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The family lost its home of 60 years to foreclosure after taking out mortgages to pay legal fees. Some advocates say gentrification and skyrocketing prices are driving Black families out [...]

Marijuana measures are on the ballot in several states that once resisted them. Oregon would go further with a proposal to decriminalize drugs like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. Oregon has [...]

SEATTLE -- Leslie Christian recently added unusual language to her living will: After death, she hoped her remains would be reduced to soil and spread around to help out some [...]

SEATTLE -- Washington became the latest state to end the death penalty on Thursday, following a scathing State Supreme Court decision that declared the practice unconstitutional. The ruling commuted the [...]

BOISE, Idaho -- In this rugged state of jagged peaks and black volcanic soils, people struggle to make a living and get good health care. Only Mississippi has lower average [...]

In the last two months, law enforcement authorities in California took a gun away from a 38-year-old man who had threatened to kill himself, his wife and their young child [...]

Byline: KIRK JOHNSON PORTLAND, Ore. -- The fatal stabbing of two good Samaritans who intervened when a man on a commuter train shouted slurs at two women -- both African-American, [...]

ANCHORAGE -- A deadly shooting rampage at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport this month has focused attention on the interconnection of public safety and mental illness and raised questions, especially here [...]

NORTH POLE, Alaska -- Miners huddled around them to stay warm through the long, cold nights in the Klondike gold rush of the 1800s. Artists have enshrined them in paintings [...]

BELLINGHAM, Wash. -- The American coal industry, with its billions of dollars and army of lobbyists, has a storied history of muscle and might. But in this northwest corner of [...]

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont did well in the Pacific Northwest during the presidential primary season with his lectern-pounding message about fairness, need and corporate greed. A [...]

BELLINGHAM, Wash. -- Rose Wakeland, 13, who got her first two-wheeler at age 2, flew over a jump on a dirt trail here one recent morning like an old hand. [...]

CORRECTION APPENDEDMOSIER, Ore. -- The Chinook salmon that Randy Settler and other Yakama tribal fishermen are pulling from the Columbia River are large and plentiful this summer, part of one [...]

The impact of falling oil prices in Alaska, which has seemed for many residents like a distant worry until now, is about to land. The turning point came on Friday, [...]

SEATTLE -- It was major local news when the new City Council was seated here in January with a 5-to-4 majority of women. It was even bigger news last week, [...]

Byline: DAVE SEMINARA, JULIE TURKEWITZ and KIRK JOHNSON BURNS, Ore. -- The armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon, which flashed into violent confrontation with law enforcement on Tuesday [...]

DENVER -- Ken Ivory, a Republican state representative from Utah, has been roaming the West with an alluring pitch to cattle ranchers, farmers and conservatives upset with how Washington controls [...]

Byline: KIRK JOHNSON and JACK HEALY BURNS, Ore. -- They used to call it Bundyville, a dot of the arid Wild West where in 1916, a Mormon pioneer named Abraham [...]

CORRECTION APPENDEDBURNS, Ore. -- They used to call it Bundyville, a dot of the arid Wild West where in 1916, a Mormon pioneer named Abraham Bundy staked out a homestead [...]

SEATTLE -- Wildlife poachers in Africa slaughter rhinos for their horns and elephants for their tusks, and organized crime gangs from Ireland to Mexico have in recent years expanded into [...]

SEATTLE -- Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon signed a bill in May that requires greater background checks for gun transfers. It was the state's first major gun-control law in over [...]

TWIN FALLS, Idaho -- For the last three decades, this small, politically conservative Western city has mostly welcomed refugees from around the world displaced by war, oppression and terror. A [...]

PORTLAND, Ore. -- About 15 years ago, when she was in her 20s, Erika Walton handed a bong to someone who turned out be a police officer, and was cited [...]

Alaska expanded federal Medicaid coverage after the state's highest court on Monday refused an appeal by the State Legislature to halt Gov. Bill Walker's expansion order. Mr. Walker, an independent, [...]

SEATTLE -- Washington State's highest court, which has threatened, cajoled and pleaded with the state Legislature and governor for years to close the gap in spending between rich and poor [...]

CORRECTION APPENDEDSEATTLE -- Environmental goals about garbage in this and other like-minded cities increasingly come down to three words: Throw less away. So Seattle residents are given different bins to [...]

SEATTLE -- The Port of Seattle's board voted Tuesday to ask that the arrival of Shell's Arctic drilling rigs be delayed, bowing to a wave of public pressure by protesters [...]

POST FALLS, Idaho -- It took five years for negotiators to work out the details of a multinational treaty on child support that would make it easier to track delinquent [...]

ANCHORAGE -- Bitter reaction here to the Obama administration's proposal to protect a huge portion of the Arctic goes beyond political divisions over oil and environmental policy, to questions about [...]

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, stepped to the rostrum in the ornate House chamber of the Capitol here on Tuesday and called for the biggest increase in [...]

ANCHORAGE -- Conservative candidates garnered majorities in many elections around the country on Tuesday, but so did efforts to legalize marijuana. And the lessons of that complex pattern -- with [...]

CORRECTION APPENDEDSEATTLE -- The nation's only major gun-control ballot initiative this year, here in Washington State, is drawing big money and star-power names like Bill Gates and former Mayor Michael [...]

KEIZER, Ore. -- Two years after voters in Colorado and Washington State broke the ice as the first states to legalize sales of recreational marijuana to adults, residents of Oregon, [...]

Byline: KIRK JOHNSON PULLMAN, Wash. -- Amateur videos of police officers doing their jobs have become part of the fabric of urban democracy, with embarrassing or violent images spreading via [...]

SEATTLE -- A hard-fought ballot referendum that would have overturned Alaska's system of taxing oil industry profits, put to voters last week but until now considered too close to call, [...]

ANCHORAGE -- Many Alaskans chart state history along a timeline of before oil and after, so crucial were those first big strikes in the late 1960s in making the state [...]

DENVER -- Like the glint of gold or rumors of oil in ages past, the advent of legal, recreational marijuana is beginning to reshape economies in Colorado and Washington State. [...]

SEATTLE -- Caden Robinson, a 21-year-old college student, said he might not have stood in line for three hours to buy legal recreational marijuana when the first retail sales began [...]

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- John Larson, a recently retired high school science and math teacher, hopes to be in the first wave of legal recreational marijuana salespeople opening shop here in [...]

SEATTLE -- Washington State will require its approval of all packaging for edible marijuana products, Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday, a pre-emptory move to ban cartoons, toy images and any […]

SEATTLE -- The first retail shops selling legal recreational marijuana in Washington State are preparing to open next month. Cash registers are standing by, and the first crops are almost [...]

SEATTLE -- The City Council here went where no big-city lawmakers have gone before on Monday, raising the local minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than double the federal [...]

For several years, Republicans in states such as Michigan have steered clear of raising the minimum wage. That shifted this week, as the state's Republican-controlled Legislature approved a gradual increase [...]

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The cheers erupted at exactly 12:08 p.m. as word filtered through the line of couples, friends and family members, some of whom had been on the sidewalk [...]

SEATTLE -- Oregon's ban on same-sex marriage, which is under legal challenge, must face its fate alone, to survive or be struck down without anyone defending it in court, a [...]

CORRECTION APPENDEDSEATTLE -- Pascal Tessier is a 17-year-old Eagle Scout in suburban Maryland who says scouting made him who he is today, with its lessons about morality, leadership and responsibility. [...]

SEATTLE -- Mayor Ed Murray presented on Thursday what he described as an imperfect but workable plan to increase the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than twice [...]