Latest Washington Headlines
All the headlines from our Washington Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Washington Train Company Sues BNSF for at Least $41M
Apr 9 2015 // Two top officials of defunct refrigerated rail service Cold Train are suing BNSF Railway in Washington for $41 million for putting them out of business. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Spokane on Tuesday. Capital...
Washington Sues Highway Builder in $29.4M Suit
Apr 9 2015 // The Utah Department of Transportation is suing a company that built a stretch of Timpanogos Highway south of Salt Lake City that has been plagued by problems. The state agency filed a lawsuit last week in Utah state court...
Washington Ferries Worker Awarded $1 Million in Retaliation Suit
Apr 7 2015 // A Washington State Ferries employee who suffered retaliation after reporting on a co-worker who skipped out on the job has been awarded $1 million. The Kitsap Sun reported that Steve Chaussee was a carpenter foreman at the...
Premera Blue Cross in Washington Says Data on 11M Exposed by Hackers
Mar 18 2015 // Mountlake Terrace, Wash.-based Premera Blue Cross, which sells health insurance in the northwestern U.S., said information on 11 million people may have been exposed in a cyberattack uncovered six weeks ago. Hackers may...
Washington Senate Votes to Lower Work Injury Settlements Age to 40
Mar 12 2015 // The Washington state Senate has passed a bill to lower the age at which an injured worker can settle a claim from 53 to 40. The chamber passed Senate Bill 5513 on a 28-21 vote Tuesday after debate on whether the bill does...
Washington Officials Seek $9M in Case of Drought
Mar 10 2015 // The state of Washington has not yet declared a drought this year, but they’re asking the Legislature for $9 million for drought relief in case it’s needed. The Department of Ecology says snowpack level...
Declarations
Mar 9 2015 // Bad Geometry “Our current station geometry does not serve eastern Washington well.” —John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington, said following a...
USDA Seeks Crop Insurance Products for Specialty Crop, Fruit, Vegetable Growers
Mar 2 2015 // The federal crop insurance program would be extended to growers of specialty crops, fruits and vegetables as well as other farmers who have not had access to policies under new rules proposed by the U.S. Department of...
Former AIG, MetLife Leader Benmosche Dies at 70
Feb 27 2015 // Robert Benmosche, the combative former chief executive officer of American International Group Inc. who led the insurer, once the world’s largest, to repay a $182.3 billion taxpayer bailout, has died. He was 70. He...
States Have No Plans If Health Insurance Subsidies End
Feb 27 2015 // Millions of people could lose health insurance subsidies in the coming months if the Supreme Court sides with opponents of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. And one thing was clear last weekend as the...
Alaska Becomes 3rd State to Legalize it
Feb 26 2015 // Alaska has become the third U.S. state to legalize marijuana. But the historic day passed with little public acknowledgement in a state with a savvy marijuana culture that has seen varying degrees of legal acceptance of...
Replacing Unsafe Train Crossings Deemed Too Expensive
Feb 26 2015 // The bullet train that will whisk passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles at 200 miles per hour won’t pass through the kinds of intersections that have led to two major commuter-rail accidents this...
Worldwide Taps Day and Donovan in Washington Office
Feb 20 2015 // Worldwide Facilities Inc. has hired Craig Day and Brian Donovan in its Seattle, Wash. Office. Day was named senior vice president, and casualty specialist. He will lead the growth for all lines of business in the...
Washington’s Early Warning System a Bit Slow Quake Shows
Feb 20 2015 // A magnitude-4.3 earthquake that rumbled under Washington state’s Cascade Range early Wednesday was “not a great advertisement” for an early warning system undergoing tests, an official said. The system...
Central Washington Jolted by M4.3 Earthquake
Feb 19 2015 // A magnitude-4.3 earthquake rumbled under Washington state’s Cascade Range, but no damage has been reported. The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network says the quake struck at 1:04 a.m. Wednesday and was centered about 20...
Family of Barefoot Marathoner Files Suit in Washington Against Vibram
Feb 12 2015 // The family of an Ethiopian runner who famously won an Olympic marathon barefoot is suing Vibram, the maker of a popular line of minimalist running shoes, saying it used his name without permission. Abebe Bikila, who died...
Work on ‘Tsunami-Proof’ School on Washington Coast Underway
Feb 9 2015 // Ground has been broken for a new school building on the Washington coast at Westport that officials say is designed to be tsunami-proof. The planned “vertical evacuation structure” will be an addition to the...
$17M Lawsuit For Bridge Collapse Filed by Washington
Feb 6 2015 // A lawsuit filed this week by the Washington State Department of Transportation is seeking at least $17 million to recover costs related to the 2013 Skagit River bridge collapse. The lawsuit, filed in Skagit County Superior...
Washington Farmworker Safety Training Classes at Capacity
Feb 2 2015 // Surrounded by brushes, respirators and yellow plastic coveralls, Flor Servin held up a white baby onesie and told a room full of farm workers, in Spanish, they must scrub chemical residue from their protective equipment...
How ‘Crying Wolf’ in Bad Weather Warnings Erodes Public Compliance
Jan 28 2015 // The public is more likely to trust and comply with bad weather warnings—such as for winter snowstorms and icy roads—if authorities give their warnings as a probability estimate, according to risk researchers. The...
