Vaccine-only sections at T-Mobile Park: The Mariners are adding vaccinated-only sections starting May 13. That means up to 5,000 vaxxed-up fans can watch the shit show that is the 2021 Mariners. I'm told that the team is "just terrible" this year (I'm not a masochist, so I don't watch baseball and must outsource these facts to people who enjoy suffering: Mariners fans). To enjoy the spoils of the vaccinated-only sections, fans must prove that they are 14 days out from the second Moderna or Pfizer dose.
Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant settles with Seattle's ethics and elections commission: Sawant will pay around $3,500 to settle the allegation that she used city resources to promote the Tax Amazon ballot measure that she never ended up running. As part of the settlement, Sawant also agreed to acknowledge that she violated the city's ethics code when she did that. Proponents of a right-wing campaign to recall Sawant included the charge among their complaints.
TikTok might've just solved a cold case: TikTok users believe that a woman in a viral video is actually Sofia Juarez, a Kennewick girl who went missing in 2003. In the video, a woman in Mexico claimed she had been held captive and said she was trying to reunite with her family. Kennewick police are investigating.
Shooting near Yesler Terrace: Stay out, and if you're in, then keep your head on a swivel:
This is happening now. Heavy police response. Watch for updates @seattletimes. https://t.co/Xe0Tx9ERD2
— Mike Carter (@stimesmcarter) May 8, 2021
Monroe Correctional Complex's doses were outdated: Health staff at the Washington prison administered expired Moderna shots to 208 inmates, according to the State Department of Corrections. The vaccines were five days past their recommended use date, but Moderna said they should still be effective at protecting against COVID-19.
Catfish Corner returns to the CD, and Simply Soulful moves into the neighborhood: "The return of Black-owned businesses to the 23rd and Jackson corridor is a welcome sight to a district that lost many minority-owned businesses due to development, rising rent costs, and gentrification," writes Mark Van Streefkerk for Capitol Hill Seattle Blog.
KNKX asks Dr. Jeff Duchin why cases remain so high in King County: And the Duch provides an answer:
Duchin said, basically, there are still enough unvaccinated people in the county to give the virus a foothold.
(For example, South and Southeast King County have among the highest cases per capita right now and among the lowest vaccination rates.) pic.twitter.com/61uZAlpKLs
— Will James (@OtherWillJames) May 7, 2021
We're missing 10 months of Durkan's text messages: And the mayor's office "mishandled a series of public records" after learning the messages were missing, the Seattle Times reports in this infuriating story. The missing texts date from "Aug. 28, 2019 to June 25, 2020," which cover the dates of the George Floyd protests, the abandonment of the East Precinct, and rise of CHOP. Durkan told the Times she "believes all her texts, calendar entries and emails should be available and quickly produced."
This is also a story about 2 civil servants & gatekeepers to public records, Stacy Irwin and Kim Ferreiro, who blew the whistle to advocate for disclosure: https://t.co/MP7QHMnmUm by @DBeekman pic.twitter.com/GCmm6EU0UH
— Daniel Gilbert (@ByDanielGilbert) May 7, 2021
COVID-19 outbreak at Oregon church: According to Oregon health officials, 74 churchgoers from Peoples Church in Salem contracted COVID-19. Last year, Peoples Church joined nine other Oregon churches to sue Gov. Kate Brown over COVID-19 restrictions.
The Dutch are training bees to detect COVID-19.
Oregon lawmaker who led COVID protesters in Capitol has COVID: Rep. Mike Nearman is ill with COVID-19. Meanwhile, he's facing "charges of official misconduct in the first degree and criminal trespass in the second degree" for leading a troop of COVID-19 protesters yelling about activity restrictions into the state Capitol building last December.
Rome is living in the year 3021: Rome has a new vending machine that spits out warm, fresh pizzas. The Italians are split over whether this is good or an atrocity.
You can tip tweeters directly on Twitter now.
Non-union newspaper strikes for a day after CEO basically threatens to turn staff writers into freelancers if they want to WFH: The CEO of Washingtonian magazine wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post saying that workers who plan to work remotely "may create a 'strong incentive' for bosses to convert full-time workers into contractors, who get paid by the hour or output and lack benefits such as health-care coverage and retirement accounts." Staffers said fuck that and took the day off. "Merrill has spent the hours since the op-ed published doing damage control," the Washington Post reports.
They need to keep us poor when we’re unemployed, otherwise they have a harder time hiring us for less than we’re worth. Don't let them win:
INBOX: The @USChamber is calling on lawmakers to end the $300 supplemental boost in UI benefits. “Based on the Chamber’s analysis, the $300 benefit results in approximately one in four recipients taking home more in unemployment than they earned working.” pic.twitter.com/oh9ptUybML
— Rebecca Rainey (@RebeccaARainey) May 7, 2021
US DOJ pursues indictment of the cop who murdered George Floyd and the three who watched him die: Though a Minnesota judge already convicted Derek Chauvin of murdering Floyd, and though the three other cops still face trial in August, the Feds decided they wanted to weigh in on civil rights charges to hold the officers "accountable for violating the Constitution," according to the New York Times. "All four men were accused of willfully failing to aid Mr. Floyd as he lay on the ground in clear need of medical care, an act deemed to violate Mr. Floyd’s constitutional right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law, including his right to be free from an officer’s deliberate indifference to serious medical needs," the Times reports.
World Health Organization approves Chinese COVID-19 vaccine: The vaccine produced by Sinopharm "has already been given to millions of people in China and elsewhere," and represents "the first vaccine developed by a non-Western country to get WHO backing," reports the BBC. This approval will provide "a substantial boost" to the global vaccination rollout, which has been slow in coming due in part to vaccine nationalism.