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Portland’s economy is not working for the majority of residents and businesses. Housing is too expensive. Companies are shrinking their presence in the city. Job numbers are going down. And the city’s most promising indicator of growth can’t be relied upon in today’s political climate: international in-migration. Those are some of the findings from ECOnorthwest, a research and consulting firm headquartered in Portland. The city’s business advocacy group, Portland Metro Chamber, partners each year with the firm to research and analyze economic indicators in the region. In the latest report released Thursday, economists at ECOnorthwest looked at population, housing affordability...

All. Elon Musk retweeted a chart showing the percentage of mass shooters who were transgenders. this is the URL: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2021674796078248300 I reposted it got slammed that it was false info. People claiming that less than .1% are trans involved in mass shootings. (Most were from AI chats which i've found to lean left since not much 'right' data is available) Anyway.. does anyone have any source that show more data to show that trans are truly more involved in mass shootings? TYIA

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The good news is that the Trump administration has announced its repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding.” As Matthew Hennessey puts it in the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression newsletter this morning, the finding is the “2009 determination that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. It was the legal basis for most federal climate regulation, allowing Washington technocrats to treat carbon dioxide, methane and four other gases as pollutants.” The White House trumpeted the repeal as “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.” Let us cheer while we can. Woo hoo! It represents a victory...

Waymo’s cars are driven without humans. But when a departing passenger leaves a door open, the car won’t move until a person closes it. For that task, Waymo is turning to gig workers from companies like DoorDash. The Alphabet-owned self-driving car company confirmed on Thursday that it’s running a pilot in Atlanta to compensate delivery drivers for closing Waymo doors that are left ajar. DoorDash drivers are notified when a Waymo in the area has an open door so the vehicles can quickly get back on the road, the company said. That acknowledgement came after a Reddit post showed a...

The 'rigging' scandal engulfing the Winter Olympics is showing no signs of slowing down after Team USA's gutted ice skaters called for the judges to be 'vetted', and thousands of fans urged the authorities to investigate. French judge Jezabel Dabouis sparked fury this week after allegations she 'rigged' her votes to help her country to Winter Olympics gold, in turn voting down Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who eventually ended up with the silver. In the past 24 hours, more than 14,000 fans have signed a Change.org petition calling for the IOC and International Skating Union to intervene and...

The Department of Homeland Security has revoked deportation protections for Yemenis living in the United States, ordering them to return home, according to a draft press release obtained by the Daily Caller. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced Friday that Yemen no longer meets the statutory requirements for Temporary Protected Status after a department review of conditions in the country. She said ending the designation would protect national security interests while returning the program to its original temporary intent. “Allowing TPS Yemen beneficiaries to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interest,” Noem wrote. “We are prioritizing...

Kayleigh Bush, the 2024 winner of the Miss North Florida beauty contest, has revealed that she was stripped of her Miss America title because she reused to sign a contract that would have forced her to accept transgenderism. Bush was stripped of her title in November of 2024 despite winning her contest and signing a contract to confirm her position. The beauty queen, though, claims that she was asked to sign a replacement contract several months after she won. Bush says the contract contained new language affirming transgenderism. And it was something she refused to sign. “It was heartbreaking. It...

Abstract AIs have made rapid progress on research-oriented benchmarks of knowledge and reasoning, but it remains unclear how these gains translate into economic value and automation. To measure this, we introduce the Remote Labor Index (RLI), a broadly multi-sector benchmark comprising real-world, economically valuable projects designed to evaluate end-to-end agent performance in practical settings. AI agents perform near the floor on RLI, with the highest-performing agent achieving an automation rate of 2.5%. These results help ground discussions of AI automation in empirical evidence, setting a common basis for tracking AI impacts and enabling stakeholders to proactively navigate AI-driven labor automation....

.....To date, the UK has supplied more than 12,000 anti-tank weapons, 300,000 rounds of artillery ammunition, thousands of air defence missiles, self-propelled artillery, and more than 200,000 pieces of non-lethal equipment, including extreme cold weather clothing, mine detection equipment, and industrial strength generators....

[Catholic Caucus] Chinese bishops side with communist regime to restrict worship, ‘unregistered clergy’The government-sanctioned bishops in China have backed limits on public worship introduced by the communist regime, supporting a ban on clergy who refuse state registration.The government-approved Chinese Catholic bishops have backed the Communist Party’s limitation on public worship.EWTN reports that the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China (BCCC), sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), supported the government’s ban on “unregistered clergy” engaging in religious pastoral work or doing so in “unapproved sites for worship.”In a February 4 statement, the BCCC stated that “religious groups must...

A Palestinian activist has called for dogs to be banned as pets in New York City claiming they aren't Islamic. Nerdeen Kiswani said dogs have a 'place in society' but 'not as indoor pets.' 'Like we've said all along, they are unclean,' she wrote on X. After receiving fierce backlash she later claimed that her post was a 'joke'. '[Laughing] at the Zionists frothing at the mouth at this, thinking they're doing something,' she wrote. 'It's obviously a joke I don't care if you have a dog, I do care if your dog is s***ting everywhere and you're not cleaning...

Daily Readings from the USCCBJesus left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district of the Decapolis. And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. Mark 7:31–32Throughout Jesus’ public ministry, His actions, while purely charitable, were often deliberate and provocative... For example, Jesus healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath (cf. Mark 3:1–6) and cured a man who had been lame for thirty-eight years (cf. John 5:1–18). In both cases, Jesus was accused...

Fists were flying. Shocking footage showed the moment a brawl broke out aboard a Jet2 flight from Antalya, Turkey to Manchester, UK, forcing an emergency landing in Belgium. “Flight LS896 from Antalya to Manchester diverted to Brussels yesterday, due to the appalling behavior of two disruptive passengers,” airline reps told the Post. “They were both offloaded by police in Brussels and the flight continued to Manchester.” Disturbing footage shows passengers exchanging blows in the aisle as onlookers swear, scream and plead with others not to “get involved.” One “shaken up” fly-witness recounted the ugly incident, claiming that “what should have...

Key Insight: Inflation showed signs of cooling in January, with the annual inflation rate dropping to 2.4%. Supporting data: Prices excluding food and fuel rose 0.3% in January, while food increased 0.2% and energy prices ticked down by 1.5%, the report found. Forward look: The January inflation reading remains slightly above the Fed's longstanding 2% target and is likely to reinforce a cautious stance toward further rate cuts, though President Trump will likely continue to push the central bank to lower rates. In recent months, as consumers face an affordability crisis, the Trump administration has rolled back tariffs on dozens...

The Minneapolis businesses that exploit illegal migrants should be compensated by ordinary Americans for economic losses amid the federal enforcement of popular immigration and civil rights laws, according to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.“They left us with economic ruin,” Walz complained after White House advisor Tom Homan said on Thursday that he is withdrawing most ICE officers after arresting more than 4,000 illegal migrants in Minneapolis. (snip) “Many Minnesota businesses – especially small businesses — are facing economic hardships that may prove insurmountable” because of the federal enforcement, said Matt Varilek, an economic development manager for Walz.

Corey Lewandowski fired a Coast Guard pilot for leaving Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s blanket on a plane — but was forced to rehire them upon realizing there was nobody else to fly the plane, according to a stunning new report.Lewandowski, an unpaid special government employee who unofficially acts as chief of staff for Noem — with whom he’s had a years-long affair — has overseen a reign of terror over department staff since President Trump took office last year.According to the Wall Street Journal, Noem had to switch planes during an official trip due to a maintenance issue, but...

Free condoms for competitors at the Winter Olympics have run out within a record-breaking three days, according to La Stampa. “The supplies ran out in just three days,” an anonymous athlete told the Italian newspaper. “They promised us more will arrive, but who knows when.” It blamed the Olympic organisers, saying they had not been “particularly generous with the numbers”. “In Paris the athletes received 300,000 condoms — two per day each— but the numbers for these Winter Games were significantly lower: not even 10,000,” La Stampa’s report states. Just under 3,000 athletes are competing at the Winter Olympics, compared...

HOUSTON, Texas (KBTX) -A Kansas woman has been sentenced to federal prison after making false claims that astronaut Anne McClain illegally accessed her bank account while deployed to the International Space Station, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Summer Heather Worden, 51, of Sedgwick County, Kansas, pleaded guilty on November 14, 2025, to making false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations to law enforcement. U.S. District Judge Alfred H. Bennett sentenced her to three months in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release. The court also ordered Worden to pay $210,000 in restitution. In July 2019, Worden...

One of the Bay Area’s hottest startups is hiring like crazy. The catch? You have to be willing to train artificial intelligence to one day do your job as well as you can. Welcome to the next gig economy. Instead of driving for Uber or delivering Postmates, a new wave of workers is signing up to school AI. These white-collar contractors review and critique the output of the large language models that power chatbots and other AI tools. Not just anyone can work for Mercor, an AI startup valued at $10 billion. Applicants have to demonstrate their abilities in the...