04-28-2024  2:00 pm   •   PDX and SEA Weather
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NORTHWEST NEWS

City Council Strikes Down Gonzalez’s ‘Inhumane’ Suggestion for Blanket Ban on Public Camping

Mayor Wheeler’s proposal for non-emergency ordinance will go to second reading.

A Conservative Quest to Limit Diversity Programs Gains Momentum in States

In support of DEI, Oregon and Washington have forged ahead with legislation to expand their emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion in government and education.

Epiphanny Prince Hired by Liberty in Front Office Job Day After Retiring

A day after announcing her retirement, Epiphanny Prince has a new job working with the New York Liberty as director of player and community engagement. Prince will serve on the basketball operations and business staffs, bringing her 14 years of WNBA experience to the franchise. 

The Drug War Devastated Black and Other Minority Communities. Is Marijuana Legalization Helping?

A major argument for legalizing the adult use of cannabis after 75 years of prohibition was to stop the harm caused by disproportionate enforcement of drug laws in Black, Latino and other minority communities. But efforts to help those most affected participate in the newly legal sector have been halting. 

NEWS BRIEFS

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

Investments will boost shelter and homeless services, tackle the fentanyl crisis, strengthen the safety net and support a...

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...

Mt. Tabor Park Selected for National Initiative

Mt. Tabor Park is the only Oregon park and one of just 24 nationally to receive honor. ...

Oregon's Sports Bra, a pub for women's sports fans, plans national expansion as interest booms

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — On a recent weeknight at this bar in northeast Portland, fans downed pints and burgers as college women's lacrosse and beach volleyball matches played on big-screen TVs. Memorabilia autographed by female athletes covered the walls, with a painting of U.S. soccer legend Abby...

Oregon university pauses gifts and grants from Boeing in response to student and faculty demands

PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) — An Oregon university said Friday it is pausing seeking or accepting further gifts or grants from Boeing Co. after students and faculty demanded that the school sever ties with the aerospace company because of its weapons manufacturing divisions and its connections to...

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

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...

OP-ED: Embracing Black Men’s Voices: Rebuilding Trust and Unity in the Democratic Party

The decision of many Black men to disengage from the Democratic Party is rooted in a complex interplay of historical disenchantment, unmet promises, and a sense of disillusionment with the political establishment. ...

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

Obstacles remain as women seek more leadership roles in America's Black Church

No woman had ever preached the keynote sermon at the Joint National Baptist Convention, a gathering of four historically Black Baptist denominations representing millions of people. That changed in January when the Rev. Gina Stewart took the convention stage in Memphis, Tennessee, —...

Wild onion dinners mark the turn of the season in Indian Country

OKMULGEE, Okla. (AP) — As winter fades to spring and the bright purple blossoms of the redbud trees begin to bloom, Cherokee chef Bradley James Dry knows it’s time to forage for morels as well as a staple of Native American cuisine in Oklahoma: wild green onions. Wild onions are...

2012 Olympic champion Gabby Douglas competes for the first time in 8 years at the American Classic

KATY, Texas (AP) — Gabby Douglas is officially back. Whether the gymnastics star's return to the sport carries all the way to the Paris Olympics remains to be seen. Douglas, who became the first Black woman to win the Olympic all-around title when she triumphed in...

ENTERTAINMENT

Music Review: Jazz pianist Fred Hersch creates subdued, lovely colors on 'Silent, Listening'

Jazz pianist Fred Hersch fully embraces the freedom that comes with improvisation on his solo album “Silent, Listening,” spontaneously composing and performing tunes that are often without melody, meter or form. Listening to them can be challenging and rewarding. The many-time...

Book Review: 'Nothing But the Bones' is a compelling noir novel at a breakneck pace

Nelson “Nails” McKenna isn’t very bright, stumbles over his words and often says what he’s thinking without realizing it. We first meet him as a boy reading a superhero comic on the banks of a river in his backcountry hometown in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia....

Cardi B, Queen Latifah and The Roots to headline the BET Experience concerts in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cardi B, Queen Latifah and The Roots will headline concerts to celebrate the return of the BET Experience in Los Angeles just days before the 2024 BET Awards. BET announced Monday the star-studded lineup of the concert series, which makes a return after a...

U.S. & WORLD NEWS

Pope visits Venice to speak to the artists and inmates behind the Biennale's must-see prison show

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Venice has always been a place of contrasts, of breathtaking beauty and devastating...

Japan's ruling party loses all 3 seats in special vote, seen as punishment for corruption scandal

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s governing party, stung by an extensive slush funds...

Renowned Peruvian investigative reporter battles criminalized smear campaign — and cancer

LIMA, Peru (AP) — At age 75, one of Latin America’s most storied journalists had been looking forward to...

A Hindu festival in southwestern Pakistan brings a mountainous region to life

HINGLAJ, Pakistan (AP) — The ascent of steep mud volcanoes marks the start of Hindu pilgrims’ religious...

A funeral is held for 20 Cambodian soldiers killed in an arms depot explosion at an army base

CHBAR MON, Cambodia (AP) — A funeral was held Sunday for 20 soldiers who died at an army base in southwestern...

Two Russian journalists jailed on 'extremism' charges for alleged work for Navalny group

LONDON (AP) — Two Russian journalists were arrested by their government on "extremism” charges and ordered by...

Frazier Glenn Cross
Bill Draper, Associated Press

In this Sunday, April 13, 2014 image from video provided by KCTV-5, Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller, is escorted by police in an elementary school parking lot in Overland Park, Kan. Cross, 73, accused of killing three people in attacks at a Jewish community center and Jewish retirement complex near Kansas City, is a known white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader who was once the subject of a nationwide manhunt. (AP Photo/KCTV-5)OVERLAND PARK, Kan.

(AP) — Kansas prosecutors filed state-level murder charges Tuesday against the white supremacist accused in shootings that left three people dead at two Jewish community sites in suburban Kansas City.

Frazier Glenn Cross has been charged with one count of capital murder for the deaths of 14-year-old boy and his grandfather outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said at a news conference. Cross also faces one count of first-degree, premeditated murder for the death of a woman who was gunned down while visiting her mother at a nearby retirement complex.

The capital murder charge carries the death penalty as possible punishment, Howe said, while the first-degree murder charge carries a life sentence with no chance for parole for at least 25 years. Cross is being held on $10 million bond, and is scheduled to appear in court at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday in Johnson County District Court.

Cross, a 73-year-old Vietnam War veteran from southwest Missouri, founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in his native North Carolina and later the White Patriot Party. He is suspected of killing 69-year-old physician William Lewis Corporon and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, outside the community center; both were Methodist. Moments later, Terri LaManno, a 53-year-old Catholic occupational therapist and mother of two, was gunned down outside a Jewish retirement complex where she was visiting her mother.

Federal prosecutors say there's enough evidence to warrant putting the case before a grand jury as a hate crime. Moving the case from state to federal prosecutors would likely mean tougher punishments if Cross is convicted, but U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said Tuesday that federal charges in the case were likely a week or more away, and Cross' state case would have to be resolved before he could be moved to a federal trial.

"Our system is more nimble, we can move a little bit quicker than the federal system. We've alleged he came into the community I've been elected to protect. ... This isn't about retribution, this is about seeking justice," Howe said.

Cross shouted "Heil Hitler" at television cameras as he was arrested after Sunday's killings, which shocked the city on the eve of Passover and refocused attention on the nation's problem with race-related violence.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that monitors the activities of known white supremacists, says Cross, who also went by the name Frazier Glenn Miller, has been immersed in white supremacy most of his life. During the early 1980s, Cross was "one of the more notorious white supremacists in the U.S.," according to the Anti-Defamation League, and served as the Carolina Knights' "grand dragon" before launching the supremacist White Patriot Party, the law center said.

By 1987, Cross was the target of a nationwide manhunt for violating terms of his bond while appealing a North Carolina conviction for operating a paramilitary camp. Federal agents tracked him along with three other men to a rural Missouri mobile home stocked with hand grenades, automatic weapons and thousands of bullets.

A federal grand jury indicted Cross on weapons charges and accused him of plotting robberies and the assassination of the law center's founder, Morris Dees. He served three years in federal prison, and, as part of a plea bargain, testified against other Klan leaders in a 1988 sedition trial.

Cross ran for the U.S. House in 2006 and the U.S. Senate in 2010 in Missouri, each time espousing a white-power platform. During his Senate run as a registered write-in candidate, Cross' effort to air anti-Semitic ads was scuttled by the Federal Communications Commission, which concluded Cross was not a "bona fide" candidate entitled to mandatory access to airwaves.

The Skanner Foundation's 38th Annual MLK Breakfast