Oregon officials declare state of emergency to address fentanyl crisis in Portland

January 31, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(OREGON) — Oregon government officials have declared a 90-day state of emergency to address Portland’s growing fentanyl crisis.

Gov. Tina Kotek, Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler each issued an emergency declaration on Tuesday following a recommendation from the Portland Central City Task Force.

Overdose deaths from synthetic opioids, mainly fentanyl, have increased by 533% between 2018 and 2022 in Multnomah County, where Portland is located, according to the county’s health department.

“Our country and our state have never seen a drug this deadly and addictive, and all are grappling with how to respond,” Kotek said in the announcement. “The Chair, the Mayor and I recognize the need to act with urgency and unity across our public health and community safety systems to make a dent in this crisis.”

The state of emergency order allows officials to dedicate resources to responding to the crisis and to establish a command center in Portland, which will offer access to day services and “improve connection to care,” according to the announcement.

The command center will also share and publicly report data on the impact of fentanyl in the city, as well as identify what gaps in service exist, respond to them and allocate resources to do so, the announcement further states.

Additionally, the Multnomah County Health Department will launch education campaigns promoting youth drug prevention, according to the announcement, including how effective recovery is and reducing stigma when it comes to treatment. The department will publicize the messages on platforms including digital media, billboards, and streaming audio.

According to the announcement, there will also be “continued missions between the Portland Police Bureau and Oregon State Police to hold individuals selling the drug accountable.”

“If you or a loved one is struggling with a fentanyl addiction, we hear you, we see you and we are taking this crisis seriously,” Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said in the announcement. “We are acting with shared leadership to take urgent action today to respond to the very human toll fentanyl takes in our community, including overdoses, fatalities and day-to-day suffering, and the fear so many families are experiencing as a result.”

Fentanyl is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and about 100 times stronger than morphine as a pain reliever, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Even in relatively small doses, fentanyl can be deadly. Because of its potency, it is often added to other drugs and yet is “nearly impossible” to detect without testing those drugs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The increasing role of fentanyl in overdose deaths is a trend seen nationwide. A CDC report last year showed more than 107,000 people died of drug overdoses from January 2019 to June 2022. Of those, more than two-thirds were linked to synthetic opioids, mainly illicitly manufactured fentanyl.

The CDC says more than 150 people die every day from overdoses related to synthetic opioids, including fentanyl.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologizes to families of children harmed online

January 31, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The chief executives of the nation’s top social media companies are being grilled on Capitol Hill over child safety, with lawmakers accusing the tech leaders of failing to protect kids from exploitation and abuse.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us — I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in his opening remarks. The comment prompted applause from families gathered in the hearing room whose children died after being ensnared in some of the darker sides of their platform.

“You have a product that’s killing people,” Graham added.

Later on in the hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called on Meta’s Zuckerberg to directly apologize to the families in the room.

“They’re here. You’re on national television … Would you like to apologize for what you’ve done to these good people?” Hawley pressed.

The CEO of Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, then stood up and turned around to address parents.

“It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered,” Zuckerberg told them. “And this is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry-leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee, in a hearing intended to drum up support for federal legislation to safeguard children from the online world, is also hearing from X’s Linda Yaccarino, TikTok’s Shou Chew, Snap’s Evan Spiegel and Discord’s Jason Citron.

Sexual exploitation of children online is a growing problem in the U.S. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, daily cyber tips of child sexual abuse material online have gone up tenfold in the past 10 years, reaching 100,000 daily reports in 2023.

Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., called online child exploitation a “crisis in America” fueled by rapid changes in technology that give predators “powerful new tools” to target kids.

Of the CEOs testifying, Durbin said “they are not only the tech companies that have contributed to this crisis, they are responsible for many of the dangers our children face online.”

“Their design choices, their failures to adequately invest in trust and safety and their constant pursuit of engagement and profit over basic safety have all put our kids and grandkids at risk,” he said in his opening statement.

Graham acknowledged there were some positives to the social sites, but “the dark side hasn’t been dealt with.”

“It’s now time to deal with the dark side because people have taken your idea and they have turned it into a nightmare for the American people,” Graham said.

In response, the CEOs largely leaned into highlighting actions they’ve taken to try to alleviate these problems. Meta recently announced plans to hide content it deems inappropriate for teens, and Zuckerberg highlighted the 30 tools they’ve built to protect kids and help parents navigate the online world.

Each of the CEOs addressed the families in the room and gave their condolences, though Zuckerberg also pushed back on the link between mental health and social media in his opening remarks.

“With so much of our lives spent on mobile devices and social media, it’s important to look into the effects on teen mental health and well being. I take this very seriously,” Zuckerberg said. “Mental health is a complex issue and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes.”

Wednesday marks the first time Snap’s CEO, Spiegel, is providing testimony on Capitol Hill in response to allegations that Snapchat is harming children’s mental and physical health.

Snapchat is also being sued in a class action lawsuit by several parents in California, many of whom say they lost their child to fentanyl poisoning and overdose with pills bought on Snapchat.

Spiegel said he feels “profound sorrow” that his service has been “abused to cause harm.”

Spiegel also discussed his support for The Kids Online Safety Act during Wednesday’s hearing. The “KOSA” bill aims to remove “harmful ads and posts, such as addiction, eating disorders, and suicide from showing up on children’s accounts,” according to supporters of the bill.

“I want to encourage broader industry support for legislation protecting children online,” Spiegel said. “No legislation is perfect, but some rules of the road are better than none.”

Yaccarino said X was supportive of KOSA, but Chew, Citron and Zuckerberg didn’t commit to backing the bill in its current form.

Legislative efforts at the national level have mostly failed, but state legislators have introduced more than 100 bills that aim to regulate how children interact with social media.

Durbin noted the failure to push federal legislation forward, saying “the tech industry alone is not to blame for the situation we’re in, those of us in Congress need to look in the mirror.”

Graham, the ranking member of the committee, said Republicans are “ready to answer the call.”

“These companies must be reigned in, or the worst is yet to come,” Graham said.

But the CEOs largely showed no consensus of support for the various bills being pushed by lawmakers.

Snap’s Spiegel was the only CEO to support KOSA. X’s Yaccarino said she supported the SHIELD Act, which would allow criminal prosecution of people who share others’ private images online without consent, and the Stop CSAM Act, a bill to crack down on the proliferation of child sex abuse material. Asked if he supported the measure, Chew said the spirit of the bill is “in line with what we want to do” and would comply if it became law.

Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, said he agrees with the “goals” in some of the handful of bills, but not the specifics — and redirected to Meta’s own legislative proposal.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said he wanted each CEO to put in writing what reforms they’d support to Section 230 — a 1990s law that has given sweeping legal immunity to tech and social media companies.

ABC News’ Becky Worley and Tenzin Shakya contributed to this report.

Family of deceased inmate whose body was returned without organs wants answers

January 31, 2024 by WDNY Radio

[The full version of this article can be found on Andscape, a sports and culture website owned and operated by ESPN. The Walt Disney Co. is the parent company of ABC News and ESPN.]

(MOBILE, Alabama) — On July 21, 2023, Agolia Moore was already in bed when the chaplain at the Limestone Correctional Facility in Harvest called to inform her that her youngest son, Kelvin Moore, had died from a fentanyl overdose, according to a new report from Andscape. He was 43.

Agolia Moore was devastated by the news. She had spoken with her son that evening and couldn’t believe he died just 90 minutes after they’d gotten off the phone. Then, the chaplain asked her a question that made her even more suspicious about her son’s death.

Six days later, Moore’s body was delivered to his hometown, which is about 350 miles from the prison, Andscape reports. Because he died while in custody, Moore’s body was first sent to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which conducts autopsies for the Alabama Department of Corrections.

But when Moore’s remains arrived in Mobile, the family’s mortician discovered that someone had taken out most of his internal organs, according to Andscape.

Birmingham civil rights attorney Lauren Faraino is investigating the case of Moore’s missing organs. The controversy has ensnared the university’s medical school, a cherished Alabama institution, which reportedly has been doing autopsies for the state’s prison system since 2006.

“It’s a systematic abuse situation,” Faraino told Andscape in an interview. “UAB has been taking the organs of incarcerated people without family consent for years now, and we have a handful of families that have come forward who discovered that their loved ones were returned without their organs.

“But so many of these cases went completely unnoticed because families don’t typically think they need to do a second autopsy. Many of them can’t afford it, even if they wanted to.”

Alabama has had the deadliest prisons in the nation for years. Moore was one of 337 inmates to die behind the walls of the state’s notoriously unsafe and draconian correctional facilities from October 2022 to October 2023, according to the Department of Corrections per Andscape reporting. Moore had been incarcerated since 1999 on two counts of attempted murder among other felonies.

During the reporting of this story Andscape interviewed two of the university’s former medical students, who say they discovered that hospital school personnel were retaining some inmate organs without family consent in 2018.

The former university students interviewed by Andscape, who asked not to be named for fear it could hurt their careers, said their complaints about the university using cadaver organs without consent led to an ethics committee hearing on the issue in September 2018. The former students said school administrators told them they had permission to harvest prisoner organs because they had a sign-off from wardens in the facilities where the inmates died.

In July 2021, a bill signed by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey went into effect designed to prevent forensic personnel from retaining organs after autopsies without permission from next of kin.

“It was very, very clear – a medical examiner may not take an organ without family consent,” Faraino told Andscape.

In response to questions from Andscape, the university released a statement that said it had followed applicable laws regarding handling organs during the autopsy process.

“We only conduct autopsies with consent or authorization,” the statement said. “The autopsy practice is accredited by the College of American Pathologists and staffed by credentialed physicians who are certified by the American Board of Pathology. In an autopsy, organs and tissues are removed to best determine the cause of death. Autopsy consent includes consent for final disposition of the organs and tissues. UAB is among providers that – consistent with Alabama law – conduct autopsies of persons at the direction of the State of Alabama.”

Simone Moore, one of Kelvin Moore’s brothers, told Andscape that he believes what happened to Moore’s organs is “thievery.”

“You cannot just arbitrarily open someone up and take what you want out of their body,” he said. “It’s just an atrocious act to know you’ve done that without our permission and we would not have agreed to it on any terms. We don’t want this to happen to another family and it could be anyone, because everyone knows someone that’s incarcerated.”

Agolia Moore added, “But they just got the wrong family this time.”

‘We caused the problem’: Boeing CEO takes accountability for Alaska Airlines door plug incident

January 31, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun took responsibility for a door plug getting blown out of an Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon earlier this month in the company’s fourth quarter earnings call Wednesday.

“We caused the problem,” Calhoun said.

Calhoun said that while the company reported its fourth quarter and 2023 results, “my focus is on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 and the actions we are taking as a company to earn the confidence of our customers, the confidence of our regulators and the flying public.”

“Boeing is accountable for what happened,” Calhoun said. “Whatever the specific cause of the accident might turn out to be, an event like this must simply not happen on an airplane that leaves one of our factories. We simply must be better. Our customers deserve better.”

Calhoun said he expects results from the National Transportation Safety Board investigation in “relatively short order.”

Calhoun said Boeing instituted additional quality controls and inspections, issued bulletins to suppliers to strengthen the focus on performance and reduce the risk of quality escapes, opened factories to 737 operators for additional oversight, appointed a quality adviser to conduct a comprehensive and independent review of Boeing’s commercial airplane quality management system and paused 737 production for a day “at a scale we have never done before” to address quality.

Calhoun said the company will “encourage and reward employees for speaking up.”

Boeing currently produces 38 737s per month, and the company will maintain that scale due to restrictions from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Boeing did not issue a financial outlook for 2024.

“Now is not the time for that,” Calhoun said.

Boeing made $22 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter and $77 billion in 2023, according to financial statements.

Alaska Airlines resumed flying the Boeing 737 Max 9 following fleet inspections for the first time on Friday.

Atmospheric river to bring two dangerous storms to California

January 31, 2024 by WDNY Radio

Photography by Keith Getter (all rights reserved)/Getty Images

(NEW YORK) — A powerful Pacific jet stream is bringing two dangerous storms fueled by an atmospheric river to the West Coast, the first of which arrives on Wednesday.

Seven western states from Washington to New Mexico are on alert for flooding, strong winds and heavy snow, with California bracing for a major impact.

The rain will reach the San Francisco Bay area around noon Wednesday.

The rainfall will grow heavier throughout the afternoon and will likely be at its heaviest around 7 p.m. Flash flooding, mudslides and strong winds are possible.

The rain starts in Los Angeles Wednesday night into Thursday morning, with the heaviest rain falling on Thursday morning. Flash flooding, mudslides and rock slides are possible.

The heavy rain and potential flash flooding will reach San Diego later on Thursday morning.

The Sierra Nevada mountain range could see 1 to 3 feet of snow while mountains in Southern California could get 1 to 2 feet of snow.

Some of this Pacific atmospheric energy moves into the Rockies Thursday afternoon into Friday, dropping heavy snow in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

The second storm will hit California on Sunday, bringing even more heavy rain and strong winds from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

This storm may stall off the coast, pummeling California with rain through Thursday.

Flooding and mudslides are a significant threat for Southern California.

Trial begins for former Ohio sheriff’s deputy in 2020 shooting death of Casey Goodson Jr.

January 31, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — Opening statements began Wednesday in the trial of a former sheriff’s deputy charged in the 2020 fatal shooting of a 23-year-old Black man who was entering his grandmother’s home in Columbus, Ohio. The trial begins more than three years after Casey Goodson Jr.’s death.

Jason Meade, a former deputy with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO), was charged with murder and reckless homicide in December 2021 in connection with the shooting. Meade, who is white, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

“Six shots in the back,” special prosecutor Gary Shroyer said in his opening statement Wednesday. “All fired by the defendant into the back of Casey Goodson with no reasonable basis for the defendant to perceive a threat by Casey. It’s an unjustified shooting. Casey was only 23 years old at the time the defendant killed him. [Meade] was a Franklin County County Deputy at the time. Casey’s death is a tremendous loss to his family.”

Defense attorney Kaitlyn Stephens said in her opening statement, “Now with the benefit of hindsight, nobody here in this courtroom is disputing how tragic the events were, on December 4, 2020. And it is not lost on us that somebody lost a life, somebody lost a son, a brother and a friend.”

Addressing the jury, Stephens asked that “you remind yourself of that instruction that the judge gave you … that as you took that oath as a juror, you are not to consider sympathy or empathy when you analyze that case. And so every time they play it, remind yourself of what the law requires.”

On Dec. 4, 2020, Meade was working with a U.S. Marshals task force searching for a wanted fugitive when he claims he saw Goodson waving a gun erratically from inside his car and then began tracking Meade, according to a December 2021 statement from Meade’s lawyers.

The former deputy claims he then followed Goodson home. Meade alleges that Goodson had a pistol in his right hand and a plastic bag in his left hand as he stood outside the door of his grandmother’s house, where he lived. Meade said he screamed at Goodson several times to show his hands but his commands were ignored, according to his attorneys’ statement.

When Goodson eventually turned to face the former deputy, Meade alleges Goodson pointed the barrel of the gun in Meade’s direction, so the deputy fired his weapon. Meade’s legal team declined ABC News’ request for comment Tuesday.

Police said a gun was found at the scene, but Goodson’s family said he was a legal gun owner. Goodson’s family claims he was returning from a dentist’s appointment, carrying a Subway sandwich and was wearing AirPods when Meade approached him and didn’t hear the officer’s commands.

Because Franklin County Sheriff’s task force officers are not issued body cameras, no video of the incident exists.

An autopsy report by the Franklin County Coroner’s Office said Goodson had been shot five times in the back and six times in total.

Nearly a year after the fatal shooting, on Dec. 2, 2021, a grand jury announced they had found enough evidence to charge Meade with two counts of murder and one count of reckless homicide in the shooting death of Goodson.

Following news of the indictment, Franklin County Sheriff Dallas Baldwin released a statement saying, in part, “I’ve reminded my staff that while everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, the standards for being a Franklin County Sheriff’s Deputy must be even higher than that of our criminal justice system.”

Meade retired after 17 years with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in June 2021. Meade had been on administrative leave since the shooting, according to the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office. The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.

Police searching for Oregon woman wanted for husband’s murder

January 31, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(PORTLAND, Ore.) — Portland, Oregon police are asking for the public’s help to find a woman wanted for her husband’s murder.

On Friday morning, officers responded to a missing persons report and found 37-year-old Phillip Pierce shot dead inside a home in Portland’s Lents neighborhood, police said.

Police initially said no suspects were located.

On Tuesday, police identified Pierce’s wife, Analiesa Golde, as the suspect, and said she was wanted for second-degree murder.

Golde’s whereabouts are unknown and she should be considered armed and dangerous, according to police.

She may be driving a burnt orange 2015 Toyota 4Runner with Oregon license plate 501HSB, police said.

Anyone who sees her is asked to call 911.

House to vote on bipartisan tax bill that would expand child tax credit

January 31, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — After long negotiations, the House is set to vote Wednesday on a bipartisan tax bill that would enhance the popular Child Tax Credit to benefit millions of American families.

The $78 billion tax package called the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 would increase the child tax credit and restore critical research and development deductions. It includes new low-income housing tax credits and disaster tax relief and tax benefits for Taiwan. If passed, the changes would be in effect through 2025 when previous Republican tax cuts expire.

Despite overwhelming support for the bipartisan bill in the House, there are still several issues lawmakers have with the legislation, including the child tax credit and state and local tax deductions.

Several New York Republicans (Reps. Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Anthony D’Esposito and Andrew Garbarino) were angered that the tax bill does not have state and local tax deduction limits — also known as SALT provisions. This is a top priority for New York lawmakers. Speaker Mike Johnson met with this group late Tuesday to discuss SALT provisions.

Meanwhile several conservatives including members from the far-right House Freedom Caucus (Reps. Bob Good and Byron Donalds) criticized the bill for expanding the child tax credit. Many liberal Democrats will vote against the bill because they argue the bill does not expand child tax credit enough.

Clearly not all lawmakers will get what they want. However, this legislation — if passed in the House — would be a rare bipartisan win.

The tax bill was negotiated by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden of Oregon and House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith of Missouri. It passed with bipartisan support out of the House Ways and Means Committee on Jan. 19 by a vote of 40-3.

The vote, expected to occur between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., will be fast-tracked and voted on under suspension of the rules, which requires two-thirds vote to pass.

The bill’s fate is uncertain in the Senate.

Five asylum-seekers arrested for assault on police officers in Times Square

January 31, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Five asylum-seekers have been arrested on charges they assaulted police officers in Midtown Manhattan, the New York City Police Department said.

The assault occurred Saturday afternoon near Times Square as officers were trying to take a person into custody.

According to police, officers attempted to disperse a disorderly group on West 42nd Street when a physical altercation occurred. When officers attempted to place an individual in custody, the suspects began to kick and punch the officers, according to the NYPD. The suspects then fled.

The officers sustained minor injuries and were treated on scene.

The suspects were identified Wednesday as Yorman Reveron, 24; Darwin Andres Gomez-Izquiel, 19; Wilson Juarez, 21; Kelvin Serita Arocha, 19; and Jhoan Boada, 22.

They face charges including assault on a police officer, disorderly conduct and gang assault.

Studies suggest experimental drug could be alternative to opioids: What to know

January 31, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A pharmaceutical company has presented new data for an experimental drug that they say can reduce acute pain, raising the possibility of an alternative to addictive opioids.

In a press release, Vertex says two studies showed that the new drug, VX-548, showed a “clinically meaningful reduction” in pain over a 48-hour period, compared to a placebo. The studies evaluated people who had recently undergone surgery and needed something to treat “acute pain” that lasts a short time.

Vertex described the drug as “safe and well tolerated” in the studies. The study results haven’t yet been vetted as part of the normal scientific review process.

The company plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration for approval of VX-548 in mid-2024 to treat “moderate-to-severe acute pain.”

For decades, researchers have been looking for ways to treat significant pain without using opiate-based painkillers, such as oxycodone, hydrocodone and morphine. Opioids generally work better than other medications for that purpose but also carry the risk of addiction. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid typically used to treat severe pain, is even more powerful and also carries the risk of addiction.

Beginning in the 1990s with the increasingly widespread prescription of pharmaceutical opioids, overdoses from opioid abuse have skyrocketed since. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 220 people in America died each day from an opioid overdose in 2021, which they say is six times the number of opioid overdose deaths in 1999.

VX-548 is an oral medication that works by blocking pain signals in the peripheral nervous system, the area outside the brain and spinal cord. This makes the medication different from opioids, which act on the brain and spinal cord.

Researchers are hopeful this means the drug wouldn’t carry the the same risk of addiction, if studies continue to go well and the drug is ultimately approved.

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