The Stranger's morning news round-up. by Nathalie Graham Seattle's minimum wage goes up: Effective Jan. 1, 2025, Seattle's minimum wage will go up to $20.76 an hour for all businesses, large and small, the Office of Labor Standards announced. The annual increase is required by the Minimum Wage Ordinance passed in 2015. Oh, I bet our current city council hates this news.  Dockworkers suspend strike: After a three-day strike of around 45,000 east coast dockworkers, the International Longshoremen's Association and the United States Maritime Alliance agreed to boost wages by 62% over six years. Workers will return to the bargaining table come January, but, for now, the ports will function as normal and avert any economic disaster. The strike struck fear into politicians and industry groups who called on President Joe Biden to intervene. A union guy, Biden said he would let the collective bargaining process play out. Though, he did issue a statement calling on the U.S. Maritime Alliance to present the workers with a fair deal.  WA sex predator escaped to Portland: A 33-year-old Washington man convicted of a violent rape in 2017 slipped out of his restrictive housing complex in Tukwila and out of his GPS ankle monitor on Monday. After a three-day search, the Department of Corrections arrested him on Thursday outside of a Portland convenience store. The man served a prison sentence in 2017, then, deemed too dangerous to live outside of a secure facility, a court civilly committed him to live under the care of Department of Social and Health Services on McNeil Island. Recently, he'd been moved to a less-secure-yet-still-restrictive living arrangement in Tukwila. After this escape, he will likely face a class A felony.  A doggone miracle: A pup plummeted from an I-5 overpass near NE 85th Street onto the freeway below. Somehow, the dog survived the fall. Washington State Patrol Troopers don't know whether or not someone threw the dog off the overpass.  Wet wet wet: Are you all ready to get soaked? Maybe you all are already getting soaked. A wet system could dump 1/2" of rain on some parts of Seattle. With the rain comes a cold front. Prepare for bluster and chill. Sun should return after Friday. The chill may hang in the air from here on out.  "Here Comes The Rain Again!" 🎵🌧️Bring your raincoats to work - it will be a soaking commute this morning out on the roadways. Slow down, use your low-beam headlights, and give extra space between yourself and the vehicle in front.#wawx pic.twitter.com/EDGSjMjTHW — NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) October 4, 2024 No plans for Saturday? Well, it'll be National Public Lands Day and all of the national parks will be free to enter, so maybe you actually do have plans for Saturday. Plus, it should be sunny. Keep an eye out for northern lights: Another geomagnetic storm could stir up some Aurora Borealis for us this weekend. Look to the skies at night and download one of those Aurora tracker apps if you want a glimpse of the good stuff.  SWPC Forecasters have issues G3 (Strong) Geomagnetic Storm Watches for 04-06 October due to a pair of coronal mass ejections that are anticipated to arrive over the course of the next three UTC days. Stay tuned at https://t.co/4CNTc1IkKt for updates as we monitor this activity! pic.twitter.com/RbLzQKHSUX — NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (@NWSSWPC) October 3, 2024 Jobs: The labor market is staying relatively sturdy. Last month, employers added 254,000 jobs and unemployment dropped from 4.2% to 4.1%.  FEMA's funding fears: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said he doesn't think FEMA's funds will make it through the hurricane season. The agency is already stretched thin working to get "meals, water, generators, and other critical supplies" to the victims of Hurricane Helene. With other hurricanes on the horizon, Mayorkas expressed fear that FEMA would not be able to help everyone impacted by future storms without more money. Congress recently added $20 billion to FEMA's disaster relief fund in a short-term spending bill, but that still may not be enough. To make matters worse, Congress likely won't meet in-person again until after the election, and Hurricane season peaks between September and October.  "Go back to where you came from:"At a bipartisan forum in Kendrick, Idaho, conservative incumbent Sen. Dan Foreman answered the question of whether there is discrimination in Idaho with a simple, "No." Trish Carter-Goodheart, a member of the Nez Perce tribe who is running to be a house representative and not against Foreman, pushed back on Foreman's answer and citing her own experience with discrimination and Idaho's storied past of white supremacy. Foreman, furious, said to Carter-Goodheart, "I'm so sick and tired of this liberal bullshit! Why don't you go back to where you came from?" He then stormed out. Carter-Goodheart is a member of the indigenous Nez Perce tribe which has resided in the Columbia River Basin for thousands of years.   Real-time true crime? A Tik Tok user joked she thought her house was haunted when she woke up to a broken laptop screen and items on her desk misplaced. Then, while digging holes to install a fence in her backyard, she and her husband found a buried rug. Suspicious and compelled by an internet audience, they called the police. A K-9 unit signaled that it smelled something in the yard. Blood? A body? Nothing? Who knows! Seems like we'll need to stay tuned.  Earlier this week a lady posted that she found a rug buried in her yard. People convinced her to call the cops. She did. Today they went with the cadaver dogs. The dogs believe there’s something buried there. pic.twitter.com/Y065PRg5NC — Jelly Santos (@MrsJellySantos) October 4, 2024 Strikes in Beirut: Israel struck a southern suburb of Beirut overnight, leaving the densely populated area ruined. Strikes also cut off the main highway connecting Lebanon with Syria. Tens of thousands of people used this highway to flee Lebanon in the wake of Israel's campaign against Hezbollah. Iran's foreign minister warned Israel that if it attacked Iran then Iran would "retaliate harshly." Burial bunkmates: England and Wales are running out of room for their dead. New proposals to update 170-year-old burial laws could see existing graves reused as new graves. Only graves with occupants put in the ground 75 or more years ago would be eligible for reuse. It's tough that there's a housing crisis even for our bones. This is what happens when we zone for single-family graves.  Something to dwell on: 23andme could go under—but then what happens to all the DNA they accumulated? A song for your Friday: Yeeeeeeaaaahhhhh!