07-12-2024  6:03 pm   •   PDX and SEA Weather

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NORTHWEST NEWS

Wildfire Risk Rises as Western States Dry out Amid Ongoing Heat Wave Baking Most of the US

Blazes are burning in Oregon, where the governor issued an emergency authorization allowing additional firefighting resources to be deployed. More than 142 million people around the U.S. were under heat alerts Wednesday, especially across the West, where dozens of locations tied or broke heat records.

Forum Explores Dangerous Intersection of Brain Injury and Law Enforcement

The Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing hosted event with medical, legal and first-hand perspectives.

2 Men Drown in Glacier National Park Over the July 4 Holiday Weekend

 A 26-year-old man from India slipped on rocks and was swept away in Avalanche Creek on Saturday morning. His body has not been recovered. And a 28-year-old man from Nepal who was not an experienced swimmer drowned in Lake McDonald near Sprague Creek Campground on Saturday evening. His body was recovered by a sheriff's dive team.

Records Shatter as Heatwave Threatens 130 million Across U.S. 

Roughly 130 million people are under threat from a long-running heat wave that already has broken records with dangerously high temperatures and is expected to shatter more inot next week from the Pacific Northwest to the Mid-Alantic states and the Northeast. Forecasters say temperatures could spike above 100 degrees in Oregon, where records could be broken in cities such as Eugene, Portland and Salem

NEWS BRIEFS

Echohawk Selected for Small Business Regulatory Fairness Board

Indigenous woman and executive leader of Snoqualmie-owned enterprise to serve on national board advancing regulatory fairness and...

HUD Reaches Settlement to Ensure Equal Opportunity in the Appraisal Profession

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced today that it has entered into an historic Conciliation...

HUD Expands Program to Help Homeowners Repair Homes

The newly updated Federal Housing Administration Program will assist families looking for affordable financing to repair, purchase, or...

UFCW 555 Turns in Signatures for Initiative Petition 35 - United for Cannabis Workers Act

On July 5, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 delivered over 163,000 signatures to the Oregon Secretary of...

Local Photographer Announces Re-Release of Her Book

Kelly Ruthe Johnson, a nationally recognized photographer and author based in Portland, Oregon, has announced the re-release of her...

Judge rejects effort by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson to get records from Catholic church

SEATTLE (AP) — A Washington state judge said Friday that Attorney General Bob Ferguson is not entitled to enforce a subpoena seeking decades of records from the Seattle Archdiocese, despite his assertion that the records are needed to learn whether the Catholic church used charitable trust funds...

California reports first wildfire death of the 2024 season as fires persist across the West

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Wildfires fueled by strong winds and an extended heat wave have led to the first death in California of the 2024 season, while wind-whipped flames in Arizona have forced hundreds to flee from what tribal leaders are calling the “most serious” wildfire on their reservation...

Judge rejects effort by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson to get records from Catholic church

SEATTLE (AP) — A Washington state judge said Friday that Attorney General Bob Ferguson is not entitled to enforce a subpoena seeking decades of records from the Seattle Archdiocese, despite his assertion that the records are needed to learn whether the Catholic church used charitable trust funds...

California reports first wildfire death of the 2024 season as fires persist across the West

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Wildfires fueled by strong winds and an extended heat wave have led to the first death in California of the 2024 season, while wind-whipped flames in Arizona have forced hundreds to flee from what tribal leaders are calling the “most serious” wildfire on their reservation...

OPINION

Minding the Debate: What’s Happening to Our Brains During Election Season

The June 27 presidential debate is the real start of the election season, when more Americans start to pay attention. It’s when partisan rhetoric runs hot and emotions run high. It’s also a chance for us, as members of a democratic republic. How? By...

State of the Nation’s Housing 2024: The Cost of the American Dream Jumped 47 Percent Since 2020

Only 1 in 7 renters can afford homeownership, homelessness at an all-time high ...

Juneteenth is a Sacred American Holiday

Today, when our history is threatened by erasure, our communities are being dismantled by systemic disinvestment, Juneteenth can serve as a rallying cry for communal healing and collective action. ...

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

A World War I veteran is first Tulsa Race Massacre victim identified from mass graves

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A World War I veteran is the first person identified from graves filled with more than a hundred victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that devastated the city’s Black community, the mayor said Friday. Using DNA from descendants of his brothers, the remains...

Mississippi must move quickly on a court-ordered redistricting, say voting rights attorneys

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi should work quickly to fulfill the court-ordered redrawing of some legislative districts to ensure more equitable representation for Black residents, attorneys for voting rights groups said in a new court filing Friday. The attorneys also said it's...

Georgia sheriff laments scrapped jail plans in county under federal civil rights investigation

ATLANTA (AP) — The sheriff in a Georgia county where prison conditions have led to a federal civil rights investigation criticized a decision not to move forward with plans for a new jail, calling the vote “shortsighted" on Friday. The Fulton County Board of Commissioners on...

ENTERTAINMENT

Celebrity birthdays for the week of July 14-20

Celebrity birthdays for the week of July 14-20: July 14: Actor Nancy Olson (“Sunset Boulevard”) is 96. Football player-turned-actor Rosey Grier is 92. Actor Vincent Pastore (“The Sopranos”) is 78. Bassist Chris Cross of Ultravox is 72. Actor Jerry Houser (“Summer of...

Book Review: 'John Quincy Adams' gives the sixth president's life the sweep and scope it deserves

To be clear, Randall Woods' “John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People” is not a leisurely read designed for the beach or airport. Clocking in at more than 700 pages, Woods' biography of the sixth president is massive in both length and scope. But that's the type of book Adams...

Book Review: 'Hey, Zoey' uses questions about AI to look at women's autonomy in a new light

Dolores is going through the motions of life when she finds a potentially marriage-ending surprise in her garage: a high-end, lifelike sex doll imbued with artificial intelligence named Zoey. There are a lot of places that author Sarah Crossan can go from here — when is it cheating?...

U.S. & WORLD NEWS

Jury ends first day of deliberations in US Sen. Bob Menendez's corruption trial without a verdict

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City jury finished its first three hours of deliberations Friday without reaching a...

Increasingly popular 'parametric insurance' helps farmers and others hit hard by extreme weather

MINDANAO, Philippines (AP) — Joemar Flores, a spindly 28-year-old, gestured across his family’s farmland,...

Data of nearly all AT&T customers downloaded to a third-party platform in security breach

The data of nearly all customers of the telecommunications giant AT&T was downloaded to a third-party platform...

Argentina indicts 2 visiting French rugby players in a harrowing case of sexual assault

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentine prosecutors on Friday charged two French rugby players with aggravated...

The gods must be angry: Mexico 'cancels' statue of Greek god Poseidon after dispute with local deity

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The gods must be angry — or just laughing at the hubris of humanity. ...

The collapse of a school in northern Nigeria leaves 22 students dead, officials say

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — A two-story school collapsed during morning classes Friday in north-central Nigeria,...

Holly Yan and Phil Black CNN

Syria Map(CNN) -- Just days after Russia and the United States reached a deal on getting Syria to give up its chemical weapons, world powers are quarreling over the details.

The agreement, reached by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry over the weekend, calls for a U.N. resolution demanding that Syria turn over its chemical weapons to international control in a specific time frame.

Russia won't support any resolution that would authorize the use of force against Syria if it doesn't comply, Lavrov said Tuesday.

But the United States and France want to keep the threat of force on the table if Syria doesn't comply. Those allies say they are convinced that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime was behind a chemical weapons attack in opposition areas that, according to U.S. estimates, killed more than 1,400 people.

The French analysis of a U.N. chemical weapons report shows the Syrian regime was responsible for the August 21 massacre near Damascus, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters Tuesday.

But, at the same news conference, Lavrov brushed aside a question about blame. He noted that the U.N. inspectors in Syria were not tasked with figuring out who was responsible and that that was not the point of the U.N. report.

Russia has suggested Syrian rebels may have been behind the attack, though critics have said rebels did not have the means to unleash chemical weapons.

A scathing report

U.N. weapons inspectors gave "overwhelming and indisputable" evidence that nerve gas was used in Syria, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday.

The team found "clear and convincing evidence" that the nerve agent sarin was delivered by surface-to-surface rockets "on a relatively large scale" in the August 21 attack on a Damascus suburb.

"It is the most significant confirmed use of chemical weapons against civilians since Saddam Hussein used them in Halabja in 1988, and the worst use of weapons of mass destruction in the 21st century," Ban said. "The international community has a responsibility to ensure that chemical weapons never re-emerge as an instrument of warfare."

The diplomatic quarrel over just who may have been responsible for the chemical weapons attack came as the toll from conventional weapons continued to mount.

The opposition Local Coordination Committees in Syria reported that 89 people -- including 10 children and seven women -- were killed Monday nationwide.

Syrian-Turkish border tension

A blast rocked the Syrian side of the Turkish-Syrian border Tuesday, Turkey's semiofficial Anatolian news agency reported.

Video shot by activists showed torrents of black smoke emerging from blazing vehicles at the crossing as survivors tried to help victims.

The LCC said the attack wounded many people.

The explosion, which happened near a border gate, comes a day after Turkish planes shot down a Syrian helicopter crossing into Turkey. It came down on Syrian territory, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said.

Syria's state news agency SANA said the helicopter was watching for "terrorists" crossing the border and erroneously strayed into Turkish airspace, but was on its way back across the border when shot down.

CNN's Richard Allen Greene, Josh Levs, Aliza Kassim, Joe Sterling and Jennifer Deaton contributed to this report.