Thousands of people gathered at Holladay Park in Portland on Saturday to say goodbye to a piece of Oregon history.

Fans of trains and public transit had the opportunity to send off TriMet’s remaining Type 1 MAX train. The Type 1 is the original MAX train, in service since 1986, which TriMet is decommissioning to make way for the new Type 6 trains.

Type 1 trains can be recognized for having stairs on each side, as opposed to the ground-level entrances seen on modern train cars. Joe Taylor, who works in TriMet’s vehicle engineering department, said they are not wheelchair accessible.

These train cars were only scheduled to last 25 years, Taylor said. They ended up lasting 40.

“I think it’s important to reflect on the manufacturer, the maintenance teams, operators, everyone here at TriMet, who have basically kept these things alive,” Taylor said.

TriMet’s first service cuts begin Sunday as $300M budget gap looms

Each visitor to the Holladay Park gathering had the opportunity to explore the train, sit in the operator’s chair and write a farewell message on the side. The messages ranged from “Thank you for your service” to “I rode this train the first day it ran!”

Many people wore costumes of the Type 1 train. Davis Mackintosh made the journey from Hood River, donning a surprisingly realistic mask that resembled the train.

“They were sort of rare and unique when I sort of learned about the different types of trains,” Mackintosh said of the Type 1. “Now they’re going away and I think that’s kind of special too, to appreciate them.”

The look of MAX trains has changed in the past four decades. The newest Type 6 trains are wider, with flat entrances that are accessible to wheelchairs.

The event also comes as TriMet faces a significant budget crisis that is forcing the agency to make cuts to bus and light rail routes. Ridership across all TriMet services has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, a significant cause of the transit agency’s $300 million budget deficit.

Starting in August, the MAX Green Line will only run from Clackamas Town Center to the Gateway Transit Center. It currently runs all the way to Portland State University.

TriMet announces layoffs and service cuts to address $300M shortfall

Many people at Holladay Park remembered when the Type 1 trains were first unveiled in 1986. Billie Shults of Gresham said she was among the first commuters to take the train to her job in downtown Portland.

“It’s always been important to me,” Shults said.

She has an even more personal connection to the train. Her significant other, Richard Pond, was a journeyman at TriMet for more than three decades before he passed away in 2001. He regularly worked on Type 1 trains — a plaque with his name remains in Car 101, which is now at the Oregon Electric Railway Museum in Salem.

At the event, Shults wore Pond’s old TriMet hat.

“Sometimes things change and things improve, and I’m sure that they’re more efficient, but it was really beautiful to be a part of that history,” she said.

During the annual three-day competition, hundreds of students from around the nation demonstrate their knowledge of the U.S. Constitution, government and Supreme Court decisions by arguing historical and contemporary constitutional issues.

Portland’s Grant High School took home the state title earlier this year to advance to the finals in Maryland. The team last won the national championship in 2024. Lincoln High School, also in Portland, finished second at the state competition, making them eligible to compete in the national finals as a wildcard team from the state.

OPB’s “Think Out Loud” recently spoke with two members of Grant High School’s constitution team and their coach before they left for the national competition.

For Sophie Durocher, a senior at Grant High School and a member of the constitution team, a certain 2015 musical first sparked her interest in U.S. history.

“If I’m being honest, the thing that initially drew me to the constitution team is the musical ‘Hamilton,’” Durocher said. “I really enjoyed learning about U.S. history and I thought that the team would be a way to engage with it a lot more directly.”

The “We the People” competition format is similar to a congressional hearing. The teams are given the questions in advance for which they prepare a four-minute statement and are then asked follow-up questions about various constitutional principles their responses may reference or raise.

Durocher’s teammate, Caspian Green, says his favorite topics to research are those regarding artificial intelligence and privacy. He says being on the team helps him make sense of the intense political moment the U.S. is living in.

“It’s a very politically charged time,” Green said. “And one of the things about the Constitution team that is really interesting is it makes you consider what America is. We have all of these ideals, but what do they actually mean?”

The students’ preparation for their competitions over the past year has taken place amid immense political turmoil in the U.S. They’re studying the principles of the Constitution when talk of “constitutional crisis” has become more frequent. At the state competition in January, students were asked to prepare arguments based on topics of executive power.

“Our first question was in relation to the Supreme Court case, Youngstown Sheet and Tube, that was about an executive order that President Truman issued during the Korean War,” said Durocher. “We would talk about an executive order from 70 years ago and then about what’s going on with executive orders now, about why it’s different, why it’s kind of getting confusing.”

Angela DiPasquale, the team’s advisor and social studies teacher at Grant High School, appreciates the relevance and resonance of what the students are learning about our constitutional history with today’s events.

“What I love about talking with the students is hearing their perspective,” DiPasquale said. “They’re living through this history. This moment, it’s theirs. The way that they develop their ideas and their critical thinking is so powerful.”

As an educator, she says watching these students develop these skills is “a dream.”

“Having conversations, even difficult conversations, helps us grow,” DiPasquale said. At the end of the day, even if we disagree, there is room for that compromise, that building, that consensus.”

The team is divided into six groups, or units, with each one tackling a different focus area. Green thinks that the disagreements that arise within units ultimately leads to a better understanding of the Constitution, as well as valuable lessons on how to manage conflict, and create a dialogue.

“My unit in particular, we have a whole swath of personalities and opinions. It’s actually been really good because we’ve been able to really be able to challenge each other on the constitutional principles,” he said.

DiPasquale says the value of being on the team lasts well after the season has ended and the last matches have been played.

“Not all students become lawyers or political scientists. But this background really helps students to better understand our country and ultimately to help us steer it in a good direction in the future.”

Angela DiPasquale, Sophie Durocher and Caspian Green spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. Click play to listen to the full conversation:

Vinyl record stores across the Pacific Northwest are preparing for Record Store Day, their biggest day of the year. Hundreds of brand-new exclusive and limited releases will be available starting Saturday morning at a variety of locations, in an effort to boost interest in vinyl as a medium.

More than 40 stores across Oregon and Southwest Washington are participating in the festivities. Many will have long lines of eager customers waiting for hours.

The following is an incomplete list of some of the shops participating in Record Store Day by city — a complete list can be found on the official Record Store Day website.

Ashland

John Brenes has worked in record stores since 1961. The 82-year-old owner of The Music Coop said Record Store Day has shown how durable demand is for the medium, even after it waned in previous decades.

“What I’ve always known is there will always be a place for a good record store,” Brenes said. “No matter how much people try to write off record stores, I never believed it and I just stuck to my guns.”

Brenes said it’s a huge day financially for his store, and people have been excited for weeks. The Music Coop will open up at 10 a.m., but Brenes said people will likely line up hours beforehand.

“I’ve been getting phone calls, four or five phone calls all day long, for the last three or four weeks, people wanting to know, ‘Do you have this?’” he said.

The Music Coop - 268 E. Main St., Ashland, OR 97520

Astoria

The Lonely Crab is a small, intimate shop in downtown Astoria. Owner Chris Lamb opened the shop three years ago after moving to Clatsop County from Bellingham, Washington. Despite it being a smaller area, he said the Northwest Oregon Coast actually contains amazing private collections.

“The volume and the variety of used collections that roll through here is kind of mind-boggling,” Lamb said.

In addition to the official Record Store Day releases, Lamb said he’s putting out dozens of used records he hasn’t made available before. He said he doesn’t see the large lines outside more urban shops, but his store does attract customers from Portland looking to avoid the crowds.

He said he feels privileged to own a record store in a time dominated by streaming and digital music.

“The fact that a physical brick-and-mortar record store exists in this day and age is ridiculous,” he said. “It is only through the direct support of the people that live in your community that makes this work.”

The Lonely Crab Records — 905 Commercial St., Astoria, OR 97103

Bend

Smith Rock Records, one of Central Oregon’s only vinyl stores, plans to open early at 8 a.m. to mark the occasion. They also plan to have different DJs spinning records throughout the day, including one who plays exclusively 45s, according to shop owner Patrick Smith.

The store has existed under various names since the 1970s. Smith said Record Store Day provides a much needed boost in business during a dry time of year.

“Especially during this kind of economy, it kind of reenergizes our industry,” Smith said. “Downtown Bend is a little slow right now. All of our small business owners are feeling a pinch.”

Smith Rock Records is also planning to move soon, to a different downtown Bend location.

Smith Rock Records — 117 NW Oregon Ave., Bend, OR 97703

Corvallis

Preatomic Records in downtown Corvallis will open at 8 a.m. on Saturday.

Owner Joshua Lucas said his shop typically carries used vinyl, CDs and tapes. But Record Store Day sees the shop offer many of hundreds of new, exclusive records for sale. The store will have a DJ on site and will be offering pop-tarts made by Odd Bird Cafe.

Lucas said that while streaming services can be good for discovering music, owning a physical album provides an entirely different experience. He said Record Store Day often brings in younger people who are unfamiliar with records.

“I think owning physical media is the best way to get in touch with the artist who created it,” Lucas said.

Nearby, Happy Trails Records announced on its Facebook page that it will open at 10:30 a.m. for Record Store Day.

Preatomic Records — 211 SW 2nd St., Corvallis, OR 97333

Happy Trails Records — 100 SW 3rd St., Corvallis, OR 97333

Enterprise

A small shop in a renovated two-car garage, Ruby Peak Music opened its doors more than four years ago, and remains one of the only record stores in northeast Oregon. Owner Greg Mitchell said the store has a wide selection of jazz, country, soundtracks and rock records.

Unlike many other stores, Ruby Peak does not sell official Record Store Day releases. Instead, Mitchell said, he has saved “dozens and dozens of new and used records” for the day.

“We just do our own thing,” he said.

The shop typically offers a 10% discount to local residents, which includes the areas around northeast Oregon and southeast Washington. Mitchell said it’s likely that discount will increase on Saturday.

He also said record stores offer an intimate shopping experience that can’t be replicated online.

“Anybody can buy things off of Amazon or Walmart, but here you get to see what you’re buying,” Mitchell said. “You get to interact with other people in the store.”

Ruby Peak Music — 501 S. River St., Enterprise, OR 97828

Eugene

Eugene’s House of Records has been around since 1973, located in a 108-year-old house.

Owner Greg Sutherland has worked at the shop for around 40 years and said Record Store Day is a huge time of year for his business.

“We make four-to-five times more than what we normally do on a regular Saturday,” Sutherland said. “It’s busier than any of the days around Christmas.”

He said they will have donuts available for those lining up before the store’s 9 a.m. opening time.

House of Records — 258 E. 13th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401

Lincoln City

Corrie Richardson and her husband opened Output Records six years ago, and it’s the couple’s second time owning a music store. She said they have collected vinyl for years; owning the shop allowed her to quit her other, part-time job.

Richardson said the shop contains a wide variety of surf and ska records, catering to their beach-loving customers. She has seen lines of up to 80 people outside the shop during previous Record Store Days.

They plan to open at their regular hours at 11 a.m.

Output Records — 1747 NW U.S. 101, Lincoln City, OR 97367

Newport

Northwest Grooves will open at 8 a.m. on Saturday. Owner Brandon Rorye said they typically see a few dozen customers line up in anticipation each year.

Rorye said it’s important to shop at local record stores, because they offer a different kind of discovery in finding new music to love.

“You never know what you’re going to see when you walk into a record store,” Rorye said. “People are bringing in things every day.”

Northwest Grooves — 414 SW Coast Hwy., Newport, OR 97365

Portland

Unsurprisingly, Portland has dozens of shops participating in Record Store Day.

The oldest and perhaps the most well-known is Music Millennium. Owner Terry Currier said he expects 300 people by the time doors open at 8 a.m. Some will start lining up 24 hours in advance.

The first 350 customers there will receive gift bags and commemorative posters, in addition to first access to the sought after releases.

Currier was part of one of the original coalition of stores that started Record Store Day in 2008. At that time, few distributors offered any music on vinyl and many stores had transitioned to selling CDs. Nearly 20 years, that has completely flipped, with vinyl becoming the dominant physical music format.

“Had it not been for the Vinyl Renaissance, there probably wouldn’t be that many record stores today at all,” Currier said. “So it’s super important.”

Currier recently announced he plans to sell the store he’s owned for more than 40 years. He told OPB on Friday he has not settled on a buyer.

Related: Portland record store helped launch a vinyl renaissance

Too Many Records in North Portland has taken a different approach. Manager Alex Hill said her shop does not sell official Record Store Day releases, as they tend to be pricey with no guarantee of sale.

“We see it as a blight on small businesses,” Hill said. “We end up paying kind of crazy prices for it … and no one ends up buying them.”

Too Many Records is completely refreshing its wall of rare records, called “grails.” They’re also putting out 50 additional Brazilian albums and soundtrack records for sale.

KMHD took a deep dive into some of Portland’s other record stores in the Record Store Rundown

Vancouver

Across the Columbia River, Ronald Records in Vancouver will be open nearly all day, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Owner Kelsey Jennings said local punk band Chaotic Neutral will be performing outside the shop at 6 p.m. A local tattoo artist will also be giving out flash tattoos from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Jennings said she sees her shop as an archive of sorts, preserving music history in a time where things are more digital. She also said it serves as a community space for the wider southwest Washington arts scene.

“We feel a responsibility to maintain and clean these older records for the new generation,” Jennings said. “Anything can be deleted off of digital platforms.”

Vancouver’s other vinyl store, 1709 Records, will have a DJ and 50 exclusive shop posters available for purchase. Owner Miki Rodgers said people had already started lining up Friday morning.

Ronald Records — 1005 Main St., Vancouver, WA 98660

1709 Records — 1709 Broadway St., Vancouver, WA 98663

Related: Record Store Day goes from essential support to celebration of music

Related: From phonographs to Wurlitzers, this Portland collector spins a life around vintage sound

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the animal was a Baird’s beaked whale, discovered on the Long Beach Peninsula.

Michael Milstein, a press officer with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, said that Baird’s beaked whales are not commonly found stranded in Oregon, “as they tend to frequent more distant, deeper waters.”

Baird’s beaked whales, sometimes called giant bottlenose whales, are found throughout the North Pacific Ocean and nearby seas, including along the West Coast from California to Alaska. According to NOAA Fisheries, the species prefers cold, deep ocean waters but may occasionally appear near shore along narrow continental shelves.

So far this year, at least 19 whales have been found on shore up and down the West Coast. On Tuesday, a 40-foot gray whale washed ashore on Oregon’s Seaside Beach, its long tail moving with the ocean waves. It was the third dead whale to strand along the Oregon Coast this year.

OPB’s April Ehrlich contributed to reporting.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson laid out a rosy vision for Portland’s future in his State of the City address Friday evening.

“Can we all agree that Portland is getting its main character energy back?” Wilson asked an audience of more than 100 seated in Portland State University’s Hoffman Hall Friday night.

“That’s why I’m here to say that Portland is in a state of resurgence and renewal.”

Fourteen months into office, Wilson shared an optimistic, self-assured take on the Rose City’s rebound in response to homelessness, public safety, economic recovery and federal overreach. Yet he painted his first year as “the toughest I have ever experienced.”

“This job demands a lot, and not just of the mind and hands, but of heart,” he said, nodding to business closures, deadly shootings, and President Donald Trump’s attempt to send the National Guard to Portland.

Wilson entered office with lofty ambitions to end the homelessness crisis on Portland’s streets and spur economic growth after the pandemic-era decline. While the number of people experiencing homelessness has increased in the region, Wilson was able to find money to open more than 1,500 overnight shelter beds. The city is still lagging in attracting new businesses and residents, leading to declining tax revenues that have hurt the city’s bottom line.

On Monday, Wilson will release a budget plan to address a projected $169 million budget shortfall.

“We can be afraid of this number, or we can be determined to work together to forge our future,” Wilson said Friday. “The stakes are so high.”

Here’s what Wilson said about the city’s top issues, its future and more.

City budget

Wilson committed to funding several programs and positions in his budget. That includes not closing any Portland Fire & Rescue station, a concern that firefighters have raised for months. He pledged not to cut any officer or investigator positions in the Portland Police Bureau. And he promised to keep “every park and community center” open. Last year, Wilson proposed significant staffing cuts to the Parks Bureau in order to keep community centers open.

Unions representing city staff have spent the past three months urging Wilson to not use layoffs as a tool to balance the budget. On Friday, he made a point to recognize all the city employees in attendance.

“Do you know who keeps those promises of renewal, of prosperity, of safety, and of a better future?” Wilson asked the audience. “It’s not the mayor, it’s not me. It’s City of Portland employees.”

He did not say whether his budget will cut jobs.

Wilson isn’t a stranger to budget crises. He entered office last year with a projected $65 million budget deficit, a gap that ballooned to nearly $130 million to pay for his new shelter plan and unexpected other shelter costs. Last year, Wilson proposed balancing this shortfall with citywide layoffs, program cuts, new fees, and a reliance on temporary outside funding from other governments. City council eventually adopted a $8.6 billion budget that preserved much of Wilson’s initial proposal.

Homelessness and housing

Wilson pointed to several numbers that back his homelessness work: a 75% reduction in tents on downtown sidewalks, 100,000 people who’ve used his overnight shelters, 375 people experiencing homelessness that the city has helped connect with family members.

“Drive down Northeast 33rd Drive and tell me what you see,” Wilson said. “Do the same on Foster Road, Marine Drive or Sandy Boulevard. There was once so much suffering. Now, there is a new hope.”

What he didn’t mention is that according to Multnomah County, nearly 3,000 more people are living unsheltered in the county than there were when Wilson took office (the county doesn’t have data for Portland alone).

Wilson also addressed the recent revelations that 7.4% of government-funded affordable housing units sit vacant. He promised that by the end of 2026, that rate will drop to 5.4%.

Economy

Wilson countered the narrative shared by some economists that Portland’s economy is in a “doom loop,” predicting a future “boom loop.”

He pointed to investments from the private sector, like auto magnate Jeff Swickard purchasing the U.S. Bancorp Tower, popularly known as “Big Pink,” and Nike CEO Phil Knight’s $2 billion donation to Oregon Health & Science University.

“If you’re on the fence about economic development in Portland, it’s time to get in the game before you’re left behind,” he said.

Wilson also celebrated his recent pledge to put more than $400 million toward renovating the city-owned Moda Center – a deal made to ensure the Trail Blazers’ new owners don’t relocate the team. The city will soon head into negotiations with Trail Blazers representatives over a new lease agreement for the Moda Center, which will include renovation details and other commitments.

“Portland has a choice for the Moda Center,” he said. “Either we activate it as a world-class facility and a major regional destination, or we let it become an aging, half-used facility in a flyover city.”

“I’m committed to striking the best deal for Moda,” he said, to applause.

Public safety

Various data points indicate that crime is down in Portland, news that Wilson cheered Friday. Homicide rates are down, as are burglaries, car thefts, and shoplifting, he said.

Along with pledging to preserve current police jobs in his budget, Wilson said he intends to add 24 new investigator positions to focus on specific crimes, like human trafficking, domestic violence, vehicular homicides, and more.

He also commended Portland police officers for testifying in federal court against the actions of federal officers against protesters at South Portland’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.

“In one of the most challenging moments in our history, Portland Police took a principled stand against federal overreach,” he said.

He also cheered the public’s response to an October visit by then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“She thought she’d get riots and chaos,” he said. “Instead, she got Portland. She got inflatable animals, naked bike rides, and a public that laughed at her lies and told her to go home.”

New government

Wilson is the first mayor to oversee the city’s new form of government, which went into effect last year. Debate over the way it’s rolled out has been central to discussion in and outside of City Hall this past year. Wilson touched on this following his speech/ in a conversation on stage with New York Times journalist (and one-time gubernatorial candidate) Nicholas Kristof (Editor’s note: Kristof’s wife, Sheryl WuDunn is an OPB Board member).

“The beauty is what you voted in with this new form of government,” Wilson told the crowd, “you voted in an executive mayor who controls the 27 bureaus and programs. A single person.”

During his speech, Wilson thanked the new 12-person city council for their work, and called out some councilors by name.

Notably, Wilson praised policies by every city councilor who isn’t part of the council’s so-called progressive caucus. (Since that six-person “Peacock” caucus formed last year, some members have stopped attending caucus meetings to avoid critique – but all six remain the most left-leaning voices on council). He did thank one progressive caucus member, Council President Jamie Dunphy, for stepping into the president’s role earlier this year.

The city’s progressive councilors have been consistently more critical of Wilson’s approach to addressing the city’s top issues.

Asked by Kristof if it’s hard to work with a council that isn’t always in lock-step with his ideas, Wilson smiled.

“I think your councilor is always going to have opinions, always,” he said. “They’re going to have their values. But at the end of the day, we’re just Portlanders trying to care for Portlanders.”

Correction: A previous version of this story had an incorrect dollar figure for Portland’s budget. OPB regrets the error.

Southern Oregon University has again raised tuition to the maximum allowed before the state must approve it. Total tuition and fees for in-state undergraduate students will increase by just under 5% next year.

The university has been struggling to address its financial situation. University leadership points to declining enrollment, rising costs and limited state support as the causes of the shortfalls.

SOU is losing money on each additional student, Trustee Liz Shelby said, meaning neither budget cuts nor enrollment growth alone will solve the problem.

“We can’t cut ourselves out of it,” Shelby said. “We have to find the right combination of a number of different solutions.”

Shelby added that several academic programs at SOU are serving fewer students, and a review is needed to determine which programs are financially viable.

The university is developing a financial plan with outside consultants from Deloitte. A draft is expected at the end of the month, with final approval required by mid-May. The plan is a condition of receiving $15 million from the state.

Deloitte is scheduled to present the draft plan publicly in a virtual meeting May 4 or 5, and to the board May 5, when campus leaders are expected to weigh in.

Trustees also received an update on a marketing initiative aimed at increasing enrollment. Benton Brown of EAB, an enrollment management firm working with the university, said prospective student engagement is shifting and the university must adapt.

EAB plans to assess the university’s goals this spring, with outreach to prospective students expected to begin by August. Brown said the firm’s university partners see an average 21% increase in applications in the first year.

JPR is licensed to Southern Oregon University, but our newsroom operates independently. Guided by our journalistic standards and ethics, we cover the university like any other organization in the region. No university official reviewed or edited this story before it was published.

Roman Battaglia is a reporter with Jefferson Public Radio. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

Iran said Saturday it had reinstated control of the Strait of Hormuz, and was reversing course on its decision to reopen the critical waterway until the United States completely lifts its blockade of Iranian ports.

The announcement came the morning after President Donald Trump had said the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports will remain and attacks could resume if no agreement is reached before the current ceasefire with Iran expires next week.

Asked by a reporter aboard Air Force One Friday night about what he will do if there’s no deal before the ceasefire expires, Trump said: “I don’t know. Maybe I won’t extend it, but the blockade is going to remain. But maybe I won’t extend it, so you’ll have a blockade and unfortunately we’ll have to start dropping bombs again.”

Trump was on his way back to Washington, after appearing at Turning Point USA’s “Build the Red Wall” rally in Phoenix, AZ. Despite hinting at the possibility of resuming attacks on Iran, Trump also told reporters “I think it’s going to happen,” referring to a deal.

Also on Friday, hours after Iran said the Strait of Hormuz was open to commercial ships, the Treasury Department said it would extend its pause on sanctions on Russian oil shipments to ease shortages caused by the Iran war. As recently as Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had ruled out such a move.

Here are further updates in the Middle East conflict:

Strait of Hormuz | World leaders on ceasefire | Lebanon reactions

Iran fires at tanker in Strait of Hormuz

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations organization, which monitors maritime security activity around the Strait of Hormuz, said it had received a report that a tanker near the strait was attacked by two Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) gun boats.

No injuries were reported in the incident, which happened hours after Iran said the strait was now under “strict control” until the U.S. agreed to lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports.

The decision reverses earlier announcements from Iranian officials and President Trump on Friday that the strait had reopened – announcements that had sent oil prices tumbling and stock markets rebounding.

The latest announcement from Iran that it had again closed the strait reignited concerns about how shipments would get through the narrow waterway, through which about 20% of the world’s crude oil and natural gas typically passes.

Oil prices tumbled and stock markets rallied on the announcement the strait was open for commercial ships.

France says Hezbollah killed UN peacekeeper in Lebanon

French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday accused the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah of killing a French UN peacekeeper in Lebanon, just one day into a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.

“Sergeant-Chef Florian Montorio of the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment from Montauban fell this morning in southern Lebanon during an attack against UNIFIL,” Macron wrote on X, adding that three additional soldiers had been injured as well.

“Everything suggests that responsibility for this attack lies with Hezbollah. France demands that the Lebanese authorities immediately arrest the perpetrators and take their responsibilities alongside UNIFIL.”

UNIFIL confirmed the soldier’s death, writing he and his team had been a part of explosives clearing.

“We extend our most sincere condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of the brave peacekeeper who lost his life in service of peace.”

The group continued: “UNIFIL condemns this deliberate attack on peacekeepers engaged in their mandated tasks. The work of explosive ordnance disposal teams is vital in the mission’s area of operations especially in the wake of the recent hostilities.”

Hezbollah did not immediately comment.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called the attack harmful to Lebanon’s global reputation.

“I have issued my strict instructions to conduct an immediate investigation to uncover the circumstances of this assault and to hold the perpetrators accountable,” he wrote on X.

“It is self-evident that this irresponsible behavior causes great harm to Lebanon and its relations with friendly countries that support it in the world.”

The accusation against Hezbollah came just over a day into the 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, which President Trump had hailed as a “historic day” for Lebanon.

He later issued his strongest public comments demanding that Israel uphold the agreement, after urging the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah to do so.

“Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday.

On Thursday night, he wrote: “I hope Hezbollah acts nicely and well during this important period of time. It will be [a] GREAT moment for them if they do. No more killing. Must finally have PEACE!”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the ceasefire could open the door to a broader agreement with Lebanon, but made clear Israel would not withdraw from what he described as an expanded 10-kilometer-deep security buffer zone in southern Lebanon. He also said any talks would hinge on Hezbollah’s disarmament.

Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, called the agreement a central Lebanese demand since the start of the war and said he hoped displaced residents would be able to return home soon.

Trump on Thursday also said he was inviting Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to the White House for peace talks.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he welcomed the ceasefire and urged all sides to respect it fully, adding he hoped it would lead to negotiations toward a long term solution.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who is credited for mediating the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, also welcomed the truce, calling it a step toward “sustainable peace” and reaffirmed his country’s support for Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, urged people displaced by the fighting not to rush back to southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs until the situation becomes clearer. The Israeli military also warned Lebanese residents not to return to their villages yet for their safety.

Hezbollah said in a separate statement any ceasefire must apply across Lebanese territory and warned that any continued Israeli presence would leave Lebanon with the right to resist depending on how events unfold.

Hezbollah has both a political wing, with several lawmakers in Lebanon’s national parliament, and militia that operates largely independently of the Lebanese government and receives funding and direction from Iran.

Lebanon’s government has pushed for a ceasefire before entering bigger diplomatic negotiations with Israel. Hezbollah opposes the talks.

Israel had agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon in 2024, but U.N. peacekeepers recorded more than 10,000 violations of that agreement, mostly by Israeli forces.

Thousands in Lebanon head home despite warnings

Thousands of people displaced by fighting in Lebanon in recent weeks began heading home Friday, hours after the ceasefire with Israel took effect, despite warnings from Hezbollah, Lebanese government officials and the Israeli military that it was still too dangerous to return home.

The war has displaced around 1.2 million people in Lebanon, according to United Nations and Lebanese figures, and many are now going back to assess the damage of their homes.

Hussein Farhat, a shopkeeper from Beirut’s southern suburbs — a Hezbollah stronghold that was repeatedly targeted in Israeli strikes — told NPR he was thinking about going home to check on his shop, but wouldn’t move back until the fighting came to a permanent end.

“You feel a heartbreak just visiting your home and neighborhood and then you leave,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Israeli forces have destroyed more than 40,000 homes in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanese officials, taking over whole villages to create what Israel says is a “security buffer zone” to keep Hezbollah from firing rockets into Israel.

The latest round of fighting began after Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel following the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28. Israeli forces responded with airstrikes and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

In his remarks shortly after the ceasefire was announced, Netanyahu made clear Israel did not intend to withdraw soon, saying “we are not leaving.”

In a lengthy statement on Friday, the Israeli prime minister’s office said, “The road to peace is still long, but we have begun it.” It added, “One of our hands holds a weapon; our other hand is extended in peace.”

Every day as the sun comes down, about a dozen blue and gold macaws fly up to Karem Guevara’s apartment.

The comical birds perch on a window sill, squawk loudly, and stretch their necks, as Guevara feeds them sunflower seeds and sliced bananas.

“These birds are like part of my family” says Guevara, a small business owner who has been feeding macaws for the past five years from the comfort of her living room. She says that sometimes the macaws bring their chicks over, a sign that they trust their human friend. “It fills my heart with joy” Guevara said.

Blue and gold macaws are not native to Caracas. But over the past two decades their numbers in Venezuela’s capital have skyrocketed, with hundreds of these birds now flying freely across the city, and dazzling locals with their colorful feathers and peculiar calls.

The birds have become a symbol of Caracas and formed a special bond with some people, who leave food for them in their balconies or gardens.

But this unique relationship between humans and exotic birds is now under threat as city authorities cut down the palm trees that the macaws depend on to raise their offspring.

Maria Lourdes Gonzalez, a biologist who studies the macaws says that in the following years, the city’s population of blue and gold macaws could plummet.

“If they don’t find a place where they can breed, there will be no new generation of macaws” she said at her office in Caracas’ Simon Bolivar University.

Gonzalez explained that the macaws only nest in a palm tree known as the chaguaramo, or the royal palm.

And they only use chaguaramos with no leaves whose trunks are decaying and have been partially hollowed out by insects.

Officials are taking these old palm trees down in several parks and public spaces as they try to beautify the city ‚and prevent rotting tree trunks from falling on people. It’s a policy that makes sense from the perspective of a city planner, Gonzalez explained, but one that threatens the macaws.

“These are not birds that make nests out of branches or twigs,” Gonzalez said. “They occupy holes inside old tree trunks, and in Caracas, they only use the chaguaramo trees.”

Gonzalez said that having less macaws in Caracas would not disrupt the local ecosystem, because colorful as they may be, these birds are an introduced species.

The blue and gold macaws are native to the Amazon and were most likely brought to Caracas in the 1970s by people who had them at home as pets.

As the years passed, many macaw owners let their birds fly away into the city.

“Macaws are terrible pets,” Gonzalez explained. “They are very loud, and inside a house –or an apartment-- it is hard to live with an animal who is always screaming.”

The birds survived thanks to the mild weather in Caracas and the lush mountains that surround the city, which are covered with trees that provide macaws with fruits and seeds.

The royal palms - a species that was introduced into Caracas during colonial times due to its elegant appearance-- provided the macaws with places to nest. The lack of natural predators, like harpy eagles or monkeys that steal eggs, made it easy for the macaws to reproduce.

Ten years ago, when blue and gold macaws had already become prevalent in Caracas, Gonzalez conducted a census of the local macaw population.

She found that the city had around 400 blue and gold macaws. Now, Gonzalez says she would like to conduct a new census to find out how the removal of old palm trees has affected the birds.

“I expect the population to decrease,” Gonzalez said. “Or its range could also expand, as the birds search for new places where they can breed.”

Gonzalez has no funding from the university, or the government for a census however. And with her public university professor’s salary of $160 a month, it is hard for her to travel around the city on her motorbike, counting the blue and gold birds, because gas has become unaffordable.

So, this time around, she says she will have to rely on volunteers to count macaws across the city. “The methodology is different from the first census, but I believe it can work,” the biology professor said.

Mabel Cornago, a photographer who has been feeding macaws for the past 15 years, said that it would be “terrible” for the local population of macaws to dwindle, because the birds have become “a symbol” of Venezuela’s capital.

Cornago says that over the past decade, she has taken more than 40,000 photos of macaws as they fly around the city, rest on trees, and perch on people’s balconies, and rooftops. Every month, she sells dozens of her prints of macaws with the lush mountains of Caracas in the background, to gift shops that cater to Venezuelans who are now living overseas and crave mementos of their country.

“For me these birds are like angels” Cornago said. “Who came to us as our country was going through very difficult times.”

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Mariam Allawiya and Kafa Wehbe sit on a sun-drenched balcony, smoking.

They both grew up amid olive groves in southern Lebanon. Allawiya’s son married Wehbe’s daughter. They’re grandmothers now.

But this is not how they expected to grow old: Squatting in a vacant building in central Beirut, displaced many times.

Yet they conjure hospitality for visiting reporters, pull up a donated plastic chair, and unspool the stories of their lives — which also tell the history of southern Lebanon.

“What can I say? It’s all anxiety and war,” Allawiya, 60, says.

She and Wehbe, 67, are among the more than one million people the Lebanese government says have been displaced by Israel’s current invasion, which began last month after Lebanese Hezbollah militants fired rockets into Israel. They said they were retaliating against U.S. and Israeli attacks on their benefactor, Iran, and for 15 months of Israeli attacks on Lebanon that continued after a previous ceasefire in November 2024.

Now, with a fresh ceasefire, both Israel and Hezbollah are warning displaced people not to return south. And Allawiya and Wehbe say they’ll stay put — it’s too dangerous.

This isn’t the first time these grandmothers have had to flee Israeli attacks.

Born in the south, displaced to Beirut, now fleeing again

Allawiya was born in the Lebanese village of Maroun al-Ras, near the Israeli border. Israeli troops invaded in 1982, destroyed her family’s house, and occupied south Lebanon for 18 years after that. The Allawiya family fled north to Beirut, settling in the capital’s southern suburbs with other displaced Shia Muslims.

But they road-tripped home every summer, and rebuilt their house — a labor of love while under occupation, she says.

“Our village, our land, our houses, our trees, our olives, our apples — our soil,” Allawiya says wistfully.

“And also Israeli checkpoints and soldiers!” her friend Wehbe interrupts. “Back then you needed a permit to move around, like in the Palestinian Territories. We don’t want that again!”

“That’s why we support the resistance,” she declares.

By that, she means Hezbollah.

Why these grandmothers support Hezbollah

Hezbollah was founded during that 1982 invasion. Back then, Israel was targeting Palestinian militants. But Hezbollah said it was fighting for the Lebanese, against foreign occupation, and endeared itself to people like Allawiya and Wehbe. It funded the reconstruction of thousands of homes, often with Iranian money. And it celebrated victory when Israeli forces finally withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000.

“Oh how beautiful that moment was,” Allawiya recalls. “It was perfect.”

But it was fleeting.

The Allawiya family never managed to move home permanently. Israeli troops invaded again, in 2006 and 2024, in pursuit of Hezbollah militants, destroying the Allawiyas’ house each time.

They rebuilt after 2006 but didn’t have a chance to rebuild again, for a third time, before last month’s invasion displaced them again — this time from their apartment in Beirut’s southern suburbs to this vacant building in a central part of the city, which the landlord offered to displaced people. They’ve gone from one temporary home to another.

Not everyone in Lebanon supports Hezbollah. Many blame the group for these successive wars. Wehbe says she worries some of her fellow citizens might give up the south — acquiesce to another era of Israeli occupation — in exchange for a ceasefire.

Despite the current ceasefire, Israel says its troops will continue to hold Lebanese territory south of the country’s Litani River, which runs 10 to 20 miles north of the current border, to create what it calls a buffer zone from which Hezbollah can no longer fire rockets.

“How could the south not be part of Lebanon? It’s on our map!” Wehbe says. “If we could all just stand together, united against Israel, then Israel would leave us alone.”

She believes Hezbollah is her country’s best bet for getting Israeli troops to withdraw, since they did it before, in 2000.

Sheltering with 35 relatives — including a pregnant woman and children

Allawiya, Wehbe and 35 of their relatives are all squatting in this vacant building together. On April 7, they stayed up all night, awaiting the announcement of a ceasefire between the United States and Iran. They trusted early accounts from Pakistani mediators that the deal would include Lebanon, and assumed that would mean Israeli attacks would end and they’d be allowed to go home.

“We were happy! We started cleaning, preparing to leave this place,” Allawiya recalls.

But her hopes were dashed the next morning, on April 8, when Israel struck Lebanon 100 times in 10 minutes — killing more than 350 people, according to Lebanese authorities. Many of the strikes hit central Beirut — shaking the building where the Allawiya and Wehbe families were huddled.

Allawiya says that experience makes her wary of trusting in an Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, announced by President Trump on April 16. As long as it’s described as temporary — for 10 days, rather than permanent — she says it still feels too dangerous to go home.

“To be honest, we don’t feel safe going back,” she says. “The Israelis may break their promise.”

Former neighbors, displaced like them, keep calling. They’re trying to figure out if their homes in Beirut’s suburbs are still standing. The area is home to some of Hezbollah’s offices, and Israeli airstrikes have hit many times.

But it’s not that apartment Allawiya is dreaming of. It’s her family’s previous home in the south, in Maroun al-Ras, which is now under Israeli control yet again. It’s part of the “buffer zone” Israel says it may hold for months, even years.

Dreaming of rebuilding again

One of Allawiya’s tech-savvy kids has made a video of their ancestral home, with a carousel of photos from when it was still standing, set to a ballad written by an Egyptian singer, Sherine, about Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon. It’s called "Lebanon in the Heart."

In this barren, borrowed, barely furnished apartment, Allawiya hunches over her cell phone, replaying this video over and over.

“Wake up, oh South! The sun is setting,” she mumbles the lyrics to the music. “Lebanon is in the heart.”

The refrain continues: “There is no one but us to protect our homeland.”

This renewed war has interrupted treatment Allawiya had been getting for cancer. One of her daughters-in-law is seven months pregnant. The grandchildren are bouncing off the walls, without school.

They can’t stay in this donated apartment forever. But even with a ceasefire, they don’t know when it’ll be safe to go home.

Take a road trip in an electric car, and you know the juicing up routine. You pull off the highway, park at a charging station, plug in the car … and wait. If you’re lucky, it’s about half an hour. Sometimes, it’s longer.

In China, one company can get you back on the road in minutes. I had the opportunity to see how, with Jason Wu, an executive at NIO Power, an EV maker.

A few weeks ago, I sat in a roomy SUV, while Wu, in the driver’s seat, spoke to the vehicle. “Hi Nomi.”

“I’m here,” the car responds in a cute, child-like voice. Wu asks the car to initiate a battery swap, and the car takes over.

We drive into a small structure that looks like a one car garage without front and back walls. The car instructs Wu to take his foot off the brake, remove his hands from the steering wheel and to not open the doors.

“If you feel nervous, I’m here,” it says. Then, it automatically backs into the car port.

The company recognizes that long charging times are keeping people from buying EVs

“This is fully-automated battery swapping,” Wu says.

No more waiting to charge up. The car is about to get a fresh battery.

NIO has recognized that long charging times are one of the main reasons keeping people from buying EVs – not only in China, but all over the world.

The company has installed nearly 4,000 battery swap stations like this around the world, most in China.

NIO EVs are popular in China, but competition is fierce. The company has roughly 4% market share in vehicles that are primarily electric. Its battery swapping is still something of a novelty.

But it’s an attractive solution in a country where many drivers live in apartments that don’t always have charging ports.

“On February 6, 2026, our total battery swapping network had provided 100 million swaps,” said Wu. That’s since the first swap station opened in Beijing eight years ago. “This fully demonstrates that battery swapping, as a power replenishment method, has already become very mainstream.”

China’s highways have 1,000 of these NIO swapping stations

NIO says it’s saved drivers more than 83 million hours. Other companies are trying it, including CATL, the world’s biggest battery maker. In the U.S., some see it as a useful potential solution for electric trucks, which have long charging times.

Wu extolls battery swapping as convenient, fast and safe. And he says it’s good for the health of the batteries. There’s also no need to get out and fuss with cables or gas pumps. Nio owners have the option of buying or renting the battery in their car, and they can charge the normal way, too.

For road trippers, NIO has put over 1,000 swapping stations along China’s highways.

Back at the battery changing station, the car stops in the port. It lifts up a tiny bit, and jostles around, followed by a muffled, methodic clanking sound and then, silence. The gray metal floor under the vehicle opens, and a machine rises to the undercarriage.

The car’s entire battery pack, which weighs about 1,100 pounds, or about as much as a grand piano, is unbolted and whisked away, underground. It goes into a closed room on the side of the swapping station where it is plugged in to charge for a future user.

Under the car, there are a few clicks and clanks as a fresh battery is lifted into place and bolted securely to the vehicle. The system runs some diagnostic checks. And that’s it.

“OK, you can see. Green light,” Wu says. “The battery swap is done.”

A screen on the swapping station shows how long the whole process took: Three minutes and eight seconds … or about the same time it might take to fuel up at a gas station.

–Jasmine Ling contributed to this story.

“We were fighting over who had caught more fish, and then I saw my crewmate pushed overboard by the captain,” Akbar Fitrian, 29, an Indonesian crewmember says as he recounts an incident aboard a Chinese-owned fishing vessel in 2022. “The ship then started to drive away as my crewmate tried to swim towards us. And then I don’t know what happened. The captain never reported the incident.”

The seas of Southeast Asia — home to some of the richest in biodiversity in the world — have long been in decline. Since the 1950s, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that 70-95% of fish stocks have been depleted and are at risk of collapse, perpetuated by the rise of industrial-scale fishing, much of which is illegal. Legal overfishing is another factor, and both are propped up by weak regulations, insufficient monitoring and insatiable demand. Approximately half of the world’s global marine fish catch comes from the seas of Southeast Asia, according to the U.N., and it comes at a calamitous cost.

In the United States, approximately 50% of the imported seafood comes from Asia, with nearly $6.3 billion in trade coming from China, Vietnam, Indonesia and India alone, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Behind the illicit seafood trade is an opaque world standing at the crossroads of intertwining issues. There is the legacy of brutal human rights violations that have enabled sea slavery to become the norm. Those involved in the efforts of organizations like the international Freedom Fund and Thailand’s Labour Protection Network, which work to end modern-day slavery in the region, say many workers are murdered at sea, abused and often brought into a cycle of debt bondage.

There is the lawless nature of the seas, which has emboldened traffickers to exploit desperate fishermen and impoverished casual laborers. Then there are the geopolitical factors at play: In a race to dominate the seas, China and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia have all built outposts and bases on shoals, reefs and atolls. Fishing fleets — of which China has the largest in the world — are fast becoming more militarized as a result.

All of this has imposed a heavy cost on unique ecosystems and led to devastating socioeconomic impacts on artisanal and small-scale fishers.

Three countries illustrate the intersectional nature of overfishing:

Thailand

“Fish were in abundance before,” says Mimit Hantele, 53, a member of the Urak Lawoi tribe on the island of Koh Lipe in Thailand. “But now, the fishing season is a lot shorter, the variety of fish is far fewer, and I sell less. So I take tourists out on scuba expeditions to earn money.”

For generations, the Urak Lawoi plied the rich waters around them for sustenance. Sea gypsies in a time past, the villagers evolved to rely only on what they could catch and used simple fishing equipment cast from small wooden boats.

Then, in the 1970s, came the big Thai and Malaysian fishing boats. Fishermen on Koh Lipe say the boats fish illegally around the island, appearing only at night to escape detection and in a protected national forest area. The ships use purse seiner nets and demersal trawlers, destroying the coral underneath and, consequently, the habitat for fish. Such overexploitation has led the Indigenous group to turn to tourism to make up for lost income and declining fish stocks. “Fishing is in our blood,” Hantele said, but “our way of life has changed. We can’t rely only on the fish.”

According to a 2001 report from the U.N., roughly 80% of fishers in Southeast Asia at the time were small-scale or artisanal, relying on traditional practices. However, declining nearshore fish stocks have forced many artisanal fishers to venture farther from shore in search of commercially valuable species. Added to that are government subsidies for fuel and tax breaks for commercial fishing vessels, which have propped up the seafood industry. Rapid advancement in maritime technology has made fleets far more effective at finding rich hunting grounds while avoiding detection by switching off their monitoring systems.

Lax regulations on the most destructive types of fishing, particularly demersal trawling and cyanide fishing, the capture of juvenile fish that prevents the replenishment of stocks, the poor oversight of labor laws and the exploitation of workers desperate to earn a living have all contributed to the devastating knock-on effects for communities along coastlines and the potentially irreversible environmental consequences.

In Thailand last year, artisanal fishermen held protests over the rollback of major fisheries reforms implemented a decade ago that had helped to rebuild fish stocks in Thai waters. Thai corporations, which own a significant share of commercial fishing vessels, pushed the government to deregulate the fishing industry to increase their profits. Protestors focused on their concerns that relaxing the rules would revive illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and lead to increased overfishing. The rollbacks, they argued, would reduce transparency and accountability across the industry and reduce checks on gear and labor. Less transparency would lead to less knowledge about what is left in the sea. In turn, sustainability decreases, hurting artisanal fishers who depend on the sea for sustenance and livelihoods.

The Philippines

The first time Donald Carmen was harassed by Chinese boats off the coast of Palawan was in December 2024. The following February, they harassed him and another fisherman again, getting close enough to hit their outriggers. “They forced us to move away and recorded us with cell phones and cameras. I have been fishing in this area since 2016, and back then, everyone was free to fish. I would catch 400-500 kilograms of fish in a night, about 60 nautical miles offshore. Now, because I don’t dare venture out as far, I’m lucky if I catch 200-300 kilograms over three days,” Carmen said as he steered his banca just weeks later, on the lookout for Chinese fishing boats and militia.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is inextricably linked to the geopolitical struggle for maritime dominance in the South China Sea. Over the past two decades, China has rapidly scaled up its fishing militias in a race to assert control over a vast area while trying to meet the country’s insatiable demand for seafood. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan have followed suit on a much smaller scale.

The South China Sea — or the East Sea, as Vietnam calls it, and the West Philippine Sea, as it’s known in the Philippines — is one of the world’s most strategic waterways. China’s use of its fishing fleet to control trade routes and dominate territory to create maritime buffer zones threatens the food security and livelihoods of fishers in the region.

While Chinese aggression has persisted for years in areas off Zambales, a province of the Philippines, it has only recently affected waters off the coast of Rizal in Palawan, as China is believed to be building up its presence in the Sabina and Bombay shoals, much closer to the Filipino coast — encroaching on the Philippines’ claim to the Kalayaan Island Group — from its original areas of claim like the Spratly Islands and the Scarborough Shoal. Among some of the tactics used by Chinese fishing militias to deter fishermen are water cannons, using swarming and encircling techniques, military-grade lasers and ramming fishing boats to intimidate and drive them from fishing grounds.

As countries in the region militarize their fishing fleets, the cost will ultimately be detrimental to ecological sustainability and geopolitical stability.

Indonesia

In Indonesia, poverty, lack of opportunities and desperation have pushed thousands of Indonesian men into trafficking circles, while others are lured by the promises of a well-paid job in the construction or service industries before being put aboard a fishing vessel unbeknownst to them. Patima Tungpuchayakul, the founder of Thailand’s Labour Protection Network, says hundreds of fishermen go missing from commercial vessels each year, and many more are brutalized while facing appalling conditions and inhumane, unsanitary conditions on board, often at the mercy of the captain or the ship’s owners.

Labor rights activists at the Migrant Resource Center in Pemalang, Indonesia, fishermen and a widow of a woman still fighting for compensation after her husband’s death say agencies in central Java are adept at recruiting Indonesian crew to work primarily on Chinese fishing vessels, entrapping them in a cycle of debt bondage and, in many cases, effectively enslaving them at sea. Workers are not offered compensation for death or injuries unless they or their families were aware of what kind of insurance the vessel owner had for them. In the worst circumstances, they face brutal working conditions and 16- to 22-hour workdays and are often subject to physical violence.

Southeast Asia is still a hub for slave labor, primarily in Thailand and Indonesia, where the seafood trade contributes much of the tuna, shrimp and trash fish used for fishmeal to the supply chains of major retailers and pet food brands in the U.S. and Europe.

“There is now less physical violence and coercion — but coercion is now more debt-based,” says Rosia Wongsuban, a program advisor at the Freedom Fund, a nonprofit working to end modern-day slavery. “Working conditions are the same. Because of a labor shortage, there aren’t enough workers to operate on vessels, and then the crew needs to take the extra burden.”

“In order to work on the fishing vessel, which was Chinese-owned, I was given a loan of 4 million Rupiah,” Akbar Fitrian, 29, a fisherman interviewed in Jakarta, explains. “1 million went to paying for fishing equipment, and then I had to work until I paid back the other 3 million. Sometimes, I had to keep borrowing more to continue working to pay off the initial loan. Sometimes I would only end up with enough salary to buy cigarettes. Sometimes I went into the red.”

For the nearly 10 million people who rely on these fisheries for their livelihoods and source of protein, the future of Southeast Asia’s fisheries hangs in the balance, at the mercy of consumer demand and political will to enforce laws. The region faces not just ecological collapse, but deepening poverty, food insecurity and social instability if illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing continues unchecked. Overfishing occurs because high demand and global overconsumption for seafood far exceed the ocean’s ability to replenish itself. Growing markets — especially in China, the European Union and North America — have transformed fish and fish products into a highly profitable global commodity. Exports from Southeast Asia alone amount to over $5 billion worth of fish products to the United States each year, illustrating the scale of international trade. This demand fuels industrial-scale fishing operations such as bottom trawlers and purse seiners, which sweep through vast areas of ocean indiscriminately. Supported by government subsidies, these fleets prioritize maximum yield, even when fish stocks are already severely depleted.

But decline is not inevitable. With stronger regional cooperation, transparent supply chains, corporate accountability and informed consumer choices, Southeast Asia can reclaim stewardship over its waters. The survival of its fisheries — and of the communities that depend on them — hinges on decisions being made now, far from shore.

This body of work, based on a nine-month-long investigation supported by the Fondation Carmignac, is on exhibit at the Bronx Documentary Center through April 26.

Nicole Tung is a photojournalist working primarily in the Middle East and Asia. You can see more of her work on her website, NicoleTung.com, or on Instagram, at @nicoletung.

Good morning, Northwest.

Today is Record Store Day, when dozens of shops across the Pacific Northwest sell brand-new, exclusive and limited releases to promote vinyl as a medium of music appreciation.

OPB reporter Joni Auden Land provides a comprehensive list of shops in Oregon and Southwest Washington where you can find the vinyl records you love.

Earlier this week, OPB’s “All Things Considered” host Crystal Ligori also stopped by the legendary Franz Bakery’s block party in Portland, celebrating its 120th anniversary. She spoke with staff and fans about how the longtime brand has brought them fond memories of its bread.

Here’s your First Look at Saturday’s news.

— Winston Szeto

Pacific Northwest vinyl stores, shoppers prepare for Record Store Day

Vinyl record stores across the Pacific Northwest are preparing for Record Store Day, their biggest day of the year. Hundreds of brand-new exclusive and limited releases will be available, beginning this morning, at a variety of locations to boost interest in vinyl as a medium.

More than 40 stores across Oregon and Southwest Washington are participating in the festivities. Many will have long lines of eager customers waiting for hours.

Here is an incomplete list of some of the shops participating in Record Store Day in Pacific Northwest cities — a complete list can be found on the official Record Store Day website. (Joni Auden Land)

Learn More

3 things to know

1. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson delivered his second State of the City address last night, 14 months into his first term in office. (Alex Zielinski)
2. Health officials in Oregon are concerned they may not be able to contain a small but growing measles outbreak, and yesterday they asked for the public’s help in turning the tide. (Amelia Templeton)
3. Court documents released Thursday show federal officers’ first-hand accounts of protest activity and what led them to use force outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland over the summer and fall. (Conrad Wilson)

‘OPB Politics Now’: 4 top Oregon Republicans square off in first gubernatorial debate

On the latest episode of “OPB Politics Now,” reporters Dirk VanderHart and Lauren Dake discuss how the candidates did, what they said to differentiate from one another and much more. (Dirk VanderHart, Lauren Dake and Andrew Theen)

Listen Now

Northwest headlines

• For Oregon’s aspiring wrestlers, the road to glory always has a starting point (Jason Sauls)
• Crews race to clear wildfire fuels in Southern Oregon before the start of a hot, dry summer (Justin Higginbottom) 
• Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek orders schools to maintain instructional hours: What happens now? (Elizabeth Miller) 
• Seattle sports power couple Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe announce split (Associated Press)

Portland’s Franz Bakery turns 120, baking up a century of memories

Just off Interstate 84 in inner Northeast Portland, a giant spinning loaf of bread sits atop one of the largest family-owned bakeries on the West Coast.

Many people showed up at Portland’s Franz Bakery earlier this week, celebrating the iconic bakery’s 120th anniversary with a block party.

The Portland Franz location bakes up to a million hamburger buns per day, shipped out to grocery stores, restaurants and fast food chains like Wendy’s and Red Robin. (Crystal Ligori)

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Subscribe to OPB’s First Look to receive Northwest news in your inbox six days a week.

Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe are splitting up.

The sports power couple announced Friday that they are ending their 10-year relationship and phasing out their popular podcast, “A Touch More.” They dropped the news together on the podcast.

“I hope you all know we put a lot of thought and care into this,” said Rapinoe, who rose to fame as a member of the Women’s World Cup team in 2011, 2015 and 2019. “It’s a decision that we made together. We’re still going to be there for all of you and for each other. It’s just going to look and feel a little bit different.

“We truly are evolving into something new to each other, to ourselves and to all of you, and we just wanted to say thank you for sharing this space with us and giving us this space for us to find ourselves in a different way through this podcast.”

RELATED: Sue Bird, Seattle Storm’s 4-time WNBA champion, has statue unveiled outside Climate Pledge Arena

Bird is considered one of the greatest women’s basketball players in history. She won four WNBA championships and was a 13-time All-Star over a 20-year career.

“We have shared so much of our life, so much of our relationship with you, so that’s why we wanted to come on here and share this, too,” Bird said. “These past 10 years have given us so much, and launching this podcast and sharing this space has been one of our favorite things that we’ve done together.”

Rapinoe is planning to start her own podcast, and Bird is committed to a second season of her own venture, “Bird’s Eye View.”

“It’s gonna look a little bit different moving forward,” Rapinoe said. “Obviously, our relationship was such a huge part of this podcast for you guys, but also for us. … We are both really sad to be losing this space. It’s been so meaningful to us, especially post-retirement, to be able to have this space to share, not just together, but with you as well.”

Bird said they will host six more special episodes of “A Touch More” as a “farewell to you all and to this space.”

RELATED: Sue Bird returns to the Seattle Storm — as an owner

President Donald Trump on Saturday directed his administration to speed up reviews of certain psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine, which recently has been embraced by combat veterans and conservative lawmakers despite having serious safety risks.

Ibogaine and other psychedelics remain banned under the federal government’s most restrictive category for illegal, high-risk drugs. But the administration is taking steps to ease restrictions and spur research on using the drugs for medical purposes, including conditions like severe depression.

“Today’s order will ensure that people suffering from debilitating symptoms might finally have a chance to reclaim their lives and lead a happier life,” Trump said as he signed an executive order on the drugs. The Republican president said his directive will help “dramatically accelerate” access to potential treatments. “If these turn out to be as good as people are saying, it’s going to have a tremendous impact,” he said.

Veteran organizations and psychedelic advocates have long contended that the ibogaine, which is made from a shrub native to West Africa, has great promise for hard-to-treat conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and opioid addiction.

Trump’s announcement follows pledges by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other administration officials to ease access to psychedelics for medical use, an issue that has won rare bipartisan support.

Joining Trump in the Oval Office were his top health officials, conservative podcaster Joe Rogan and Marcus Luttrell, the former Navy SEAL whose memoir about a deadly mission in Afghanistan was the basis of the film “Lone Survivor.” Rogan said he texted Trump information on ibogaine and the president responded: “Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let’s do it.”

“You’re going to save a lot of lives through it,” Luttrell told Trump during the ceremony. “It absolutely changed my life for the better.”

How psychedelics are aiding in end-of-life care in Oregon

The Food and Drug Administration next week will issue national priority vouchers for three psychedelics, which the agency’s commissioner, Marty Makary, said will allow certain drugs to be approved quickly “if they are in line with our national priorities.” The vouchers can cut review times from several months to a period of weeks. It is the first time the FDA has offered that fast-tracking to any psychedelics.

The FDA is also taking steps to clear the way for the first-ever human trials of ibogaine in the U.S.

Trump’s action surprised many longtime advocates and researchers in the psychedelic field, given that ibogaine is known to sometimes trigger potentially fatal heart problems. The National Institutes of Health briefly funded research on the drug in the 1990s, but discontinued the work due to ibogaine’s “cardiovascular toxicity.”

“It’s been incredibly difficult to study ibogaine in the U.S. because of its known cardiotoxicity,” said Frederick Barrett, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. “If the executive order can pave the way for doing objective, scientific research with this compound, it would help us understand whether it is truly a better psychedelic therapy than others.”

No psychedelic has been approved in the United States, but a number of them are being studied in large trials for various mental health conditions, including psilocybin, MDMA and LSD. All those drugs remain illegal, classified as Schedule I substances alongside drugs such as heroin. Two states — Oregon and Colorado — have legalized psychedelic therapy with psilocybin.

Ibogaine was first used by members of the Bwiti religion in African nations like Gabon during their religious ceremonies.

In recent years, U.S. veterans have reported benefiting from the drug after traveling to clinics in Mexico that administer it.

Psilocybin in Oregon may help address fears of death, but people can’t always access it

Backing from veterans groups and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry led to a law last year providing $50 million for ibogaine research in that state. Perry, who co-founded a group called Americans for Ibogaine, recently appeared on Rogan’s podcast, making the case for reducing federal limits on the drug. It was his second time talking about ibogaine on the popular podcast in the past two years.

The drug is known to cause irregular heart rhythms and has been linked to more than 30 deaths in the medical literature, according to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a nonprofit that conducted some early studies in patients outside the U.S.

The group’s co-executive director, Ismail Lourido Ali, said Trump’s order might encourage other states to follow the Texas model.

“The stigma around Schedule I drugs is significant,” Ali said. “It feels like this would give pretty substantial cover for Republican governors and legislatures to step into the ring in terms of funding research programs at their universities.”

Owners of ibogaine clinics said the impact of the order will not be immediate.

“There will be no insurance coverage, it will still be considered unapproved and non-covered care,” said Tom Feegel of Beond Ibogaine, which operates a clinic in Cancun, Mexico. “But what it does mean is that ibogaine shifts from being fringe and underground to being federally acknowledged.”

Feegel says his clinic treated 2,000 people with ibogaine last year for between $15,000 and $20,000 per person. The company also gave free treatment to about 100 veterans.

Clinics that use the drug typically monitor patients’ heart readings and have emergency medical equipment on hand.

One of the only recent studies conducted by U.S. researchers found that veterans treated with ibogaine showed improvements in symptoms of traumatic brain injury, including PTSD, depression and anxiety. The Stanford University study was small — enrolling 30 veterans who received the drug in Mexico. It did not include a placebo group for comparison, an essential feature of rigorous medical research. Patients in the study received a combination of ibogaine mixed with magnesium intended to reduce heart risks.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

If you’re a fan of professional wrestling, you probably already know that this is Wrestlemania weekend. Since its creation in 1985, the annual event has become that multi-billion-dollar industry’s equivalent of the Super Bowl, packing thousands into stadiums and arenas and with millions of fans watching at home.

But for pro wrestlers the journey to get to Wrestlemania is long, if it ever happens at all.

The vast majority of pro wrestlers begin their careers in front of dozens of fans, not thousands, and before that, they need to learn how to wrestle at all. That’s where wrestling schools and academies, like the Oregon Pro Wrestling School in Hillsboro, come in.

Since opening in 2021, the school has aimed to serve as both a launching pad for those starting out and a space for those looking to further their careers.

Ricky Gibson, the founder, owner and operator of the school, grew up in Oregon and says he knew as early as age 5 that he wanted to be a pro wrestler. He started his still-active career in the state over 20 years ago, and his resume includes appearances with large companies like World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and Ring of Honor, as well as regular appearances in rings throughout Oregon and Washington.

Gibson says the inspiration to start the school was born after the pandemic. When live wrestling events started up again in 2021, he needed a place to train.

“I decided I was going to buy a ring and rent a storage unit just for me. And as I started doing that, I realized I should just open a school,” he explained. “And since then, it has grown exponentially.”

With an enrollment that now includes around 70 students and alumni of all genders, the school serves both beginners and experienced wrestlers seeking to learn the basics or broaden their skills. Early lessons include how to fall on the mat correctly, various grapples and holds, and learning to run the ropes, which Gibson says is harder and more painful than it looks.

“Almost everyone that attempts it for the first time is completely surprised at how difficult it can be to maintain a rhythm, to do it smoothly, to be able to bounce off the ropes, and then it’s surprising how much the ropes hurt your underarms.”

One of the things every professional wrestler will tell you is that even though matches are scripted and choreographed and outcomes are predetermined, it still hurts.

“I knew the ring was hard. I knew it wasn’t like a trampoline like some people think it is. I didn’t know it was going to hurt that bad,” explained wrestler “Hotshot” Spencer Scott.

The physical side of pro wrestling is vital, of course, but so is the ability to tell a story, to create drama and to engage the audience. From its pre-TV vaudeville days to the present, a wrestling match flounders or thrives on how much the audience cares or doesn’t. Creating a persona or character — known in wrestling as a babyface (hero) or heel (villain) — is a big part of the equation.

“Everyone has their own autonomy to come up with their character,” Gibson said. “But I, as a coach, spend a lot of time helping them develop that. And even their peers will help give them ideas or suggestions to further it as well.”

Gibson says one of his goals with the school is to create a supportive environment where wrestlers learn from each other.

“The first day everyone gets the speech of we’re here to build each other up,” he said. “We’re here to encourage each other. There’s no hazing or bullying.”

He says that approach contrasts with some of the schools and training environments he encountered at the start of his career. And those who’ve attended the school appreciate the difference.

“I’ve been to a couple schools, and a lot of students that are there come for the wrong reasons. But everyone here? We’re all tough. We’re all ready to go. I love this school for that,” said wrestler Caleb Teninty.

Fellow wrestler Gunnar Thorson agrees, adding, “This place is a haven for those who want to learn wrestling in a judgement-free environment, who don’t want to feel the pressure of, ‘You have to learn this in three months, you have to learn this now!’”

Teninty, Thorson and several other current and former students recently performed at one of the school’s Student Exhibition Nights: an evening of matches held at the school and free to attend for anyone who signs up. Gibson says the audience for the exhibitions are comprised largely of friends and family of the wrestlers in the ring.

“I wanted to provide a platform for these students to wrestle in front of a forgiving crowd at first but then learn the lessons that are necessary, so they don’t look too bad before they’re in front of what we’d call a real crowd, a real audience,” he explained.

Some of the school’s graduates have competed in matches with various independent circuits throughout the U.S. In the Pacific Northwest, that includes organizations like Oregon-based DOA and POW! Pro Wrestling and Defy Wrestling in neighboring Washington. Some have also had matches in Mexico, Japan and other countries. Making it to a bigger stage or signing with a company like WWE or AEW is always a dream, of course, but many wrestlers say they are happy to keep doing something they love wherever and whenever they can.

“I’m just doing this to make people happy and to make people feel good about coming to shows,” said wrestler “Badman” Bryan Scott. “It’s one of the only places I feel like I can be me and I’m trying to bring that to other people.”

As for the future of the Oregon Pro Wrestling School, Ricky Gibson says he is excited about bringing in more students, expanding to offer classes for teenagers (with parental permission and supervision), and seeing his graduates develop.

“I’m happy to provide all the talent that comes through Oregon right now,” he said. “And it’s just cool to see all the growth that I have and I can’t wait to see what’s next.”

Chainsaws were buzzing along Grants Pass’ Cathedral Hills Trail System this week, part of a 240-acre fuels reduction project meant to reduce the risk of wildfire amid warnings from climatologists.

Workers with Grayback Forestry cut down small-diameter trees — less than 8 inches for hardwoods like oak — and piled the timber to be dried out and burnt in the fall.

Sean Hendrix, base manager at Grayback, said that while the trees are too wet to burn now without producing large amounts of smoke, they should be wetter. Oregon is coming off a dry winter and record-low snowpack.

“In fire and fuels we talk about fuel moisture,” he said. “Live fuel moisture just three weeks ago, they were 60%. In the middle of May they should be 160% saturated.” That means the weight of the water contained in a tree this time of year should be about 1.6 times the weight of its dry matter.

Hendrix’s company has contracted with the Bureau of Land Management for this project. Grayback, one of dozens of forestry contractors in Southern Oregon, can employ over 200 workers for springtime fuels reduction and wildfire fighting in the summer.

He said that firefighting season isn’t too far away.

“It is starting earlier. If we wouldn’t have got this last rain, they could be calling fire season now,” Hendrix said.

Fuels reduction projects are prioritized in areas near homes such as this trail system, said Bureau of Land Management public affairs officer Kyle Sullivan.

“We don’t have all of the funding in the world to treat every acre every year,” he said. “Southwest Oregon has 22 out of the top 50 communities most at risk for wildland fire. And so we need to be strategic about where we’re doing our fuels reduction treatments.”

The homeowners near this trail system are members of the Firewise USA program. The initiative from the National Fire Protection Association brings residents together to mitigate fire risks on their properties.

“There’s a lot of people here in Southern Oregon and throughout the nation that don’t really know their neighbor, and Firewise brings a community together,” said Josephine County Firewise coordinator Mike McLaughlin. “They develop an action plan for three years, and they focus on not only their individual homes but potentially maybe road structures coming in.”

Workers first treated this area in 2009. But forests require follow-up fuels reduction as vegetation regrows.

Cathedral Hills Trail System visitors should check for closures during the project.

Justin Higginbottom is a reporter with JPR. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

Thursday’s executive order from Gov. Tina Kotek left teachers, school board members and superintendents confused about how the sweeping prohibition on cutting instructional time would work, as the end of the school year approaches and as school districts prepare to finalize budgets for the upcoming year.

Since the governor’s announcement Thursday morning, a few things have changed or been clarified:

• This executive order will not change the school calendar for any district that has already cut school days for financial reasons.
• Currently, Oregon school districts can count up to 30 hours of professional development and up to 30 hours of parent/teacher conferences as instructional time. Kotek’s order initially appeared to end that practice immediately. But that change will go through a more extensive regulatory process first, and will include opportunities for public engagement to the Oregon State Board of Education.

School communities across the state may appreciate the more careful look at how to factor in the time teachers spend receiving professional development or conducting parent-teacher conferences.

But Oregon’s education system is made up of over 200 school districts and education service districts. And in a state with strong local authority over education decisions, there are differences in both how much instructional time students get and how they will respond to this news. Here’s what we know right now.

The state doesn’t really know how many districts have cut days

After OPB reported last month on furlough days in four Oregon school districts, we learned of two other districts with furlough days on the calendar. In addition to Portland, Reynolds, St. Helens and West Linn-Wilsonville, the Canby School District has five furlough days this year and Gladstone has six.

When asked how many districts have cut instructional time this year, Gov. Kotek said at least a half dozen. The Oregon Department of Education does not collect this data. When OPB asked the Oregon Education Association (whose local unions often have to reach contract agreements with their districts to allow furlough days), their list was incomplete.

One thing Kotek’s executive order does is require ODE to report annually, district by district, how much instructional team students receive.

There are inequities among districts in instructional time and how they fill funding gaps

It might be obvious, but the school year doesn’t look the same in every district across Oregon. But the reasons vary.

Take Lake Oswego. Kate Lupton, who appeared at Kotek’s press conference announcing the executive order, has two kids in the school system there. Through a Lake Oswego levy that’s been renewed since 2000, Lupton said the district has avoided cutting school days to save money. She also credited Lake Oswego’s executive team with being good stewards of the district’s funds.

“We are able to keep everything the same,” she said. “It’s complicated, because not every district has that.”

She’s right. Almost every election, there are school districts that are unable to pass a levy.

But the number of instructional hours Lake Oswego students have is on average lower than others in the metro area. That’s according to Sarah Pope, executive director of Stand For Children. Her organization commissioned a report from ECOnorthwest to study instructional time district by district.

“It’s been great they haven’t had to reduce instructional time this year … they are on average lower than other districts in the metro area,” Pope said.

The ECOnorthwest district-by-district data is not available publicly yet. But Pope said the variability is “very extreme.” An analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive found wide variation of schools in the Portland area.

“We have regions in every quadrant of our state that are high and are low,” Pope said.

“And I think the question that we need to ask ourselves is, ‘How is that possible when we have supposedly equalized funding?’”

Some districts are taking Lake Oswego’s approach. Newberg School District is asking voters to pass a levy next month. According to the filing documents, Newberg projects a $4.5 million funding gap for next school year. They don’t have the reserves to cover it. They include five school days as a possible consequence of the funding gap. But should voters approve a levy, it would provide an estimated $6 million a year and ensure a full academic school year, the district wrote.

Riverdale, like Lake Oswego, has been going to voters for local funding since 2000. This May, the levy is up again.

“If approved, this measure would provide additional funding to support Riverdale’s instructional programs, staffing, and general operations,” district officials shared in their filing document. “If not approved, the District would need to reduce it’s 2026-27 budget by more than $1,000,000, the estimated equivalent of cutting seven teachers or 23 school days.”

Kotek says emergency funds is not an option

When Oregon legislators met in a short session earlier this year, they kept education funding at the same level they had set a year ago, at the beginning of the biennium. But the advocacy of school leaders, staff and parents for Oregon to tap into its Education Stability Fund for schools was not successful.

Kotek reiterated that during her press conference.

“I know there’s a call for tapping into the Education Stability Fund,” Kotek said. “That would take legislative leadership and decision to do that. I’m not hearing that from our legislators.”

Kotek said districts need to figure out their budgets without that additional money, and without cutting instructional time.

“When you tap into those funds, they would be distributed across all school districts,” Kotek said. “Not every school district is having similar budgetary challenges.”

Districts are still confused - and in trouble

As district leaders plan to present their budgets for next school year, confusion about Kotek’s executive order remains. In the Reynolds School District, where leaders are facing a $20 million deficit, district officials have already announced plans for cuts across the board.

“We are well beyond trimming the excess and belt tightening,” Reynolds superintendent Frank Caropelo told OPB. “These reductions will erode support and program options for students.”

To balance the budget for the current school year, the district implemented six furlough days, which save a total of approximately $5.3 million. The district has not made a decision for next year, though Caropelo said the district planned to return to a full school year.

The wording in the order about how districts should account for furlough days taken this year and next is confusing, and allows for two different interpretations based on two different parts of the executive order.

One part says districts need to “submit a plan to ODE detailing how the district will restore student instructional time to no less than 2024-25 levels no later than the beginning of the 2027-28 school year.” According to the Governor’s office, that means school districts need to return to a full school year by fall 2027.

But on the next page there’s a requirement titled “Restoration of Previously Reduced Student Instructional Time” that pushes districts to do more. It asks districts to present a plan “ensuring the full restoration of student instructional time.”

Caropelo said the district is figuring out how to pay for adding back the lost days.

“We are still evaluating the potential impacts of the Executive Order and options for compliance,” he wrote. “Adding the furlough days taken in 25-26 as six extra days of instruction during the 26-27 school year would require approximately $3.6 million in new funding or additional reductions from our proposed budget.”

Without the option of furlough days, and without more funding from the state, districts have difficult choices to make.

In a letter to the Oregon State Board of Education, Northwest Regional Education Service District Superintendent Dan Goldman shared information he said “may be helpful in understanding the implications of this policy”. In addition to sharing research about the importance of high-quality instruction, Goldman outlined the costs of that instruction compared to more time in the classroom.

“Extending the school year statewide would take a significant financial investment,” Goldman shared. “The estimate I have heard is approximately $50 million per day.”

Newly released court documents detail federal officers’ first-hand accounts of protest activity and what led them to use force outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland over the summer and fall.

The redacted accounts are part of records released Thursday by the U.S. Justice Department after a coalition of news organizations, including Oregon Public Broadcasting, filed a motion to unseal court documents from the federal government related to President Trump’s attempt to deploy the National Guard in Portland last year.

Between June and September, Homeland Security officers in Portland used crowd control weapons on more than a dozen occasions while responding to protests near the ICE facility, OPB found when reviewing the documents. The records consist largely of incident reports from the Federal Protective Service, one of the lead Department of Homeland Security agencies stationed at the facility.

Intermittent demonstrations outside the ICE facility have continued since June. In recent months, uses of force by federal officers has been the subject of two separate lawsuits that both resulted in judges issuing injunctions limiting officers’ use of munitions. Both cases are currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

The documents contain the most detailed insights yet into the mindsets of the federal officers deployed at the frequent protests. A federal judge, who reviewed the sealed accounts, found the protests were largely peaceful and did not require military intervention. A federal judge also found that Homeland Security officers had an unwritten policy to use excessive force on nonviolent protesters to chill constitutional rights.

Portland immigration operation spanned months, included 100 ICE agents

The incident reports largely focus on shouting and “snarling” protesters who kicked, bit and threw rocks.

“I detected and observed a large rock coming at a high rate of speed towards me,” one federal officer wrote in an incident report from July. “I was then struck by the rock and sustained an injury to my left shin.”

Other reports describe protesters throwing fireworks or glass bottles at federal officers. One officer reported firing pepperballs at a protester who kicked a “burning CS gas canister” at the officer.

“I shouted for him to ‘Stop!’ and fired multiple 2-3 round bursts at his body,” the officer wrote in an incident report. “I observed my balls impacting his stomach and back as he moved, and he retreated back into the crowd.”

The incident reports note at least one effort by federal officers to deescalate a situation with protesters by returning inside the Portland ICE facility. Other documents describe arrests by federal officers, including a person who was arrested after shooting two fireworks that exploded against the ICE building. At one point, an FPS inspector “deployed pepper spray to move two subjects away from officers.” While the protesters weren’t hit by the spray, “most of the officers felt the effects of its use.”

OPB joined with The Oregonian, The Associated Press and a coalition of news organizations in ongoing litigation over the sealed documents.

Federal officers’ tear gas tactics in Portland head to appeals court

They represent only a small portion of all the records connected to the Trump administration’s efforts to deploy the military to American cities. While detailing numerous confrontations between protesters and federal officers, the reports also show that in the week before Trump called the National Guard into the city, federal officers reported a number of peaceful protests.

Trump announced on Sept. 27 he was attempting to send the military to Portland. That same day, his administration launched an unprecedented immigration enforcement campaign, “Operation Black Rose,” that resulted in more than 1,100 arrests from across the region.

The City of Portland along with the states of Oregon and California successfully sued to block the National Guard troop deployment.

After a three-day trial in late October, U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut concluded, “the President did not have a lawful basis to federalize the National Guard.”

Immergut, who Trump appointed to the federal bench during his first term, noted in her 106-page ruling there was some violence, but “the protests outside the Portland ICE facility have been predominately peaceful, with only isolated and sporadic instances of relatively low-level violence, largely between protesters and counter-protesters.”

Trump announced in December that he would abandon his efforts to deploy the National Guard after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the administration in a similar case in Illinois. Speaking to reporters in early January, he said they may return to Portland “at the appropriate time.”

At the same time, federal officers still assigned to the ICE facility have come under scrutiny for excessive force and widespread use of crowd control weapons as protests have continued in 2026. Two federal judges in Oregon drastically curbed officers’ use of those munitions before a federal appeals court stepped in. The Ninth Circuit paused those orders as it considers their legality. The court’s decision is pending.

OPB’s Troy Brynelson and Michelle Wiley contributed to this report.

The number of immigrants who have died while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody has reached an all-time high this fiscal year.

Twenty-nine people have died in ICE custody since October, the start of the federal government’s fiscal year, already surpassing 2004’s toll of 28, the previous record, according to government data.

The most recent death was of 27-year-old Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, a Cuban man held in ICE custody in Miami, Florida. According to an initial report released by ICE on the evening of April 16, Carbonell-Betancourt was found unresponsive in his cell on the morning of April 12. The report lists the cause of death as a “presumed suicide,” but the official cause remains under investigation.

The report said Carbonell-Betancourt entered the United States in 2024 without valid documents and later released into the U.S. via a program known as parole, which allows noncitizens to enter the country without a formal visa, often for humanitarian reasons.

He was arrested for resisting an officer with violence in 2025, and then transferred into ICE custody earlier this year, according to the ICE release.

The rise in deaths comes as detention numbers have skyrocketed during the Trump administration. Detentions are up more than 70% under President Trump compared to the first year of the Biden administration. The Trump administration has carried out an unprecedented crackdown on immigration. Immigration officers have arrested and detained criminals in the country illegally, as well as many people without a criminal record and some migrants who are in the country with temporary protections from deportation.

There are about 60,000 people currently in immigration detention.

In a statement to NPR, DHS denied there’s been a spike in deaths and attributed the increase to the large number of people in detention. DHS said as of April 16, “death rates in custody under the Trump administration are 0.009% of the detained population.”

The agency added that ICE provides migrants with access to medical care.

“For many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives,” the statement said. The statement went on to encourage detainees to self-deport. “Being in detention is a choice. We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App,” the statement said.

During a congressional hearing also on Thursday, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said there are a high number of deaths this fiscal year “because we do have the highest amount in detention that ICE has ever had since its inception in 2003.” Lyons added that the agency spent “almost half a billion dollars last fiscal year … to ensure that people have proper care.”

He reiterated details noted by other DHS officials: that detainees get a complete physical within 14 days and are seen by a medical professional within 24 hours of being admitted.

“No death is what we want. We don’t want anyone to die in custody,” Lyons, who handed in his resignation hours after testifying, said. “I hope that’s a policy of anyone that has to be tasked with detaining someone.”

Facilities in Texas and California are the deadliest

Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, Calif., and Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas have each reported the deaths of three detainees, the most out of ICE’s sprawling detention operation.

According to ICE’s initial reports, the deaths of the six immigrant detainees were attributed to a number of causes, including suicide, alcohol withdrawal, liver failure and kidney failure. Other detainees displayed symptoms like shortness of breath.

One of the deaths at Camp East Montana was ruled a homicide by the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Initially, DHS said that Geraldo Lunas Campos had died in Camp East Montana after experiencing “medical distress.” It also claimed Lunas Campos had become “disruptive while in line for medication” and was placed in segregation. But later, the El Paso Medical Examiner’s Office ruled his death a homicide due to “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.” The FBI is now investigating the death.Chris Benoit, an attorney representing the family, told NPR Lunas Campos came to the U.S. in the mid-1990s as part of a wave of Cubans immigrants during the balsero crisis after the fall of the Soviet Union.

“For all sense and purposes he is an American,” Benoit said. “He’s lived here for decades and raised his family here and his kids love him and miss him.”

According to DHS, Lunas Campos had been convicted of multiple crimes, including petty larceny, unlawful possession of a weapon during a robbery, and sexual contact with a child under 11.

In a court petition seeking eyewitness testimony, Lunas Campos’ three children said they planned to file a wrongful death lawsuit.

Rahul Mukherjee contributed to this report.

Under an executive order issued Thursday, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek wants to stop that.

“We simply cannot backslide on the instructional hours we have,” Kotek said at a press conference announcing the order Thursday morning.

“We don’t have enough of them, and we certainly can’t go backwards.”

Kotek’s order outlines several steps to keep school years intact, even as administrators and school board members face rising costs, insufficient revenue and limited options to balance the budget.

School districts including Portland and Reynolds voted earlier this year to shorten their school years to deal with mid-year budget cuts.

“I know some districts are going to say, ‘You’re asking us to do things we can’t afford,’” Kotek said. “We can’t afford not to stop losing instructional hours.”

“The clear lead to our districts today is we can’t cut any more hours, we have to come up with better solutions within the existing budgets we have.”

Joining Kotek at the press conference was Sarah Pope, executive director for education advocacy group Stand For Children, and Kate Lupton, a Lake Oswego parent of three and graduate of Salem-Keizer Public Schools.

Pope shared data her organization commissioned through the economic consulting firm ECOnorthwest. The report found glaring variability in how much time students spend in schools, district by district.

“Students in the lowest-time districts can receive three fewer school years than those in the highest-time districts,” Pope shared.

Years ago, Lupton spent time as a public school teacher in Baltimore, Maryland. There, she saw differences. For instance, she couldn’t go home for Thanksgiving because she had to work the first few days of that week. In her children’s school district, students have the whole week off.

Kotek, Pope, and Lupton all said Thursday’s order is just the beginning of an effort to change Oregon’s short school year.

“That is something we can fix, that is something we can reach for,” Lupton said. “With this executive order, we have the opportunity to take that first step towards 180 instructional days for all public school students, and we can stop reducing our already-short school year.”

The governor’s order prohibits the Oregon Department of Education from issuing “waivers” of instructional time requirements — which ODE has routinely approved over the years when school districts in difficult financial situations have requested them.

For the 2024-2025 school year, the last year for which ODE has school year district reports, four school districts reported not meeting instructional time requirements: Portland Public Schools, David Douglas School District, Falls City School District and Greater Albany Public Schools. Portland and Greater Albany did not meet requirements due to teacher strikes; David Douglas fell short due to weather-related closures, and Falls City due to furlough days.

Kotek is calling on school districts that have already approved instructional-time reductions below minimum requirements to restore the time by the start of the 2027-28 school year.

Kotek’s order also seeks two broader changes to instructional time guidelines. One would no longer count certain uses of time as “instruction.” Under current state regulations, schools can include “non-classroom activities” as instructional time, including time teachers spend receiving professional development and meetings they have with parents. The order spurs the State Board of Education to “immediately prioritize policies that prevent any further reductions in student instructional time due to budget or operational pressures.”

Order raises questions, evolves at state board meeting

The Oregon State Board of Education already had a packed agenda ahead of Thursday’s executive order, including a first reading of the new statewide performance targets for attendance, test scores and graduation rates.

Kotek’s executive order drew a strong reaction as the board was tasked with creating rules to implement the order.

“We’ve made this choice as a state to have lower instructional hours. We’ve allowed, as a state, for districts to count this,” said Becky Tymchuk, school board advisor to the state board.

“How in the last week did this become an emergency?”

“When we look at where we are per the rankings we’ve discussed and all the hard work districts are doing, we need to pull each and every lever we can to start moving the needle,” said ODE director Charlene Williams, responding to Tymchuk.

Tymchuk’s questions were answered with more questions from her fellow board members.

“School districts have been sounding the alarm for a very long time, with little action from the legislature,” said state board vice chair Shimiko Montgomery, sharing a concern that this order will lead to more staff layoffs.

“What are the levers for us, as a state board, to reduce the harm this will cause? And if we pass this, how exactly will ODE be helping local districts who are out of options without increasing funding?”

Echoing Montgomery’s concerns was the State Board of Education member who represents local superintendents — La Grande Superintendent George Mendoza.

“Implementing this executive order will create more challenges than solutions without the resources,” Mendoza said.

Mid-meeting, there were updates made to the state board’s temporary rules codifying the order, with two contentious parts of Kotek’s order crossed out — for now. The crossed-out sections relate to outside-of-classroom time that school districts have been able to count toward instructional time requirements.

Kotek wants to prohibit school districts from what’s been an accepted practice of using up to 30 hours of teacher professional development and 30 hours of parent-teacher conferences as part of a district’s calculation of instructional time. ODE Deputy Director of Academics Candice Castillo said those rules will be a part of the “regular engagement” process, similar to how permanent rules come to the board.

The state board approved rules codifying the other parts of Kotek’s executive order, including a requirement for ODE to track and publish every district’s instructional time annually.

After more questions and comments, the board approved rules, but not before Tymchuk spoke again about a lack of strategy in Oregon’s education policy.

“Educational policy in this state needs to be a much bigger vision, it needs to be urgent, it needs to be well thought-out,” Tymchuk said.

“We are putting together a patchwork quilt, and to be putting together educational policies through emergency orders ... I absolutely, as a school board member, agree with the result. I do not agree with the methodology.”

Tymchuk said the state needs to work more collaboratively at state and local levels to improve educational outcomes and be more transparent.

“If we really want to make a difference ... we have to be smarter, we have to do this better,“ Tymchuk said.

Responding to the order Thursday, the members of the Portland Public Schools board sent a letter to the state board with concerns. In the letter, the board mentioned the four furlough days that PPS teachers are taking to prevent laying off 200 teachers.

“Mandating the recovery of lost instructional time without new funding will necessitate even deeper cuts to essential student services like access to mental and behavioral health care — and the dedicated staff that provide them,” the board members wrote.

Teachers union, administrators group push back on order

The executive order appears to have taken some leading education organizations by surprise, including the powerful statewide teachers union. The president of the Oregon Education Association, Enrique Farrera, said the union agrees with the goal of increasing instructional time for students. But he argued in a statement that the governor’s order is the wrong approach.

“Instructional time is what public schools are all about,” Farrera said. “OEA members are asking for more time; leaders are just not funding it.”

School funding is largely set by the Oregon Legislature. School superintendents propose spending plans, with the approval of local school boards, based on state funding levels. Local budget decisions are often approved in the preceding spring for the coming school year. Making mid-year budget cuts, as some school districts have done this year, is unusual — and school leaders often have few options about how to make them.

“We are alarmed that Governor Kotek, and the State Board under her direction, are ramming through a major policy decision this late in the school year, with no resources to support it and no public process to speak of,” Farrera said. “OEA is currently evaluating the language in the executive order, as are many of our partners. If needed, we will use any tool we have to challenge this order.”

Kotek’s order also raised concerns with the statewide organization that represents school executives. The Coalition of Oregon School Administrators pointed out that 85% of school spending goes into people and that the time educators spend in classrooms is part of collective bargaining agreements. As a result, changes to instructional time will have implications for funding and employee contracts.

In a statement in response to the executive order, COSA saw an “opportunity to work together”.

“The Governor’s Executive Order introduces an additional challenge for districts already navigating declining enrollment, rising [public employee retirement] obligations, increasing operational costs, and the financial pressures facing educators themselves,” COSA executive director Krista Parent said in a statement released Thursday. “While we share the goal of protecting and expanding instructional time, we believe that a mandated approach at this moment is unlikely to produce the meaningful, sustainable change Oregon students deserve.”

Health officials in Oregon are concerned they may not be able to contain a small but growing measles outbreak, and on Friday they asked for the public’s help in turning the tide.

In one sign of the mounting outbreak, Oregon recently saw its first hospitalization due to the measles, state epidemiologist Dr. Dean Sidelinger reported. The hospitalized person has been discharged and is recovering, Sidelinger said in a press conference Friday.

Saying the situation is growing more urgent, he urged parents who are on the fence about the measles vaccine to talk to their child’s health care provider about it.

Oregon has counted 20 known cases of measles so far this year, although state officials have repeatedly said they believe there are far more cases in Oregon going unreported. Sidelinger said there are mounting signs that transmission of the virus is becoming more widespread in Multnomah and Clackamas counties.

Just this week, the Oregon Health Authority announced that a middle school, a community college and an urgent care were all sites of potential measles exposures.

Measles cases in Oregon are ticking up. Here’s what you need to know

On April 11, public health officials identified Oregon’s first outbreak this year that involved more than a single household, involving measles cases in Multnomah and Clackamas counties. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines an outbreak as three or more linked cases.

The risk to the majority of the public is low because a large majority of Oregonians have been vaccinated against measles. A single dose of the shot provides strong prevention against infection, and that protection lasts throughout a person’s lifetime with little waning of immunity.

Sidelinger said he believes a major driver of transmission in Oregon is people who have the virus, aren’t stick enough to seek medical care, and go on to spread it to other unvaccinated people.

When people with measles are seen by a doctor or get a lab test, medical providers are required to report those cases directly to public health officials, so they can help identify anyone else who might have been exposed. If the virus is spread by people who do not seek medical care, there is little opportunity for public health to intervene.

Protecting the unvaccinated

Measles is among the most contagious respiratory diseases in the world.

Unvaccinated pregnant people, unvaccinated people with a weakened immune system, and infants under 12 months old are at higher risk of catching measles if they are exposed, and also of getting a more serious infection.

Families that have conclusively decided not to vaccinate can help limit the spread of measles by quarantining themselves if they get sick, and by wearing a mask and calling ahead if they go to urgent care or a hospital.

“We do rely on cooperation from others and, and people to take some simple steps to protect their family and loved ones,” Sidelinger said.

There is no specific antiviral treatment that can cure measles, though doctors can provide supportive care to keep patients hydrated and address symptoms like a fever.

Measles has reached a Portland school. Here’s why health officials think they can stop it

It can be serious in children under five years old. As many as one in every 20 children who gets measles develops pneumonia. In rarer cases, it can cause life-threatening swelling in the brain.

“Prevention is absolutely critical,” said Dr. Dawn Nolt, a professor of pediatrics at OHSU.

The United States has decades of experience with measles and a highly effective vaccine that doesn’t require regular boosters.

“If we can get one shot in everyone, we stop this in its tracks,” Nolt said.

Sidelinger said he is particularly concerned that an unvaccinated person or people have brought measles into two schools this week.

Because measles spreads quickly to people who have not been vaccinated, those exposures rapidly expanded the pool of unvaccinated students who could contract the disease and then go on to unwittingly spread it to other classmates and staff. Per state policy, any unvaccinated student or staff person who is exposed to measles is excluded from school for several weeks — and that can add up for children exposed more than once.

“It risks bringing to a halt the whole reason these students are at schools learning, academic achievement, social connection,” Sidelinger said.

Measles cases in Oregon are ticking up. Here’s what you need to know

In South Carolina, the state with the largest outbreak so far in the United States, the vast majority of measles cases have been reported in children. Schools have been one major hub of transmission and some unvaccinated students have had to quarantine themselves repeatedly during that extended outbreak.

In Oregon, about 6% of kindergarteners have a non-medical exemption allowing them to opt out of the first dose of the two-dose measles vaccine, which is otherwise required for school attendance. That amounts to more than 10,000 children in the state without protection against the virus.

Measles was declared eradicated in the United States in 2000. But waning vaccination rates have allowed the virus to gain a foothold again. In 2025, the United States reported more than 2,000 cases of measles, and diagnoses are on track to far exceed that number this year.

Oregon voters passed Measure 110 in 2020. The goal was to decriminalize small amounts of street drugs and move users into treatment.

That goal was ultimately not realized, and in 2024, the legislature changed the drug laws. They implemented a new program: it let counties set up deflection programs to direct people facing misdemeanor possession charges away from the criminal justice system and into treatment.

Most counties set up these deflection programs, and some, like Washington County, kicked off their program as early as they could: Sept. 1, 2024.

Now, a new report is out that details how many people in the county went through the deflection program, or otherwise received treatment and social services to support their sobriety.

We’re joined by Danielle Far, the senior program coordinator of Washington County’s deflection program.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

You might have seen recently that a federal judge blocked President Trump’s May 2025 executive order barring federal funding for NPR and PBS, saying the move violated their First Amendment rights.

Some of you saw the news and asked me: Are you getting your funding back? The answer is no. The ruling does not change the action Congress took in July 2025 to rescind funding for the entire public media system, including OPB.

The ruling does support the First Amendment rights of the press, including public media organizations, and says that the order overstepped the bounds of the executive branch.

Even though this ruling doesn’t restore funding, we’re in a strong position thanks to your support. Your incredible outpouring of generosity closed our first year’s funding gap. With you and now over 173,000 in the OPB member community standing with us, OPB is thinking big as we serve people all across our region.

Becoming a More Rooted Presence Across Our Region

As I shared in my update in February, the journalism ecosystem in our region is in trouble, with the problems especially acute in rural areas. In response, OPB is putting down roots in more communities.

I’m pleased to share that we are now recruiting another reporter in Eastern Oregon, and a second reporter in our Southwest Washington bureau. We also hope to add another reporter on the Oregon Coast in the coming months. Keep an eye out for fresh reporting across the Northwest as new talented people fill these positions soon.

Connect With All Things OPB Through Our First LookNewsletter

If you already receive OPB’s First Look email newsletter, you may have noticed that it got a spring makeover. If you don’t currently receive First Look, I strongly encourage you to sign up now!

Our daily newsletter now features a clean new design to improve the reading experience and better highlight the stories, events, and documentaries that OPB is working on. And with your generous support, we continue to grow our team and our output—so there will continue to be more to enjoy over time.

You Help Create Award-Winning Stories That Make a Difference

Just last week, I was overjoyed to see our team’s hard work commended on the national stage. Monica Samayoa and Tony Schick were awarded a national Goldsmith Prize for Explanatory Reporting for their work on the series "Power Struggle: What Stalled the Northwest’s Push for Green Energy." Produced in partnership with ProPublica, the series documents key obstacles to renewable energy growth in the Pacific Northwest—and how states like Texas are performing well ahead of Oregon and Washington.

Spurred by OPB’s reporting, by the end of last year Oregon and Washington leaders were pursuing many of the solutions outlined in the stories.

The Goldsmith Prize is awarded by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and the selection committee unanimously selected this series as the winner from among 85 entries.

Earlier this month, OPB also received a record 32 nominations in the NW Emmy Awards. These nominations cover work across our organization: our education team’s capstone “Class of 2025” documentary, Oregon Field Guide‘s groundbreaking special on Indigenous youth paddling the newly undammed lower Klamath River, an Oregon Art Beat story on Black rodeo culture, and many more wonderful works across our teams.

Thank you for standing with OPB!

With gratitude,

— Rachel Smolkin, President and CEO of Oregon Public Broadcasting

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

The Fertile Ground Festival of new plays in development has become a staple of the Portland theatre scene since it first began in 2009.

This year’s festival has expanded to 17 days, the longest festival yet, to take in the 80-some different productions that run through April 26.

We talk with the festival director, Tamara Carroll, and Kristin Tehran, who helped create “When I Was a Mexican: A Bollywood Musical.”

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

These rate hikes are on top of others in recent years — since 2020, PGE’s residential rates have gone up nearly 60%.

Usually, rate increases arise in November, but due to the Fairness & Affordability in Residential Energy Act, passed last year, utilities can no longer increase rates during the winter months, when utility costs are often at their peak.

However, this April rate hike has hit at another challenging time for consumers, with gas prices in Oregon soaring due to the war in Iran.

We’ll hear details about these increases from Kristen Sheeran, the Vice President of Policy and Sustainability for PGE, and Bob Jenks, the executive director of the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

Months before a high-profile group appointed by Gov. Tina Kotek is due to release recommendations for juicing Oregon’s sluggish economy, disagreements are spilling into the open.

Two labor-affiliated members of the 16-member Oregon Prosperity Council issued a report Tuesday evening, calling out what they said was a “low road” to economic growth they expect the council’s business-oriented majority to take.

“The Prosperity Council is at a crossroads: it must choose between taking the high or low road to improved prosperity,” the two council members, Robert Camarillo of the Oregon State Building Trades Council and Alice Dale, a consultant for the Service Employees International Union, wrote. “We choose the high road.”

The paper amounts to a retort to Oregon business groups that are making a hard push for a shakeup. A recent survey asking businesses for suggestions for improving the state business climate turned up bitter criticisms about overregulation and unwieldy taxes.

Meanwhile, some in the business world are pointing to a paper of their own. A newly released study from researchers at Reed College, Yale University and the University of New Hampshire found that a 2020 tax on high earners that funds free preschool in Multnomah County likely led wealthy people to move elsewhere.

The competing messages come at a notable time. As she launched her reelection bid last fall, Kotek said she’d grown concerned over negative economic indicators that have bedeviled the state: sluggish economic growth, rising unemployment, and signs that Oregon businesses are increasingly looking elsewhere when they plan expansions.

Mass layoffs at Intel and Nike, two of the state’s largest employers, helped pave the way for Oregon to lose more than 18,000 jobs than it gained in 2025. It was the only West Coast state to shed jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Kotek convened the Prosperity Council in January, with direction to send her policy recommendations that would help shift that direction. The group is expected to deliver prescriptions by June 30, and lobbying over what the list will include, and how it will be received by policymakers, is in full swing.

The 17-page paper released by labor affiliates Tuesday — authored with help from a suite of progressive policy advocates and a Portland economist — argues that targeted tax breaks that are a bedrock of conventional plans to boost business activity will only harm the state.

In fact, the paper says, Oregon’s economic picture is sunnier than commonly depicted by business groups and news stories.

That argument relies in part on ratings by the Brookings Institution, which puts Portland in the middle of the pack of top metro areas when it comes to economic growth from 2014-24. The organization also rates Portland in the top 10 in terms of income and wealth growth. Notably, the decade Brookings uses to make those comparisons includes a period of surging pre-pandemic growth in the city.

The paper also argues that increasing worries about businesses fleeing the state are overblown, citing a 2023 study that concluded more businesses moved into Oregon than left in 2021. In the last year, concerns that Portland — a major economic driver in the state — could be entering a self-perpetuating “doom loop” has become a top argument for business groups.

“The ‘doom loop’ narrative, widely embraced by the business community, fails to stand up to the economic data,” the report says. It adds: “Just like any smart CEO, Oregon should pursue a strategy of its own and ignore the low road of doing everything other states do, just more cheaply.”

The paper concludes Oregon’s best bet for improving its economy is not through tax breaks many progressives oppose. Instead, it’s through boosting funding for K-12 schools, higher education and apprenticeships. The paper also calls for regulating artificial intelligence, weeding out underperforming business tax breaks and resisting attempts to reduce taxes on the wealthy.

The document’s authors take special issue with one of Kotek’s top goals in her prosperity effort: rocketing Oregon up business friendliness rankings put together by CNBC, the cable business news channel. The Beaver State currently sits at 39th overall. Kotek has said her goal is to get it into the top 10, an aim Camarillo and Dale view as misguided.

“Business climate rankings are negatively correlated with income levels, with high wage innovation-based industries, and quality of life,” the paper said. “In effect, business climate measures treat a bad climate for workers as a good climate for business.”

Joe Cortright, an economist who helped prepare the paper, acknowledged Thursday that the state’s economy had slowed. In his view, that’s a symptom of Oregon more quickly feeling a slowdown in the national economy — not an argument for wholesale change.

“It’s like, yeah you caught a cold, that doesn’t mean something is fundamentally wrong with your health,” Cortright said. “You caught a cold when it was winter.”

The relatively sanguine view of the state’s economy offered in the paper is a sharp contrast to the outlook of people like John Tapogna, executive director of the Oregon Business Council.

Last year, Tapogna, an economist, captured the attention of top policy makers with a presentation that argued the fundamentals of Oregon’s economy had shifted. The state can no longer count on seeing its fortunes surge when economic times are good, he argued. A retrenchment is necessary.

“We know where we stand at the moment, but what’s coming at us for the next 25 years?” Tapogna said Wednesday. “Are we in a strong position to be able to navigate it?” (Editor’s note: Tapogna is chair of OPB’s board of directors.)

While Cortright and others are wary that Kotek’s Prosperity Council will recommend wholesale tax changes, the group has offered no outward indication of what its suggestions will be. According to a press release, a council meeting in Pendleton this week discussed the results of the recent online survey — and tax changes.

“The Council is moving with urgency to turn what we’ve heard from Oregonians into actionable recommendations that will make a difference,” Kotek said in a statement Thursday.

One subject certain to come up for the group is the new study looking at the impacts of Multnomah County’s Preschool for All, which funds free preschool for children in the county. The program is funded by an income tax that kicks in when single filers make more than $125,000 and joint filers make more than $200,000.

While the new study acknowledged that the 2020 tax coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, racial justice protests and other significant factors, it concluded that the Preschool For All tax likely had a role in spurring high earners to leave the county.

“All analyses point to sizable, statistically significant increases in out-migration from Multnomah after [Preschool for All], especially among households likely subject to the tax,” it said. “Substantial migration involved moving out of Oregon.”

The study suggested that the movement of high-income earners meant that taxpayers earning a combined $1.4 billion were no longer on the county tax rolls. Notably, it also found that increased out-migration due to the tax “may be dissipating.”

Multnomah County officials took issue with the study’s conclusions this week. The county’s tax return data shows that the number of people earning enough to pay the Preschool for All tax has increased in recent years.

“We believe the Reed study draws conclusions that are too strong based on the assumptions it relies on,” a county spokesperson, Matt McNally, told OPB.

The study was being circulated among Oregon civic leaders Wednesday morning and is likely to fuel debate over the program.

“Nobody up until this morning had issued a report that was persuasive that that had actually happened,” Tapogna said Wednesday. “This morning’s report, I think, was the one that really nailed it.”

Others were skeptical.

“For god’s sake, the tax took effect in the pandemic,” said Chuck Sheketoff, former director of the progressive Oregon Center for Public Policy, who worked with Camarillo and Dale on the white paper. “Of course they are going to find some effect.”

On the latest episode of “OPB Politics Now,” reporters Dirk VanderHart and Lauren Dake discuss how the candidates did, what they said to differentiate from one another and much more. Find the show anywhere you get your podcasts.

The four leading candidates for the GOP nomination for governor used their first debate on Thursday night to indict Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek for ruining the state’s education system, crushing the economy and poorly managing the forests.

It’s obvious it’s an election year, said state Sen. Christine Drazan, of Canby. Because Kotek “suddenly recognizes our economy is in the toilet,” noting Kotek’s recently-formed economic prosperity counsel.

The Republicans hit predictable themes – calling for more accountability in state agencies, slashing taxes, easing regulations and making Oregon more business-friendly.

“We haven’t had a governor with a business background in over 40 years,” said Chris Dudley. “And it shows.”

They mostly took aim at one-party Democratic control, and largely avoided taking aim at each other. Dudley, the former Portland Trail Blazer who lost to former Gov. John Kitzhaber in 2010 by a slim margin, hammered that he was an outsider who has an economic background.

“Salem’s problems will not be solved by someone from Salem,” Dudley said.

Drazan, who ran against Kotek in 2022 and lost in a rare three-way race, noted as a legislative leader she led the walkout to stop the environmental cap-and-trade policy and said she has continually stayed engaged to stop the “Democratic machine” that has driven Oregon to the bottom.

She said the only question facing Republican voters is who can beat Kotek and make her a one-term governor. “That is what matters right now. I am that candidate. I have the policy background. I have gone toe-to-toe with Tina Kotek. I have been in this fight and I have the scars to prove it.”

At one point in the debate, state Rep. Ed Diehl, of Scio, who was pivotal in the effort to collect signatures to put a gas tax increase on the ballot, said he believed he was the “only person on this stage who built a business from scratch.”

To which, the other candidate, Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell looked at him and said, “I mean, I’m literally on this stage sitting right next to you.” Bethell previously noted she owns a plumbing company.

All of the candidates spoke of easing environmental regulations and improving forest management.

“When a fire starts, put it out,” Diehl said, adding more fuels need to be eliminated in the forests as well.

The debate was moderated and civil and stayed largely focused on statewide themes - homelessness and housing, business and industry, the environment and forestry and public safety.

The federal government was rarely mentioned and nobody mentioned President Donald Trump.

Voters haven’t sent a Republican to Oregon’s governor mansion since the 1980s. Whoever makes it past this primary, will have to appeal to a more moderate electorate in the general election if they want a shot at living in Mahonia Hall.

The head of an Oregon-based disaster relief nonprofit that was founded after the destructive Labor Day wildfires in 2020 allegedly misspent donations on strip clubs, casino visits and other illicit expenses.

Marcus Brooks, the founder and director of Cascade Relief Team, based in the coastal town of Otis, allegedly siphoned $837,000 of donations to the nonprofit that were earmarked for victims of wildfires, floods and tornadoes in Oregon and Kentucky.

In a 24-page lawsuit filed Thursday, the Oregon Department of Justice claims Brooks set up the organization with a “disinterested board of directors” to reap donations — largely from Oregonians — and public contracts.

Those dollars paid Brooks’ salary and a slew of illegal expenses. The complaint alleges he spent $270,861 on credit cards and personal bills; $67,885 on rent, child support, liquor, jewelry, restaurants and entertainment; $116,133 in travel expenses without any “recognizable connection to disaster relief,” including stops at Disneyland and vacation rentals in Florida.

Brooks spent at least $6,000 at casinos, the complaint claims. The Oregon Department of the State Fire Marshal joined Rayfield in the suit.

An OPB reporter made multiple attempts to contact Brooks through two phone numbers associated with him and the nonprofit but received no response by press time.

Rayfield, in a statement, pledged to hold Brooks “accountable for every dollar he took.”

“Oregonians donated to this organization because they wanted to help their neighbors recover from wildfire and floods,” the attorney general wrote. “Instead, that money went into one man’s pocket.”

Investigators said Brooks formed Cascade Relief Team in the wake of the deadliest wildfire season in Oregon’s history. Around Labor Day weekend 2020, multiple fires roared to life across the state to torch more than a million acres combined.

Among the devastation, the Alameda Fire in southern Oregon razed more than 2,600 homes and a conflagration in the Santiam Canyon destroyed another 1,500 structures. Eleven people died during the fires.

Brooks “capitalized” on the devastation, investigators said, by forming a “sham” organization that was governed by board members who, ultimately, never attended any meetings or saw any financial records.

Donations poured in. The organization notched $48,000 in revenue in 2020 and another $941,587 in 2021, according to public filings required of nonprofit organizations.

Brooks, meanwhile, began a pattern of drying out bank accounts. Investigators said he opened several accounts at a time for donations, spent them into the red and ignored rising bank fees. Banks would close his accounts, only for Brooks to move on to another financial institution. Investigators said Brooks had opened and used about 26 different bank accounts.

Brooks’ organization also collected contract money through government agencies and disaster relief organizations. At one point, the Oregon Department of Human Services paid the organization $60 an hour to help disaster-struck Oregonians but did not renew the eight-month contract after developing “concerns” about the organization, according to the complaint.

Brooks also landed a $100,000 contract with the Oregon Department of the State Fire Marshal to clean up debris and help remove trees associated with multiple wildfires in the state. He ghosted the organization shortly after getting the grant, the complaint said, and never completed the work.

In November 2023, Brooks landed a $326,000 contract with the Red Cross to help tornado victims in Kentucky. That money was sent to an account with $17,000 in overdraft fees, leaving $309,000 remaining that Brooks never doled out to tornado victims, according to investigators.

Oregon Justice Department officials wrote in the complaint that they hoped to see Brooks ordered to repay the donations and pay the costs associated with the lawsuit and investigation. They also suggested that Brooks be permanently ban him from any fiduciary duties of a charity.

Just off Interstate 84 in inner Northeast Portland, a giant spinning loaf of bread sits atop one of the largest family-owned bakeries on the West Coast.

“We knew we were getting close when we could smell the bread,” laughed Kathleen Draper.

She was one of the many people at Portland’s Franz Bakery this week, celebrating the iconic bakery’s 120th anniversary with a block party.

Draper, who was born and raised in Portland, came with her 3-year-old grandson Crosby, “I can remember coming to Franz Bakery on field trips from school and just always enjoyed it, so we just thought it’d be really fun to bring him down here and let him experience this.”

As the smell of baking bread wafted over the crowds, people munched on gooey grilled cheese sandwiches, spun a prize wheel for some carb-themed merchandise and got tours of the iconic local bakery from Madeline Brockmyre.

“It is really cool to see how many adults are interested in the Franz history,” said Brockmyre, who is the tour guide and coordinator at Franz. “People who have been on tours when they were 7-years-old and now they’re 70-years-old.”

She said she’s even given tours to people whose parents’ or grandparents’ names are engraved in plaques inside the Franz bakery. “It’s just really heartfelt to see them be able to connect to that side of their family [and] have that experience.”

Many people at the birthday block party have memories of the bakery, including Ethan Webb: “My aunt had worked here since ’87, [so] my memory of Franz is the company picnics and just the smell and the nostalgia of baking bread everyday.”

Webb is the production manager at the Portland Franz Bakery, working his way up over the last 20 years.

“I started as a general laborer, I was in the wrapping and packaging department. After about a year, I learned the ovens, then I learned to mix,” he said. From there, he trained to be a supervisor, became a certified baker through the American Institute of Baking and, he said “the rest is history.”

Also in attendance was a foursome of millennial women, snapping selfies while in red hairnets donned before heading inside for a factory tour.

“We’re calling it mom’s field trip,” laughed Veronica Neely. “I think we all grew up on ‘I Love Lucy’ and the chocolate factory [scene] or the Sesame Street episode on how crayons are made, but no idea really what to expect.”

The Portland Franz location bakes up to a million hamburger buns per day, shipped out to grocery stores, restaurants and fast food chains like Wendy’s and Red Robin. But Lauren Rosenthal was most surprised by the journey that the buns make while still inside the facility.

“I was surprised to realize how many miles a bun travels in those machines, the amount of turns and ups and downs it goes,” she said. “And it’s not really in that much space.”

At any given point, nearly 17,000 buns can be traveling on the three-tiered “bun highway” that snakes throughout the facility, cooling hot-out-of-the-oven buns before they are packaged.

Tours of the bakery are full for the remainder of the season, but will start again in September.

The House on Friday voted by unanimous consent to extend a controversial surveillance program until April 30.

Earlier in the morning GOP leaders had pushed for either a five-year renewal or the 18-month renewal President Trump had demanded, but both votes tanked.

The stop-gap measure was pushed through and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was set to expire Monday, now heads to the Senate.

The tool allows U.S. intelligence agencies to intercept the electronic communications of foreign nationals located outside of the United States.

Like past reauthorizations, FISA 702’s renewal has sparked a protracted debate on Capitol Hill over if and how the tool should be modified.

Some of the nearly 350,000 targets whose communications are collected under FISA 702 authority are in touch with Americans, whose calls, texts and emails could end up in the trove of information available to the federal government for review.

For almost two decades, privacy-minded lawmakers from both parties have sought to reform the program to require specific court approval before federal law enforcement or intelligence agents are allowed to review an American’s information.

The intelligence community has argued that would inhibit the efficacy of the tool and endanger national security.

The fight over those changes — responsible for weeks of turmoil in the House — ultimately resulted in limited modifications that failed to satisfy privacy hawks.

If FISA 702 is allowed to lapse, intelligence collection could continue but would likely be subject to lawsuits from the technology and telecommunications communications who are compelled to provide the communications to the government.

President Donald Trump railed against a federal judge’s decision on Thursday that continues to block above-ground construction of a $400 million White House ballroom, allowing only below-ground work on a bunker and other “national security facilities” at the site.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s latest ruling comes in response to an appeals court’s instruction to clarify an earlier decision on the 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom planned for the site where it demolished the East Wing of the White House.

Trump on social media called Leon, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, a “Trump Hating” judge who “has gone out of his way to undermine National Security, and to make sure that this Great Gift to America gets delayed, or doesn’t get built.”

The administration filed a notice that it will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review Leon’s latest decision, too.

National Trust for Historic Preservation president and CEO Carol Quillen, whose group sued to challenge the project, said in a statement that the group is pleased with the court’s ruling.

Leon said that below-ground work on security measures is exempt from his order suspending above-ground construction. Government lawyers have argued that the project includes critical security features to guard against a range of possible threats, such as drones, ballistic missiles and biohazards.

Leon’s latest ruling comes several days after a three-judge panel from the D.C. appeals court instructed him to reconsider the possible national security implications of stopping construction.

In his previous order, Leon barred above-ground work on the ballroom from proceeding without congressional approval. The judge also ruled on March 31 that any construction work that’s necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House is exempt from the scope of the injunction. Leon said he reviewed material that the government privately submitted to him before concluding that halting construction wouldn’t jeopardize national security.

Leon had suspended his March 31 order for two weeks. He stayed his latest decision for another week, which gives the administration more time to seek Supreme Court review.

Leon said he is ordering a stop only to the above-ground construction of the planned ballroom, apart from any work needed to cover or secure that part of the project. Otherwise, the Trump administration is free to proceed with the construction of any excavations, bunkers, military installations, and medical facilities below the ballroom.

“Defendants argue that the entire ballroom construction project, from tip to tail, falls within the safety-and-security exception and therefore may proceed unabated,” the judge wrote. “That is neither a reasonable nor a correct reading of my Order!”

On Saturday, the appeals court panel said it didn’t have enough information to decide how much of the project can be suspended without jeopardizing the safety of the president, his family or the White House staff.

Leon said he recognizes the safety implications of the case, but stressed that “national security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity.” He also said he has “no desire or intention to be dragooned into the role of construction manager.”

On April 2, two days after Leon’s previous ruling, Trump’s ballroom won final approval from the 12-member National Capital Planning Commission, which is charged with approving construction on federal property in the Washington region.

The preservation group sued in December, a week after the White House finished demolishing the East Wing to make way for a ballroom that Trump said would fit 999 people. Trump says the project is funded by private donations, although public money is paying for the bunker construction and security upgrades.

Good morning, Northwest.

Four candidates vying for the Republican nomination in the race for Oregon governor took the stage last night for their first debate of the primary season.

OPB’s Lauren Dake reports from Hillsboro on what may have been a rare opportunity to see all of the candidates share the debate stage.

In other news, Oregon’s ambitious greenhouse gas reduction program faces a fresh legal challenge.

Don’t forget to submit your feedback on First Look’s new look before our survey closes.

Here’s your First Look at Friday’s news.

— Bradley W. Parks

Republican gubernatorial debate features barbs at Kotek, little daylight between candidates

The four leading Republicans in the race for Oregon governor used their first debate on Thursday night to indict Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek for ruining the state’s education system, crushing the economy and poorly managing the forests.

It’s obvious it’s an election year, said state Sen. Christine Drazan of Canby. Because Kotek “suddenly recognizes our economy is in the toilet,” noting the recently formed Prosperity Council.

The candidates hit predictable themes – calling for more accountability in state agencies, slashing taxes, easing regulations and making Oregon more business friendly.

“We haven’t had a governor with a business background in over 40 years,” said Chris Dudley, the nominee from 2010 and former Trail Blazer. “And it shows.”

They mostly took aim at one-party Democratic control and largely avoided jabbing at each other. (Lauren Dake)

Learn More

3 things to know

• Months before a high-profile group appointed by Gov. Tina Kotek is due to release recommendations for juicing Oregon’s sluggish economy, disagreements are spilling into the open. (Dirk VanderHart)
• Among other cuts, the Multnomah County chair seeks to close more than 600 homeless shelter beds to shrink a major funding gap. (Bryce Dole)
• More than two dozen groups are once again challenging Oregon’s authority to implement the Climate Protection Program. (Monica Samayoa)

Northwest headlines

• Oregon attorney general sues ‘sham’ disaster-relief nonprofit that spent thousands on casinos, strip clubs (Troy Brynelson)
• Gov. Kotek vetoes controversial bill overhauling Oregon public meetings law (Alex Zielinski)
• Portland’s Lloyd Center to permanently close on Aug. 8 ahead of demolition (Kyra Buckley and Lillian Karabaic)
• Medical examiner’s office confirms missing family found in Columbia River (OPB staff)
• Kotek order blocks Oregon school districts from cutting instruction time to patch budget holes (Elizabeth Miller and Rob Manning)
• Eugene school district considers renaming César Chávez Elementary School (Natalie Pate)

Listen in on OPB’s daily conversation

“Think Out Loud” airs at noon and 8 p.m. weekdays on OPB Radio, opb.org and the OPB News app. Today’s planned topics:

• First year of Washington County’s deflection program shows progress, areas to improve
• How charitable donation bins in Oregon, and around the US, can be deadly
• Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival of new plays offers audiences an enormous variety

Superabundant recipe: Greet Oregon strawberry season with this glorious tiramisu

Superabundant newsletter writer Heather Ardnt Anderson was planning an easy yet elegant alternative to classic strawberry shortcake for this week.

It was set to be a basic non-recipe recipe.

But then she smelled the perfectly ripe Albions at the fancy grocery store — the pulchritude! The olfactory poetry!

Ripe strawberries are transcendent, all at once offering sweetness, umami and bright acidity, like a slightly tropical rose with a hint of burnt sugar.

Her original idea was already edging toward tiramisu territory, so she figured she may as well just make a whole casserole pan of the stuff. (Heather Arndt Anderson)

Learn More

Subscribe to OPB’s First Look to receive Northwest news in your inbox six days a week.

Combatting bacterial and viral infections is getting tougher because of their growing resistance to drugs. Antibiotic drugs can no longer be counted on to conquer nasty bacteria. Antivirals don’t always overpower the viruses. This is a huge problem but it is one that widely acknowledged and researched.

There’s an additional medical challenge though, that matters a lot. Namely, drug-resistant fungi.

Yep, fungi.

It’s a topic that doesn’t get discussed much — and that worries Paul Verweij, professor of clinical mycology at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He says there’s a “silence surge” in drug-resistant fungi and that it’s mostly happening under-the-radar.

This is a particular challenge in lower-income countries.

“Look at, for instance, Candida auris [a type of yeast that can cause severe infections and is often drug-resistant] -- you need very, very strict infection control measures in hospitals, you need good diagnostics, good infection control, you have to follow-up with patients and that’s just not available in these lower- middle-income countries," he says. “People will die, and you won’t know they have a fungal infection. You wouldn’t know if it was resistant.”

Verweij teamed up with 50 scientists around the world – from Brazil to Nigeria to China — to call for action against drug‑resistant fungi in Nature Medicine this week.

NPR spoke with Verweij, who’s been working on this issue for more than 20 years. His interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the link between agriculture and drug-resistant fungi?

Fungicides are used to protect plants against fungal disease. Everything — watermelons, maize, wheat, flowers — use lots of fungicides. If we didn’t use the fungicides, you’d probably have a yield loss maybe of 30% or 40%.

The problem is that the fungicides are quite similar to the drugs we give to patients. So the fungus becomes resistant to the fungicide and, at the same time, our medical azoles [a class of antifungal drugs] do not work as well anymore.

The fungi which cause disease in humans are not causing disease in plants. So this is an unintended effect.

How does the resistance get from farms to hospitals?

So the molds – the hairy fungi – have spores which are released into the air. These spores travel long distances. It’s not really well-understood but the idea is that they go right up to these jet streams, very high into the atmosphere and then can travel for continents. We inhale the spores all the time.

How serious are fungal infections?

With fungi you have two types of infections. First, we have very severe infections, and they usually occur in [hospitalized] patients who have some kind of defect in their immunity. So, yeast found in the bloodstream or mold in the lungs. Second, we have infections of the skin, the hair and the nails, which are irritating but are not life threatening.

In the past 10 to 20 years, we see more and more resistance in fungi in both those categories.

There are very few studies looking at the clinical impact. We did a study in the Netherlands, and we found that if you compare an infection [where azole antifungal drugs work] and where it’s resistant. There’s about a 20% difference in mortality — you’re 20% more likely to die. So that’s a significant impact. And there’s the new skin disease [Trichophyton indotineae] where you don’t have mortality but we’ve had patients who have been on treatment for four years and are still suffering from the infection.

Why is it hard to create new antifungals?

The main challenge is that fungi, if you look at the cell structure — how they are built up — it’s very similar to the human cell. This is different from bacteria, because bacteria are much simpler. And viruses are even more simple because they don’t even have a cell.

For fungi, because they’re similar to human cells, it’s quite difficult to find a drug which kills the fungus but does not harm the human cell. So in the past 75 years, we have developed only five classes of antifungals. The azoles are, by far, the most important.

The problem is that if you can’t use one of these classes then maybe you’ll have one alternative left. It’s already causing problems. For instance, if the fungus is in the brain, you have a very few drugs which actually get into the brain.

What can be done?

At a mycology meeting we found a global community who wanted to collaborate [on this issue].

For example, you really want to know what people are using [on crops] and see if you can reduce that or if there’s any unnecessary use. Another important factor is: If you introduce new fungicides, they [should] undergo an assessment to see their impact on human fungal pathogens. It’s important to establish if there’s a risk for cross resistance.

Are you optimistic?

I’ve worked in this field for a long time, and I think that it is changing.

WHO published a fungal pathogen list in 2022 for the first time — that had a major impact. A decade ago, when the World Health Organization came out with its global action plan against antimicrobial resistance, fungi were only mentioned twice. Now, after 10 years, it is being revised. And as a mycology community, we feel it is really important now that fungi are addressed.

The problem is, in fungi, we need to do the basic stuff: Develop the tools. Do the surveillance. Set up the [laboratory] networks. And it’s sometimes difficult to get these basic things funded.

But overall, I think it’s really changing. People are realizing this is not a local problem — it’s really global.

President Trump says the U.S. naval blockade on ships accessing Iran will continue, despite an announcement Friday by the Iranian foreign minister that the Strait of Hormuz was open.

The conflicting announcements came in a flurry of social media messages Friday.

First, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz was “completely open” on a coordinated route previously indicated by Iran.

Trump initially acknowledged that in a short all-caps post. But then he followed with another message:

“THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE, BUT THE NAVAL BLOCKADE WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT AS IT PERTAINS TO IRAN, ONLY, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100% COMPLETE. THIS PROCESS SHOULD GO VERY QUICKLY IN THAT MOST OF THE POINTS ARE ALREADY NEGOTIATED,” Trump said.

This is a developing story that will be updated.

Here are further updates in the Middle East conflict:

World leaders on ceasefire | Lebanon reactions | Strait of Hormuz

World leaders urge restraint as an Israel-Lebanon ceasefire takes hold

President Trump hailed the ceasefire as a “historic day” for Lebanon, but urged Hezbollah to uphold the agreement.

“I hope Hezbollah acts nicely and well during this important period of time. It will be [a] GREAT moment for them if they do. No more killing. Must finally have PEACE!” Trump said in a post on social media.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the ceasefire could open the door to a broader agreement with Lebanon, but made clear Israel would not withdraw from what he described as an expanded 10-kilometer-deep security buffer zone in southern Lebanon. He also said any talks would hinge on Hezbollah’s disarmament.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Nawaf Salam, called the agreement a central Lebanese demand since the start of the war and said he hoped displaced residents would be able to return home soon.

Trump on Thursday also said he was inviting Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to the White House for peace talks.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he welcomed the ceasefire and urged all sides to respect it fully, adding he hoped it would lead to negotiations toward a long term solution.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who is credited for mediating the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, also welcomed the truce, calling it a step toward “sustainable peace” and reaffirmed his country’s support for Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, urged those displaced not to rush back to southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs until the situation becomes clearer. In a separate statement, the militant group said any ceasefire must apply across Lebanese territory and warned that any continued Israeli presence would leave Lebanon with the right to resist depending on how events unfold.

Hezbollah has both a political wing, with lawmakers in Lebanon’s national parliament, and militia that operates largely independently of the Lebanese government and receives funding and direction from Iran.

Lebanon’s government has pushed for a ceasefire before entering bigger diplomatic negotiations with Israel. Hezbollah opposes the talks.

Israel had agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon in 2024, but U.N. peacekeepers recorded more than 10,000 violations of that agreement, mostly by Israeli forces.

Thousands in Lebanon head home despite warnings

Thousands of people displaced by fighting in Lebanon in recent weeks began heading home Friday, hours after the ceasefire took effect, despite warnings from Hezbollah and Lebanese officials that it was still too dangerous to return home.

The war has displaced around 1.2 million people in Lebanon, and many are now going back to assess the damage of their homes.

Hussein Farhat, a shopkeeper from Beirut’s southern suburbs – a Hezbollah stronghold that was repeatedly targeted in Israeli strikes – told NPR he was thinking about going home to check on his shop, but wouldn’t move back until the fighting came to a permanent end.

“You feel a heartbreak just visiting your home and neighborhood and then you leave,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Israeli forces have destroyed more than 40,000 homes in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanese officials, taking over whole villages to create what Israel says is a “security buffer zone” to keep Hezbollah from firing rockets into Israel.

The latest round of fighting began after Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel following the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28. Israeli forces responded with airstrikes and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

In his remarks shortly after the ceasefire was announced, Netanyahu made clear Israel did not intend to withdraw soon, saying “we are not leaving.”

France and Britain host talks on reopening Strait of Hormuz

French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are hosting an international summit in Paris on Friday on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which about 20% of the world’s crude oil and natural gas typically passes.

The shipping route has been choked off by the war in the Middle East, with Iran effectively closing off the narrow strait. In addition, Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Gulf countries’ oil and gas refineries have caused further disruption in global supply. As a result, some international experts say the world is now facing “the greatest energy security threat in history.”

The Paris meeting, which will be virtual, brings together leaders from dozens of countries, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also expected to attend in person.

The United States is not involved in the talks, which Macron described as focused on a “strictly defensive” mission to protect commercial shipping when the fighting stops. That includes demining the route, intelligence sharing, military escorts and ensuring Iran does not charge ships for passing through the waterway.

Starmer said the reopening of the strait was a “global responsibility,” as countries worked to limit the economic fallout from the conflict, which has sent energy markets reeling.

“The unconditional and immediate reopening of the Strait is a global responsibility, and we need to act to get global energy and trade flowing freely again,” Starmer said in a statement ahead of the summit.

Trump has criticized European countries for rejecting or hesitating to get involved in the war with Iran.

The war on Iran has had severe consequences for economies across the Mideast.

A new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says the hardest-hit countries are Iran, Iraq and Qatar.

In addition to disruption of oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz, major airports from Doha to Dubai have seen traffic drop dramatically because of the war, affecting revenue across the Gulf.|

The International Monetary Fund said the country worst-hit economically is Qatar, with a nearly 9% contraction to its economy this year due to a complete suspension of gas production.

The IMF also predicts that Iran’s economy will shrink by 6 % this year, and that Iraq’s will contract by nearly 7%.

These figures are based on assumptions the current ceasefire holds and energy production resumes to normal levels by June.

Elsewhere in the region, according to the report, energy importers like Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Pakistan have had to spend more due to soaring oil and gas prices, widening their fiscal deficits.

Kat Lonsdorf in Beirut, Aya Batrawy in Dubai, Fatima Al-Kassab and Rebecca Rosman in London contributed to this report.

Paul Collins, an English professor at Portland State University, wrote about this issue for the publication. He joins us to share more about the people who have died because of these bins and why they are so deadly.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

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This was supposed to be a basic non-recipe recipe.

I was originally planning an easy-yet-elegant alternative to classic strawberry shortcake — the first precious, local strawberries grown under protection (they deserve it!) tossed with just a sprinkle of sugar, topped with a dollop of mascarpone whipped cream and a crumbled amaretti cookie.

I was going to serve it in vintage punch glasses; it was going to be just lovely.

But then I smelled the perfectly ripe Albions at the fancy grocery store — the pulchritude! The olfactory poetry!

Ripe strawberries are transcendent, all at once offering sweetness, umami, and bright acidity, like a slightly tropical rose with a hint of burnt sugar.

They aren’t even a true berry!

(Strawberries are technically an aggregate accessory fruit; the fleshy part grows from the flower’s receptacle instead of the ovaries, which makes the exterior “seeds” the actual fruits.)

Anyway, my original idea was already edging toward tiramisu territory, so I figured I may as well just make a whole casserole pan of the stuff.

To try and keep this simple enough to let the fruit shine, I did resist the urge to add cardamom to the strawberries, and I took a few shortcuts like spooning the pureed fruit over the lady’s fingers instead of dipping the cookies.

(This recipe also skips the marsala wine, but if you wanted to take this to the next level, you could dunk the lady’s fingers in strawberry lambic before arranging them in the pan). Serves 12

Notes: To make the strawberry “shortcake” I’d originally planned: Instead of neatly layering the components in a pan, just spoon the diced, macerated strawberries into little serving bowls, add dollops of the mascarpone mixture, and sprinkle a coarsely crumbled amaretti or lady’s finger (the crispy kind) over the top.

You can leave out the egg yolk if you want, or use pasteurized eggs if you’re concerned about food safety.

Save the egg whites, and you can make your own amaretti from scratch!

Try popping this in the freezer for a couple of hours before serving — it’ll be easier to slice into neat portions, but also just tastes really good semi-frozen.

Ingredients

2 pints fresh strawberries (or 2 10-ounce bags of frozen strawberries)

½ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 egg yolks

1 8-ounce tub mascarpone, slightly softened

¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

7 ounces of lady’s finger cookies

1 snack-sized bag (about ½ cup) freeze-dried strawberries

Instructions

1. Hull and roughly chop the strawberries. If you’re using frozen berries, let them thaw first (no need to chop) and reserve the juices. Toss them with 2 tablespoons of the sugar in a bowl and set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, whip the cream with 1 tablespoon of the sugar and the vanilla until firm peaks form, about 4 to 4 ½ minutes if you’re using an electric mixer. You want the whipped cream to be stiff enough to stand up on its own, but spoonable.
3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks (see note) with the remaining sugar until it’s lightened in color and texture, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add the mascarpone and salt and continue beating until the mixture is smooth and creamy, another 2 or 3 minutes. Fold the mascarpone mixture into the whipped cream until fully combined.
4. Blend the macerated strawberries into a rough, slightly chunky puree, then spread an even layer of the puree in the bottom of a 9x13-inch baking dish. Lay the lady’s fingers into the puree until the entire bottom of the pan is covered (you might need to break some to fit), then spread another thin, even layer of the strawberry puree over the top. Follow with half of the mascarpone mixture, spreading it evenly across the juiced-up lady’s fingers.
5. Repeat this process of strawberry puree, lady’s fingers, and more puree, then finish by spreading the other half of the mascarpone mixture across the top. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours, but overnight is better.
6. When you’re ready to serve, grind the freeze-dried strawberries into a powder, then sift the powder over the top of the tiramisu (straining out any seeds in the process). You’ll have to work fairly quickly, especially if it’s a rainy day — humidity will cause the powder to get sticky and harder to sift.

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