WASHINGTON, April 22 -- The Alliance for Justice issued the following statement on April 20: Alliance for Justice applauds the Supreme Court's opinion Monday that ends non-unanimous jury verdicts in Louisiana and Oregon, the only two U.S. states still implementing a decades-old practice steeped in racism and unequal justice. In Ramos v. Louisiana, the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment requires that juries must come to unanimous decisions in order to convict defendants of serious crimes, even  more

SILVER SPRING, Maryland, April 20 -- The American Herbal Products Association issued the following news release: The Oregon Department of Justice (OR DOJ) has temporarily adopted a rule declaring it "unfair and deceptive" (and thus unlawful) to represent that any product "will prevent, treat, diagnose, mitigate, or cure coronavirus, COVID-19 or a related condition, without first having competent and reliable scientific evidence upon which to base a reasonable belief in the truth of the represen  more

WASHINGTON, April 24 -- The Center for Biological Diversity issued the following news release: The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned for Endangered Species Act protection for the critically imperiled Suckley's cuckoo bumblebee, which has declined by more than 90%. The rare parasitic pollinator was once common to prairies, grasslands and meadows across the West but has lost more than 50% of its historic range to grazing, pesticides, habitat loss and global warming. The last sighting of  more

SALEM, Oregon, April 23 -- The Center for Food Safety issued the following news release: The Stand Up to Factory Farms coalition, a broad coalition of family farming, environmental, food safety, and animal welfare organizations, released a letter calling on the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) to include mega-dairy emissions control in their new rulemaking plan. The plan is required under Governor Brown's new Executive Order 20-04, which directs state agencies to propose how th  more

ARLINGTON, Virginia, April 22 -- The Institute for Justice issued the following news release on April 21: Yesterday, in Ramos v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires a unanimous jury verdict of guilty to convict someone of a serious crime in state court. The Institute for Justice (IJ), which won a unanimous decision last year in a related case, filed an amicus brief in Ramos urging the Court to overturn Apodaca v. Oregon, a 1972 decision  more

NEW YORK, April 24 -- The Institute for Public Relations issued the following news on April 23: Three University of Oregon students will receive the Jack Koten Page Principles Case Study Award for their submission analyzing Dick's Sporting Goods' evolving communication strategies regarding the politically charged issue of gun reform. Alyson Morris, Hanna Neuschwander, and Rui Zhao will share more about their winning case in an upcoming episode of Page's The New CCO podcast. The Case Study Comp  more

BEAVERTON, Oregon, April 24 -- The Journal of Education and Training Studies, a journal that says it features consumer education, pedagogy, curriculum and instruction, educational leadership, philosophy, technology and distance education, published research articles on the following topics in its May 2020 edition: * Business Analysis Perspective for Engineering Education in Egypt * Children's Toys and Games during the Shoah, as Reflected in Five Hebrew Books * Extrinsic Motivators and Context  more

LONDON, England, April 20 -- The Journal of Parasitology, a peer-reviewed journal that says it features parasitic animals from the American Society of Parasitologists, published research articles, including the following topics, in its April 2020 edition: * D-mannose-specific Immunoglobulin M in Grass Puffer (Takifugu niphobles), a Nonhost Fish of a Monogenean Ectoparasite Heterobothrium okamotoi, Can Act as a Trigger for its Parasitism * Gaharitrema droneni n. gen., n. sp. (Digenea: Zoogonida  more

PORTLAND, Oregon, April 24 -- The Mercy Corps issued the following statement by Indonesia Executive Director Ade Soekadis: As the world's largest Muslim population prepares for Ramadan, COVID-19 threatens to devastate communities in Indonesia already living on the front lines of the climate crisis. "For hundreds of millions of people across Indonesia, COVID-19 is the latest in a long line of crises they are learning to live with, and that are devastating their communities and livelihoods. "On  more

PORTLAND, Oregon, April 21 -- The Mercy Corps issued the following statement by Haiti Country Director Justin Colvard: Haiti faces an urgent triple threat: the spread of the coronavirus compounded by the start of hurricane season in June and the current lean season period likely to drive millions of people deeper into crisis levels of hunger. Already more than 3.67 million Haitians are facing emergency or crisis levels of food insecurity after the protests and economic disruptions this past fal  more

PORTLAND, Oregon, April 24 -- The Mercy Corps issued the following statement by Regional Director for Africa Sean Granville-Ross: In the middle of last year, a plague of desert locusts - the most devastating migratory pest in the world - began to descend on countries in the Horn of Africa and East Africa. Measures intended to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic are unwittingly slowing the essential response to prevent these pests from wiping out food supplies. "As many East Af  more

PORTLAND, Oregon, April 24 -- The National Psoriasis Foundation issued the following news release: 53 patient and provider groups, led by the National Psoriasis Foundation, NPF, circulated a letter to congressional leadership in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate asking Congress to include guardrails for the use of step therapy protocols in future COVID-19 relief legislation. Thanks to recent efforts by Congress and the Administration, patients have already received several prot  more

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana, April 21 -- The Society of Professional Journalists issued the following news: The Society of Professional Journalists recognizes the best collegiate journalism in Region 10 with 2019 Mark of Excellence Awards winners. SPJ's Region 10 comprises Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. First-place winners will compete at the national level among other regional MOE winners from the 12 SPJ regions. Regional winners would normally be recognized at regional conferences  more

PORTLAND, Oregon, April 21 -- The Mercy Corps issued the following statement: On October 10th 2019, Neal Keny-Guyer resigned as Chief Executive Officer after 25 years of leadership at the helm of Mercy Corps. He did so after accepting full institutional responsibility for Mercy Corps' response in late 2018 to Tania Culver-Humphrey's appeal for an investigation into her allegations of sexual abuse in the 1990s by her father, Mercy Corps co-founder Ellsworth Culver. As a Board we accepted his re  more

WASHINGTON, April 21 -- The Center for American Progress issued the following statement: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Ramos v. Louisiana that jury verdicts in state criminal trials must be unanimous in order to convict a defendant of a serious crime. This decision overturns the standards in Louisiana and Oregon, which had long punished people based on 10-2 verdicts. Louisiana changed its law last year to require unanimous verdicts in all criminal cases but did not apply the change retroa  more

EUGENE, Oregon, April 21 -- The Western Environmental Law Center issued the following news release: Indigenous, community and conservation groups called on New Mexico's congressional delegation to oppose bailing out fossil fuel companies with emergency aid during the coronavirus pandemic. In newspaper ads in the Santa Fe New Mexican and through a social media blitz, the groups called on the state's U.S. House and Senate members to safeguard New Mexicans by focusing stimulus money on public hea  more