Justices consider constitutionality of punishing people for sleeping outside as western states seek to address encampments The debate over how US cities can respond to America’s spiraling homelessness crisis reached the supreme court this week, as justices heard arguments over the constitutionality of local laws used against unhoused people sleeping outside. The justices on Monday considered a challenge to rulings from a California-based appeals court that found punishing people for sleeping outside when shelter space is lacking amounts to cruel and unusual punishment ..read more

Huge prize was due to a winless streak of more than three months in the lottery, which only gives a 1 in 292.2m chance of winning A Powerball player in Oregon won a jackpot worth more than $1.3bn on Sunday, ending a winless streak that had stretched more than three months. The single ticket – revealed after a delay of more than three hours to the drawing – matched all six numbers drawn to win the jackpot worth $1.326bn, Powerball said in a statement ..read more

A government proposal to cull half a million owls, in order to save a related species, has raised complicated questions It sounds like a set-up for an ecological horror film – to save one species of owl, US wildlife officials want to shoot down half a million of its cousins. The federal government’s latest proposal to save the endangered spotted owls has raised complicated questions about the ethics of killing one species to save another, and the role of humans to intervene in the cascading ecological conundrums that they have caused ..read more

‘Fish taxi’ tanker crashed after driver lost control on sharp turn, leading to deaths of 26,000 smolts, but remaining fish survived A creek in Oregon was inadvertently restocked with tens of thousands of young salmon when a tanker carrying the fish overturned and spilled its cargo. State officials said more than 75% of the 102,000 Chinook salmon smolts that the tanker was transporting from a hatchery to the Imnaha river made it into Lookingglass Creek following the accident last Friday ..read more

FAA investigating loss of panel before Boeing 737-800 landed safely in Oregon The US Federal Aviation Administration is investigating how a United Airlines Boeing 737-800 lost an external panel before landing safely in Oregon. United flight 433 landed at Medford airport at about 1.45pm on Friday carrying 139 passengers and six crew after departing from San Francisco, the FAA and airline said ..read more

In the US, IQ scores are often a key factor in gauging parenting ability. Critics say the assessments are misguided and unfair – and the results can be devastating Amethyst Gibson brought her son home from St Charles hospital in Bend, Oregon, five days shy of Christmas. It was 2022 and Gibson, who goes by Abbi, was renting a room from Tina Berlin-Dungan, who owned a one-story house in a nearby town and charged her $400 a month. The two women had equipped the home with everything the baby, Dean, would need: a Pack ’n Play crib and changing station, clothes, bottles, a baby bath, baby gate, and ..read more

Mass die-off in Klamath River caused by extreme changes in water pressure amid largest dam removal project in US history As many as hundreds of thousands of newly hatched Chinook salmon released into the Klamath River have died due to “gas bubble disease” caused by extreme changes in water pressure. The young salmon fry were released amid the largest dam removal project in US history along the 257-mile-long river, which flows across Oregon and California. Four hydropower dams are being removed, reconnecting the lower and upper portions of the Klamath River for the first time in a century and a ..read more

Measure 110, an experiment approved in 2020, gets overhauled as state grapples with fentanyl crisis and growing public drug use Oregon lawmakers have moved to reintroduce criminal penalties for the possession of hard drugs, in effect ending the state’s groundbreaking three-year decriminalization experiment. In 2020, nearly 60% of voters moved to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs with the passage of Measure 110, but the new law had grown increasingly controversial as the state grappled with the fentanyl crisis and growing public drug use ..read more

Sandra Young was in high school when she disappeared in 1968 or 1969, state police said after using advanced DNA technology tests The remains of a teenager found more than 50 years ago have been identified through advanced DNA technology as a young woman who went missing from Portland, Oregon state police said. The remains are that of Sandra Young, a high school student who disappeared in 1968 or 1969, police said on Thursday in a news release ..read more

Three years ago, the state began a novel social experiment that put treatment over punishment – then came the backlash Holding his five-month-old daughter, Danny Schlabach sways gently on his feet in their small room at a youth shelter in Eugene, Oregon. Their room is scattered with the detritus of a new baby: A+D ointment, formula, baby shampoo, bottle brushes, six pairs of miniature shoes lined up in the closet. Schlabach, 23, is wildly in love with this child – his first. Her tiny fuchsia sweatsuit, her shock of dark hair. He’s raising her mostly alone. “I wasn’t really on the right track ..read more