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Good Morning, Portland: We're looking at some nice weather for Friday and Saturday, and some nice rain on Sunday. The Catholic Church has a new pappy, and he's a g-d-m Chicagoan, which means, there's a non-zero chance the new pope has tried Jeppson's Malört. Let's hit the news—much like Jeppson's Malört, it somehow gets worse as we go.
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• A security guard at the preschool of Jewish community center Chabad Lubavitch of Oregon shot a man in the building's parking lot Thursday. While there's still not much information about what unfolded before the shooting, the school released a statement saying the guard was "threatened and assaulted" and "used his licensed weapon to defend himself." Portland Police told reporters and the school that they did not believe the interaction was related to religious or cultural bias.
• A recently-filed suit reveals that the Portland Pickles have sued Disney for trademark infringement on their name. Attorneys representing the team say that the use of a similar name—Peaks Valley Pickles—in the Pixar-animated Disney TV show Win or Lose risks diluting and devaluing their brand.
• A case of alleged gender discrimination in the Multnomah County District Attorney's office continued this week as, the Oregonian reports, Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) demanded $725,000 in lost wages and damages for a former prosecutor Amber Kinney who resigned from the DA's office in 2022, saying she had been retaliated against for blowing the whistle about sex discrimination.
• Goodnight sweet pizza: Foster-Powell brewpub Assembly Brewing will close its doors after Sunday, May 11, the Oregonian reports. Credited with bringing Detroit Pizza to the Portland area, owner George Johnson plans to keep the business' Assembly Pizza Annex open on NE Alberta.
• More Mercury reporting about anal: The closest Björk's immersive audio-visual Cornucopia tour made it to Portland was San Francisco, but now anyone near an indie art house can catch the magic of Björk: Cornucopia, a recording of the Icelandic songwriter's 2023 show in Lisbon, Portugal. Music editor Nolan Parkersaw the documentary's premiere at Cinema 21 on Wednesday—there are two more showings this weekend—which they encourage fans to attend. This review contains the words "goddess," "deity," and "medium," and a short rant about normalizing sex that’s not for procreation and that doesn’t center cis men.
• Why we can't have nice things: Northeast Portland bar Dream House requests the return of a cat painting that used to hang in their downstairs bathroom. The work depicts two cats—Townes and KP—the pets of one of the establishment's bartenders. Ever the mature one, Dream House has offered not to ask questions if the painting is returned, alternately they also suggest: "if you see it somewhere—hanging at a friend’s house, etc—swipe it & bring it back to us!"
• Strike shirks this mortal coil: Oregon Zoo is having a sad month! They announced the death of 16-year-old hero otter Tilly on April 30, and now they've had to break the news about 15-year-old cheetah Strike. A release from the org said Strike was humanely euthanized on Wednesday following age-related decline. This video seems to argue the Strike was friend-shape and therefore friend.
IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• Glad I had my Conclave watch party on Wednesday, because the sequestered 133 Catholic Church cardinals threw up their white smoke Thursday morning, announcing their decision to appoint Robert Francis Prevost as the church's new pope. Prevost is the first American pope and the first native English speaker in the role in over 800 years. Assuming the papal name Leo XIV, the new pope spoke of peace from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. At his first mass, delivered Friday morning, Associated Press reports the pope "complained that in many places Jesus is misunderstood, 'reduced to a kind of charismatic leader or superman.'” While Leo XIV was born and raised in Chicago, he appears to have lived outside of the United States for most of his adult life, traveling to study religious law and serving as a missionary, priest, teacher, and bishop in Peru, the New York Times reports. He holds dual citizenship with Peru, after becoming a naturalized citizen there in adulthood.
• Pre-pope nope: Scintillatingly, you'll see reports that the new pope already stepped to Trump's administration in his before-pope days, when he rebuffed a statement VP Vance made on Fox News in January. Vance alleged it is "a Christian concept" to love your family, your neighbor, and then the world, in that order. A Twitter account purporting to be from Prevost replied: "JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others" and shared a link to a National Catholic Reporter opinion piece arguing against it more thoroughly, with more scripture.
• New pope trope: At this moment, every aspect of Prevost's life is under examination—where he chooses to sleep, who reads scripture at his mass, what color shoes he's wearing, etc.—as the world tries to anticipate his next moves. Some outlets pulled his voting records and have noted he voted absentee for a number of Republican primaries in Illinois.
• The national's imperiled data: TeleMessage has been hacked, and therefore so has the government entities using it.
tired: SignalGate @wired.com: The Signal clone, TeleMessage—which Mike Waltz appeared to use in a Reuters photo—has been hacked. And Customs and Border Protection also confirmed it used TeleMessage. Welp.
— WIRED (@wired.com) May 9, 2025 at 6:57 AM
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• Trade deal of kings: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his negotiators say they spent nine weeks working to secure a trade deal with the Trump administration that will, according to NYT, "roll back tariffs on some British exports, including autos and steel" while leaving the blanket ten percent import tax on everything else in place. Some critics have printed out that the Trump administration is so chaotic that any agreement with them means nothing.
• Flying isn't feeling great right now, the Daily podcast framed a look at anxiety around US air-traffic safety systems by recounting a recent 90-second blackout of communication at Newark Airport.
• But we have been having lot of airplane problems. For instance, an aircract carrier stationed in the Red Sea lost its second jet in a little over a week. I'm mostly telling you this because I want to make sure you saw this joke:
Is anybody missing two jets? I found two jets. I will leave them on the lawn until noon, otherwise they're going OBO on Facebook marketplace.
— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 9:38 AM
• Now we're sending you into the weekend with these antifa chickens.