2004 Clatsop County Spelling Bee Champion, Southwest Region.

[February 25th, 2004] WINNERS

Local environmental groups, who've been attacking the Bush administration's post-Biscuit-fire logging plan in Southwest Oregon as a destructive giveaway to the timber industry, got some significant backup last week. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency came out publicly against the plan, saying it is more than five times too large and would drop a big, long-term hurt on wildlife, fish and water quality.

Supporters of the MARC, the supersized community sports complex proposed for the moribund Memorial Coliseum site, floated a whopper of an idea last week: They're hoping to finance the conversion with help from the Salvation Army, recent recipients of a $1.5 billion bequest from McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc. Fries with your workout?

Chalk it up to scoundrel's luck. Portlanders thought they'd had the last laugh after Rasheed Wallace was punted into basketball purgatory with the Atlanta Hawks, but 'Sheed had barely set down his bags in ATL when he was shipped to salvation with playoff-bound Detroit. Motor City denizens, our prayers are with you.

A little bird whose ranks are getting thinner, the western snowy plover, did a triple-hop and twitter at the news last week that some 25 percent of Oregon's sandy beaches would eventually be closed to campfires, dogs and off-roaders on its behalf. The restrictions are part of a new plan floated by the state in order to stay on the right side of the federal Endangered Species Act.

LOSERS

Portland Catholics who hoped the whole leaders-of-their-faith-molesting-kids thing had blown over got a nasty shock over the weekend: a letter quantifying the cost of the sex scandals to their church. The note, authorized by Archbishop John G. Vlazny, claimed that the Portland archdiocese has paid $53 million since 1950 to settle claims--mostly for sex abuse. And that's just for the western half of Oregon.

Surprise loser of the week: Oregon public-school students got screwed yet again, this time finding themselves with fewer teachers and ballooning class sizes. Oregon schools axed 775 teaching jobs this year, leaving a ratio of 20.2 students to every teacher--a figure that's 30 percent higher than the national average.