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Good morning, Portland! 

It’s Tuesday, Aug. 20 and we can expect a mild, partly cloudy day with a high of 79. We’ve got about four weeks left of summer. Soak it up!

First, soak up some current events.

In Local News:

• Foo Fighters tore through a three-hour set at Providence Park last Friday night, re-christening the soccer stadium with the first concert the location has hosted in nearly 20 years. With Chrissie Hynde at the mic, Pretenders warmed up the crowd before Foo Fighters blasted through their discography, and a cigarette. Dave Grohl and company were stoked to be playing in the Rose City, and the stadium show even summoned fireworks(!) likely to the surprise of nearby condo owners and high-rise apartment dwellers. Do you think the band just wrote “fireworks plz” into their gig contract as an obscene, impractical request to see if Providence Park would oblige? Music will again rattle the bleachers when Green Day plays the stadium on Sept. 25.

 

• An e-scooter spontaneously caught fire Monday morning at a Northwest Portland apartment complex. According to Portland Fire & Rescue, the scooter’s lithium ion battery overheated in what’s known as “thermal runaway,” sparking a blaze that triggered the building’s overhead sprinkler system. This same thing happened at a different location about three and a half months earlier. 

• Oregon utility companies keep trying to rake customers over the coals, but a legal settlement will prevent NW Natural from implementing its planned 17 percent rate hike in 2025. Instead, the natural gas company will likely implement a 7 percent residential rate increase, to take effect next year. The increase is on top of an 18 percent increase the gas company implemented last year. NW Natural’s initial request to the Oregon Public Utilities Commission was challenged by environmental groups and the Coalition of Communities of Color.

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by Jacob Habib Khan (@jacobhkhan)

• Do you like food? Do you like eating for less than $10? Of course you do. That’s why we partnered with nearly 90 restaurants across Portland to bring you this year’s much anticipated Burger Week. You know the drill: All week long, grab yourself an $8 burger specially crafted for this week only, at one of the 88 participating restaurants across Portland.

In National/World News:

• The Democratic National Convention kicked off Monday in Chicago, with President Joe Biden delivering the evening's closing speech. “Because of you, we’ve had one of the most extraordinary four years of progress ever, period,” Biden said, as noted in the Washington Post’s recap. “When I say ‘we,’ I mean Kamala and me.” The DNC’s first day also included speeches from former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also delivered remarks. Day one of the DNC was filled with attacks on Trump, including several video segments, and warnings about what’s ahead if the former president and convicted felon gets elected again. Former President Barack Obama is also scheduled to appear.

• In its ongoing quest to monitor the rise of far-right extremism, the Southern Poverty Laws Center’s Hatewatch reports an active-duty Army soldier stationed in North Carolina is a member of white supremacy group Patriot Front. Kai Liam Nix, 20, reportedly runs a Telegram channel where he and others doxx (the practice of revealing personal information online about someone else, with intent to harass, harm, or stoke fear in them) their political adversaries.

“In addition to participating in racist activism for Patriot Front, Nix appears to be the operator of a Telegram channel that worked in conjunction with white power groups in the South to release sensitive personal information about perceived political enemies including their names, photos, phone numbers and addresses,” SPLC writes. “Their targets included nine journalists, a business owner who spoke up about how antisemitism affected their community, activists in left-leaning groups, lawyers and cybersecurity analysts.”

• George Santos–the bizarre, former New York Republican congressman who turned out to be a pathological liar indicted for felony identity theft and fraud– will soon face time in prison. Santos pleaded guilty to two felony counts of fraud on Monday, and is likely to be sentenced to a prison sentence of six to eight years. Can he still do Cameos from behind bars?

•And finally, check out this look inside Harlem Week- a revitalization effort that began 50 years ago in a New York borough that was plagued by blight, crime and poor living conditions. Harlem Week was initially birthed as a single-day event to celebrate the area’s arts, culture, and other vibrant pockets of life, as a way of uplifting the area’s residents and businesses. The inaugural event featured notable cultural figures, like actor and film director Sidney Poitier, and poet Maya Angelou. Five decades later, the event has become a two-week long, street fair-style celebration showcasing local art, shops, music, and cultural groups. Food for thought as Portland is inundated with calls for revitalization and restoration-much of which are focused on increasing police and displacing unhoused people, and very few of which include leaning into the city’s rich arts and music scene, or its world-class dining.