Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 45
SEATTLE (AP) — BNSF Railway must pay nearly $400 million to a Native American tribe in Washington state, a federal judge ordered Monday after finding that the company intentionally trespassed when it repeatedly ran 100-car trains carrying crude oil across the tribe's reservation. U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik initially ruled last year that the railway deliberately violated the terms of a 1991 easement with the Swinomish Tribe north of Seattle that allows trains to carry no more than 25 cars per day. The judge held a trial earlier this m...
SEATTLE (AP) — The Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into the Boeing jetliner blowout that left a gaping hole on an Alaska Airlines plane this January, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Citing documents and people familiar with the matter, the newspaper said investigators have contacted some passengers and crew — including pilots and flight attendants — who were on the Jan. 5th flight. The Boeing plane used by Alaska Airlines suffered the blowout seven minutes after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, forci...
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Majiah Washington noticed a flash outside her home this week in Portland, where a dangerous storm had coated the city with ice. Opening her blinds, she saw a red SUV with a downed power line on it and a couple who had been putting their baby in the car. The woman screamed to her boyfriend to get the baby to safety, and he grabbed the child and began to scramble up the driveway on concrete so slick it was almost impossible to walk. But before he made it halfway, he slid backward and his foot touched the live wire — "a lit...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Authorities were hunting Thursday for whoever sent suspicious letters — including some containing fentanyl — to elections offices in at least five states this week, delaying the counting of ballots in some local races in the latest instance of threats faced by election workers around the country. The letters were sent to elections offices in the presidential battlegrounds of Georgia and Nevada, as well as California, Oregon and Washington, with some being intercepted before they arrived. Four of the letters contained fenta...
LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Authorities in Hawaii pleaded with relatives of those missing after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century to come forward and give DNA samples, saying the low number provided so far threatens to hinder efforts to identify any remains discovered in the ashes. Some 1,000 to 1,100 names remain on the FBI's tentative, unconfirmed list of people unaccounted for after wildfires destroyed the historic seaside community of Lahaina on Maui. But the family assistance center so far has collected DNA from just 104 famili...
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A man who posed as an undercover police officer kidnapped a woman in Seattle, drove her hundreds of miles to his home in Oregon and locked her in a cinder block cell until she bloodied her hands breaking the door to escape, the FBI said Wednesday. Negasi Zuberi, 29, faces federal charges that include interstate kidnapping, and authorities said they are looking for additional victims after linking him to violent sexual assaults in at least four more states. "This woman was kidnapped, chained, sexually assaulted, and l...
COLUMBUS, Mont. (AP) — A bridge that crosses the Yellowstone River in Montana collapsed early Saturday, plunging portions of a freight train carrying hazardous materials into the rushing water below. The train cars were carrying hot asphalt and molten sulfur, Stillwater County Disaster and Emergency Services said. Officials shut down drinking water intakes downstream while they evaluated the danger after the 6 a.m. accident. An Associated Press reporter witnessed a yellow substance coming out of some of the tank cars. David Stamey, the c...
ALLEN, Texas (AP) — It took four minutes for a neo-Nazi with an arsenal of firearms to kill eight people and wound seven others at a Dallas-area shopping center before a police officer ended the rampage, likely saving untold lives. The massacre Saturday sent hundreds of shoppers at the Allen Premium Outlets scrambling for cover in shops, storerooms and closed hallways. Those killed included two elementary school-age sisters, a couple and their 3-year-old son, and a security guard who had helped others escape. Allen, a multicultural suburb of 10...
SEATTLE (AP) — Thursday marks marijuana culture's high holiday, 4/20, when cannabis fans gather in clouds of smoke at music festivals, celebrate with all-you-can-deals on chicken wings and other munchies, and take advantage of pot-shop discounts in legal weed states. This year's edition provides an occasion for activists to reflect on how far their movement has come, with recreational pot now allowed in 21 states and the nation's capital, as well as a national political climate that hasn't moved as quickly on legalization as many expected. H...
SEATTLE (AP) — Kirkland Warren was out on bail pending a long-delayed murder trial in Arkansas. But when he was arrested in southwestern Washington state early this month on charges that he assaulted his ex-girlfriend and fired a gunshot into her apartment, he quickly posted bond and was released again. Just a few days later, his ex-girlfriend, Meshay Melendez, 27, and her 7-year-old daughter, Layla Stewart, vanished. Police named Warren a person of interest in their disappearance. The discovery of their bodies in thick brush down a road e...
SEATTLE (AP) — Boeing bid farewell to an icon on Tuesday, delivering its final 747 jumbo jet as thousands of workers who helped build the planes over the past 55 years looked on. Since its first flight in 1969, the giant yet graceful 747 has served as a cargo plane, a commercial aircraft capable of carrying nearly 500 passengers, a transport for NASA's space shuttles, and the Air Force One presidential aircraft. It revolutionized travel, connecting international cities that had never before had direct routes and helping democratize passenger fl...
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho police pieced together DNA evidence, cellphone data and surveillance video to charge a criminology graduate student with the November slaying of four University of Idaho undergraduates, according to an affidavit unsealed Thursday. The affidavit says DNA matching that of 28-year-old Bryan Kohberger was found on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene, just a short drive across the state border where he is a doctoral student at Washington State University. The affidavit also says that a cellphone belonging to Kohberg...
SEATTLE (AP) — The Washington state attorney general on Thursday charged two Tacoma police officers with murder and one with manslaughter in the death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who died after repeatedly telling them he couldn't breathe as he was being restrained. Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed charges of second-degree murder against Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins, and first-degree manslaughter against Timothy Rankine. Witnesses reported seeing Burbank and Collins attack Ellis without provocation, according to a probable c...
SEATTLE (AP) — A divided Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday the state's dairy workers are entitled to overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week, a decision expected to apply to the rest of the agriculture industry. For the past 60 years, state law — like federal law — has exempted farmworkers from classes of workers who are entitled to overtime pay, but in a 5-4 ruling the court found that unconstitutional. The majority said the Washington state Constitution grants workers in dangerous industries a fundamental right to healt...
SEATTLE (AP) — In a victory for the Trump administration, a U.S. appeals court on Monday upheld rules that bar taxpayer-funded family-planning clinics from referring women for abortions. The 7-4 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned decisions issued by judges in Washington, Oregon and California. The court had already allowed the administration's changes to start taking effect while the government appealed those rulings. The changes ban taxpayer-funded clinics in the Title X program for low-income women from making a...
SEATTLE (AP) — A Customs and Border Protection memo obtained by The Associated Press confirms that bus companies such as Greyhound do not have to allow Border Patrol agents on board to conduct routine checks for immigrants in the country illegally, which is contrary to the company's long insistence that it has no choice but to do so. Greyhound, the nation's largest bus carrier, has said it does not like the agents coming on board, but it has nevertheless permitted them, claiming federal law demanded it. When provided with the memo by the AP, t...
SEATTLE (AP) — Patrick DePoe was in high school the last time his Native American tribe in Washington state was allowed to hunt whales. He was on a canoe that greeted the crew towing in the body of a gray whale. His shop class worked to clean the bones and reassemble the skeleton, which hangs in a tribal museum. Two decades later, he and the Makah Tribe — the only American Indians with a treaty right to hunt whales — are still waiting for government permission to hunt again as their people historically did. The tribe, in the remote north...
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would grant legal marijuana businesses access to banking, a measure that would clear up a longstanding headache for the industry. The bill, called the SAFE Banking Act, passed 321-103 on the strength of near-unanimous support from Democrats and nearly half of Republicans. Its prospects in the Senate are uncertain, but supporters said the amount of Republican support in the House was a good sign. "This is a sign the time has come for comprehensive cannabis reform," said Morgan Fox, a...
SEATTLE (AP) — A hacker accessed the personal information of 106 million Capital One credit card holders or credit card applicants in the U.S. and Canada, in the latest massive data breach at a large company. Capital One Financial Corp., one of the nation's largest issuers of credit cards, said among the information obtained by the hacker was 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers. It said no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised. The breach is among the largest of a major U.S. financial i...
SEATTLE (AP) — Trump administration rules that impose additional hurdles for low-income women seeking abortions are on hold once again. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Wednesday vacated a unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel and said a slate of 11 judges will reconsider lawsuits brought by more than 20 states and several civil rights and health organizations challenging the rules. The rules ban taxpayer-funded clinics from making abortion referrals and prohibit clinics that receive federal money from sharing o...
SEATTLE (AP) — A federal judge in Seattle on Tuesday blocked a Trump administration policy that would keep thousands of asylum-seekers locked up while they pursue their cases, saying the Constitution demands that such migrants have a chance to be released from custody. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled Tuesday that people who are detained after entering the country illegally to seek protection are entitled to bond hearings. Attorney General William Barr announced in April that the government would no longer offer such hearings, but i...
SEATTLE (AP) — The proof is in the pee. A federally funded study has confirmed, not surprisingly, that marijuana use went up in Washington state after its first legal pot stores opened in 2014. In fact, consumption appeared to double, at least in one major city, over three years — a conclusion scientists reached by way of the unglamorous work of analyzing raw sewage. "It's stinky," said lead author Dan Burgard, a chemist at the University of Puget Sound. "But we've worked with urine, we've worked with wastewater, and we've worked with por...
New Trump administration rules imposing additional hurdles for women seeking abortions can take effect while the government appeals decisions that blocked them, a federal appeals court said Thursday. The rules ban taxpayer-funded clinics from making abortion referrals and prohibit clinics that receive federal money from sharing office space with abortion providers — a rule critics said would force many to find new locations, undergo expensive remodels or shut down. More than 20 states and several civil rights and health organizations c...
SEATTLE (AP) — Ashes to ashes, guts to dirt. Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation Tuesday making Washington the first state to approve composting as an alternative to burying or cremating human remains. It allows licensed facilities to offer "natural organic reduction," which turns a body, mixed with substances such as wood chips and straw, into about two wheelbarrows' worth of soil in a span of several weeks. Loved ones are allowed to keep the soil to spread, just as they might spread the ashes of someone who has been cremated — or even use it...
SEATTLE (AP) — A U.S. judge in Washington state Thursday blocked new Trump administration rules that would provide additional hurdles for women seeking abortions, including by banning taxpayer-funded clinics from making abortion referrals. Judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima granted the preliminary injunction in cases brought by the state and abortion rights groups, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said. The new rules were due to take effect May 3. "Today's ruling ensures that clinics across the nation can remain open and continue to p...
