They're among the most unassailable laws (of a certain prevailing segment) of Portland: If your bicycle hasn't been stolen, it will be. And even if you've been lucky, someone you know hasn't been. That's because bike theft is an astonishingly consequence-free crime in Portland (for the thieves, that is). The Portland Police Bureau, prodded by activists and community members, seems on the verge of doing something more to combat a scourge in which just 2 percent out of thousands of cases end with a prosecution.

The man who police say shot himself after he fired a weapon at officers, ran off, and got himself cornered in a yard has since been identified. He's a known gang member, they say, who'd escaped a halfway house.

The Portland Children's Levy is mostly a Good Thing, in that it properly dispenses millions to needy kids. But it's not perfect, a new audit has found. It's way too entwined with its political champion, Commissioner Dan Saltzman. And it ought to do a better job explaining its allocations while letting spurned groups appeal.

Yes, Right 2 Dream Too was essentially paid $846,000 last year to move somewhere besides the Pearl District's outskirts. But that move is no more likely now than it was a year ago. And now donations are down because a lot of people mistakenly thought that money would pay for operating expenses. Which isn't allowed.

Looks like whatever vote's coming out of Salem on transportation funding, a measure that will help clarify Portland's paused street fee debate later this year, has no choice but to break along party lines. A vocal Republican lawmaker from Clackamas County has put up a bill saying Portland should pay for its own damned roads.

Another arrestee in Chicago has come forward to talk about the hours she spent shackled and denied an attorney visit in a secret police department interrogation facility recently exposed by the Guardian.

Certainly there's nothing suspicious or strange about the various drones that have been spotted flying over French landmarks and the US Embassy in Paris, not long after drones were spotted flying over the country's nuclear installations.

I never knew adultery was genuinely and seriously illegal in South Korea. But now that it isn't anymore? SO MANY MORE KOREANS ARE BUYING CONDOMS.

Donald Trump is a wise person who makes wise and careful decisions and keeps the needs of his diseased country close to his courageous heart.

When Hillary Clinton was US secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation nonetheless kept collecting millions in donations from foreign governments. One of those gift broke special rules crafted by the Obama White House to minimize conflicts of interest.

Sorry, prohibitionists! The District of Columbia ignored "bullying" and threats from a pair of GOP lawmakers and pushed ahead with the legalization of marijuana, as approved by voters last year.

Mysterious and massive craters keep appearing in Siberia. The leading theory blames natural gas explosions helped along by thawing permafrost. That's bad news, not only for Russia's gas-reliant economy but also for the rest of the increasingly warming world.

BID EARLY! BID OFTEN! AND MAYBE YOU CAN OWN THE TIE THAT FORMER TORONTO MAYOR ROB FORD WORE (DUDE'S STILL A CITY COUNCILMAN!) WHEN HE ADMITTED SMOKING CRACK.