In the dawning days of a new year, it’s customary to look back at events in the months that have passed. The Oregonian reliably does that, every January, with an examination and recitation of the previous year’s murders and slayings. Portland’s tally rose to 26 in 2014 from remarkably low 16 in 2013—an increase fed, in part, by an unusually high number of domestic-violence-related murder-suicides.
Way more important than the score during the Rose Bowl: Several Oregon players taunted a Florida running back player dogged by sex assault accusations by singing “no means no” to the tune of his university’s famous (and racist) “war chant.” The Oregon players will nonetheless all face discipline.
The Central Eastside, Portland’s last close-in industrial pocket, could see some transformative changes in the coming months, thanks to new rules for density and the pending arrival of a new MAX line. Which is why the O is plotting a major series on the already-shifting neighborhood’s future.
The business-glutted burg of Sea/Tac was the first to vote itself a $15 minimum wage. A year in, calamity has hardly arrived—but neither have any promised boons.
Florida tried so incredibly hard to fight off marriage equality. It failed. A federal judge yesterday told the state it had to start marrying same-sex couples next week, making the oft-backed conservative bastion the nation’s 36th state where anyone in love can marry whomever they want.
Mario Cuomo, a well-spoken Democrat three times elected the governor of New York, was famous for giving some thundering speeches in the 1980s and then passing on a couple of seemingly well-primed chances to run for president. He died yesterday just hours after his son, Andrew, was sworn in for a second term in the job his old man once held.
Most cancer basically comes down to luck, scientists have realized. Pretty much like everything else.
Sony still can’t say—with any meaningful degree of certainty—whether the hackers who wrecked the media company’s holidays still have access to its systems.
Two cops in West Virginia tried pulling over an SUV they thought was stolen. Soon after, a truck pulled up, and its driver opened fire at the cops injuring them. The cops were injured but survived. The two drivers were arrested, claiming they’re father and son. And the truck? It was holding the corpses of the elderly couple who owned the SUV.
After a horrific New Year’s stampede in Shanghai that killed 36 people and left 43 others injured, recriminations are flowing. Along with accusations that cops are whisking away upset relatives to minimize outrage.
Police body cameras caught a shooting inside a Minnesota man’s home. But officials in Duluth are refusing to release the footage—using an arcane policy to label it classified—even after an investigation that cleared the two cops who were involved.
A shrinking national deficit has eased the pressure on officials, local or farther afield, trying to fend off calls for government spending cuts. The resulting increase in spending, however tiny, has helped to speed up economic growth.
They’ve pulled more bodies from the ocean, in the aftermath of the likely crash of a an AsiaAir flight over he Java Sea, bringing the number up to 30.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid had his face and several ribs busted in what his aides are calling a weird mishap with an exercise machine in his Nevada home. It’s more fun to wonder if that’s cover for a loving holiday beatdown on behalf of organized crime.
RIP Edward Herrmann. AKA Richard Gilmore. AKA the vampire overlord in 1987’s The Lost Boys