Dirk VanderHart

Wilder Schmaltz It doesn’t take much to spark new furor in the debate over fluoride these days, and the unveiling of a new study that shows reduced cavities in Oregon’s schoolchildren has done just that in the past week. The delayed release of the 2012 Smile Survey has also heaped scrutiny on the Oregon Health […]

Jeff Sheridan As city staff worked in recent months to craft a way out of the worst budget year in recent memory, events in Salem might have accomplished more to shore-up city finances than any pool closure or reduction in police officers. Thank the city’s current and future retirees. The budget proposed by Mayor Charlie […]

DAVE KIERSH It was a small dust-up, hardly noticed amid the groans of potentially steep budget cuts. But the ongoing fight between two city bureaus over who pays for street cleaning—and how widespread that cleaning should be—could have reverberations for how Portlanders experience the city. And in Mayor Charlie Hales’ budget proposal, unveiled yesterday, round […]

Wilder Schmaltz Somehow, the fluoride debate keeps getting uglier. Opponents of the push to fluoridate Portland’s water supply are suggesting the Oregon Health Authority might have colluded with pro-fluoride groups to withhold results of a 2012 survey of students’ dental health. In a news release today, anti-fluoride political action committee Clean Water Portland announced it’s […]

The FBI is turning its attentions to the widow of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev after discovering female DNA on one of two bombs used in the attack. Agents paid a visit to Katherine Russell at her parents’ Rhode Island home yesterday. They say the DNA could have come from someone who helped make the […]