May 17th, 2022

What A Week   (5/17)

Intro: (Cue intro music) 

Hey everyone, welcome back to What a week! I’m your host, Olivia Lee, here to deliver your weekly dose of the news. Let’s get started!

In Local News: 

https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2022/05/more-than-20-old-town-encampments-home-to-dozens-of-people-swept-in-past-few-days.htmlLast week,  an order by Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler was subsequently cleared, allowing for the removal of at least 21 homeless encampments in Old Town, ranging in size from one to four city blocks, said Cody Bowman, a spokesman in Wheeler’s office. An estimated 165 tents or structures were removed, according to the city office that cleans and removes camps. Typically one to three people live in each temporary home. It is unprecedented for the city to sweep so many camps in one area within three days. Bowman said in a report quote “The (Old Town Community Association) has rightly asked for an intervention to address the high rate of murder and other crimes in Old Town. They have rightly pointed out that a high number of victims murdered or injured in Old Town have been Portlanders experiencing homelessness.” At least five people experiencing homelessness have died from homicide in Portland this year.

In-state news:

https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-crime-lawsuits-portland-2f52f54495baf53da222f55c48eba3edThis past Monday, criminal defendants in Oregon who have gone without legal representation for long periods of time amid a critical shortage of public defense attorneys filed a lawsuit that alleges the state violated their constitutional right to legal counsel and a speedy trial. The complaint, which seeks class-action status, was filed as state lawmakers and the Oregon Office of Public Defense Services struggle to address the huge shortage of public defenders statewide. The crisis has led to the dismissal of dozens of cases and left an estimated 500 defendants statewide — including several dozen in custody on serious felonies — without legal representation. Crime victims are also impacted because cases are taking longer to reach resolution, a delay that experts say extends their trauma, weakens evidence and erodes confidence in the justice system, especially among low-income and minority groups. The lawsuit specifically names Gov. Kate Brown and Stephen Singer, the recently appointed executive director of the state’s public defense agency, and asks for a court injunction ordering criminal defendants to be released if they can’t be provided with an attorney in a reasonable period of time. Oregon’s system to provide attorneys for criminal defendants who can’t afford them was underfunded and understaffed before COVID-19, but a significant slowdown in court activity during the pandemic pushed it to a breaking point. A report by the American Bar Association released in January found Oregon has 31% of the public defenders it needs. Every existing attorney would have to work more than 26 hours a day during the work week to cover the caseload, the authors said.

 

 

 

In National News:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/making-sense-of-the-racist-mass-shooting-in-buffalohttps://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amberjamieson/buffalo-tops-supermarket-mass-shootingLast  Saturday, 10 people were killed and 3 were wounded in a mass shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on according to law enforcement officials who spoke to the Associated Press.The US attorney's office announced that the FBI was investigating the shooting as a hate crime and racially motivated violent extremism. The shooting took place at Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Avenue in the neighborhood of Masten Park, a predominantly Black neighborhood. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia described the shooter as an 18-year-old white man, and told reporters that he was wearing tactical gear and using a camera to livestream the attack.The suspect, who is eighteen, used a weapon painted with a white-supremacist slogan and live-streamed his attack. Prior to the shooting, he also allegedly posted a manifesto, which relies heavily on the so-called great replacement theory, a racist conspiracy that has become increasingly mainstream in a number of Western countries, from France to the United States. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-deaths-1-million-biden/Last Thursday, President Biden commemorated the 1 million American lives lost to COVID-19 in his remarks opening the second Global COVID Summit, a virtual gathering of world leaders, nongovernmental organizations and private sector companies hosted by the the White House. In recognition of the disease's high toll, Mr. Biden also issued a proclamation ordering flags to be flown at half-staff until sunset on May 16. The president also urged Congress to approve more funding for his administration's COVID-19 efforts, saying the world is quote "at a new stage in fighting this pandemic, facing an evolving set of challenges."COVID-19 ranks behind only heart disease and cancer as America's leading causes of death over the past two years, claiming vastly more lives than other infectious diseases. By comparison, the flu season of 2017-18, one of the deadliest in recent decades, claimed an estimated 52,000 lives. 

In International News: 

https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2022/05/13/elon-musk-twitter-deal-temporarily-hold/9765540002/https://nypost.com/2022/05/13/elon-musk-says-twitter-deal-temporarily-on-hold/Elon Musk said this past Friday that his planned $44 billion purchase of Twitter is quote “temporarily on hold” pending details on spam and fake accounts on the social media platform. In a tweet, the Tesla billionaire linked to a Reuters story from May 2nd citing a financial filing from Twitter that estimated false or spam accounts made up fewer than 5% of the company's "monetizable daily active users" in the first quarter. Musk tweeted the following quote, "Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," end quote. Musk’s tweet caused Twitter stocks to dip more than 25% to as low as $33.79 in pre-market trading early this past friday and caused a load of uncertainity into the weekend.  

Lastly here is the wildcard news for the week:

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/16/1099079032/mcdonalds-leaving-russiaLast...