A steering committee that includes three Bend City Councilors -Bill Friedman, Jim Clinton and Mark Capell - and a senior manager from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) will meet Friday to review evaluation of potential improvements to the intersection of Highway 97 and Cooley Road. The project team will present technical evaluation of the concepts including cost, traffic operations and impacts, as well as feedback from property and business owners, neighborhood representatives, and other ... [full story]

NEWPORT, Ore. -- The Oregon Department of Human Services announced this evening that an agreement has been reached in the mediation between Gabriel Allred's paternal grandmother and his foster parents. Gabriel, a 2-year-old child born in Oregon who holds dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship, has been at the heart of a contested adoption between his biological family in Mexico and his foster family in Oregon. In brief, Sra. Martinez, Gabriel's paternal grandmother, will withdraw her request to ... [full story]

FRESNO, Calif. -- A California jury has found guilty a woman charged with killing her husband and disposing of his body in acid for financial gain.The jurors deliberated for more than two days to reach a verdict, finding Larissa Schuster, 47, guilty of the first-degree murder of her estranged husband Timothy, the Fresno (Calif.) Bee reported Thursday.Prosecutors argued Shuster, a biochemist, masterminded the death with the help of a babysitter and former aid at her ... [full story]

Nobel prize winner Al Gore urged climate change delegates in Bali to push forward with a consensus statement addressing climate change despite obstacles.The former U.S. vice president Thursday blasted the United States for "obstructing the process here in Bali," the Washington Post reported.Gore, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change issues, said he understood how some delegates at the U.N. conference on climate change may be tempted to abandon the ... [full story]

CONCORD, N.H. -- Polls assessing the presidential elections have Democratic hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a dead heat among likely New Hampshire primary voters.A CNN/WMUR poll released Wednesday shows Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., 1 percentage point ahead of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. , down from a 23-point lead in September, the Boston Globe reported Thursday.A Rasmussen Reports poll and a Suffolk University/WHDH-TV poll verified the diminishing Clinton lead.Clinton's campaign team said it expected ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- The top U.S. military judge conducting tribunals for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wrote a university paper in 2002 calling tribunals "ill-advised."U.S. Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann was appointed lead judge of the tribunals in March but a master's degree paper he wrote in 2002 has come to light in which he denounced the system, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday."Unnecessary use of military tribunals in the face of reasonable international criticism is ... [full story]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A senior Pakistani lawyer said his cohorts will challenge the legitimacy of President Pervez Musharraf's re-election when the country's state of emergency ends.Abrar Hasan, a senior lawyer in the Pakistani Supreme Court, said Thursday that his judicial colleagues planned to challenge the legitimacy of Musharraf's re-election if the state of emergency ends Saturday as expected, Voice of America reported.Hasan said the termination of the state of emergency would allow the challenge that ... [full story]

BELGRADE, Serbia -- Serbian police Thursday said they broke up an international drug ring that reportedly smuggled drugs to six European countries for several years.A Belgrade police official said officers confiscated drugs with a street value of more than $1.5 million from five suspects, including a former Serbian state security officer, the Serbian news agency Beta reported.In raids on apartments in Belgrade this week, police seized 106 pounds of heroin and 9 pounds of cocaine, ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Army statistics showed a record 109 confirmed or suspected suicides among soldiers this year, USA Today reported Thursday.The Pentagon told the newspaper there were 85 confirmed suicides this year, with 24 other deaths under investigation. Of the confirmed deaths, 27 occurred in Iraq and four in Afghanistan, the Army said.A total of 109 suicides would equal a rate of 18.4 per 100,000, compared with the civilian suicide rate of 11 per 100,000 ... [full story]

PARIS -- The stepmother of Princess Diana told a French inquest that Diana and her lover, Dodi Fayed, made plans to wed shortly before their deaths in a 1997 car crash.Raine McCorquodale, the countess of Dartmouth, said in her first public comments about the couple that the pair was "closer" than a simple "summer romance" and said she felt Diana and Fayed would wed soon, the Daily Telegraph reported Thursday."Incredibly happy. She said she had ... [full story]