Latest Washington Headlines
All the headlines from our Washington Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Washington Jury Awards $50M After Test Misses Birth Defect
Dec 12 2013 // Lawyers say a King County, Wash. jury has awarded $50 million to a Burien couple whose son was born with profound mental and physical disabilities after a hospital and lab failed to detect his genetic abnormalities. Brock...
Personal Genetic Tests Now Subject to Sharper Scrutiny After 23andMe Episode
Dec 12 2013 // The genetic test firm 23andMe Inc.’s clash with U.S. regulators over the direct sale of its gene analysis service to consumers signals stiffer oversight of thousands of tests in an industry predicted to increase...
Washington Victim Of Botched Laser Surgery To Get $30M
Dec 9 2013 // A jury has recently awarded an additional $18 million to a woman whose botched surgery at a Wenatchee, Wash. hospital left her unable to speak. The Wenatchee World reported that Becky S. Anderson was having polyps removed...
Glass-Steagall Firewall Could Return If Volcker Rule Disappoints
Dec 9 2013 // Five U.S. agencies will finish the Volcker rule tomorrow after more than three years of Wall Street resistance to its limits on trading and investing. Lawmakers and their allies who want to rein in big banks are ready to...
Washington Navy Yard Shooting Victim’s Family Files Suit in Florida
Dec 6 2013 // The family of a woman slain during the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard is the first to file a lawsuit against the U.S. government and defense contractors over the slaughter that left 12 dead, alleging that...
Obama Product Safety Chief Tenenbaum Returns to South Carolina
Dec 6 2013 // After four years in Washington as the nation’s products safety czar, Inez Tenenbaum is coming home to the Columbia area, her life changed in ways large and small. “Now I’m always giving advice unsolicited...
Lawsuits Challenging Obamacare Cite Religion, Tax Issues
Dec 5 2013 // Hours after the University of Notre Dame filed a religious challenge to the U.S. health-care overhaul in Indiana federal court, a judge in Washington heard arguments in a lawsuit assailing tax provisions of the...
Flood of Regulations Coming from Obama Administration
Dec 5 2013 // Over the next 12 months, the Obama administration is due to issue regulations governing everything from e-cigarettes to smoke-stack emissions in what experts predict will be a second-term rush to put rules in place before...
Metro-North Crash Seen Thwarting Delay of Automatic Braking
Dec 4 2013 // The deadly train derailment in New York City may force railroads to install automatic brakes by 2015 and dash industry efforts to put off adding the technology by five years. The Metro-North Railroad wreck may persuade...
50-Plus Tornadoes Pummel Midwest in Late Season Outbreak
Dec 2 2013 // In a rare late season outbreak, more than 50 tornadoes blasted across Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. on Nov. 17. Preliminary estimates by the catastrophe modeling firm RMS put insured losses from the...
States, Insurers Working on Ways to Bypass Obamacare Federal Exchange
Nov 21 2013 // States and insurers are already working to bail out President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, anticipating the system’s online insurance exchanges may not be ready by a critical December deadline. All of...
Forecasters: Illinois Twister Had Winds of Up to 190 mph
Nov 19 2013 // National Weather Service said a tornado that struck the central Illinois community of Washington had winds between 170 and 190 miles per hour. The meteorologists said that the storm had a preliminary rating of an EF-4. The...
Car Makers Offered Relaxed Regulation for Installing Ignition Lock Tied to Seat Belt Use
Nov 19 2013 // A U.S. regulator’s offer to relax auto safety rules for manufacturers that install technology to prevent drivers from starting a car unless seatbelts are fastened drew swift opposition from safety advocates. Cars...
Storms Sweep Across Illinois, Kill at Least 5, Delay Flights
Nov 18 2013 // Tornadoes and thunderstorms swept through a 300-mile stretch of Illinois and other Midwestern states, killing at least five people, damaging hundreds of homes and disrupting air travel at O’Hare International...
D.C. Insurance Commissioner Dismissed After Questioning Obamacare Fix: Reports
Nov 18 2013 // Washington, D.C.’s commissioner for the department of insurance, securities and banking, William P. White, was dismissed last Friday, a day after questioning the White House’s proposal to let health insurers...
Washington Driver Blames ‘Gorilla’ For Causing Crash
Nov 18 2013 // A Spokane, Wash., woman who wound up with a totaled car, a broken collarbone and a $550 ticket blames her post-Halloween crash on a person in a gorilla suit who she says jumped in front of her car. Hailey Wulz said she...
Obamacare Banking on Enrollment Surge Near Deadlines
Nov 14 2013 // Almost 1 million people who applied for health care on the government insurance exchanges last month left without choosing a plan, a pipeline of potential customers the Obama administration must persuade to return. While...
Washington Apple Crop Tops $2B in Sales
Nov 11 2013 // An apple a day may not keep the doctor away, but it sure lines the pockets of Washington’s apple growers. Apples were worth more than $2 billion to Washington farmers in 2012, the first crop in state history to cross...
Washington Driver Blames ‘Gorilla’ For Causing Crash
Nov 6 2013 // A Spokane, Wash., woman who wound up with a totaled car, a broken collarbone and a $550 ticket blames her post-Halloween crash on a person in a gorilla suit who she says jumped in front of her car. Hailey Wulz told KREM-TV...
PLUS Conference: Global Risks, Governance and Hypocrisy
Nov 5 2013 // America’s European allies are being hypocritical in their complaints about the U.S. spying on them because they all have their own surveillance programs, according to two former top officials in the Clinton...
