Amazon is offering an unused building to house about 200 people for a year.
Amazon is offering an unused building to house about 200 people for a year. Ansel Herz

It's Going To Be A Hot One: Thought it was warm yesterday? Meteorologists are expecting temperatures to be in the 80s today and tomorrow, KING 5 reports.

Amazon Opens Temporary Housing For Homeless Families: The shelter, which was once a Travelodge hotel in downtown, will be run by Mary's Place until Amazon builds offices on the lot next year. The City of Seattle is also helping pay for the shelter. Mary's Place executive director Marty Hartman told KUOW: "There are 63 beautiful rooms where families can come in. ... We have community space where we can all eat together. There's a great kids club room that's being built out by our partners at Amazon for toys, and great play time, computer space to maybe do some homework."

A Sumner, Wash. Slaughterhouse Is Selling Meat From Illegally Slaughtered Animals To Seattle Restaurants: Undercover investigators described the barn-turned-slaughterhouse as "filthy" and said the animals were being killed inhumanely, the Seattle PI reports. "Investigators identified restaurants in Seattle’s Central District and Columbia City neighborhood as suspected customers of the slaughterhouse. The ongoing investigation has not yet resulted in any criminal charges."

New Ballot Drop Boxes Could Roll Out In Seattle: "According to the plan, 26 of the new 30 proposed ballot drop boxes are in areas that score highest in places with indicators for assessing equity, including income, ethnic background and English proficiency," KUOW reports. The King County Council passed a resolution to install more drop boxes last year. They will take the issue to committee starting April 25.

It's National Park Week! Get outside to celebrate the National Parks System's 100th anniversary. Admission is free to Mt. Rainier National Park, Olympic National Park, and North Cascades National Park until April 24.

Sherman Alexie Wrote A Poem For Slog: It's beautiful. Go read it.

Yes, You Should Still Be Salty About The Whitewashed Ghost In The Shell Casting: Scarlett Johansson was cast as Major Motoko Kusanagi, a Japanese woman. Aside from y'know, not actually casting an Asian woman in the role, there were other missteps too: Actual Asian actors were relegated to secondary roles and Paramount allegedly considered using CGI to "alter the ethnicities" of background actors. io9 reports. Hollywood has a longstanding history of casting white actors in lieu of actors of color.




Remote, Impoverished Towns Some Of The Hardest Hit By Ecuador's 7.8 Magnitude Earthquake: More than 350 were killed and thousands are now homeless after Saturday's quake. "The AP reports that there's a shortage of shelter in many earthquake-affected regions, and leaving people sleeping outdoors. There are fears that even houses that are still standing might have been damaged, and later collapse," KUOW reports.

7.0 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Kyushu Region of Japan: More than 40 people were killed and thousands more evacuated to shelters. "Authorities have instructed more than a quarter million people to leave their homes for fear of further quakes, as some 30,000 rescue workers look for survivors trapped under collapsed homes and landslides," Quartz reports.

One Hundred Forty People Were Killed In Ethiopia Last Week: From the Wall Street Journal:

The fighters, members of South Sudan’s Murle tribe, launched the attack on the rival Nuer tribe in Ethiopia’s western region of Gambella on Friday, killing 140 people and abducting dozens, including children, according to Ethiopia’s Communications Minister Getachew Reda. Ethiopian troops responded to the raid on Saturday, killing at least 60 of the attackers, the minister said.

It was the worst violence in the border region since the South Sudan tribal conflict erupted more than two years ago, raising concern that it might spill over into Ethiopia and threaten the stability of one of Africa’s most promising economies.

And that violence is part of a larger problem:

Both tribes live in South Sudan’s oil-rich Jonglei and Upper Nile states, which have seen some of the heaviest combat in the two-year conflict. The fighting has killed more than 50,000 people and displaced nearly 2.5 million.

Ethiopia’s Gambella region hosts about 280,000 South Sudanese refugees, most of them from the Nuer tribe, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The Murle and Nuer tribes have a long history of antagonism and have raided each other’s territory for generations over cattle, grazing lands and water rights.

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