Michael's Reference

JACKSONVILLE — A vacant City Council seat will have to be filled even though the council, on a split vote, decided not to make an appointment when it met Aug. 17.

Ashland Planning Commissioner Michael Morris is challenging Eric Navickas for his position on the City Council, while Oregon Army National Guard member Raymond Hanson has dropped his bid to unseat Navickas.

September's a busy month for the Rogue Valley Transportation District, with announcements of route and service changes and a 35th anniversary celebration.

A 19-year-old Medford man kicked off his Labor Day weekend by allegedly speeding away from a traffic stop and crashing his sports car into parked vehicles before being nabbed by police.

WHITE CITY — Despite being tested in front of a pack of peers, she didn't seem nervous at all.

Thousands of nonprofit organizations across the state, including hundreds in the Rogue Valley, are in danger of losing their tax-exempt status because of missing paperwork, according to an online list published by the Internal Revenue Service.

The American Red Cross has scheduled the following blood drives for September. Call 800-RED CROSS (800-733-2767) or visit www.redcrossblood.org to schedule a donation appointment.

I was plagued with advertisements addressed to my late husband until I finally wrote a letter saying to please stop sending them. My deceased husband never lived where I live, and I have remarried. He died in 1993.

Two pretty little metalwork trellises magically popped up in my tomato patch this week ... but I had nothing to do with their sudden appearance.

Officials declared a state of emergency Saturday after a powerful predawn earthquake struck near Christchurch, New Zealand, sending people into the streets as windows exploded, water mains broke and buildings crumbled.

Tropical Storm Earl raked Canada's Nova Scotia on Saturday, and its winds grew stronger on Prince Edward Island, the National Hurricane Center said.

After five years of planning and more than two years of construction, Jackson County's first new high school in 43 years will debut Tuesday.

Felony arrests

Jackson County health inspectors evaluated 108 restaurants in August. All passed their semiannual inspections, and 18 received perfect scores of 100. A portion of all scores are published weekly in the Mail Tribune.

Bahrain says it plans to charge 23 people for plotting to overthrow the government and for belonging to what officials described as a sophisticated terrorist network, the Bahrain News Agency (BNA) reported on Saturday.

An Iranian woman already condemned to death faces another sentence of 99 lashes due to a case of mistaken identity in a photograph, a human rights group says.

Since World War II, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have consistently held the United States out as a worldwide model for the protection and promotion of human rights standards.

An apparent U.S. drone strike killed four suspected militants in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border, two Pakistani intelligence officials told CNN on Saturday.

Protests kick off across France against President Nicolas Sarkozy's anti-crime plans, which organizers say are "strategies of stigma and discrimination."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced the creation of a high peace council as part of the reconciliation effort to reintegrate some Taliban militants, a spokesman for his office said on Saturday.