view-master victims

1) Phone customers furious about "cramming" and "slamming" may find relief in proposed legislation in Salem that would penalize phone companies for adding services or switching phone providers without customer permission.

2) View-Master victims were vindicated when researchers reported that workers at the defunct Beaverton toy factory are twice as likely to die of kidney and pancreatic cancer as the general population. Roughly 25,000 workers labored at View-Master from 1952 to 1998, during which time the factory's water supply was contaminated by trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent, at 320 times the federal standard.

3) Oregon Public Power Coalition electrified its supporters with the news that it has obtained enough signatures to qualify a People's Utility District on the September ballot. The group hopes to acquire Enron subsidiary Portland General Electric with public funds.

WINNERS

1) They marched, they stood up, they spoke out and obeyed Mother Vera politely, but Portland peace activists couldn't garner the City Council votes to pass an anti-war ordinance (as 46 other U.S. cities have).

2) Last week the reputation of Portland Police paper-shufflers took a beating with the news that records manager Debbie Haugen was under investigation for her role in the case of Michael Pimentel, an officer accused of assaulting his girlfriend. In an attempt to avoid scrutiny, Pimentel and his sergeant persuaded Haugen to downgrade an initial report from domestic violence to a noise disturbance.

3) Still recovering from the dismissal of the "fat kids vs. McDonald's" case in New York, Oregon's obese choked on their Twinkies in horror when they learned that state epidemiologist Dr. Mel Kohn is planning to slenderize them. No official word on what the doc has in mind, but he sounds ready to strap those who have made Oregon the West's lardiest state onto treadmills and force-feed them granola bars.

4) The Oregon Zoo's famed elephant-breeding program took a body blow when the eldest bull, Hugo, a 10,000-pound Asian elephant, died unexpectedly from unknown causes. He was believed to be 43. The zoo is left with just two studs, Rama and Packy--and pillow talk around the elephant cage suggests that Packy needs some Viagra.