The city's lawsuit against Monsanto, over the PCBs that are rife in the Willamette River, Columbia Slough, and Columbia River, can proceed. A judge ruled last week that the city has standing to sue the company over the chemicals it produced for around four decades—apparently with plenty of evidence they were toxic.
Days after Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to Portland to gnash his teeth over undocumented immigrants, ICE launched a coordinated sting here and in other "sanctuary cities" around the country. The result, 33 people snatched up in Portland, and nearly 500 detained nationwide.
If you haven't taken the time to look into the abject misery playing out in Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled after mass murders carried out by the government of Myanmar, well, do that. It's awful.
Donald Trump has unveiled his tax plan. It includes big tax cuts for wealthy folks, including, probably, more than $1 billion in savings for Trump himself. Lots and lots of people have gripes about what the administration is proposing.
Trump cabinet member Tom Price says he'll pay almost $52,000 for the charter jets he ordered up to zip around the country. That would apparently cover just Price's seat, not those of the staff he also hauled along. In total, the lavish travel is suspected to have cost more than $400,000. And Price isn't the only one.
Is the Portland region willing to tax itself nearly $2 billion in order to pay for a new light rail line and a bevy of other anti-congestion projects? TriMet and others are considering asking next November.
Just so we're clear: If you're an LGBTQ Oregonian, your secretary of state—the first person in line to take over if the governor resigns—thinks you're immoral.
The O has been laying into Douglas County, where officials are closing libraries but spending hundreds of thousands in federal "safety net" money on trips to Washington DC and pro-logging videos.
So apparently American diplomats in Cuba have been suffering vague and bizarre "attacks" that have left some with brain damage and a variety of other symptoms? "Some U.S. diplomats reported hearing various loud noises or feeling vibrations when the incidents occurred, but others heard and felt nothing yet reported symptoms later. In some cases, the effects were narrowly confined, with victims able to walk 'in' and 'out' of blaring noises audible in only certain rooms or parts of rooms..." The US is pulling more than half its embassy staff from the country, and advising citizens not to visit.
Super boring and super important: Oregon's now short $25.3 billion of the amount it owes its public pensioners. That rising unfunded liability is partly based on assumptions the state makes over how its investments will perform, not any sort of economic collapse, but it may make budgets difficult across the state in years to come.
