Seattle

RENTON, Wash. — Health officials are warning the public that a rabid bat was found near a popular park in Renton.

According to Public Health - Seattle & King County, the rabid bat was found on July 28 on the sidewalk at the south end of the park, in the area near the playground, south shelter and park restrooms.

Anyone who may have had physical contact with this bat (even if not bitten) could be at risk and should seek medical evaluation immediately or call Public Health at 206-296-4774 to determine whether rabies preventive treatment is necessary.

Rabies is fatal once symptoms begin, according to the health department.

“Rabies is treatable if it’s caught before symptoms begin, so it’s important to identify anyone who has had contact with the bat as soon as possible,” said Jocelyn Mullins, Public Health Veterinarian at Public Health – Seattle & King County. “Contact includes touching a bat, being bitten or scratched, or having any other bare skin touch a bat or its saliva.”

If you see a bat outside, do not touch the bat. If you are concerned that the bat is sick, call animal control at 206-296-7387 (PETS).

When sea water, or any liquid, gets warmer, it expands. It’s the main reason that climate change has been raising sea levels, along with glaciers melting.

The expected arrival of a strong, if not record-breaking, El Niño later in 2026 could further boost sea levels temporarily by heating up much of the Pacific Ocean.

Oceanographer Ian Miller with Washington Sea Grant at the University of Washington said strong El Niños in 1982 and 1997 raised sea level on the Pacific Northwest coast by almost one foot, while another big El Niño in 2015 raised it about 6 inches.

An El Niño in the winter of 2023-24 added six to eight days of high-tide flooding on the Oregon and Washington coasts and two to four days on Puget Sound, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Northwest Climate Hub.

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration researchers say there’s an 80% chance of a very strong El Niño weather pattern by autumn.

Most global climate models, operated by scientists at different institutions, are forecasting an El Niño of unprecedented strength.

“The vast majority of models, about 90% of the runs now, expect a record-setting El Niño event, stronger than anything that we have observed since records began in the mid-1800s,” Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/64240087

Go anti-woke, go broke. A planned anti-trans rally outside of a WNBA game in Seattle, of all places, appears to have been a major flop.

The “rally” took place outside the Climate Pledge Arena ahead of the Seattle Storm v. Indiana Fever game. Even calling it a rally is generous though — per a video posted to Instagram by local news outlet The Burner, attendance was sparse. According to ESPN, the crowd consisted of “a few dozen,” who were there to both voice support for Fever guard Sophie Cunningham and for legislation that would bar trans girls from participating in school sports in Washington state.

In a press conference on Tuesday, police said they have now recovered three weapons used in the shooting. The first, an illegal Polymer 9mm ‘ghost gun’ with an extended 33-round magazine, was found with 19 rounds left in the magazine on the 15-year-old-suspect.

A second gun, a Springfield RO 9mm, was discovered, but not used, according to Chief of Police Shon Barnes.

In addition, a third gun, a Glock .45 9mm pistol with an automatic switch and extended 40-round magazine, was discovered during clean-up on Monday ― hours after the shooting. The Glock had 21 rounds left in the magazine.

Both the Glock and the ‘ghost gun’ were believed to be used in the shooting, according to Chief of Police Shon Barnes.

Several people died and some wounded. I just got word from my partner and they're okay.

A shooting killed two people and wounded five including a child on Sunday evening during a popular food festival near the Space Needle in Seattle, a city fire department spokesperson said.

Video of a vendor recording an ad as his coworkers and the public react to the shooting in real time: https://bsky.app/profile/candylovely.bsky.social/post/3mrm6lpc4zc2y

11:47 PM US Pacific: Edited title to reflect latest news. https://www.kuow.org/live-updates/live-updates-multiple-victims-shot-at-seattle-center

Shout out to @specialseaweed@sh.itjust.works for updating the other post on this topic!

Transcript:

"Now Council is proposing to pull this funding from our general fund, which is already facing a $175 million deficit. I look forward to seeing which critical services they plan to cut from the general fund to make their numbers work."

The mayor’s office had argued that universal school meals would help out more than 6,800 students whose family income barely exceeds federal thresholds. But Hollingsworth and Foster said equity should come first with additional aid to Seattle’s poorest youth. The question of whether to siphon off funds from one food program to another started a bitter zero-sum debate between proponents of means testing and universalism.

The vote did not fall neatly along progressive and centrist lines. Foster, a sponsor, is one of the council’s three progressives, while the centrist Saka gave an impassioned speech about how his childhood experiences motivated him to oppose any delay.

“We qualified for free and reduced lunch, which means we also would have likely qualified for Medicaid,” Saka said. “But I never went to the dentist and only went to the doctor a handful of times in nine years because of the severe, significant, non-trivial, and substantial administrative paperwork burden imposed on people that need these valuable resources.”

In a press statement, Wilson pledged to work closely with the council and city departments to implement the programs funded by the FEPP levy.

Washington joined the ranks of states like Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine in enacting a so-called millionaires tax. It places a 9.9% levy on households earning more than $1 million per year. The tax doesn’t apply to the first $1 million of income — only the income beyond that threshold.

Supporters of the tax argue that it affects only a sliver of households in the state, while opponents warn it threatens opening the door to a broader statewide income tax.

Let’s Go Washington, a political action committee sponsored by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, put forward the repeal measure. “We are proud to lead the fight to protect families and small businesses from Olympia expanding their state income tax on all Washingtonians,” he said in a statement July 15, when its initiative met the signature threshold for appearing on the ballot.

Meanwhile, a campaign urging voters to reject the repeal bid has won the backing of some high-profile Washingtonians, including travel writer Rick Steves and “Jeopardy!” winner-turned-host Ken Jennings.

Gov. Bob Ferguson (D) signed the bill creating the tax in March. It takes effect in 2028, with the first taxes due in 2029.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/news@lemmy.world/p/2230332/a-bad-week-for-flock-but-a-good-week-for-privacy-and-local-organizing-in-washington-sta

As the pushback against Flock and other ALPRs grows all around the country, Washington state is doing its part!

The Seattle area job market appeared to improve over the last quarter, with the unemployment rate declining and job openings increasing slightly. But those averages obscure a significant restructuring that may reshape the regional labor force.

Job growth is shifting away from the tech industry — once seen as the unstoppable economic engine of the region — toward healthcare and frontline services. That’s according to new data compiled by the Workforce Development Council (WDC) of Seattle-King County, a nonprofit that helps set employment strategy for the region.

The 300-foot-long wetland, anchored along a dock in Ballard, is designed to give young salmon some of the calm, shaded, shallow habitat they’ve lost along the city’s hardened shorelines. “They need every help they can get to survive,” said Nancy Rottle with the University of Washington’s Green Futures Lab.

Since 2022, the Green Futures Lab has partnered with the nonprofit EarthCorps to study whether a constructed floating ecosystem can survive in saltwater and help salmon do the same. “To our knowledge, no one had tested them in salt water,” Rottle said.

Researchers say more than 75% of Seattle’s shorelines have been altered by development, making it harder for young salmon to find the protective nearshore waters they need to grow. The floating wetland tries to bring some of that habitat back by providing shade, food sources and other ecological benefits right at the marina.

“The perfect place to provide habitat that would provide shade for salmon, food for salmon, other aquatic advantages, ecosystem services,” Rottle said.

The Seattle City Council approved a beefed-up renewal of the city's dedicated transit funding measure Tuesday on a 9-0 vote, giving voters the chance to sign onto a major expansion of city-funded King County Metro service. If approved in November, the refreshed Seattle Transit Measure will generate around $138 million per year, the vast majority of which would maintain and expand supplemental bus service across the city to increase Seattleites' all-day access to transit.

Increasing the Seattle Transit Measure's funding source from its current 0.15% sales tax rate to 0.3% will allow the City of Seattle to purchase around 100,000 more bus trips per year, ramping up from the 180,000 provided today. That will mean 10-15 routes see increased frequencies, particularly on nights and weekends, with the exact corridors determined using existing equity criteria in place at the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT).

SR3 believes the shootings may be fueled by the “dangerous myth” that harbor seals are primarily responsible for declining salmon populations, according to the petition.

However, harbor seals eat a wide variety of prey, including sole, flounder, sculpin, cod, herring, octopus and squid.

Researchers have also found that eliminating seals and sea lions from Washington waters alone would not restore salmon populations because habitat loss and other human-driven factors remain the primary causes of salmon declines, SR3 said.

Harbor seals are common throughout Washington’s nearshore waters, including Bellingham Bay, Hood Canal and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

For two sisters raised in a family of 11 children that moved back and forth between Washington state and South Dakota, danger didn’t come from outsiders like they’d been warned by their church.

It came from their brothers in the next bedroom.

Federal prosecutors say the owner of Capitol Hill’s Single Shot Kitchen and Saloon did not pay the IRS more than $1 million in employee taxes over a ten-year period beginning with the restaurant’s 2014 debut on Summit.

Federal prosecutors have charged Rory McCormick with one count of Willful Failure to Pay Over Tax in the case that includes allegations of $1,027,362 in unpaid employee taxes and another $418,979 in employer-side payroll taxes owed to the IRS.

His wife had been contemplating a separation and told him on the night of the altercation that she was leaving him. At Williams-Booth’s insistence, she always carried her firearm when she left the house. She was grabbing her laptop from the home office when he came in and blocked the only exit.

He asked her if she was carrying, and she patted the belly holster where her 9mm pistol was kept. Then, she said, Williams-Booth lunged at her and pinned her up against the wall. He pulled the gun from the holster, grabbed her by the hair, and took her to the ground.

While they were on the ground, Williams-Booth had the frame of the gun pressed against the side of her throat. It had a loaded magazine but not a round in the chamber. She tried to take her phone from her purse to call 911, and the two struggled over the purse until the strap ripped. Eventually, she double-kicked him in the chest and escaped out the window, leaving behind her weapon and purse.

A Thurston County detective investigated the incident and found the evidence was consistent with his wife’s account. The detective found clumps of hair where the struggle occurred. Her purse strap was ripped, as she described. His wife had injuries on her lip and nose.

The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office developed probable cause to arrest Williams-Booth for misdemeanor domestic violence assault and unlawful imprisonment.

Previously, Washington’s rental laws didn’t have much guidance on new cooling units. Slatter said that landlords could refuse to let a tenant install one. The new law, by contrast, states that renters can now install a portable AC unit, as long as a landlord hasn’t explicitly written a ban into the lease.

The law, which went into effect in June, includes specific restrictions depending on the kinds of AC units a tenant is looking to install. For a window unit, here are the restrictions:

• A tenant must give the landlord two days’ notice before installation.
• The device cannot prevent a window accessible from the outside to be locked.
• It cannot require excessive brackets that would damage the window frame warranty.
• The device must be safely secured from falling out of the window.
• The landlord’s insurance policy must allow window-mounted units to be installed.
• Landlords can require inspection of window-mounted units after installation.
• Fewer restrictions apply to other types of AC units, like floor-mounted devices and saddle-mounted units.

The pest control company I've been using (Purcor) has been disappointing me for a while. Who do you use, and what do you pay for recurring service?

Looks like a suicidal person might have been in crisis and either jumped, shot himself or something. There's multiple police agencies with snipers ready. The bridge is closed and there's a ton of cars diverted to the street exit before the bridge. Some of the people are going back to Kitsap or to the ferrys which basically will take an additional hours. Or you can go to Olympia and go around.

This is freaking crazy. I didn't even want to drive here and now I'm stuck overnight.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49593018

Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/meet-jimothy-seattles-internet-famous-raccoon/

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/offbeat@lemmy.ca/p/2218315/seattles-newest-cryptid-is-actually-just-a-very-round-raccoon-named-jimothy