Erik Neumann

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced Friday morning that the Ashland-based regional theater company's 2020 season will be further postponed until early September due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. They also laid off the majority of their staff.

Universities and technical colleges in southern Oregon and northern California announced plans on Thursday to extend spring breaks and move classes online in order to minimize the spread of coronavirus.

Several hundred public employees of Jackson County could soon go on strike over longstanding disagreements over health coverage and pay. The union employees includes staff in the county’s Health and Human Services department, the agency working on the county’s coronavirus response.

As COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, continues to spread along the West Coast, older adults are at especially high risk.

A proposed bill in the Oregon legislature would boost funding for a new model of behavioral health clinics aimed at treating both the physical and mental health of patients.

At dawn on the edge of Big Lagoon County Park, north of Arcata, California, Ken Burton is walking through the woods trying to rile up the nearby birds. As he scans the windswept cypress trees and leggy underbrush, he purses his lips and makes a plosive screech. It’s called “pishing.”

Cap-and-trade legislation is among the items topping Oregon’s agenda during this year’s legislative session. But like last year’s bill, which led to Republican Senators walking out of the Capitol in protest, it’s already drawing criticism from rural Oregon.

Counts of homeless people, known as “point-in-time” counts are taking place across Oregon this week, including in Jackson County on Monday.

Senator Jeff Merkley, D-OR, described the impeachment trial of President Trump as a possible “travesty” during a call with reporters on Thursday, if Senate Republicans vote to exclude new evidence from the process.

California's largest electric utility took the unprecedented step of shutting off power to millions of customers beginning last October. The decision was meant to prevent power equipment from sparking catastrophic wildfires.

Now a renewable energy microgrid on a tiny California Native American reservation is proving to be one solution to this ongoing problem.

The Blue Lake Rancheria is located just north of Eureka, Calif. On the 100-acre campus, just behind the casino and hotel, Jana Ganion opens a chain-link fence.

The Coos Bay City Council voted to approve the latest step towards developing the Jordan Cove liquid natural gas (LNG) pipeline on Tuesday.

Wildland firefighters from Western states including both Oregon and California have been deployed to help with the fires burning across Australia.

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case based in Boise, Idaho. It focused on whether the city can ticket homeless people for sleeping in public. The case could have repercussions for a similar lawsuit in Grants Pass, Oregon.

A new $50 million non-profit medical center was unveiled to the public in Klamath Falls on Thursday. The Sky Lakes Collaborative Health Center is jointly owned by Sky Lakes Medical Center and Oregon Health and Science University.

As competing court rulings play out over the future of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, a group of western Oregon counties is calling for the state’s congressional delegation to swap timber land protected within the monument for other federally managed land.

The proposal came from the Association of O&C Counties (AOCC), a group of Oregon counties that encompass more than 2.4 million acres of land largely overseen by the Bureau of Land Management.

New data from the Oregon Department of Education shows the number of K-12 students experiencing homelessness in the state grew by about two percent last year. But homelessness looks different between rural and urban areas.

Southern Oregon University is facing a difficult budget forecast. During a campus community meeting on Thursday, SOU President Linda Schott delivered what was part pep talk and part warning about the future of higher education in Southern Oregon.

The Pacific fisher, an animal in the weasel family that's native to Southern Oregon and Northern California, could get increased protections under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). 

On the native land of the Shasta and Takelma people, a group of teenagers wearing bright dance regalia and fur headdresses swirled around the Southern Oregon University student union building on Monday.

Annual data released this week ranks Asante Ashland Community Hospital with some of the largest penalties in Oregon for low hospital quality measures.

The first public meeting in the Rogue Valley to discuss Oregon’s new Corporate Activity Tax was held Tuesday night in Medford.

The Oregon Department of Revenue is hosting two town hall meetings in the Rogue Valley this week to discuss a new corporate business tax.

Two crops common to Southern Oregon, wine grapes and hemp, were the focus of a conference call with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and reporters on Thursday.  

Hundreds of high schoolers from throughout the Rogue Valley left school on Friday to demand political action to address climate change. Marches took place in Ashland, Medford, Grants Pass and half a dozen other small towns south to Redding.  

Governor Kate Brown’s Council on Wildfire Response held a meeting to discuss new wildfire management plans on Monday. Their draft proposal is already getting pushback from one firefighting group.

With the university school year set to begin in a matter of weeks, some state union employees are considering going on strike, including more than 350 members of SEIU Local 503 in Southern Oregon.  

Growing conflicts last year between a southwest Oregon wolf pack and livestock are the inspiration for a workshop in Jackson County this weekend. The two-day event is focused on how Southern Oregon ranchers can protect their animals.

Last year the group of six wolves known as the Rogue pack killed 13 animals, including several dogs, according to officials with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Jackson County has become the first in Oregon to formally declare addiction a public health crisis.

A recent report about reduced criminal justice funding in Northern Oregon warns about the risk of fewer jail beds and inmates being released from jail early. But space issues are an even bigger problem in Southern Oregon, according to Jackson County Sheriff Nate Sickler. 

Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley discussed new legislation he’s sponsoring to stop drug companies from charging American patients more than what people pay for pharmaceuticals in other countries.