Students on Three UW Campuses Demand Changes for Minority Students: "Hundreds of students walked out of class for protests Wednesday afternoon," KIRO reports. "The student-activists declared a state of emergency at the University of Washington in relation to minority students. Protestors marched simultaneously on campuses in Bothell, Seattle and Tacoma... Students asked peers, staff and professors to join in a walk out in solidarity of the Black Lives Matter movement." Here's some of their demands.

Catching Global Warming in the Act: "Scientists training their instruments on the skies have caught the world’s major greenhouse gas right in the act of warming the planet, researchers reported Wednesday, providing the first direct evidence that human activity is dangerously altering the environment," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. "The instruments captured more than a decade of rising surface temperatures, changes that were directly triggered by the atmosphere’s increasing burden of carbon dioxide, a team of scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, reported."

Catching the Port of Seattle in the Act of Aiding Arctic Drilling (and Global Warming): "For months, secret negotiations that would end up helping the Royal Dutch Shell oil company had been under way at the Port of Seattle, whose slogan is 'Where a sustainable world is headed,'" writes Sydney Brownstone. "Then on January 7, the SeattlePI.com broke the news: A partnership between Shell and the port had been proposed, part of a deal that would create a new winter home for the $234 billion oil company's Arctic drilling fleet. It was the first time the public learned a climate bomb might be stashed on Seattle's waterfront, and it was followed, less than a week later, by a strange public meeting of the elected officials who make up our local port commission."

Seattle Police Video Will Go Straight to YouTube: "Seattle police will begin testing software developed after last December’s 'hackathon,' aimed at safely and quickly redacting officer dash- and body-camera video, and has launched a new YouTube channel to showcase the work," reports the Seattle Times. "The SPD hopes the software, or some version of it, will enable the department to resolve a pressing technological issue that has stood in the way of transparency and public trust. The SPD has struggled to find a balance between releasing gigabytes of public information in the form of police video and audio while protecting individual privacy."

Mass Vaccinations in Oregon After Meningococcal Outbreak: "Health officials at Washington universities are on alert as the University of Oregon launches a mass vaccination campaign to halt the spread of potentially deadly meningococcal infections on the Eugene campus," the Seattle Times reports. "Four Oregon students have developed bacterial bloodstream infections known as meningococcemia since the start of the school year, school officials said. Lauren Jones, an 18-year-old freshman from Georgia, died Feb. 17 after becoming infected. In response, Oregon officials have scheduled a vaccination clinic starting Monday for as many as 22,000 students."

Seattle Has a New Fire Chief: "Mayor Ed Murray has appointed a California fire chief to helm the Seattle Fire Department," SeattlePI.com reports. "Murray nominated Harold Scoggins, a 25-year veteran of the Glendale, Calif. Fire Department who has served as chief there since 2008. Before then, he served as a firefighter in the U.S. Air Force for five years, according to a statement from the mayor’s office."

Warning! Two Days Until Girl Scout Cookies: If you're in Seattle, and you buy some, they likely moved through this warehouse, according to West Seattle Blog. Also, in this amazing world of ours there exists a thing called a cookie finder.

Really? The Space Needle Is the "Corporate Leader of the Year"? As Sydney noted last week, Space Needle employees have been asking for a raise and recently were offered some company-backed advice on how to "live on less." Then yesterday, as the eagle-eyed Abby Lawlor noted on Twitter, a gay business association known as the GSBA gave the Space Needle a "Corporate Leader of the Year" award. Krishanu Ray explains what's going on.

The Siberian Craters Are Getting Scarier: "In the middle of last summer came news of a bizarre occurrence no one could explain. Seemingly out of nowhere, a massive crater appeared in one of the planet’s most inhospitable lands. Early estimates said the crater, nestled in a land called 'the ends of the Earth' where temperatures can sink far below zero, yawned nearly 100 feet in diameter," writes Terrence McCoy. "The saga deepened. The Siberian crater wasn’t alone. There were two more, ratcheting up the tension in a drama that hit its climax as a probable explanation surfaced."

Identity of Apparent Executioner in ISIS videos revealed: "The world knows him as 'Jihadi John,' the masked man with a British accent who has beheaded several hostages held by the Islamic State and who taunts audiences in videos circulated widely online," reports the Washington Post. "But his real name, according to friends and others familiar with his case, is Mohammed Emwazi, a Briton from a well-to-do family who grew up in West London and graduated from college with a degree in computer programming. He is believed to have traveled to Syria around 2012 and to have later joined the Islamic State, the group whose barbarity he has come to symbolize."