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Good morning, Portland! I hope you had a restful long weekend that was everything you wanted it to be and more. Lots of things happened, so let's get caught up!

In local news:

• Omicron-specific booster shots are on their way to Oregon this week, with some vaccine appointments starting as early as this Wednesday. State officials have pre-ordered over 75,000 booster doses, which are available to anyone 12 and older who received their most recent COVID vaccine or booster at least two months ago. If you have caught COVID, health officials recommend waiting two months since your infection to get the Omicron booster. 

• ICYMI: The Portland Police Bureau has started a new pattern of not releasing the names of officers who have shot members of the public, despite bureau policy to release the officer’s name within 24 hours of the shooting. PPB has cited “doxing” concerns as the reason for breaking policy—however PPB nor the city has utilized the recent Oregon anti-doxing law that was literally created at the request of the Portland Police Association to protect cops and their families against doxing and harassment. Curious...

• New school year, same staffing woes: Oregon school districts are struggling to rebound from staffing shortages of teachers, paraeducators, custodial staff, and bus drivers. Schools are facing dual challenges of hiring educators and other school staff, and retaining the staff they currently have. According to the Oregon School Employees Association, from 2018 to early 2021, approximately 3,300 school employees left their positions. During the 2021-2022 school year alone, more than 5,300 employees left their school jobs.

• Multiple food carts on the corner of North Vancouver Avenue and North Fremont Street caught fire Sunday, destroying a portion of the cart pod. Pepe Chile’s Taqueria appeared to be the center of the damage, but firefighters have not released information about how or where the fire started.

In national and international news:

• Ten people are dead and at least 18 injured after a mass stabbing at an Indigenous reserve in Saskatchewan, Canada, Sunday. Police believe two people committed the stabbings and that some of the attacks appeared to be targeted while others were seemingly random. One suspect, Damien Sanderson, was found dead after a multiple-day manhunt while the other, Myles Sanderson, is still evading police.

• Following Boris Johnson’s resignation in July, Liz Truss has been elected as the Conservative Party’s new leader and will take over as Britain’s new Prime Minister today. Truss campaigned on promises to tackle the cost-of-living crisis in the UK. Inflation in the UK is above 10 percent with projections that it may increase to a 42-year-high of 13.3 percent in October.

• Running water was restored to Jackson, Mississippi, on Monday, but a boil-water notice is still in place throughout the city. Jackson residents went days without access to water after the city’s treatment plant went offline last week following months of performance issues. The federal government is still distributing bottled water in the city and there is no estimate when the 150,000 residents will have access to running water that’s safe enough to drink without boiling it first.

• Shout out to all my bitchy witches out there—it’s your season.