05-02-2024  4:07 pm   •   PDX and SEA Weather
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NORTHWEST NEWS

Portland Government Will Change On Jan. 1. The City’s Transition Team Explains What We Can Expect.

‘It’s a learning curve that everyone has to be intentional about‘

What Marijuana Reclassification Means for the United States

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is moving toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. The Justice Department proposal would recognize the medical uses of cannabis but wouldn’t legalize it for recreational use. Some advocates for legalized weed say the move doesn't go far enough, while opponents say it goes too far.

US Long-Term Care Costs Are Sky-High, but Washington State’s New Way to Help Pay for Them Could Be Nixed

A group funded by hedge fund executive Brian Heywood is attempting to undermine the financial stability of Washington state's new long-term care social insurance program.

A Massive Powerball Win Draws Attention to a Little-Known Immigrant Culture in the US

An immigrant from Laos who has been battling cancer won an enormous jumi.3 billion Powerball jackpot in Oregon earlier this month. But Cheng “Charlie” Saephan's luck hasn't just changed his life — it's also drawn attention to Iu Mien, a southeast Asian ethnic group with origins in China, many of whose members fled from Laos to Thailand and then settled in the U.S. following the Vietnam War.

NEWS BRIEFS

April 30 is the Registration Deadline for the May Primary Election

Voters can register or update their registration online at OregonVotes.gov until 11:59 p.m. on April 30. ...

Chair Jessica Vega Pederson Releases $3.96 Billion Executive Budget for Fiscal Year 2024-2025

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New Funding Will Invest in Promising Oregon Technology and Science Startups

Today Business Oregon and its Oregon Innovation Council announced a million award to the Portland Seed Fund that will...

Unity in Prayer: Interfaith Vigil and Memorial Service Honoring Youth Affected by Violence

As part of the 2024 National Youth Violence Prevention Week, the Multnomah County Prevention and Health Promotion Community Adolescent...

The Latest | Arrests top 2,000 as protests against Israel-Hamas war roil college campuses

The number of people arrested in connection with protests on college campuses against the Israel-Hamas war has now topped 2,000. The Associated Press has tallied arrests at 35 schools since the protests began at Columbia University on April 18. Student protests have popped up at many...

Tension grows on UCLA campus as police order dispersal of large pro-Palestinian gathering

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Law enforcement on the UCLA campus donned riot gear Wednesday evening as they ordered the dispersal of over a thousand people who had gathered in support of a pro-Palestinian student encampment, warning over loudspeakers that anyone who refused to leave could face arrest. ...

The Bo Nix era begins in Denver, and the Broncos also drafted his top target at Oregon

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — For the first time in his 17 seasons as a coach, Sean Payton has a rookie quarterback to nurture. Payton's Denver Broncos took Bo Nix in the first round of the NFL draft. The coach then helped out both himself and Nix by moving up to draft his new QB's top...

Elliss, Jenkins, McCaffrey join Harrison and Alt in following their fathers into the NFL

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Marvin Harrison Jr., Joe Alt, Kris Jenkins, Jonah Ellis and Luke McCaffrey have turned the NFL draft into a family affair. The sons of former pro football stars, they've followed their fathers' formidable footsteps into the league. Elliss was...

OPINION

New White House Plan Could Reduce or Eliminate Accumulated Interest for 30 Million Student Loan Borrowers

Multiple recent announcements from the Biden administration offer new hope for the 43.2 million borrowers hoping to get relief from the onerous burden of a collective

Op-Ed: Why MAGA Policies Are Detrimental to Black Communities

NNPA NEWSWIRE – MAGA proponents peddle baseless claims of widespread voter fraud to justify voter suppression tactics that disproportionately target Black voters. From restrictive voter ID laws to purging voter rolls to limiting early voting hours, these...

Loving and Embracing the Differences in Our Youngest Learners

Yet our responsibility to all parents and society at large means we must do more to share insights, especially with underserved and under-resourced communities. ...

Gallup Finds Black Generational Divide on Affirmative Action

Each spring, many aspiring students and their families begin receiving college acceptance letters and offers of financial aid packages. This year’s college decisions will add yet another consideration: the effects of a 2023 Supreme Court, 6-3 ruling that...

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

Judge grants autopsy rules requested by widow of Mississippi man found dead after vanishing

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi judge granted a request Thursday by the widow of a deceased man who vanished under mysterious circumstances to set standards for a future independent autopsy of her late husband's body. Hinds County Chancery Judge Dewayne Thomas formalized...

Asian American Literature Festival that was canceled by the Smithsonian in 2023 to be revived

NEW YORK (AP) — A festival celebrating Asian American literary works that was suddenly canceled last year by the Smithsonian Institution is getting resurrected, organizers announced Thursday. The Asian American Literature Festival is making a return, the Asian American Literature...

Critics question if longtime Democratic congressman from Georgia is too old for reelection

CONYERS, Ga. (AP) — U.S. Rep. David Scott faces multiple Democratic primary opponents in his quest for a 12th congressional term in a sharply reconfigured suburban Atlanta district. But with early voting underway ahead of the May 21 primary elections, the 78-year-old is ignoring challengers and...

ENTERTAINMENT

Book Review: Rachel Khong’s new novel 'Real Americans' explores race, class and cultural identity

In 2017 Rachel Khong wrote a slender, darkly comic novel, “Goodbye, Vitamin,” that picked up a number of accolades and was optioned for a film. Now she has followed up her debut effort with a sweeping, multigenerational saga that is twice as long and very serious. “Real...

Celebrity birthdays for the week of May 5-11

Celebrity birthdays for the week of May 5-11: May 5: Actor Michael Murphy is 86. Actor Lance Henriksen (“Millennium,” ″Aliens”) is 84. Comedian-actor Michael Palin (Monty Python) is 81. Actor John Rhys-Davies (“Lord of the Rings,” ″Raiders of the Lost Ark”) is 80....

Select list of nominees for 2024 Tony Awards

NEW YORK (AP) — Select nominations for the 2024 Tony Awards, announced Tuesday. Best Musical: “Hell's Kitchen'': ”Illinoise"; “The Outsiders”; “Suffs”; “Water for Elephants” Best Play: “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”; “Mary Jane”; “Mother...

U.S. & WORLD NEWS

Death toll jumps to at least 48 as a search continues in southern China highway collapse

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Man who bragged that he 'fed' an officer to the mob of Capitol rioters gets nearly 5 years in prison

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Biden says 'order must prevail' during campus protests over the war in Gaza

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Lawmakers in Serbia elect new government with pro-Russia ministers sanctioned by the US

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A new form of mpox that may spread more easily found in Congo's biggest outbreak

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — Congo is struggling to contain its biggest mpox outbreak, and scientists say a new form...

Death toll jumps to at least 48 as a search continues in southern China highway collapse

BEIJING (AP) — The death toll from a collapsed highway in southeastern China climbed to 48 on Thursday as...

Kimberly Dozier AP Intelligence Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bruised from their latest diplomatic clash, the U.S. and Pakistan are trying to bandage their relationship by forging a new joint intelligence team to go after top terrorism suspects, officials say.

The move comes after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented the Pakistanis with the U.S. list of most-wanted terrorism targets, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Wednesday. The list includes some groups the Pakistanis have been reluctant to attack, U.S. officials said.

It's one of a host of confidence-building measures meant to restore trust blown on both sides after U.S. forces tracked down and killed al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden during a secret raid in Pakistan last month.

But it also amounts to a new test of loyalty for both sides. The Pakistanis say the U.S. has failed to share its best intelligence, instead running numerous unilateral spying operations on its soil.

U.S. officials say they need to see the Pakistanis target militants they've long sheltered, including the Haqqani network, which operates with impunity in the Pakistani tribal areas while attacking U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

All those interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

The U.S. and Pakistan have engaged in a diplomatic stare-down since the May 2 raid, with the Pakistanis outraged over the unilateral action as an affront to its sovereignty and the Americans angry to find that bin Laden had been hiding for more than five years in a military town just 35 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

The U.S. deliberately hid the operation from Pakistan, recipient of billions in counterterrorism aid, for fear that the operation would leak to militants.

A series of high-level U.S. visits has aimed to take the edge off. Marc Grossman, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell met with intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha last month. Last week, the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, held a day of intensive meetings with top Pakistani military and civilian officials.

After that outreach, Pakistan allowed the CIA to re-examine the bin Laden compound last Friday. Pakistan also returned the tail section of a U.S. stealth Black Hawk helicopter that broke off when the SEALs blew up the aircraft to destroy its secret noise- and radar-deadening technology.

The CIA has also shared some information gleaned from the raid, and Pakistan has reciprocated, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Wednesday.

The investigative team will be made up mainly of intelligence officers from both nations, according to two U.S. officials and one Pakistani official. It would draw in part on any intelligence emerging from the CIA's analysis of computer and written files gathered by the Navy SEALs who raided bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, as well as Pakistani intelligence gleaned from interrogations of those who frequented or lived near the bin Laden compound, the officials said.

The formation of the team marks a return to the counterterrorism cooperation that has led to major takedowns of al-Qaida militants, like the joint arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003.

The joint intelligence team will go after five top targets, including al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, a possible bin Laden successor, and al-Qaida operations chief Atiya Abdel Rahman, as well as Taliban leader like Mullah Omar, all of whom U.S. intelligence officials believe are hiding in Pakistan, one U.S. official said.

Another target is Siraj Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani tribe in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. Allied with the Taliban and al-Qaida, the Haqqanis are behind some of the deadliest attacks against U.S. troops and Afghan civilians in Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence officials say their top commanders live openly in the Pakistani city of Miram Shah, close to a Pakistani army outpost.

Pakistani officials say the U.S. has never provided them accurate intelligence as to the Haqqani leadership's location. Pakistani officials also argue that as the Haqqani network has been careful never to attack the Pakistani government, there is no reason to attack them.

One official said a final target on this preliminary list is Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, leader of a group called Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, which the State Department blames for several attacks in India and Pakistan, including a 2006 suicide bombing against the U.S. consulate in Karachi that killed four people.

A second U.S. official confirmed that the Pakistanis and Americans have agreed to go after a handful of militants as a confidence-building measure, but the official would not confirm the specific names on the list.

Pakistani officials say those five have always been top targets, but they also did not confirm that the new agreement specifically names them as joint targets.

Intelligence-sharing operations between the U.S. and Pakistan were already strained before the bin Laden raid, particularly by the arrest and detention in January of CIA security contractor Raymond Davis in the shooting deaths of two Pakistani men. Davis said the two were trying to rob him.

Davis was eventually released in March after the dead men's relatives agreed to accept blood money under Islamic tradition, an agreement Pakistani intelligence officials say they brokered.

But only a day after his release, a covert CIA drone strike killed at least two dozen people in the Pakistani tribal areas - people the CIA said were militants and the Pakistanis said were civilians.

Both sides disputed media reports that Pakistan had completely shut down joint intelligence centers it operates with the Americans following the bin Laden raid.

Two of the five "intelligence fusion centers" where the U.S. shares satellite, drone and other intelligence with the Pakistanis were mothballed last fall, long before either the Davis or bin Laden controversies, the Pakistani official and another U.S. official say. It was part of the fallout of the public embarrassment of the WikiLeaks cables disclosures, which revealed a closer U.S.-Pakistani military relationship than publicly acknowledged by Pakistan.

Two other fusion centers, plus smaller cooperative intelligence-sharing facilities, remain operational, both sides say, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

The high-value target team is expected to use any intelligence found at the bin Laden compound in the hunt, although a month after the raid analysts have found nothing "actionable," a term describing intelligence that leads to a strike or operation against a new al-Qaida target, two U.S. officials say. The CIA-led teams have gotten through more than 60 percent of the computer files and written material taken from the compound so far.

They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the ongoing review of the now-classified bin Laden files.

The Skanner Foundation's 38th Annual MLK Breakfast