Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 201 - 207 of 207
While most of our attention in the Pacific Northwest these days is on trade wars, tariffs and wildfires, there are critical talks underway between the U.S. and Canada over future allocations of the Columbia River system’s water. The two countries are renegotiating the Columbia River Treaty which went into effect in 1964. It is a 50-year agreement under which both nations can redo providing there is a 10-year advanced warning. That occurred and negotiators are now busy meeting. A new agreement w...
In America, when people invent things, they expect their trade secrets to be protected by federal law when their government patents are approved. However, that isn’t always the case. Patent infringements are life and death for inventors especially when their ideas are incorporated into products made by larger and better financed competitors who avoid paying licensing fees. Too often the originators sue, run out of money fighting off competitors, and simply fade away. Until recently, our c...
Believe it or not, there is good news to report these days. According to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, last year Americans donated more than $410 billion in cash to non-profit organizations which is up from $389 billion in 2016. Additionally, giving by individuals represented more than 70 percent of total contributions. “Americans’ record-breaking charitable giving in 2017 demonstrates that even in divisive times our commitment to philanthropy is solid. As people have mor...
The massive Berkeley Pit in Butte, Mont., is one of the world’s largest superfund sites and has been described as a giant sink filling with metal-laden, acidic water from over 10,000 miles of underground mine workings. It has been a ticking time bomb since 1982 when the mine owner turned off the pumps which kept the subsurface tunnels dry for miners. The pit has collected 50 billion gallons of toxic water. While the rising pit water is a looming environmental threat if it seeps into the area’s g...
The Jetsons television series about a space-age family featuring “Rosey the Robot” gave us a preview of life with robots, kiosks and interactive television. In 1962, it was a fictitious cartoon; however, in 2018, many of the Jetsons’ conveniences are a reality. Take fast-food restaurants, for example. Faced with a growing shortage of workers and increased costs, some are turning to robots to flip hamburgers and clean grills----mundane, unpleasant and hard to fill jobs. Wendy’s installed self-cl...
Too often, our sons and daughters tend to look for role models in lofty places and many become disillusioned by the bad behavior of some of them. Worse yet, some try to emulate that comportment. The most admired people tend to be the teachers, neighbors, pastors and bosses who live in our home towns. In 2013, Dr. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, a psychology and brain science professor at the University of Massachusetts, wrote in Psychology Today (PT): “Role models who uphold high ethical or moral v...
Last week, Seattle’s City Council did an “about face” revoking the onerous corporate head tax it unanimously enacted less than one month ago. Its city council had approved an annual $275 per full-time employee assessment to fund homeless programs and affordable housing. The tax, which would raise $237 million over five years, was the subject of an employer-led referendum to abolish it. The handwriting was on the wall. If the council did not rescind the tax, the voters would. Tax suppo...
