Good Morning, News: Potential Keystone XL Pause, the City’s Misspent Utility Money, and a Tragically Angry Bull

For a second time, a Multnomah County judge has ruled the City of Portland illegally spent ratepayer money from its sewer and water utilities on extraneous causes—like sending employees to help with Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath—while also finding the city legitimately spent some disputed money. It’s the latest turn in a winding civil suit over utility spending, but not the last. The suit’s setting up for a battle over millions the city spent cleaning up the Portland Harbor superfund site.

A University of Oregon employee who leaked news her boss had improperly shown an alleged rape victim’s medical records to the university’s attorneys has quit, saying doing the right thing has only earned her retaliation and grief.

SPECIAL REPORT, Portland: Your dog/dogs almost certainly won’t care if your home is broken into. They’ll mostly just be confused and vaguely stoked.

More Kitzhaber drama? Sort of. Our former governor is still fighting to keep his emails out of the clutches of a federal grand jury, while the state released a report that was highly critical of how a key whistleblower in the case seized equipment from Kitzhaber’s staff, and said he made repeated “misrepresentations” to investigators.

SAD ANIMAL NEWS: A Subaru hit a bull on an Idaho highway, which angered the bull enough that he charged rescue workers trying to help the Subaru’s occupants. Deputies decided to kill the bull. The bull’s owner showed up with a rifle. Deputies killed the owner, then the bull.

PERPLEXING ANIMAL NEWS: A drunk Nebraskan broke into a zoo and got mauled by the tiger. Then she showed up at the hospital, surly at having been freshly mauled.

So apparently Mayor Charlie Hales was incensed enough that his former supporters were giving money to Ted Wheeler that he’d actually call them up and scold them? The Turncoat Denis C. Theriault includes this morsel in a solid piece about the mayor’s decision to leave public office after this term.

TransCanada wants to put the brakes on the Keystone XL pipeline! But there’s concern that’s just because it wants to push the process back until President Obama—expected to reject the project—is out of office.

In other trans news: The US Department of Education just ruled an Illinois school district must accommodate a trans girl’s use of the girls’ locker room. It’s a big decision.

Middle-aged white Americans are dying more often, while their peers of other races see a decreased death rate (though white people still have a lower death rate than some other races). It’s a fact mostly tied to suicide and drug/alcohol poisoning, and it’s surprising people who study this stuff.