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Violence on women surges near Mexico City
Central Oregon has
Juniper to burn
By Tracy Wilkinson Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — For hours, gunmen held captive a church group camping on a spiritual retreat. They raped girls and beat boys. They stole their cellphones. Finally the gunmen left; the youths wrapped themselves in blankets and walked five miles to find help. The attack late last week outside Mexico City illustrates the mounting dangers — especially violence targeting women — in the Mexican state that until a few months ago was governed by the man who will be Mexico’s next president. The State of Mexico, which surrounds Mexico City on three sides, has seen an “alarming” surge in slayings and rapes of women, according to several human rights organizations. Much of that surge occurred during the governorship of Enrique Peña Nieto, whose six-year term ended last fall before he went on to win this month’s presidential election. “We identified a systematic pattern of violence against women, triggered by a lack of investigation, prosecution and punishment by the system of justice that exists in the state,” a Mexican watchdog group, the National Citizens’ Observatory of Female Murders, concluded this year. The organization was rebuffed in its efforts to persuade the state legislature under Peña Nieto’s government to issue an alert to women to protect themselves. It identified 1,003 slayings of women during Peña Nieto’s term, roughly half of which went unsolved and largely un-investigated. In 2011, two women a day, on average, were slain or went missing in Mexico State, according to the Observatory. See Mexico / A6
TOP NEWS DROUGHT: More than half the U.S. parched, A3 NEW ORLEANS: Coming back from Katrina, A4 TODAY’S WEATHER Thunderstorms possible High 84, Low 53 Page C6
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By Holly Pablo The Bulletin
Swimming is Ben Hill’s exercise of choice. Water aerobics get your heart pumping, use every muscle in the body and are the best way to cool down on a hot Central Oregon day, he said. But Hill, of Bend, does not swim often. Getting in and out of pools isn’t easy without accessible options like chairlifts. The 35-year-old was born with spina bifida, a defect that leaves an opening between the spinal cord and backbone. He’s used a wheelchair since middle school. “There’s been times I’ve gone to a pool with a bunch of people and I can’t use it,” said Hill, who has a long history of wheelchair-racing, basketball and tennis. “It makes me feel not normal, like I’m not part of the normal crowd just because of my disability, and it’s not my fault.” This may be the last summer swimming season Hill faces this predicament. An Americans with Disabilities Act mandate requires all existing public and commercially accessible swimming pools, wading pools and spas — from community centers to hotels — to offer patrons permanently fixed chairlifts or ramps at each body of water by Jan. 31. The regulation does not apply to homeowners associations and private clubs. See Pool / A6
Rob Kerr / The Bulletin file photo
A juniper near the Badlands Rock Trailhead parking lot.
• The prolific juniper is a favorite firewood in the High Desert, and federal agencies get plenty of public help in thinning the water-guzzling trees By Dylan J. Darling The Bulletin
W
hen customers buy firewood from Dave Elpi, owner of Sisters Forest Products, they have a choice. Their options include Douglas fir, lodgepole pine and juniper. About a third choose juniper. “Juniper is a real good firewood,” Elpi said. “It’s an excellent wood.” Woodcutters like Elpi are part of federal efforts to thin the amount of juniper growing around Central Oregon. The thirsty tree absorbs about 40 gallons of water per day, said Steve Castillo, forester for the Bureau of Land Management in Prineville. “It will suck up most of the available water to the exclusion of the other vegetation,” he said. So the U.S. Forest Service and BLM regularly are thinning juniper around the High Desert. While
juniper has long been used for fence posts and there is a small market for juniper as lumber, the trees cut in the thinning projects are mainly collected for firewood. Commercial operations like Elpi’s business as well as individual firewood permit-holders bring in the wood. Each year around the beginning of May the BLM sells individual permits for people to collect juniper firewood around Millican, where there are also offhighway vehicle trails, Castillo said. “It goes pretty quick,” he said. Permits – which cost $10 per cord, with a minimum of two cords required – are sold out, and most of the juniper firewood is already gone from the 300 acres made available this year, Castillo said. The BLM moves the collection area each year; the 300 to 400 acres typically yield two to four cords per acre. See Juniper / A6
Western juniper
Western junipers often outcompete other plants Canopy because: • A single juniper can drink up to 40 gallons of water per day • The root system radiates far beyond the canopy of the tree, suppressing nearby grasses • Junipers also produce chemical compounds that inhibit surrounding vegetation, a process called allelopathy
Juniperus occidentalis Juniper woodlands cover vast amounts of land north and east of Bend. Comparing old and new satellite imagery shows that juniper has colonized many former grass and sagebrush communities, likely due to grazing removing competing plants and fire suppression.
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New rule will let everyone get in pool
In deep soils, junipers grow a taproot, but this is often not found in junipers growing in shallow soils. Source: “Northwest Trees” by Stephen F. Arno & Ramona P. Hammerly Andy Zeigert / The Bulletin
State with the most public bankruptcies? It’s not California By Steven Church Bloomberg News
Busted land deals and empty subdivisions bankrupted more governmental entities in Brian C. Doyle’s home state than anywhere in America. With the recent financial collapse of three of its cities, it might be easy to assume he’s from California. Doyle, however, lives in Nebraska. Quirks in local, state and federal law have made Nebraska home to almost one-fifth of the more than 220 Chapter 9 bankruptcies filed in the United States since 1981, according to a nationwide review of federal court records. California, with more than 20 times Nebraska’s population, is second, followed by Texas and Alabama. California may soon add to its total, as San Bernardino decides whether to seek court protection this week. The main difference between Nebraska and its larger brethren is the kind of governmental bodies that file for bankruptcy. No town, city or county has sought court protection in the state. See Nebraska / A6
It pays to be prepped for sorority rush week By Abigail Sullivan Moore The New York Times
Margaret King of Birmingham, Ala., was at a loss about how to help her older daughter prepare to rush at the University of Virginia. In the South, where sororities have long been a momentous rite of passage, the road to sisterhood is long and not so clearly marked. So King, who graduated from Yale in 1984, before it had any sororities, enlisted the aid of Marlea Foster and Pat Grant, local consultants who had coached their own daughters through rush at Furman, the University of Georgia and Auburn University. Naming themselves the Rushbiddies, they opened shop in 2009 after hearing about the rush misfortunes of their daughters’ friends. About 50 mothers and their “chicks,” as the Biddies affectionately call them, attended one of their two-day workshops in April ($100 a couple), complete with mock rush party, wardrobe hints and paperwork prep. And there is a mound of it. See Sorority / A5