Klamath County's violent crime rate for 2016 shot up in the final days of the year. Three separate homicides occurred in a span between December 26th and 31st; an unusual outbreak of violence. Stephen Floyd covered the cases for the Herald & News in Klamath Falls.

Recent history shows how trends in human behavior produce similar movements in different places far apart. Example: the UK vote on "Brexit" and the American presidential election. But that's to be expected in a modern, connected world, right? So how do we explain some of the human revolutions of antiquity? Michael Scott takes on that project in his book Ancient Worlds: A Global History of Antiquity , showing how societal changes happened even among humans scattered far and wide.

It's been more than a decade since beekeepers began noticing huge die-offs of bees in their care, in a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder, or CCD. Science is perhaps closer to understanding the causes of CCD, but not to stopping it outright. And the public at large has a stake, since bees pollinate so many of the crops we depend upon for food. Biologist Sainath Suryanarayanan and sociologist Daniel Lee Kleinman teamed up to explore bee plague and human reaction, in a book called

Rogue Valley communities are not used to dealing with snow in any amounts, and eight inches fell on Medford on Tuesday (January 3, 2017). That's a headache for travelers to deal with, and the job of road crews to clean up. The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) works closely with its California counterpart, CalTrans, on the Interstate Five corridor linking the two states. So California blizzard conditions led to a half-day shutdown on the Siskiyou Summit on the Oregon side, to allow road

Conservative giant William F. Buckley called his TV show "Firing Line" when it debuted in 1966. But despite the title, it was not a free-fire zone for people to yell at one another. Debate and disagree, yes... but not like today's shouting matches on cable news channels. Buckley's show and his other work in media made him the prototype pundit, and that role allowed him to present his ideas to a broader audience. Over time, they became mainstream. M.I.T. professor Heather Hendershot reconstructs

There tends to be a controversy attached to any official designation of a wilderness area. The argument against wilderness set-asides is that they restrict economic activity. But the wilderness proponents point out that roads crisscross the planet, rendering most roadless areas small. There is now a global map of roadless areas showing exactly where the untouched islands lie.

The State of Oregon will have to scramble for funding again in the coming legislative session. Revenue projections are not keeping up with the cost estimates, to no one's surprise. Measure 97 in the November election was supposed to address the systemic issue by taxing corporations more. But voters rejected it, leading to the obvious question: what next? A Better Oregon is already on it, floating an idea for a new corporate tax and a health care provider tax.

Let's sit down for a meal. Figuratively, not literally. Literal meals have become quite adventuresome of late, with generous helpings of science and fusions and exotic ingredients. Dana Goodyear captures the mood in her book Anything That Moves .

Over the course of 12 months, we meet a LOT of interesting people on The Exchange. And some of them arrive in-studio with musical instruments in hand. Those are actually some of our favorite segments; less talking and more listening. We grab some of the musical highlights of this year and pack them into a single hour.

We're a lot more open-minded about people's disabilities than we used to be. Mostly, anyway. But it's not universal... in some parts of the planet, blind people are still considered stupid. Rosemary Mahoney had her eyes opened to the way people think about blindness, both with and without it. Her stunning book is For the Benefit of Those Who See: Dispatches from the World of the Blind .