Credit: MGN SEATTLE (AP) — New research suggests that inbreeding may be a key reason that the Pacific Northwest’s endangered population of killer whales has failed to recover despite decades of conservation efforts. The so-called “southern resident” population of orcas stands at 73 whales. That’s just two more than in 1971, after scores of the whales were captured for display in marine theme parks around the world. For research published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers sequenced the genomes of 100 living and dead killer whales in the southern resident populatio ..read more

Credit: MGN SEATTLE (AP) — A King County Sheriff’s deputy was shot in Seattle Monday during a situation involving a barricaded person and is in critical condition at a hospital, police said. The Seattle Police Department said on Twitter around 10:30 a.m. that a person was barricaded in the Ballard neighborhood and that a county detective had been shot and taken to Harborview Medical Center. Hospital spokesperson Susan Gregg told The Associated Press around noon that he was “critical and will be an intensive care patient.” His name has not been released. Just before noon, police said the scene ..read more

Credit: MGN BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A bill that would allow Idaho to execute condemned inmates by firing squad is headed to the governor’s desk after passing the Legislature on Monday with a veto-proof majority. Firing squads will be used only if the state cannot obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections — but one death row inmate has already had his scheduled execution postponed multiple times because of drug scarcity. Idaho previously had a firing squad option on the books but has never used it. The option was removed it from state law in 2009 after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a method of ..read more

photo courtesy of Pamela Pearce A group of students from West Linn High School are working hard to get the message out that drugs are a bad idea. photo courtesy of Pamela Pearce The Teen Advisory Board put together a National Drug Alcohol Fact Week kick-off lunch at the high school.  They’re asking people to take time this week to educate themselves, their families and the communities they live in to share facts that will help make a positive impact on young people.  KXL’s Veronica Carter talked to a group of the students who were busy creating flyers and posters with an anti-drug m ..read more

Credit: MGN WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has issued the first veto of his presidency as he seeks to block Republican-led efforts in Congress to overturn a Labor Department rule allowing retirement plans to consider environmental, social and governance factors when making investment decisions. The Labor Department rule ended a Trump-era ban on managers of retirement plans considering factors such as climate change or pending lawsuits when making investment choices. Because suits and climate change have financial repercussions, administration officials argue that their predecessors wer ..read more

Actor William Hurt - photo courtesy of Arts Watch Portland Broadcaster David Paull reached out to us about his interview with veteran actor William Hurt who passed away at the age of 71 on March 13, 2022 here in Portland.  For the one-year commemoration of his death, Stage and Studio on ArtsWatch created this encore of Paull’s insightful conversation with Hurt about the craft of acting when he was performing “No Man’s Land” at Artists Repertory Theatre with then long-time artistic director Allen Nause. Thanks to David and to Nicole Lane for arranging the interview. You can hear ..read more

Credit: MGN NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is telling employees in a memo that the company plans to eliminate 9,000 more jobs in the next few weeks. The job cuts would mark the second largest round of layoffs in the company’s history. Amazon had already cut 18,000 in the past few months. In the memo on Monday, Jassy said the second phase of the company’s annual planning process completed this month and led to the additional job cuts. This time around, the job cuts will hit profitable areas for the company including its cloud computing unit AWS and its burgeoning advertising business. T ..read more

Credit: MGN BERLIN (AP) — Humanity still has a chance, close to the last one, to prevent the worst of climate change’s future harms, a top United Nations panel of scientists said Monday. But doing so requires quickly slashing carbon pollution and fossil fuel use, 60% by 2035, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. The United Nations chief said it more bluntly, calling for an end to new fossil fuel exploration and rich countries quitting coal, oil and gas use by 2040. This is likely the last warning the IPCC will be able to make about the 1.5 mark because their next set of reports ..read more

Credit: MGN ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Two students were injured in a shooting outside a Dallas-area high school on Monday morning and police arrested the person suspected of opening fire, officials said. The shooting began on a high school campus in the suburb of Arlington around 6:55 a.m., before many students arrived for the first day back to classes after the spring break, according to police and school district officials. One student was injured by gunfire, another was hurt by “debris from the shooting,” and both are getting medical care, said Arlington Independent School District spokeswom ..read more

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) Does New York really plan to arrest Donald Trump tomorrow? Of course not! So why would Trump predict that?   He’s taking a shot across the bow of the corrupt Manhattan DA…calling his bluff. Supposedly, Alvin Bragg…one of those sleazy George Soros bought-and-paid for District Attorneys plans to bring a criminal charge. It concerns money Trump paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Except the Manhattan DA’s office already considered bringing THAT case years ago and dumped it when they found there’s no case.   Alvin Bragg was IN the DA’s off ..read more