Oregon

Until recently, very few people had ever heard of raspberry ketones, the aromatic compounds that give the berries their distinctive smell. Today, health food stores have trouble keeping the capsules or drops of the stuff on their shelves. Almost overnight, an obscure plant compound became the next big thing in weight loss - and all it took was a few words from Dr. Oz. In a February episode of "The Dr. Oz Show," Mehmet Oz told viewers that raspberry ketones were "the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. " Once Oz calls something a "miracle," it doesn't remain obscure for long.

Re "Oregon forbids Native American mascots," May 20 Native Americans have faced numerous battles. They have been victims of genocide - and people continue to view them as mascots? Team mascots are typically animals, occupations and objects. With so many Native American mascots, are Native Americans part of that group as well? Nobody seems to care about the things these people have already faced. I am glad some are finally reversing course. Every board of education throughout the country should follow Oregon's lead and ban such offensive mascots.

Stu Rasmussen promised a new administration if he was elected, and he's as good as his word: Silverton residents not only are getting a new mayor; they're also getting a new Stu. Rasmussen, longtime manager of the local cinema, was also elected mayor in 1988 and 1990, and served four years -- but that was when he was wearing slacks and sport shirts to council meetings.

With Mitt Romney essentially the last Republican presidential candidate standing, the former Massachusetts governor will inch closer to officially clinching his party's nomination Tuesday when voters head to the polls in Oregon and Nebraska. Though the GOP presidential race lacks suspense, Republicans will have their eyes on Nebraska, where the retirement of Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democrat, has left a key seat up for grabs. Democratic former Sen. Bob Kerrey is expected to win his party's nomination, but the battle on the Republican side between Attorney General John Bruning, state Treasurer Don Stenberg and state legislator Deb Fischer, is less clear.

An oxygen-depleted "dead zone" the size of New Jersey is starving sea life off the coast of Oregon and Washington and likely will appear there each summer as a result of climate change, an Oregon State University researcher said Thursday. The huge area is one of 400 dead zones around the world, most of them caused by fertilizer and sewage dumped into the oceans in river runoff. But the dead zone off the Northwest is one of the few in the world -- and possibly the only one in North America -- that could be impossible to reverse.

The cost of executions is soaring, especially in the state that conducts the most: Texas. The reason? The necessary drugs have become increasingly hard to get. A year ago it cost the Texas Department of Criminal Justice $83.55 for the drugs used to carry out an execution -- sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. Then last March the state was forced to replace sodium thiopental with pentobarbital after the U.S. supplier of the former drug halted distribution amid international protests.

USC tonight AT OREGON When: 8. Where: Matthew Knight Arena, Eugene, Ore. On the air: TV: Prime Ticket. Radio: 710. Records: USC 10-6, 2-1 in Pacific 10 Conference play. Oregon 7-9, 0-4. Record vs. Oregon: USC leads, 62-44. Update: The Ducks have lost six consecutive games heading into the inauguration of their arena. Three of Oregon's key players ? forwards Joevan Catron and Jeremy Jacob and guard Malcolm Armstead ?

Five things to watch for this week: 1No. 4 USC plays at No. 10 Oregon on Halloween night with the ESPN "GameDay" crew in town and Lee Corso possibly putting a pumpkin on his head. It's the game of the year in the Pac-10 as Oregon tries to go 5-0 in conference and USC tries to win in Oregon for the first time since 2005. 2Florida and Georgia hook up in Jacksonville for their annual "Cocktail Party" game with the Gators (7-0) struggling on offense yet somehow moving back to No. 1 in the polls.

Democrat Suzanne Bonamici's victory in a special congressional election in Oregon on Tuesday night preserves the balance of power in the House. Bonamici won the all-mail vote Tuesday by a double-digit margin over Republican Rob Cornilles to hold for the party the seat left vacant when David Wu resigned last summer amid allegations of sexual misconduct. National Democrats made a sizable investment of cash and manpower in the contest, spending more than $1 million and making 336,000 phone calls and knocking on 148,000 doors in the 1st district.

Many college coaches are control freaks who operate on military time and like to assign stadium steps for anyone arriving five minutes late to a 10 o'clock meeting. Their game plans are meticulously penned in multiple colors and tiny letters on laminated sheets. Coaches have the omnipotent power to block player transfers and close practice to the media. So it was kind of funny hearing Pac-12 Conference coaches sounding so helpless Tuesday on the subject of a playoff. Pac-12 coaches huddled last week at their annual conference meetings in Phoenix to discuss how different the post-season is going to look when the BCS goes RIP in two years.

Rain Dragon A Novel Jon Raymond Bloomsbury: 272 pp., $16 paper FADE IN: A car idles in the foggy pre-dawn, pointed at the end of a cul-de-sac. Inside, an attractive 30-ish couple, DAMON and AMY, are worn from travel. She is dark-haired, pale-skinned and tense, and she leans against the passenger window. Behind the wheel, he carefully watches her mood as they evaluate the appearance of an owl in front of them. Good omen or bad? They can't decide, and continue on, lost.

In 1966, Eyrie Vineyards founder David Lett planted Pinot Noir vines in Oregon's Willamette Valley, hoping he'd found a place that shared traits with his beloved Burgundy. Four years later, the man who would come to be known as "Papa Pinot" made his first commercial harvest. Within the decade, half a dozen families, every bit as intrepid, followed him to the land, an unlikely collection of former engineers and liberal arts majors with a perceptible countercultural streak. Their perseverance and collaboration resulted in one of the great success stories in modern American winemaking, a robust industry composed largely of small family wineries excelling in cool climate varieties.

If you go to the Springfield Museum in Springfield, Ore., you can take your picture on the "Simpsons" couch sculpture with Bart and family. And you can read the plaque that says: "Yo to Springfield, Ore., the real Springfield. Your pal, Matt Groening , proud Oregonian, 2007. " So why the big buzz about the "The Simpsons" hometown being revealed Wednesday in a Smithsonian magazine interview for the May issue? Likely because it's news to the rest of us who live outside that Springfield, population around 57,000.

Dick Harter Former Oregon Ducks coach Dick Harter, 81, the University of Oregon men's basketball coach whose Ducks team ended UCLA's 98-game home winning streak in 1976, died Monday at a South Carolina hospital, according to Island Funeral Home in Hilton Head. The cause was not given. Harter compiled a college record of 295-196 at Rider University, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Penn State. He won two Ivy League championships with Pennsylvania. In the NBA, Harter was the first head coach of the expansion Charlotte Hornets in 1988.

Arizona lost a lot after its run to the NCAA West Regional final last season. But the Wildcats didn't lose everything. Derrick Williams took his mad skills to the NBA early after taking Arizona to within a bounce or two of reaching the Final Four. The Wildcats were going to have trouble getting back to the NCAA tournament . . . everyone knew that. "I heard that all the time," guard Kyle Fogg said. "People kept saying it. The older guys took that as offensive. We put the team on our backs and that led to a pretty good season.

The bubble of teams left hoping for an NCAA tournament berth got a little larger Thursday when the Pac-12 Conference's regular-season champion was added to the list. Top-seeded Washington was upset by ninth-seeded Oregon State, 86-84, in a quarterfinal game of the Pacific Life Pac-12 tournament at Staples Center, a result that took a considerable amount of luster off a team that had been considered a shoo-in for at least an at-large berth. "I would think the Pac-12 champion would be able to find a place in the NCAA tournament," Huskies Coach Lorenzo Romar said after the game.

For Stanford, the Pacific Life Pac-12 Conference women's basketball tournament is once again a dress rehearsal for the big dance later this month. The tournament atmosphere, with its neutral site — Galen Center for the first two rounds beginning Wednesday, Staples Center for the final two — and its lose-and-you're-done format, will help prepare the No. 2-ranked Cardinal for the NCAA tournament, which begins March 17 and for which it will probably...