Kevin Durant hadn't been a member of the SuperSonics two full days before one of the most popular players in team history anointed him Seattle's basketball savior.
"I don't want to put pressure on Kevin, but I think you will save the Sonics," Slick Watts, who played for the Sonics from 1973-78, said Saturday to Durant, the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft.
"I think you will help keep them in Seattle."

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is urging a former White House political director to ignore a subpoena and not testify before Congress about the firings of federal prosecutors, her lawyer says.
The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to hear from Sara Taylor at its hearing Wednesday and she is willing to talk. Testifying, however, would defy the wishes of the president, "a person whom she admires and for whom she has worked tirelessly for years," lawyer W. Neil Eggleston said.
Eggleston stated, in a letter this weekend to committee leaders and White House counsel Fred Fielding, that Taylor expects a letter from Fielding asking her not to comply with the subpoena.

TEXARKANA, Texas (AP) _ A Texas appellate court has upheld the felony conviction of Shaquanda Cotton, the Black East Texas teenager freed in March amid heightened racial tensions in her small town and a shakeup of the state's troubled juvenile prison system. Found guilty in March 2006 of shoving a teacher's aide at Paris High School. She was 15 when a judge sentenced her to a state youth prison in Brownsville, where she served one year...

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The words "summer school" don't usually invoke images of barbecues, classic hip-hop tunes and videography classes.
But that's exactly what's happening at Oregon Outreach's "welcome to summer school" celebration.

Portlanders are known for their environmental passions, but a group of local women are taking recycling to a whole new level.
"It's beyond LEEDS," says Alisa Kane of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority's plans to convert their meeting hall into an environmentally friendly, "green" building.
Kane, who works in the city of Portland's Green Building program, reviewed the Delta's grant application, which garnered the sorority $117,000, and said the Delta's meeting hall plans are innovative and sustainable.

On the morning of Sunday, June 24, residents in one Northeast neighborhood awoke to find graffiti marking their streets, sidewalks and vehicles. Vandals hit several cars on Northeast Seventh Avenue and Holman Street with the words "Consume" in gold spray paint, and other areas of the street on that same block featured similar graffiti that appeared to be political in nature.

Shi'ann Davis intently watches her coach, Israel Annoh (not pictured), for cues as she marches with SEI Drum Corps during last Saturday's Good in the 'Hood parade. Durrell Singleton leads SEI's full Drum Corps, which was one of many participants in the Good in the 'Hood parade, held June 23.

Seahawk Mack Strong signs 5-year-old Jordan Rogers' cast at the Summer Bash event, held June 23 at Pratt Park. Sponsored by the Leonard Weaver Foundation, the Summer Bash featured free food, live entertainment, games and free haircuts, not to mention the appearance of several Seahawks, including Strong, Leonard Weaver, Bryce Fisher and Ray Willis.

Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske's repeated involvement in the investigation of two officers damaged his department's credibility and makes increased oversight necessary, according to a civilian review board.
A report by the board, consisting of a lawyer, a former Sumner police sergeant and a former president of the local branch of the NAACP, was blasted last week by Kerlikowske as "despicable" and politically motivated.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels stood by him, but City Council President Nick Licata said the dispute pointed to changes that might be needed in the setup of the Office of Professional Accountability Review Board, which prepared the report centering on a contentious drug arrest.
George "Troy" Patterson, 26, a convicted drug dealer who relies on a wheelchair, accused Officers Gregory P. Neubert and Michael A. Tietjen of using excessive force and planting drugs on him in the arrest during the wee hours of Jan. 2 at a downtown intersection.