the
abeth Warren, a liberal Demo-
Internet age, this proposal to solve the agency's budgetary woes is generating buzz — and
crat from Massachusetts, who
Saturday delivery and shutter
rural post offices after hemorrhaging more than $20 billion over the past two years.
Perhaps the most high-profile proponent of the inspector general'sproposalis Sen. Elizlaid out her case for "postal
banking" last week.
forfamiliesofm oderatemeans whose needs weren't met by the traditional banking system. In 2012, the senator said, a
quarter of U.S. householdsencompassing 68 million people — spent an average of 10 percent of their incomes on interestand fees for check-cash-
By Tyler Leeds
ingand payday lending,about the same amount they spent on food. SeePost office/A7
The Bulletin
backbreaker. Faced with those steep
costs, Oregon and several other states are lookingto limit who has access to the
drug, which nearly everyone acknowledges is a revolutionary treatment for the
disease affectingmore than 3 million Americans. Expensive specialty drugs aren't new to health care. But Sovaldi stands out because it is aimed at help-
ing millions of Americans who carry hepatitis C, and a largeshare ofthose infected
are low-income and qualify for government coverage.
WASHINGTON — Nearly
300 passengers perish when their plane is shot out of the sky. Airlines suspend flights to Israel's largest airport after rocket attacks. Two airliners crash during storms. Aviation has
Transport Association. That in-
the seeming randomness of the
cludes accidents involving cargo Safety Foundation, an airline and charter airlines as well as industry-supported nonprofit in scheduled passenger flights. Alexandria, Virginia, that pro"One of the things that makes motes global aviation safety. me feelbetter when we look at But Beatty said he also finds
they think the events indicate
that flying is suddenly becoming less safe. Less than one in 2 million
sufferedone ofitsw orstweeks flights last year ended in an in memory, a cluster of disasters accident in which the plane was spanning three continents. damaged beyond repair, acIndustry analysts and safety cording to the International Air
these events is that if they all
were the same type event or same root cause thenyou would say there's a systemic problem here, buteacheventisunique in its own way," said Jon Beatty,
dents were punished for bringing aweapon on A4 to school in academic year, including one in which a gun was brought
experts shake their heads at tragedies, saying they can find no common themes. Nor do
There were 32 instances in which stu-
the Bend-La Pine district this past
Plane crashadds to duster of air disasters The Associated Press
Schools record 32 weapons violations
president and CEO of the Flight
onto the Summit
the disaster cluster "a cold reminder" that airline accidents
are likely to increase because the industry is growing, especially in developing countries. See Disasters/A4
High School campus. The Summit in-
cident was one of two gun violations
this past year, with the other occurring when a Bend High student killed himself with a rifle inside a classroom.
SeeWeapons/A4
Its arrival also coincides
with the aggressive expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which
TODAY'S WEATHER
extends health care to tens of millions Americans who
previously couldn't afford it. SeeDrug/A7
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