A man who was found dead in a remote mountain area in Oregon apparently was stranded there for more than 60 days by heavy snow - information gleaned from brief notes he made on a homemade calendar, authorities said.
Jerry William McDonald
A U.S. Forest Service crew found the body of Jerry William McDonald, 68, in his pickup truck Thursday in the Willamette National Forest and the Cascade Range roughly 70 miles southeast of Portland, Linn County Sheriff Tim Mueller said.
McDonald - who Mueller said was transient, estranged from his family and wasn't reported missing - arrived at the spot on February 7, according to a makeshift paper calendar that McDonald kept of his travels, the sheriff said.
He stayed there for the rest of the week, apparently to camp, with nothing noted on the calendar except his location - Horn Road - and a running count of the days he’d been there in corner of each day's box, as was his habit, Mueller said. But on the space for the 14th, McDonald wrote, "heavy snow," and "snowed in."
L'Orca lost out to L'Humpback on Thursday. Well, kinda.
L'Orca, a 38-foot sailboat out of Portland, Oregon, was participating in the Oregon International Offshore race in the Pacific Ocean on Thursday morning when a breaching humpback whale crashed down onto the vessel, crushing its mast and rigging and knocking it out of the race to Victoria, British Columbia.
The sailboat was about a half-hour into the race when the whale struck about 9:30 a.m.
"It looked to be a humpback whale, about 30 feet in length roughly. It hit the mast about halfway to three-quarters of the way up, and then proceeded to fall forward and on the starboard side of the boat. The mast came down as well as the forestay and all the rigging, and our tow rail and all our life lines on the starboard side of the boat were demolished, as well," crewmember Ryan Barnes, whose father owns L'Orca, said in a Coast Guard video.
They say defense wins championships, but beginning Friday night, a handful of NBA stars can champion Japan by breaking down defenses.
For every point they score in select games this weekend, the players will donate a cool grand to Japan's relief efforts. Putting up points shouldn't be a tall order for the Chicago Bulls' Derrick Rose, the Los Angeles Lakers' Pau Gasol, the Portland Trailblazers' LaMarcus Aldridge, the Oklahoma City Thunder's Russell Westbrook or the Atlanta Hawks' Al Horford. Each has been averaging between 16 and 25 points all season.
JaVale McGee of the Washington Wizards and Pau's little brother, Marc Gasol of the Memphis Grizzlies, will also lend their marksmanship to the cause, and 13 other players will donate set amounts.
I caught up with Horford, from my hometown Hawks, after Friday's practice. Let this be a warning, New Jersey Nets: Horford says he's going "to try to be a little more aggressive" in Saturday night's game - and I'm sure you remember he dropped 24 on you when you visited the A-Town in December.
The five most popular stories on CNN.com in the past 24 hours, according to NewsPulse.
Reflections from SI's first swimsuit star: Babette Beatty, born in Germany and raised in Brazil and Canada, now lives in relative obscurity in the Oregon boondocks. But in 1964 in Sports Illustrated's very first swimsuit cover, she was a page-turner. "It was just another job," she said. "I never expected it to be big. It just didn't even enter my mind."
The United States vetoes U.N. resolution against Israel: The U.N. Security Resolution would have declared Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said that while the United States agrees about "the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, we think it unwise for this council to attempt to resolve the core issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians."
Diver apparently killed by sharks: Peter Clarkson, a well-known abalone expert, was attacked by two sharks as he returned to the surface from a dive, according to the watersport site Swellnet. Divers in the shark-filled waters off South Australia often use shark cages, but Clarkson was not in a cage when he was attacked, police Senior Sgt. Mick Walsh told Adelaide Now.
Justin Bieber's views on abortion cause stir: The teenage hearthrob's opinion on abortion, in the latest issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, threatens to create a Belieber Backlash. "I really don't believe in abortion. I think [an embryo] is a human. It's like killing a baby. [In the case of rape], I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I don't know how that would be a reason. I guess I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that."
4.3 quake shakes tiny, tremor-filled Arkansas town: Speaking of rolling stones ... . Since September, seismologists have recorded 700 temblors around the town of Guy, Arkansas. The Arkansas Geological Survey has recorded 50 quakes in and around Guy since Sunday. That includes Friday morning's 4.3 window-rattler and three other lesser quakes that occurred within 20 minutes of each other around 11 a.m.
An Oregon motorist allegedly went to great lengths, or speeds, over the weekend to post a video to Youtube, according to Oregon law enforcement.
A Marion County deputy clocked a vehicle going 118 mph in a 55-mph zone Saturday on Interstate 5, the sheriff's office said.
The lawman, upon approaching the car, noticed the motorist was holding a video camera and taking pictures of the deputy's car.
Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was replaced as the leader of U.S. forces in Afghanistan last year after a damaging magazine profile, says Americans need to stay informed about world events and engage with other cultures.
"The reality is that most of us have a very limited understanding of most of the parts of the world where we're invested," McChrystal told an audience Friday in Portland, Oregon, according to The Oregonian. "We have an absolute need to build relationships at the personal level, the organizational level and the regional level."
Less than 20 percent of Americans speak a second language, while nearly of half of Europeans do, he said.
Failure to understand Afghan culture and attitudes undermined U.S. efforts to gain influence in Afghanistan after the Soviets were driven out, he said, according to the Oregonian.
While Americans expected Afghans to be grateful for U.S. backing in that fight, the Afghans felt Americans failed to appreciate their sacrifices against America's greatest rival, he said.
Despite foreign armies' long history of failure in Afghanistan, McChrystal told the audience he believes the current war is winnable.
"In reality, most wars have nobody win," McChrystal said. "What we're trying to do now is have the Afghans win the war in Afghanistan."
A Rainier, Oregon, police officer who struggled with a suspect at a car audio shop was killed by a gunshot Wednesday, according to the Columbia County Sheriff's Office.
Read more from CNN affiliate KGW.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, pleaded not guilty Monday to a single count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. A federal grand jury in Portland indicted him on that charge shortly before his Monday afternoon court appearance, and he could face life in prison if convicted.
About 100 people, including several members of the area's Somali-American community, packed the small hearing room and the hallway outside. Mohamud did not acknowledge them during the hearing.
The Oregon State University student was arrested Friday after he attempted to detonate what he believed was an explosives-laden van parked near a tree-lighting ceremony in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square, law enforcement officials said. But the bomb was fake, thanks to an undercover operation designed to undermine the plotter, and officials said the public was never in danger from the mock device.
WikiLeaks documents – WikiLeaks, the website sitting on a trove of U.S. diplomatic cables, didn't expect the papers to reveal as much espionage as they apparently do, a spokesman says. The New York Times and four European news outlets that had received the documents in advance began publishing excerpts on Sunday. Many of them detail conversations on sensitive issues between American officials and leaders in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Major topics in the documents include pressure from U.S. allies in the Middle East for decisive action to neutralize Iran's nuclear program, conversations about military action against al Qaeda militants in Yemen, and Washington's efforts to have highly enriched uranium removed from a Pakistani research reactor.
Here are some of the angles on the story that our reporters are working on today:
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who was arrested on Friday night for allegedly attempting to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Oregon, is due in federal court Monday to answer to charges of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
As of a year ago, the 19-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia lived with his family in Beaverton, Oregon, across the street from Stephanie Napier.
Napier spoke with John Roberts on American Morning Monday morning to describe her impression of the Mohamud family.
A Somali-American teenager arrested Friday on suspicion of plotting to bomb a holiday ceremony in Portland, Oregon, told an undercover FBI employee that he wrote articles published in an English-language jihadist magazine, including a story on fitness, an FBI affidavit says.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, told the undercover operative last summer that he had written articles for the online magazine Jihad Recollections under a pen name, according to an FBI affidavit filed with Mohamud's arrest warrant.
One of the articles Mohamud claimed to have written was "Getting in shape without weights," which was published in the inaugural issue of Jihad Recollections in April 2009, according to the affidavit.
In the article, the author – identified as Ibn al-Mubarak – writes that jihadists must prepare their bodies for war and "train as hard as possible in order to damage the enemies of Allah as much as possible."
The article implores readers to train without weights, in part because using them is "unrealistic for the Mujahid in the front lines anywhere in the world today," and because gyms are not Islamic environments, with their "music, semi-naked women [and] free mixing."
A 19-year-old has been arrested in connection with a plot to detonate a vehicle bomb at an annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon, on Friday evening, the Justice Department announced.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, was arrested on suspicion of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He is a resident of Corvallis, Oregon, and a student at Oregon State University, according to the FBI.
Mohamud was arrested by the FBI and Portland Police Bureau after he attempted to detonate what he believed to be an explosives-laden van that was parked near the tree-lighting ceremony in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square, the Justice Department said in a written statement. However, "the materials were not explosive," said Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd, who called the device a "mock bomb."
Cristin NorineEvery time you tweet, Facebook chat or Skype, you're essentially taking part in a social media experiment - but Cristin Norine is taking the idea to a new level.
She is putting herself behind glass walls for 30 days as part of the Public Isolation Project that shows how technology cuts people off from each other - even if it seems like it is connecting them.
"I'm seeing how it's affecting my relationships," she said.
It's also left her completely open to public view and scrutiny, but for the most part, Norine said she's been encouraged by others.
Norine said many people have stopped by and left her messages. She told CNN she was getting tired of seeing people texting while she was with them all the time - or having conversations with her friends only via technology.
Not that Norine is the first person to try and make a point by living in a glass house and throwing metaphorical stones.
A similar glass house project in Santiago, Chile, sought to showcase the basics of day-to-day life, by having a woman living behind glass walls. That project, however, caught a bit more attention, when the woman began to take a shower in public view.
Norine, however, doesn't have that issue - the small bathroom is the only area where she's off public display.
You can follow the rest of what she's doing online by following her on Twitter or on Facebook.
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