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GOOD MORNING, PORTLAND! Hopefully you found a way to stay cool throughout the week, particularly during the two hottest days on record. More on that later. For now, exhale and enjoy the best days of summer, before August gets here and everyone is sweaty, stinky, and miserable. Today’s high will be 84 degrees, with a low of 56. 

IN LOCAL NEWS:

  • U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is scheduled to tour parts of Portland today, as part of a Pacific Northwest stop on the Investing in America tour. Buttigieg is slated to highlight major infrastructure projects being built as part of a Biden administration initiative. His travel plans include a tour in Washougal, Wash. before he heads down to the Rose City to check out 82nd Avenue with Gov. Tina Kotek. Someone should ask him to fix the constant freight train delays, please & thanx!
  • Despite a push to hire more officers and increased funding from the city, Portland Police Bureau’s response times have gotten worse, not better. Still, PPB cites ongoing staffing shortages for its response times that saw officers respond to fewer than 20% of high priority calls within five minutes, KOIN reports.
  • In bizarre news, animal advocacy group People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is offering up to $5,000 and a hefty supply of free vegan chicken for information leading to the discovery of a stolen chicken truck. PETA says a 2016 Ford E-350 super duty box truck with Virginia license plates was stolen late Monday or early Tuesday morning in Portland’s Brentwood Darlington neighborhood. The truck is impossible to miss. It’s a “life-size chicken transport truck” with images of actual chickens being transported in crates for slaughter. Someone check Pete Davidson’s garage.
  • A 32-year-old man stabbed to death near a busy intersection in inner Southeast Portland has been identified as Colin Smith, a server at Ox restaurant. Smith was allegedly stabbed during an altercation with a stranger outside the High Dive Bar while defending an LGBTQ+ friend in his group.
  • Police are also seeking information following a shooting that claimed the life of another Portland man, Ace Lewis, 28, who was found dead in a home in the Argay Terrace neighborhood. No suspects have been arrested in either case. 

IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:

  • OceanGate, the company that charged exorbitant amounts of money for trips to see the Titanic wreckage in its submersible, will cease operations. One would think that decision came after the company’s leaders were warned of safety issues and red flags, but nah, no time like the present to close up shop, right? The announcement came after OceanGate’s Titan submersible imploded during a recent deep sea expedition, killing all five people on board.
  • A pissing match of internet hellscapes has begun. It didn’t take long for billionaire manchild Elon Musk to get thrown into a tizzy after the launch of Meta’s new social media app, Threads. Musk, who owns Twitter, threatened to sue Meta (formerly Facebook) founder Mark Zuckerburg’s company over the new Threads site. The site, which closely resembles the Twitter platform, allows users to make posts with up to 500 characters. Threads is viewed as the first serious competitor to Twitter that could divert users and ad dollars away from the site. 
  • Recently, ProPublica and High Country News reported the majority of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe’s water in the Colorado River goes to cities in Nevada, California, and Arizona, while the Indigenous people don’t have access to their own water and aren’t paid for its usage.
  • In case you missed it, this week marked an unofficial record high temperature on Earth. While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the data produced by the University of Maine isn’t reliable enough, others say it points to a catastrophic level of climate change and global warming happening more rapidly than researchers initially thought. Cool, cool, cool. 

Now that I’ve ruined your day with news, here’s a reminder that dogs make everything better. 

 
 
 
 
 
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