School gunman used texts to gather victims at lunch, police say
SEATTLE — The student who opened fire with a handgun in his high school cafeteria Friday morning in northwest Washington state, killing two and wounding three, arranged through text messages for the five fellow students to be there together, police investigators said Monday.
Trying to raise profile of climate change for Washington voters
SEATTLE — The effort by a California billionaire named Thomas F. Steyer to bolster global climate change measures in Washington has turned the battle over the state Senate into one of the most expensive legislative elections in state history.
Seattle mayor details plan for $15 minimum wage
SEATTLE — Mayor Ed Murray presented on Thursday what he described as an imperfect but workable plan to increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than twice the federal minimum wage and one of the highest anywhere in the nation, through a series of complex and phased-in stages. Just as crucially, he said, the plan has broad political support, with a coalition of labor and business groups ready to push hard for it at the City Council, starting with the first hearings next week.
Panel recommends ditching plagued Oregon health exchange
WASHINGTON — With encouragement from the Obama administration, an Oregon panel recommended Thursday that the state scrap the website for its beleaguered health insurance exchange and use the federal marketplace instead.
In a shift, fewer young voters identify with democrats
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The college vote is up for grabs this year — to an extent that would have seemed unlikely two years ago, when a generation of young people seemed to swoon over Barack Obama.
Murder Case Highlights Risk of Selling Marijuana, Even Legally
Ken Gorman, an aging missionary of marijuana, was found murdered in his home here two weeks ago. The unsolved crime is exposing the tangled threads at the borderland of the legal and illegal drug worlds he inhabited.