Despite a new Portland Police Bureau policy against officers shooting at oncoming cars, a grand jury cleared Lt. Jeffrey Kaer in the Jan. 4 shooting death of an unarmed man in a car outside the house of Kaer's sister. Also last week, a state arbiter reversed the five-and-a-half-month suspension of Officer Scott McCollister in the 2003 shooting of Kendra James, who was killed trying to flee a traffic stop.

Frank Gable, who denies he fatally stabbed state corrections chief Michael Francke in 1989, has been granted a new parole hearing. That raises the potential of Gable's release in 2011, though freedom may still be a long shot, since the Court of Appeals denied his request to reintroduce an argument for an alibi or theories of a coverup.

Northwest sports fans, rejoice. More than 67,000 Seattle Seahawks supporters cheered their team Sunday to its first Super Bowl appearance in the franchise's 30-year history. Meanwhile, nearly 10,000 Portlanders rooted on the LumberJax Saturday to the lacrosse team's first win in its two-week history.

LOSERS

Just Blew It? Nike chief executive William Perez stepped down little more than a year after taking over as chief executive of Swooshville, saying he had "differences" with Nike co-founder Phil Knight.

City Commissioner Sam Adams contributed another chapter to the aerial tram tragicomedy when he "pre-announced" the resignation last week of top officials on the troubled project. Hard to keep track of what's climbing faster: costs of the tram, or the number of scapegoats for those money overruns.

Oregon State University is getting burned by a backdraft of criticism after forestry professors tried to censor a graduate student's findings that were at odds with timber interests and Bush administration plans. The controversial paper, published last week in the journal Science, found that forests recover better from fires when they aren't logged.