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Staff contracted with HUCIRP remove trash and belongings from a SE Oak encampment alongside Laurelhurst Park in November 2020.
Staff contracted with HUCIRP remove trash and belongings from a SE Oak encampment alongside Laurelhurst Park in November 2020. Alex Zielinski

Good Afternoon, Portland! It's Tuesday and beautiful, and tomorrow will also be beautiful. BUT, BEGINNING TODAY, MERCURY IS IN RETROGRADE. At the very least, this will result in more people saying, "Mercury is in retrograde" around you. You're welcome, and here's the news!

IN LOCAL NEWS:

• The City of Portland reached an agreement with the participants of a class-action lawsuit, which argued that the city's contractors illegally discarded their possessions when clearing homeless encampments. The plaintiffs—not seeking money—asked for new rules about how and why campsites should be removed.

• Yesterday, Willamette Week reported that Portland City Council candidate AJ McCreary had paid her 15-year-old son $3,200 to create her campaign website. Today, in an update, the director of the small donor elections program told WW that McCreary isn't allowed to use the small donor funds to pay a relative. However, she may have paid her son from her private contributions, which is allowed.

• I cannot tell you how many times I have eagerly entered a new opening date for beloved local chef Gregory Gourdet's soon-to-be-open Haitian restaurant Kann. Good news: The Oregonian reports that we're looking a July date now baybee. Even more good news: Gourdet also plans create a pan-Caribbean cocktail bar in the restaurant's downstairs!

• Oregon's mail-in system makes voting easy, so take a moment to pull your ballot out of the mail pile and exercise your democratic right to choose your champion political representative for the next few years of Thunderdome elected office. And just who are all these people? Read up on 'em in the Mercury Election Endorsements! If you don't have time for all that, we also made a Mercury Election Cheat Sheet!

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:

• Putting a human face on the struggle between everyday people and Russia, Pussy Riot's Maria Alyokhina has escaped her home country, after being jailed in 2012 for executing a performance art piece in a church. She disguised herself as a food courier and fled, after further charges were changed to a sentence in a penal colony. The New York Times spoke to Alyokhina about her experiences of trying to express dissent in Russia.

• The Associated Press reports that on Tuesday—at a Tesla thingy—Elon Musk said banning Donald Trump from Twitter was a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme.” He thinks temporary bans are a better idea. Everyone I know says they hate Twitter, but if you're sad about the impending Musk-ing of the website, you may be comforted by this episode of Sway where Kara Swisher and William Cohan muse on how Musk could still "just pay $1 billion and walk away" from the deal.

• After 22 years, Apple has ceased making iPods. It has finally gone the way of the Zune.

• Mess with the birds, get the collar!