CORVALLIS, Ore. — Oregon's wine grape industry is booming due in part to the growing number of new vineyards and wineries popping up across the state. According to a new report on selected Oregon commodities, wine grape crops posted gross sales of $46.7 million last year, an increase of 27.6 percent since 2005. Increases in harvested acreage and improved yields due to better growing practices, management and seasonal conditions resulted in a 25.6 percent increase ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - A team of NASA and university scientists has found clear evidence that extensive areas of snow melted in west Antarctica in January 2005 in response to warm temperatures. This was the first widespread Antarctic melting ever detected with NASA's QuikScat satellite and the most significant melt observed using satellites during the past three decades. The affected regions encompass a combined area as big as California.Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., ... [full story]

College graduates looking to find a job should think twice before putting untrue statements on their resumes. Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, learned that lying on resumes can come back to haunt you. She fabricated her education credentials almost 30 years ago on her resume. Jones admitted that she never completed her undergraduate degree; however, recently it was discovered that she received an undergraduate degree at a university ... [full story]

Going green not only helps the environment, but it may also benefit companies in recruiting new employees. Eco-friendly businesses will most likely have an advantage over their competition when it comes to hiring the intelligent young people in today's market. A survey completed by Harris Poll discovered 33 percent of Americans would rather work for a green company compared to a business that does not try to encourage socially and environmentally friendly methods, according to ... [full story]

The future appears bright for those 2007 graduates entering the working world. MRINetwork, an international recruitment organization, shows the job market for college graduates as being in the best shape it has been in since the 1990s. After hitting a low point in 2003, the job market has advanced for graduates during the last four years. The Economic Policy Institute shows that the employment rate has increased to 86 percent after dropping to 84 percent ... [full story]

The weak housing market may have an impact on companies trying to find workers in the competitive labor market. Job candidates are no longer as willing to relocate as they once were now that home values have dropped. Only 16.6 percent of job seekers in the first quarter moved for a job offer, according to the most recent Challenger Job Market Index, a quarterly survey of 3,000 job-hunters by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global ... [full story]

LACK OF MENTORS New staff members may have to search for a mentor themselves in order to learn more about the company or business. Fifty-eight percent of more than 1,400 chief financial officers polled in a survey by Accountemps, a staffing service, said it's unusual for new hires to be placed with mentors within their organizations. Within the accounting and finance departments of the surveyed companies, only 13 percent of the CFOs responded that mentors ... [full story]

"Jack Kevorkian's decade-long assisted suicide campaign was never about compassion," says bioethicist and assisted suicide expert Wesley J. Smith. "It was about Kevorkian's obsession to engage in human vivisection." Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, urges the media to report the story of Jack Kevorkian's release from prison accurately and not promote the false myth of "Jack the Martyr." Kevorkian admitted ... [full story]

SAN DIEGO - Before his corpse was dumped on a Mexicali street, a former state police commander was videotaped by his captors alleging that the Baja California Attorney General's Office is involved in drug trafficking. The video has created a stir in Tijuana after Mexican media obtained it and then posted it on the Internet this month. In it, Jose Ramon Velasquez alleges that he worked for a drug gang that had an arrangement with ... [full story]

Q: This is a picture of a vase that was given to my parents over 20 years ago. It was originally purchased in the late 1940s after World War II in Europe. The vase is about 14 inches tall and in perfect condition. Marked on the bottom are the words "Made in Austria, Hungary - 1904 - Zsolnay." Also included with the mark are five towers with crosses on top. Could you give me any ... [full story]