Last modified: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 4:51 PM PST News Digest OREGON - GOP rolls out late candidate for Oregon secretary of state SALEM (AP) — With just two weeks until the filing deadline, Oregon Republicans have finally rolled out a candidate for one of three statewide offices open this year. TV newsman Rick Dancer announced Monday he quit his job as the evening anchor at KEZI in Eugene to run for Oregon secretary of state, the only Republican who has filed. Four state senators are running for the Democratic nomination. At his campaign announcement, Dancer, 48, made it clear he won’t be counting on getting a lot of help from the state Republican Party, which confirmed last week that it is deeply in debt, a situation party officials ascribed mainly to ‘’donor fatigue.’’ 88 percent of Ore. high schoolers completed four years in 2007 SALEM (AP) — About 88 percent of the class of 2007 finished four years of high school last June, according to new numbers released Monday by the state Department of Education. But the numbers don’t reflect how long it took them to graduate — some might have finished in the traditional four years, academic whizzes in three or less, and some students might have spent five years or more in an Oregon high school. And it’s about to get harder for Oregon students to graduate on time: Starting with next year’s ninth-graders, the number of credits required to graduate will increase, and students will have to show that they’ve mastered a set of ‘’essential skills.’’ Northwest officials say agency shorting tsunami protection PORTLAND (AP) — After the killer Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, state officials in the Northwest thought the money Congress approved for tsunami preparations would help them gird for what could be the biggest natural disaster to hit the United States. But Western states are now getting even less money than before. That’s because, officials told The Oregonian newspaper, the federal government is diverting the cash for its own programs. ‘’It’s a real slap in the face of a pretty good program that they’re not getting that funding,’’ said Jay Raskin, a City Council member in Cannon Beach who was part of a team that reviewed federal tsunami efforts. Much of the federal tsunami money has gone toward warning buoys that would not help the West Coast in the case of the most serious tsunamis -