A late South Kitsap resident’s wish to aid those who once cared for him was fulfilled in grand fashion July 23 with SK Fire and Rescue ceremoniously unveiling a state-of-the-art addition to its EMT fleet purchased entirely through donated assets.

Ron Johnson’s appreciation for SKF&R had already been strong, his brother Jerry having served as a volunteer firefighter in the 70s and his family demonstrating decades of support before that. That appreciation would grow substantially when he took a nasty fall in December 2006, prompting his life partner Robert Roblee to call 911.

His gratitude for the service rendered to him went beyond words, going so far as to bequeath some of his own property to be transferred to and sold by SKF&R upon his death in order to fund a new ambulance. Following Johnson’s passing on May 7, 2021, the sale rose roughly $450,000 according to SKF&R chief Jeff Faucett, with just under $369,000 being used to acquire said ambulance and the associated equipment

Rank-and-file Seattle police officers voted in favor of a new, partial three-year contract that, if approved by the Seattle City Council, will give them immediate retroactive raises totaling 23%.

The agreement, announced by Mayor Bruce Harrell on Monday, will make Seattle officers the highest paid in the state, leapfrogging them from 29th. A starting officer will make $103,000 a year, up from $83,000.

Negotiations are not finished, however. The agreement covers 2021, when the previous contract expired, through 2023. City negotiators and the Seattle Police Officers Guild left 2024 unresolved and called in a mediator with the Public Employment Relations Commission to help.

But I thought the police were defunded!! /s

In the week since a line of Japanese health supplements began being recalled, five people have died and more than 100 people were hospitalized as of Friday.

Osaka-based Kobayashi Pharmaceutical Co. came under fire for not going public quickly with problems known internally as early as January. The first public announcement came March 22.

Company officials said 114 people were being treated in hospitals after taking products, including Benikoji Choleste Help meant to lower cholesterol, that contain an ingredient called benikoji, a red species of mold. Earlier in the week, the number of deaths stood at two people.

Some people developed kidney problems after taking the supplements, but the exact cause was still under investigation in cooperation with government laboratories, according to the manufacturer.

I think it's finally upgrade time. While I love my Neptune 2, it definitely has its issues.

Ideally, my next printer would have:

• Built-in auto leveling, so I don't have to install a BL Touch
• An enclosure
• Be slightly larger than the Neptune 2
• Open source firmware
• OctoPrint support

I was looking at the Prusa MK4, but it seems like a high price for what you get. Any recommendations?

Republicans are entering a months-long stretch of legislating with their smallest House majority in decades. And the margin is about to tighten even more.

Departures from the House have whittled down the Republican caucus from 222 to 219, meaning the party can only afford to lose two members and still pass legislation when everyone is attending and voting.

Another Republican, Rep. Ken Buck (Colo.), announced Tuesday that he would vacate his seat at the end of next week.

Meanwhile, Congress is staring down a deadline next Friday to fund about 70 percent of the government — including the Defense, State and Homeland Security departments. It could further complicate a stalled border security bill and aid package for Ukraine and Israel.

Democrats are likely to add another lawmaker to their ranks after a special election in a deep-blue, Buffalo-area district in late April. The next special election in a red district isn’t until May 21.

American oil and natural gas wells, pipelines and compressors are spewing three times the amount of the potent heat-trapping gas methane as the government thinks, causing $9.3 billion in yearly climate damage, a new comprehensive study calculates.

But because more than half of these methane emissions are coming from a tiny number of oil and gas sites, 1% or less, this means the problem is both worse than the government thought but also fairly fixable, said the lead author of a study in Wednesday's journal Nature.

The same issue is happening globally. Large methane emissions events around the world detected by satellites grew 50% in 2023 compared to 2022 with more than 5 million metric tons spotted in major fossil fuel leaks, the International Energy Agency reported Wednesday in their Global Methane Tracker 2024. World methane emissions rose slightly in 2023 to 120 million metric tons, the report said.

"This is really an opportunity to cut emissions quite rapidly with targete

The Massachusetts governor, Maura Healey, announced plans to pardon all simple marijuana possession charges from the state, which could affect “hundreds of thousands” who have faced charges.

“We believe this is the most sweeping cannabis pardon announced by any governor in the United States. The reason we do this is simple: justice requires it,” Healey said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Though the state does not have exact numbers of how many people the pardon will affect, Healey said it could be “hundreds of thousands” in Massachusetts.

The pardon does not cover other marijuana-related charges, including those related to distribution or driving under the influence. Without the pardon, simple marijuana possession charges can show up on people’s criminal records, affecting their ability to obtain a job or housing.

Kohberger’s public defenders had argued that a grand jury seated by prosecutors improperly indicted him on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary. They contended that Idaho law left open the idea that grand jurors must reach the higher legal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt — the same as at trial to convict a defendant — rather than the longstanding threshold of probable cause to indict.

In the one-page Supreme Court ruling issued Tuesday afternoon, the justices offered no legal rationale for their denial of the motion to appeal from Kohberger’s attorneys. The document was signed by Melanie Gagnepain, clerk of the Idaho Supreme Court.

The King County Prosecutor’s Office said Officer Noah Zech, 40, was justified in firing a single round from his patrol rifle, striking Shaun Fuhr in the back of the head as Fuhr fled through a construction site in the 4100 block of 37th Avenue South after police responded to a report of domestic violence and child abduction.

The city’s civilian-run Office of Police Accountability previously found Zech’s actions fell within the department’s policies. The office also dismissed complaints of biased policing — Zech is white and Fuhr was Black — and failure to de-escalate the situation before resorting to deadly force.

King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion met with Fuhr’s family and their attorneys before publicly releasing her office’s findings. A federal civil-rights lawsuit from Fuhr’s family is pending against the city and Zech in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

In addition to an internal investigation by OPA, the city in a rare move had asked the King County Sheriff’s Office t

A six-week audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s production of the 737 MAX jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.

The air-safety regulator initiated the examination after a door panel blew off a 737 MAX 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the agency announced that the audit had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, failed to comply with quality-control requirements, though it did not provide specifics about the findings.

The presentation reviewed by the Times, though highly technical, offers a more detailed picture of what the audit turned up. Since the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its quality-control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence about manufacturing lapses at the company.

For the p

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said a 911 call around 7:40 p.m. Sunday reported the crash outside the city of Madras, and deputies found the site with the help of power company officials.

“Due to the extent of the crash there were no survivors,” the sheriff’s Facebook post said.

Authorities did not specify the number of passengers in the single-engine plane. The sheriff’s office says it won’t release the names of the victims until identities are confirmed and families are notified.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it has opened an investigation into the crash, which involved a Piper PA-32. It will oversee the probe along with the Federal Aviation Administration, the sheriff’s office said.

The NTSB said one of its investigators arrived at the site Monday afternoon to document the wreckage before it’s sent to a secure facility for further evaluation.

Local power company officials found the wreckage after looking into a power outage in the area, the fe

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the Federal Aviation Administration will rigorously assess Boeing after the blowout of a fuselage section on an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

To maintain airline safety, “that means an enormous amount of rigor in dealing with Boeing, in dealing with any regulatory issue,” Buttigieg said on Fox News Sunday. “And that’s exactly what the FAA is doing.”

Boeing has faced scrutiny from lawmakers, regulators and increasingly passengers after a series of high-profile flight incidents this year, most notably the blowout of a fuselage section on a brand-new 737 MAX 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

Shares of Boeing fell 1.6% in premarket U.S. trading on Monday, after reports over the weekend that the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the Alaska Air incident. The head of Delta Air Lines Inc. told Bloomberg separately that he expects further delays to the yet-to-be certified 737 MAX 10.

By the close of Washington’s legislative session last week, state lawmakers had added more funding to help reduce health care insurance costs for undocumented immigrants, as the state also prepares to expand Apple Health, its free or low-cost health insurance, to the same population in July.

This year, the Legislature added $28.4 million, nearly twice as much as its first allocation of such funding during the 2023 session, to continue helping the 16,000 individuals who applied for coverage during the recent enrollment period, which ended Jan. 15.

In May 2022, Washington was the first state to file a waiver application to allow undocumented immigrants to buy private health insurance; a year later, the waiver was approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of the Treasury.

The waiver meant undocumented immigrants could apply for Medicaid or shop for private health care insurance through Healthplanfinder, the website to apply for health care

A collision on Interstate 5 just north of Everett has caused a 6-mile backup for drivers traveling south, the Washington State Department of Transportation said Monday morning.

The department first posted about the closure on X shortly before 7 a.m. WSDOT’s real-time traffic map showed the backup stretching through Marysville around 8 a.m.

Drivers should avoid the area if possible or prepare for delays, the department said.

A Washington State Ferries crew on Saturday helped the Coast Guard rescue six people and two dogs from a boat in Rosario Strait.

A 37-foot cabin cruiser called for assistance during “nasty weather” near Decatur Island just before 1 p.m., the Coast Guard station in Bellingham said. A wave over the bow shattered the boat’s front windshield, injuring some of the boaters and causing the vessel to take on water.

The boaters shared their GPS position before their radio shorted out and they lost communications. The Coast Guard issued an Urgent Marine Information Broadcast — a radio message for all boaters in the area — and dispatched vessels and a helicopter.

Democratic lawmakers are probing SpaceX over Russia's reported use of Starlink in Ukraine, saying that recent developments raise questions about SpaceX's "compliance with US sanctions and export controls."

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk last month denied what he called "false news reports [that] claim that SpaceX is selling Starlink terminals to Russia," saying that, "to the best of our knowledge, no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia." But Musk's statement didn't satisfy US Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who sent a letter to SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell yesterday.

"Starlink is an invaluable resource for Ukrainians in their fight against Russia's brutal and illegitimate invasion. It is alarming that Russia may be obtaining and using your technology to coordinate attacks against Ukrainian troops in illegally occupied regions in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, potentially in violation of US sanctions and export controls," Raskin and Garc

Astra's long, strange trip in the space business is taking another turn. The company announced Thursday that it is going private at an extremely low valuation.

Four years ago, the rocket company, based in Alameda, California, emerged from stealth with grand plans to develop a no-frills rocket that could launch frequently. "The theme that really makes this company stand out, which will capture the imagination of our customers, our investors, and our employees, is the idea that every day we will produce and launch a rocket," Astra co-founder Chris Kemp said during a tour of the factory in February 2020.

Almost exactly a year later, on February 2, 2021, Astra went public via a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC). "The transaction reflects an implied pro-forma enterprise value for Astra of approximately $2.1 billion," the company stated at the time. For a time, the company's stock even traded above this valuation.

But then, rockets started failing. Only two of the seve

Attackers have transformed hundreds of hacked sites running WordPress software into command-and-control servers that force visitors’ browsers to perform password-cracking attacks.

A web search for the JavaScript that performs the attack showed it was hosted on 708 sites at the time this post went live on Ars, up from 500 two days ago. Denis Sinegubko, the researcher who spotted the campaign, said at the time that he had seen thousands of visitor computers running the script, which caused them to reach out to thousands of domains in an attempt to guess the passwords of usernames with accounts on them.

Visitors unwittingly recruited

“This is how thousands of visitors across hundreds of infected websites unknowingly and simultaneously try to bruteforce thousands of other third-party WordPress sites,” Sinegubko wrote. “And since the requests come from the browsers of real visitors, you can imagine this is a challenge to filter and block such requests.”

Like the hacked

China’s hackers-for-hire take government officials out for lavish banquets, binge drinking and late-night karaoke with young women in a bid to win favor and business, as revealed in a highly unusual leak last month of internal documents from a private contractor linked to Chinese police.

China’s hacking industry is vast in size and scope but also suffers from shady business practices, disgruntlement over pay and work quality, and poor security protocols, the documents show.

Private hacking contractors are companies that steal data from other countries to sell to the Chinese authorities. Over the past two decades, Chinese state security’s demand for overseas intelligence has soared, giving rise to a vast network of these private hackers-for-hire companies that have infiltrated hundreds of systems outside China.

Though the existence of these hacking contractors is an open secret in China, little was known about how they operate. But the leaked documents from a firm called I-So

The federal judge who oversaw a New York defamation trial that resulted in an $83.3 million award to a longtime magazine columnist who says Donald Trump raped her in the 1990s refused Thursday to relieve the ex-president from the verdict's financial pinch.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan told Trump's attorney in a written order that he won't delay deadlines for posting a bond that would ensure 80-year-old writer E. Jean Carroll can be paid the award if the judgment survives appeals.

The judge said any financial harm to the Republican front-runner for the presidency results from his slow response to the late-January verdict in the defamation case resulting from statements Trump made about Carroll while he was president in 2019 after she revealed her claims against him in a memoir.