Seattle, Washington Local News – Page 224

‘This is a painful reality’: Nike will lay off 2% of employees

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In a companywide email Thursday night, Nike CEO John Donahoe said that the cutbacks will not impact store employees, store managers or distribution center workers.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Nike is laying off approximately 2% of its workforce, about 1,600 jobs, starting Friday, the sportswear company said in a companywide email Thursday night.

“This is a painful reality and not one that I take lightly,” said John Donahoe, president and CEO, in the email. “We are not currently performing at our best, and I ultimately hold myself and my leadership team accountable.”

Donahoe said the first round of layoffs will start Friday and go through next week, while the next round will be complete by the end of May.

Nike is one of the region’s largest employers, with more than 15,500 workers in the Portland and Southwest Washington area — and around 83,000 people worldwide, as of May 2023. In December, the company announced a $2 billion cost-cutting and restructuring strategy, signaling that there may be layoffs.

It’s likely that most of the layoffs will be at the company’s Beaverton headquarters. Donahoe said in the email that the cutbacks will not impact store employees, store managers or distribution center workers.

“Nike has a proud history where the most challenging moments bring out the best in us, individually and as a team,” Donahoe said. “I know we will come together to respond once again, and I am confident in our future.”

Jana Panafilio worked at Nike for over 29 years, and after leaving, she co-created a group for past Nike employees called 6453 Alumni. Panafilio said she hopes she can be a resource for those laid off by Nike.

“We are here to support as a landing place for those people as they leave the brand to make their transition from Nike to next,” said Panafilio.

Panafilio said that the 6453 Alumni group will connect those laid offs with other Nike alumni in various fields.

“There is a disproportionate number of former Nike people that start their own companies. They are looking for talent and they are looking for clients. So depending on what it is they are looking to do or what kind of help that they need, we have the resources to help them,” Panafilio said.

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of Nike President and CEO John Donahoe.

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February 17, 2024

Man shot multiple times near downtown Redmond

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REDMOND, Wash. – Police are investigating a shooting that left a man hospitalized early Saturday morning near downtown Redmond.

Redmond PD says they responded to reports of shots fired in the parking lot of the Sammamish River Villas apartment complex around 4 a.m.

Upon arrival, police located a 35-year-old man with two gunshot wounds. He was taken to a local hospital for treatment.

Police said in an update the victim is in stable condition and remains at the hospital.

The suspect in this shooting is still at large. Anyone with information or video footage of the Sammamish River Villas parking lot at 4 a.m. is asked to contact the Redmond Police Department at 425-556-2500.

Police closed the entrance and exit to the apartment complex as they investigated. Roads in the area are now back open.

Redmond PD thanked the community for their patience and cooperation during the closure.

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February 17, 2024

What to know about the situation in the Middle East this week

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LONDON (AP) — As Israel-Hamas cease-fire talks flounder, Israel is vowing to press ahead with its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip despite warnings from the U.S. to work harder to protect civilians. Violence spiked across the volatile Israel-Lebanon border. This is what happened in the Middle East this week.

ISRAEL TO KEEP UP OFFENSIVE

Israel’s defence minister said Friday that the country’s military was pushing ahead with its planned offensive into Rafah, one of the last population centers in the Gaza Strip that its ground forces have so far mainly stayed out of. He has not said when the offensive will begin but says Israel’s military will prepare a plan first to evacuate the estimated 1.4 million Palestinian civilians who are crammed into the city on the Egyptian border.

There have been growing expressions of concern around the world and repeated warnings by the United States that Israel must come up with a credible evacuation plan. In Rafah, the situation is increasingly desperate. People lack adequate food, water, electricity and medical care, and they are under regular Israeli bombardment. Israel says it targets Hamas fighters and holds the militants responsible for civilian casualties because they operate from civilian areas.

Over the past few days, Israel’s military has raided Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the main hospital in the southern Gaza Strip, saying it had evidence that Israeli hostages had been held there. It found no hostages but said it arrested 100 militants, 20 of which it claimed had been involved in the attacks that started the war. A surgeon at the hospital said one patient had been killed in the raid.

Israel launched its war in response to a cross-border Hamas attack on Oct. 7 in which militants killed some 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 hostages. The offensive has killed nearly 29,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave, caused widespread destruction, displaced some 80% of the population and sparked a humanitarian crisis.

EGYPT WORRIES ABOUT SPILLOVER, CEASE-FIRE TALKS STALL

The upcoming offensive on Rafah has also sparked warnings by neighboring Egypt. It worried that the fighting would push Palestinian civilians into its territory, and threatened to suspend its peace treaty with Israel. But it has also fortified a buffer zone on the border with another wall. The zone runs five kilometers (three miles) deep from the border, and is meant to stop any potential breaches, Egyptian officials say.

At the same time, cease-fire talks, moderated by the U.S., Qatar and Egypt, appear to be going nowhere. Hamas says it will not release its remaining Israeli captives, numbering about 100, until Israel withdraws from Gaza and releases a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including top militants. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called this “delusional” and said Israel would continue to fight Hamas until its destruction. He also said international recognition of a Palestinian state would amount to rewarding terrorism — just as France said it might go ahead and do just that.

FIGHTING WITH HEZBOLLAH HEATS UP

Across the tense Israeli-Lebanese border, fighting also heated up this week. Rocket fire from Lebanon killed an Israeli soldier on Wednesday. In response, an Israeli drone strike killed a Hezbollah commander and two other operatives in Lebanon. The next day, Israeli airstrikes killed 10 Lebanese civilians, prompting Hezbollah to fire a salvo of rockets into northern Israel and threaten to expand the conflict.

Hezbollah is a major political party and militia in Lebanon with a sizeable rocket and infantry force. It fought Israel to a standstill in a previous war in 2006. It receives backing from Iran, which relies on it to pressure Israel, its archenemy. They have been engaged in low-intensity fighting since the start of the Gaza war. Both sides say they don’t want another war but there are constant fears that things could slip out of control.

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BALINT SZLANKO

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February 17, 2024

One person dead, another in custody after shooting on King County Metro bus in Kent

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One person was shot during an altercation between two passengers on the bus on Feb. 16.

KENT, Wash. — One person was shot and killed after an altercation on a King County Metro bus in Kent on Friday afternoon.

The shooting occurred around 1 p.m. on a bus serving Route 161, according to King County Metro. An altercation between two passengers occurred. One person drew a weapon and fired, striking the other.

When Kent police officers arrived they found a 29-year-old man with a gunshot wound. First responders attempted lifesaving efforts, but he died.

Meanwhile, officers found a 35-year-old man with minor injuries who claimed he was assaulted by the man who died.

Initial information, according to police, indicates that before the 29-year-old was shot, he got onto the Metro bus and “engaged in an altercation” with the 35-year-old. Police believe the 35-year-old shot the 29-year-old during a fight.

The 35-year-old is cooperating with police.

The relationship between the two men is unknown at this time.

The incident appears contained to the bus. No other injuries were reported.

Footage from the scene showed the bus wrapped in crime tape, along with a nearby tire shop. A KING 5 photojournalist observed one person being loaded into an ambulance.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Download our free KING 5 app to stay up-to-date on news stories from across western Washington.

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February 16, 2024

Trump civil fraud trial verdict: $364M penalty imposed

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Judge orders Trump to pay $355M in fraud case

A New York judge has ordered Donald Trump and his companies to pay $355 million. The judge found they engaged in a yearslong scheme to dupe banks and others with financial statements that inflated his wealth. Trump won’t have to pay out the money immediately as an appeals process plays out, but the verdict still is a stunning setback for the former president. He also was barred from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for three years or from getting a loan from banks registered in the state.

NEW YORK – A New York judge ordered Donald Trump and his companies on Friday to pay $355 million in penalties, finding they engaged in a yearslong scheme to dupe banks and others with financial statements that inflated his wealth.

Trump won’t have to pay out the money immediately as an appeals process plays out, but the verdict still is a stunning setback for the former president.

If he’s ultimately forced to pay, the magnitude of the penalty, on top of earlier judgments, could dramatically diminish his financial resources. And it undermines the image of a successful businessman that he’s carefully tailored to power his unlikely rise from a reality television star to a onetime — and perhaps future — president.

Judge Arthur Engoron concluded that Trump and his company were “likely to continue their fraudulent ways” without the financial penalties and other controls he imposed. Engoron concluded that Trump and his co-defendants “failed to accept responsibility” and that experts who testified on his behalf “simply denied reality.”

Read the full court ruling here:

“This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin,” Engoron, a Democrat, wrote in a searing 92-page opinion. “They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”

He said their “complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological” and “the frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience.”

Trump, who built his reputation as a real estate titan, also was barred from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for three years or from getting a loan from banks registered in his native state.

Ruling in Trump civil fraud trial expected

A ruling is expected Friday in former President Donald Trump’s $370 million civil fraud trial. FOX 5 NY’s Robert Moses has the latest.

His eldest sons, Trump Organization Executive Vice Presidents Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, each were ordered to pay $4 million and barred from being officers of New York companies for two years. Former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was ordered to pay $1 million.

Trump called the verdict a “Complete and Total sham.” He wrote on his Truth Social platform that New York Attorney General Letitia James “has been obsessed with ’Getting Trump’ for years” and that Engoron’s decision was “an illegal, unAmerican judgment against me, my family, and my tremendous business.”

The total $364 million verdict — which James’ office said grows to $450 million, adding interest — keeps the Trump Organization in business. The judge backed away from an earlier ruling that would have dissolved the former president’s companies. But if upheld, the verdict will force a shakeup at the top of the company.

In a statement, James said “justice has been served” and called the ruling “a tremendous victory for this state, this nation, and for everyone who believes that we all must play by the same rules — even former presidents.”

“Now, Donald Trump is finally facing accountability for his lying, cheating, and staggering fraud. Because no matter how big, rich, or powerful you think you are, no one is above the law,” James said.

What to know about Trump’s case

Trump’s case involved 11 years of financial statements with values based on disputed and sometimes outright false descriptions of properties used as collateral should his loans go bust.

Among them: Trump exaggerated the size of his Manhattan penthouse apartment by three times. He listed unfinished buildings as if they were complete, and apartments under rent-control as if they were free of such rules. He showed restricted funds as if they were liquid cash. And Trump valued Mar-a-Lago as a single residence, though he had signed away rights to develop it as anything but a club.

Former US president Donald Trump on the 4th hole at Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg, Co. Clare, during his visit to Ireland. ( Brian Lawless/PA Images via Getty Images)

In making her case against Trump, Letitia James called to the stand a lending expert who estimated that Deutsche Bank gave up $168 million in extra interest on its Trump loans, basing his calculations as if Trump never offered a personal guarantee.

But Trump did offer a guarantee, even if his estimate of his personal wealth was exaggerated. In fact, the bank made its own estimates of Trump’s personal wealth, at times lopping billions from Trump’s figures, and still decided to lend to him.

And testimony from Deutsche officials responsible for the loans suggested that deciding the right rate at which to lend, even absent Trump’s personal guarantee, isn’t so simple.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower on April 03, 2023 in New York City. (Gotham/GC Images)

The Deutsche unit making the Trump business loans wasn’t the typical lending unit, but its private wealth division. That group often lends to rich clients not only to earn interest but to help its chances of winning the lucrative business of managing their vast personal investments and getting them to buy other bank services — something that testimony showed Deutsche was clearly hoping to do with the ex-president.

Trump has repeatedly said in impromptu rants at his trial that the case is a meritless, political “witch hunt” because he is richer than the statements sent to banks suggest, and lenders didn’t care about those figures anyway because they always did their own analysis, always got paid back in full and continued to lend to him.

“What’s happened here, sir, is a fraud on me. I am an innocent man,” Trump said in a six-minute statement in court earlier this month before the judge cut him off.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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February 16, 2024

A Dog, a Fox, and a Rabbit Walk into a Bar

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The crowd at the Phinney Neighborhood Association’s Night of the Living Draft beer and cider tasting regarded Aaron Kalin and his business partner Ray Araldi with curiosity. It was no mystery why. Kalin was a fox named Martini, and Araldi a rabbit called Spork.

It was November 2022, and the two friends had recently moved from Chicago to chase their dream of running Slightly Furry, the only queer, openly-furry cidery in the US, and maybe the world. They had no clue how people outside the community would react. The cider was an unexpected hit.

Now you can find Slightly Furry’s eye-catching cans—colorful illustrations of sexy anthropomorphic animals, suggestively posed—at Seattle queer bars and area cideries. You may have seen the viral Tumblr post, captioned “seattle moment,” of their ginger cider, Leg Up. Slightly Furry’s tasting events at local bars have become popular in the furry community, and even normie crowds are oddly charmed.

Raymond Araldi (left) and Aaron Kalin at CiderCon in 2023 Chicago. COURTESY OF SLIGHTLY FURRY

“Every time we go, I’m a little apprehensive but people just, they love us,” Araldi said. “They dig our vibe. Even people who don’t know what it is like, they’re like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on. I just think you guys are cool. Your products are great.’ We hear that a lot.”

This weekend, Slightly Furry is opening what could be the most furry-forward taproom in existence at 851 Rainier Avenue South, the former Sovereign Brewing space.

Kalin wants the taproom to feel like the first floor of a furry convention, a social space where furries can be themselves and the curious can get a taste of what an active FurCon might feel like. He even envisions the bar as an ambassadorship of furry to the general public, an important aspect of both his and Araldi’s identities.

“It’s not just for marketing,” Kalin said. “It’s me putting myself out there in probably the most intense, bravest way that I can possibly think of, saying, ‘No, this is really me, I’m not going to dial it down that much for you. So you can kind of take it or leave it.’ And luckily, as far as we can tell, the public has received it pretty well.”

Where It All Began

Kalin began brewing as a hobby in 2012, with a late wedding gift of beer-making materials from his older brother. He moved on to ciders after tasting Angry Orchard at his parents’ bar in Chicago. His family once owned six of them, and after a number of sell-offs and deaths, his sister runs the last, Yak-Zies, across the street from Wrigley Field.

Kalin began taking his hobby more seriously in 2019 when friends said his ciders were good enough to sell. He’d been in tech for almost 20 years (a furry stereotype, he tells me), but the shift felt natural given that he grew up around bars. Despite family insistence against entering what’s a tough business, he took a leap of faith during lockdown in 2020. He soon found himself overwhelmed and called on his best friend Aralidi for help. The two met at an afterparty for Chicago’s furry convention, Midwest FurFest, and have been friends since.

With a third partner, a purple and green hyena named Nick “Kompy” Charbonneau, the trio planned to very subtly brand their product furry with the name Slightly Fuzzy. (Like buzzed, get it?) That idea flew through the window when a vodka company nearly sued them for copyright infringement, so they decided to go all-in unabashedly with Slightly Furry.

As the company grew, it became clear they would have to relocate. Getting a winery license, a legal requirement to produce cider in the United States, proved difficult in Illinois; the city itself capped self-distribution at 5,000 gallons. And partnering with a distributor would’ve significantly cut into their profit margin. Seattle appealed to them because the market here is growing, most of the county’s supply of apples comes from Washington, and there’s no limitation on self-distribution.

Friends Kalin had met during a decade of business trips to Seattle encouraged him to move their operation here. Araldi, who grew up in Chicago, already wanted to try living someplace new. He joked that for furries, moving is like a Twister spinner with only two colors: Denver and Seattle.

Since arriving in 2022, Slightly Furry had been searching for a space to turn their concept of furry ambassadorship into reality, but several deals on spaces in Seattle, Tacoma, and Woodinville fell through before they “lucked out” on Sovereign Brewing.

Seattle is not short on furry-friendly bars, and if the popular Vulpine Taproom in Lake Forest Park is any indication, Slightly Furry could be a big success.

Slightly Furry opens Friday, February 16. COURTESY OF SLIGHTLY FURRY

Like a Fox

Vulpine Taproom owner Josh Anderson had been part of the fandom for 10 years when he opened the business with his parents in 2021. To his knowledge, it was the first furry-owned taproom in the world. While its branding is not as brazenly furry as Slightly Furry—there’s a fox mural, but the only mention of the word is in reference to their dog policy—Anderson intended Vulpine to be a community space where people could “come as they are,” but he didn’t anticipate people lining the block for a new business at the tail end of lockdown.

“Part of that was restrictive seating, but part of that was putting the word out to people we knew in the fandom,” he said. “They came out in force and it was pretty much business all day.”

He said the furries that came that day still come to his taproom. To his surprise, people started trickling from all over the United States, taking trips to Seattle for the sole purpose of seeing Vulpine.

“It’s a really artistic, creative community; we love to support each other,” he said. “Word travels fast. Now when someone comes in and says they’re visiting from Germany and [they] ‘heard about your space and I came to see you’ I’m less surprised.”

These taprooms are just one of those things that make sense for Seattle. There’s a large community (which you’d know if you read Capitol Hill graffiti), a convention called Anthro Northwest, and groups like the event planning company FetchNW, which caters to the furry and pup play communities.

There’s no definitive answer as to why Seattle brings all the dogs, cats, dragons, and half-cats half-dragons to the yard. FetchNW co-owners Kit Fox and Flair Coyote guessed the prevalence of tech jobs combined with progressive, laid-back attitudes were the initial draw, and now furries come here because there are other furries.

Yet furries in Seattle don’t have dedicated spaces beyond Vulpine and Slightly Furry. That has not kept the community from thriving. Furries flock to spaces like the Cuff Complex, where furries share space with people from the leather and broader LGBTQ community, and CC Attle’s, where Slightly Furry is on tap. People have created an informal network of houses that host movie nights and parties. There are even furry ski groups, they said.

Kit said queer people like himself often find a home in the community’s warm, fuzzy arms. He didn’t have much community in his home state of conservative Arizona, but in the furry community, he found a space where he could be himself. The International Anthropomorphic Research Project, also known as Furscience, has found that 70% of furries identify as LGBTQ+ and a quarter are gender diverse.

As you might expect, right-wingers hate that kumbaya between anyone they perceive as a sexual deviant, and in the last two years, they’ve swept the furry fandom into the same moral panic as queers.

“The reason that furry comes up in this context is that people are trying to draw a parallel between being furry and being trans, which is very different—it’s not the same thing at all,” Flair said. “It’s sad, it’s never been about furry, I don’t think.”

Fight for Your Right to Furry

In 2021, right-wingers started a myth meant to delegitimize trans students’ identities and needs for public restrooms that align with their gender. The hoax postulated that students who identify as cats are using litter boxes in public schools all over America, and districts were willfully accommodating them. They’re not, but in 2022, NBC identified at least 20 conservative candidates, elected officials, and influencers repeating that unproven claim. Only one school in Colorado stocked cat litter—it wasn’t for furries, but so students could use the bathroom during lockdown in the case of a school shooting.

Oklahoma Rep. Justin Humphrey even introduced legislation that would ban students “who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries” from participating in school. This law would’ve directed schools to call animal control to remove them if their parents weren’t available.

One of the nearly 1,000 anti-trans laws introduced in statehouses across the country last year, North Dakota’s House Bill 1522, not only banned trans kids from the bathroom but prevented schools from accommodating students’ perceptions that they were anything but human. The bill passed, but lawmakers struck the language about furries.

Slightly Furry co-founder Araldi, who has been in the fandom since the late 1990s, said that stigma is nothing new. There’s long been an unspoken community rule to be kind and inviting to challenge any preconceived notions people have from years of sensationalist media coverage, winning over sometimes perplexed staff at convention centers and hotels around the country. They tip well, too, he said.

The taproom opens its doors at 4 pm Friday, February 16. Araldi and Kalin expect at least a dozen people to fly in for the opening, including one person from New Zealand, and local supporters to come out in droves.

“There’s a lot of furries who want to be here for what is, in some way, a big piece of furry history,” Kalin said. “This certainly never happened before.”

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Vivian McCall

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February 16, 2024

Online influencers lead thousands demanding change in Hungary following president’s resignation

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BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Some of Hungary’s best-known online personalities led a crowd of at least 10,000 protesters in Budapest on Friday to demand a change in the country’s political culture, a response to the conservative president’s recent resignation over a pardon she issued in a child sexual abuse case.

Demonstrators filled the Hungarian capital’s sprawling Heroes’ Square and called for genuine reforms to Hungary’s child protection system and for a transformation in Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s system of governance.

“I don’t know exactly what we’re going to achieve at the end of the day,” said Zsolt Osváth, a popular online content creator who helped organize the demonstration. “But it’s certain that we won’t stay silent any longer, and that we had to step out from the comfort zone of our computer screens.”

The protest came amid an unprecedented political scandal that has shaken the government of the prime minister, a staunch nationalist who has dominated Hungary’s public life since 2010.

President Katalin Novák, an Orbán ally, resigned amid controversy last week after it was revealed that she issued a presidential pardon to a man that had been imprisoned for covering up a string of child sexual abuses by the director of a state-run orphanage.

The pardon shocked Hungarian society and opened fissures within Orbán’s Fidesz party, which has governed the country with a constitutional majority for nearly 14 years.

Friday’s expression of popular discontent took root among a segment of society that is often disengaged from politics. The demonstration’s organizers included nearly a dozen popular YouTubers and other content creators, who wrote that they were “distraught” over the revelations and protesting for a “healthy society.”

The organizers, each of whom has hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube, urged their fellow Hungarians to break out of political “apathy” but asked opposition political parties not to display party insignia at the protest.

Bulcsú Hunyadi, an analyst with the Budapest-based think tank Political Capital, said influencers taking the lead gave the event greater resonance than calls to action by Hungary’s fragmented political opposition.

“The people who are organizing this demonstration reach certain groups of society in large proportions. Their voices go far and wide,” Hunyadi said. “This demonstration can reach a different group than those organized by the traditional political parties, and can presumably reach a wider audience.”

Also implicated in the scandal was former Justice Minister Judit Varga, another key Fidesz figure who resigned her parliamentary seat over her role in endorsing the pardon.

Varga was expected to lead the list of candidates from Fidesz when European Parliament elections are held in June. The loss of two of Hungary’s leading female politicians from the male-dominated government came as a blow to Orbán as his party prepares for the European Union balloting.

Gábor Balk, a protester and father of three, said he is not convinced the scandal will mark a turning point in Hungarian politics.

“I don’t expect anything from this government. They aren’t going to change anything,” Balk said. “They threw away two people, they can go, but there will just be two other cadres in their place.”

Even with Novák and Varga’s resignations, the pardon scandal has spread to implicate others in Orbán’s circle and sparked outrage over unanswered questions on why the pardon was issued.

Zoltán Balog, one of Orbán’s former ministers and the head of Hungary’s reformed church, stepped down from his role Friday after he admitted to having advised Novák to issue the pardon.

Varga’s ex-husband, Péter Magyar, made public accusations of corruption and intimidation against Orbán’s government in an interview on popular YouTube channel Partizán, which has garnered more than 2 million views in the country of fewer than 10 million.

Hunyadi, the analyst, said such public outcry among a wide spectrum of Hungarian society could mobilize further opposition to Orbán’s power.

“What works against apathy now is that people simply feel that this is a serious matter that can and has had consequences — the two resignations,” he said. “Now they feel that there’s a reason to do something, that they can achieve something by taking action.”

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JUSTIN SPIKE

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February 16, 2024