OPB Audio

A naturally occurring toxin could be the blame.

We wrap up the week's Northwest news with OPB's Emily Cureton Cook. We also hear from Oregon Capital Chronicle reporter Ben Botkin about his reporting on new scrutiny of Oregon’s system for getting mental health services to people on Medicaid, following a whistleblower complaint.

Oregon’s largest homeless shelter has won a reprieve and will remain open — at least until the end of the year. The Bybee Lakes Hope Center, which is housed at the old Wapato Jail site in North Portland, received $1.5 million from Multnomah County on Thursday. The money comes with one condition: that Bybee Lakes open its books for a third-party financial review.

Three years after the 2020 fires devastated communities in Southern Oregon, survivors are still recovering from the fires’ impact on their homes, their stability and their mental health. A local long-term recovery group is helping support residents who’ve experienced trauma.

na drinks intro

Organ donation in the US is broken - but there's a possibility that breaking the monopoly that runs it might change things.

What happened to Bend's famous osprey nest

Vaux Swifts return to Portland early this year

OPB politics reporter Dirk VanderHart to talk about the record 5 billion dollar kicker that is making its way back to taxpayers next year.

WA County Public Defender Lawsuit

School staff are working to ensure a smooth and celebratory start to the new school year. Here’s a look inside a few Oregon schools.

Some special education programs are not required to report the same information to the state as other educational institutions, leading to a lack of accountability for systems serving Oregon's most vulnerable students.

QA with Dawn Nolt from OHSU on covid and schools

healing video games INTRO

Colegio Cesar Chavez is coming up on its 50th anniversary.

Gov. Tina Kotek, who briefed reporters on a new task forced aimed at reviving the city, says she’s not ruling anything out.

Oregon psychedlic mushroom client

Addressing questions of race and representation in Oregon’s political system can be fraught. That can be especially true in some Eastern Oregon communities. In Ontario, a recent discussion about the city code defining its diversity committee became a full-on debate over what the committee’s actually accomplishing.

We wrap up the week's Northwest news with OPB's Anna Griffin. We also hear from Bend Bulletin reporter Taylor Bayly about her reporting on student discipline reform efforts in Bend and throughout the state of Oregon.

Summer is a time for festivals – and celebrating the bounty of the Pacific Northwest. And one of the most fragrant celebrations takes place in Washington County: the North Plains Elephant Garlic Festival.

Radical Abundance is a new Southeast Portland thrift shop that opened July 23rd. Like many other thrift shops, volunteers take clothing donations, resell them at a low price, and use the proceeds for charitable causes. Their cause? Helping trans* and non-binary folks afford gender-affirming medical care.

There’s a growing push in Oregon to decriminalize consensual sex work – in other words, to stop charging people who engage in prostitution with crimes. But recently, it’s gotten some push back from perhaps the most influential place: The governor’s office. Earlier this month, Governor Tina Kotek quietly vetoed two attempts to use public money to study the idea.

This week’s oppressive and deadly heat wave is finally beginning to wind down in some parts of Oregon. But although some relief from the extreme heat is coming soon, climate scientists predict heat waves could happen more frequently in the Pacific Northwest.

In Central Oregon, roughly a quarter of a million people float the Deschutes River through Bend each summer, and many of them lose things along the way. But, thanks to a local diving group, some lost items are finding their way home.

Bend police data paints a complicated picture around encampment clearings