05-29-2023  6:04 pm   •   PDX and SEA Weather
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NORTHWEST NEWS

Former Senator Margaret Carter Receives Honorary Doctorate of Public Service

Margaret Carter was the commencement speaker for Willamette University's Salem undergraduate commencement ceremony

Ex-Seattle Man Gets 8 Years for Stealing $1M in Pandemic Benefits

Bryan Sparks, 42, was indicted for the fraud scheme in November 2021 and pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in January. He was also ordered on Tuesday to pay more than jumi million in restitution.

Boycotting Oregon GOP Senators Vow to Stay Away Until Last Day of Session

The walkout, which began on May 3 ostensibly because bill summaries weren't written at an eighth grade level as required by a long-forgotten law, has derailed progress on hundreds of bills

NEWS BRIEFS

Oregon and Washington Memorial Day Events

Check out a listing of ceremonies and other community Memorial Day events in Oregon and Washington. A full list of all US events,...

Communities Invited to Interstate Bridge Replacement Neighborhood Forums in Vancouver and Portland

May 31 and June 6 forums allow community members to learn about the program’s environmental review process ...

Bonamici, Salinas Introduce Bill to Prevent Senior Hunger

Senior Hunger Prevention Act will address challenges older adults, grandparent and kinship caregivers, and adults with disabilities...

This is Our Lane - Too: Joint Statement on the Maternal Health Crisis from the Association of Black Cardiologists, American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association

Urgent action is needed to combat the maternal health crisis in America and cardiologists have a vital role to play. ...

New Skateboarding Area Planned for Southeast Portland’s Creston Park

Area has largest number of overall youth and of people of color out of locations studied ...

4 of 7 teens who escaped a juvenile detention center remain at large

SEATTLE (AP) — Law enforcement officials continued their search Monday for four of seven teens who escaped from a juvenile detention center after assaulting a staff member and stealing her car. The seven teens, ages 15 to 17, escaped from the Echo Glen Children’s Center campus in...

Historic acquittal in Louisiana fuels fight to review 'Jim Crow' verdicts

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Evangelisto Ramos walked out of a New Orleans courthouse and away from a life sentence accompanying a 10-2 jury conviction, thanks in large part to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision bearing his name. Ramos v. Louisiana outlawed nonunanimous jury...

Foster, Ware homer, Auburn eliminates Mizzou 10-4 in SEC

HOOVER, Ala. (AP) — Cole Foster hit a three-run homer, Bryson Ware added a two-run shot and fifth-seeded Auburn wrapped up the first day of the SEC Tournament with a 10-4 win over ninth-seeded Missouri on Tuesday night. Auburn (34-9), which has won nine-straight, moved into the...

Small Missouri college adds football programs to boost enrollment

FULTON, Mo. (AP) — A small college in central Missouri has announced it will add football and women's flag football programs as part of its plan to grow enrollment. William Woods University will add about 140 students between the two new sports, athletic director Steve Wilson said...

OPINION

Significant Workforce Investments Needed to Stem Public Defense Crisis

We have a responsibility to ensure our state government is protecting the constitutional rights of all Oregonians, including people accused of a crime ...

Over 80 Groups Tell Federal Regulators Key Bank Broke $16.5 Billion Promise

Cross-country redlining aided wealthy white communities while excluding Black areas ...

Public Health 101: Guns

America: where all attempts to curb access to guns are shot down. Should we raise a glass to that? ...

Op-Ed: Ballot Measure Creates New Barriers to Success for Black-owned Businesses

Measure 26-238, a proposed local capital gains tax, is unfair and a burden on Black business owners in an already-challenging economic environment. ...

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

Impeachment trial of Texas’ Ken Paxton to begin no later than August 28

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A historic impeachment trial in Texas to determine whether Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton should be permanently removed from office will begin no later than August in the state Senate, where the jury that would determine his future could include his wife, Sen. Angela...

Teenager walks at brain injury event weeks after getting shot in head for knocking on wrong door

Ralph Yarl — a Black teenager who was shot in the head and arm last month after mistakenly ringing the wrong doorbell — walked at a brain injury awareness event Monday in his first major public appearance since the shooting. The 17-year-old suffered a traumatic brain injury when...

Why do Kosovo-Serbia tensions persist?

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo flared anew this weekend after Kosovo’s police raided Serb-dominated areas in the region’s north and seized local municipality buildings. There have been violent clashes between Kosovo’s police and NATO-led...

ENTERTAINMENT

CBS is television's most popular network for 15th straight year

NEW YORK (AP) — CBS claimed the distinction of most-watched television network for the 15th straight year, even as those bragging rights don't mean what they used to. The network averaged just under 6 million viewers on a typical moment in prime time for the season that just...

Country singer Tyler Hubbard's growth expands beyond Florida Georgia Line

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Singer-songwriter Tyler Hubbard was fully prepared to hang up his boots so to speak when his duo partner in Florida Georgia Line, Brian Kelley, said he wanted to go solo. The pair had been together more than a decade, and whether you were a fan of their bro...

Movie review: Julia Louis-Dreyfus reteams with Nicole Holofcener in 'You Hurt My Feelings'

If I didn’t like Nicole Holofcener’s latest film, would I tell her? OK, sure, it wouldn’t be so odd for a critic to give an unvarnished opinion. But what about a sibling? Or a spouse? If they didn’t care for Holofcener’s movie, what’s more important: Being honest or making...

U.S. & WORLD NEWS

Pay per wave: Native Hawaiians divided over artificial surf lagoon in the birthplace of surfing

EWA BEACH, Hawaii (AP) — Brian Keaulana is the quintessential Native Hawaiian waterman, well-known in Hawaii and...

Trump's welcome of Scott into 2024 race shows his calculus: The more GOP rivals, the better for him

NEW YORK (AP) — When Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina launched his campaign for the White House last...

No fatalities reported in Iowa as officials plan to demolish partially collapsed building

Officials in Iowa are making plans to demolish a six-story apartment building a day after it partially collapsed,...

4 dead after tourist boat capsizes in storm on Italian lake

MILAN (AP) — A body was retrieved early Monday in a northern Italian lake by police divers, raising to four the...

What 5 more years of Erdogan's rule means for Turkey

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won reelection in a runoff Sunday, following a nail-biter...

China plans to land astronauts on moon before 2030, expand space station, bring on foreign partners

BEIJING (AP) — China’s burgeoning space program plans to place astronauts on the moon before 2030 and expand...

From Staff and Wire Reports

A chart at the top of the facebook developers website Thursday tracked response time for repairs to the social network Wednesday and Thursday.

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Untold millions of Facebook users scrambled desperately to access Bejeweled, Mafia Wars and Farmville today as the mega-social network crashed and stayed down for hours.
Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old wunderkind behind Facebook is making a move to become a player in philanthropy just before the opening of a film that portrays him as less than charitable.
The site's heavy crash sent waves of panic around much of the world, demonstrating how the tentacles of its applications. The Associated Press quoted TechCrunch's analysis: "This is a problem not just because the site is down, but Facebook's omnipresent Like button is also completely down, and so is Connect, and Platform — in other words, the entire Internet (or a good percentage of it) is feeling this pain."
Normal service was restored just after 5 p.m. Eastern standard time.
Zuckerberg no doubts eyes will return to his $100 million donation — thought to be the biggest of his young life — to the Newark public schools, a long-struggling district that could use the money to become a laboratory for reforms.

 

Facebook tycoon Mark Zuckerberg
The donation is being announced Friday on Oprah Winfrey's TV show in an arrangement that brings together the young Internet tycoon, Newark's celebrated Democratic mayor and a governor who has quickly become a star of the Republican party.
The unusual coalition is more evidence of the growing cache of the cause of remaking urban public schools, an issue that has long confounded educators and advocates.
"What you're seeing is for the under-40 set, education reform is what feeding kids in Africa was in 1980," said Derrell Bradford, the executive director of the Newark-based education reform group Excellent Education for Everyone. "Newark public schools are like the new Live Aid."
Zuckerberg is not the first person to get rich on technology and then donate some of his wealth to urban schools.
Last year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $290 million in education grants, along with $45 million for research into effective teaching. The grants included $100 million to Hillsborough County Public Schools in Tampa, Fla., and $90 million to Memphis City Schools. The Gates Foundation also has given than $150 million to New York City schools over the past eight years, primarily for a project to transform its high schools into small schools.
An official familiar with the Newark plan confirmed it to The Associated Press on Thursday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the parties have been told not to usurp the announcement on Winfrey's show. The donation was first reported by The Star-Ledger of Newark.
The state Education Department, Facebook and the Newark mayor's office have been mum on the donation, but that hasn't stopped Gov. Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker from hinting about it on their Twitter accounts.
Booker tweeted: "Looking forward to Oprah on Friday! Please tune in to learn more about what's going on in Newark." Christie replied: "See you in Chicago," then added: "Great things to come for education in Newark."
The deal also sets the stage for Christie's announcement next week on his plans to reform the state's schools.
Some suggested that altruism was not the only thing driving the gift.
The announcement comes a week before the film "The Social Network" opens widely. The movie, whose tagline is "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies," portrays Zuckerberg as taking the idea for Facebook from other Harvard students. It is to debut at the New York Film Festival on Friday.
"I hate to be cynical and there are few districts in the nation that couldn't use an infusion of cash more than Newark," wrote blogger Christopher Dawson on ZDNet. "However, the timing of the announcement, coinciding with a high-profile return of district control from the state of New Jersey to the municipality of Newark, on Oprah no less, feels a little too staged."
Forbes.com on Thursday was asking readers: "Was the gift heartfelt or cunning PR?"
Zuckerberg is worth $6.9 billion, good enough to make him the 35th wealthiest American, according to Forbes magazine rankings out this week. His massive donation establishes him as a major player in philanthropy, placing him alongside others made wealthy by technology innovations, including Microsoft Corp. co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
Details have not been disclosed on how the money may be spent in Newark, where the school district budget this year is $940 million, but it will likely give Booker some control over his city's school district.
The schools have been state-run since 1995 but consistently have some of the state's lowest scores on standardized tests and worst graduation rates. The problems have continued to mount despite major infusions of funds from the state government, which has been under court order to improve schools in Newark and other impoverished New Jersey cities.
According to the official with knowledge of the plans, Christie won't give up state control of Newark schools as part of the deal, but will authorize Booker to implement the education plan. Christie will still have ultimate control and can veto any moves.
Christie, like Booker, is an advocate of more publicly funded charter schools, using public money to send children to private schools and paying teachers partly based on how well students perform. The ideas from both often make teachers unions bristle, though union officials in Newark declined to comment.
For Christie, the deal may be a way to recover from the biggest misstep of his administration so far: Last month, the state missed out on a $400 million federal education grant because of a simple error on its application. Former state Education Commissioner Bret Schundler was fired in the aftermath.
Education scholars and advocates will be watching closely.
Newark and other impoverished New Jersey districts have received infusions of state funding over the last two decades, but they've still lagged far behind schools in the suburbs. Advocates are hoping the effort brings reform, not just money.
"Just throwing a lot of money at a problem doesn't necessarily solve anything, and I think past history demonstrates this," said Joseph DePeirro, dean of education at Seton Hall University.
Bradford, of the Newark-based education reform group, said: "If you are enormously successful, then you really have outlined a model of how you can use private philanthropy to break the status quo. And if you fail, you've given everybody a billion reasons never to try again."
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Mulvihill reported from Trenton. Associated Press writer Beth DeFalco in Trenton contributed to this report.