Midday Scan: The Kitsap shootings; a new coal port application; looking for health solutions

It's been a difficult week because of two shootings. Renewed application for a coal project. Smarter paving for the future? And possible health care solutions.

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Shipping around Longview could expand beyond logs and other products to include sending coal to China.

It's been a difficult week because of two shootings. Renewed application for a coal project. Smarter paving for the future? And possible health care solutions.

It has been a difficult week around the Puget Sound, particularly in Kitsap County with the shooting death of State Trooper Tony Radulescu and the accidental shooting of 8-year-old Amina Kocer-Bowman, who faces surgeries and weeks of hospitalization. 

There's outstanding coverage of both cases by The Seattle Times today — the insightful kind that makes you glad we still have a paper like The Times. And the smaller Kitsap Sun is holding its own in covering the hard stories in its backyard. As The News Tribune reports, authorities announced this morning that a woman had been arrested on suspicion of trying to help her boyfriend escape the area after Radulescu's shooting. Specific links to the papers' coverage are below, but with the saturation coverage of the shootings, let's end the week with a quick look at some non-crime writing. 

One of the state's big news stories is a renewed effort in Longview to export large amounts of coal to Chinese utilities. The Daily News notes that the application is for a facility that would dwarf the size of one proposed earlier and withdrawn (amid embarrassing revelations that the company actually planned a much larger operation than it was telling officials and the public). The facility would cost more than a half-billion dollars and create new jobs, but it also raises local issues about coal dust and traffic tie-ups at train crossings. Not to mention global warming.

On the Sightline Institute's Sightline Daily site, Lisa Stiffler provides a good look at how a couple of suburbs, Issaquah and Gresham, Ore., are moving into the use of permeable pavement. As Stiffler reports, letting water drain through pavement has both environmental and safety advantages (fewer dead fish, fewer drivers losing control as they hydroplane). She also strikes notes of caution about still-developing techniques and whether mandates or incentives are better at bringing about innovations.   

In recent years, as newspapers have struggled, the Associated Press has taken on more investigative reporting. AP was one of a number of news and citizens' groups that requested emails from Sarah Palin's time as governor of Alaska, and it is now reporting that the emails show her growing frustrations before quitting as governor June 29, 2009. In April of that year, she called one reported ethics complaint "Unflippinbelievable... I'm sending this because you can relate to the bullcrap continuation of the hell these people put the family through."

The Republican presidential candidates seem to have started a wildfire around social issues. The SeattlePI.com's Joel Connelly takes a good look at one local political result, reporting on a fundraiser for Sen. Maria Cantwell. Connelly summed it up at the start: "The intensity surrounding America's so-called social issues was displayed Thursday as U.S. Senate women took the stage in Seattle, and took out after those seeking to restrict use of contraception, limit women's health care coverage,  and deliberately complicate reproductive choice."

Finally, if you're looking for solutions, there's an interesting reminder of a PBS program on health care from The Herald of Everett's editorial page. According to The Herald, the trick to providing better health care at no extra cost is to eliminate unnecessary spending. In the PBS program U.S. Health Care: The Good News appearing on KCTS this Sunday, "Innovations at The Everett Clinic, Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, Group Health and Mountlake Terrace-based Premera Blue Cross are held up as national models for delivering high-quality care at a reasonable cost," the editorial notes.  

Links summary

The News Tribune, "New developments today in trooper shooting"

Kitsap Sun, "Boy involved in Armin Jahr shooting in court

The Seattle Times, "Father says son who took gun to school 'made a bad mistake' "

Longview Daily News"Millennium Bulk Terminals files paperwork with county for $600 million coal terminal"

Sightline Daily, "Surprisingly ambitious permeable projects"

Associated Press (in the Anchorage Daily News and elsewhere), "Palin frustration seen in last batch of emails"

Seattlepi.com, "Women on fire: Not so gentle words from 'gentle ladies' of the U.S. Senate"

The Herald, "Charting new courses here"

  

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