In the News

KING 5: Historic lodge at Saint Edward State Park fully restored and welcoming guests

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KING COUNTY, Wash. — After many years of dormancy, and many more in development, The Lodge at Saint Edward State Park in Kenmore has opened its doors, again.  It's the same building that housed the St. Edward Seminary until 1976. The 326 acre land was sold to the state a year later and became the Saint Edward State Park. Since that time, the building has been vacant and is now…

GeekWire: ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system goes live in Washington state — here’s how it works

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The news: ShakeAlert, an automated system designed to warn people that an earthquake has occurred and shaking is imminent, is being activated in Washington state today to complete a West Coast rollout of the technology. How it works: The alert system, operated by the U.S Geological Survey in cooperation with the University of Washington-based Pacific Northwest Seismic Network,…

National Memo: Let’s Cut Child Poverty In Half -- By Making Tax Credit Permanent

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Child poverty has been a pervasive issue in the United States as nearly 11 million children are considered poor. That's one in seven children. Rising costs of living — from basic necessities, like rent and groceries, to transportation and childcare — coupled with stagnating wages are putting more children and their families below the poverty line. COVID-19 has made it…

HuffPost: Parents Would Keep Getting Monthly Checks Under Joe Biden’s ‘American Families Plan’

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Parents would receive monthly checks, even after this year is over, under President Joe Biden’s forthcoming multitrillion-dollar plan for American families. If made permanent, the payments could amount to one of the most consequential policy changes of Biden’s presidency, finally bringing the U.S. into the ranks of other advanced nations that pay parents a monthly child…

CNN: House Democrats want to see permanent child tax credit in Biden's second recovery

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A group of House Democrats have introduced a bill to permanently expand the child tax credit and want to see it as part of President Joe Biden's recovery plan, a new marker that could complicate the passage of the bill. The push over the child tax credit is the latest in a high stakes negotiation over the President's bill and is just the most recent example of a place where…

Vox: HIPAA, the health privacy law that’s more limited than you think, explained

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The first thing you should know about HIPAA is that it’s HIPAA, not HIPPA. There is only one P, and that P doesn’t stand for “privacy.” “People make up what that acronym stands for,” Deven McGraw, co-founder and chief regulatory officer of the medical records platform Ciitizen and former deputy director for health information privacy at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)…

GeekWire: Rep. Suzan DelBene on out-of-date privacy laws, and why she’s not giving up on federal legislation

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It’s one of the hottest topics in tech, but despite broad agreement about the importance of online privacy, the United States has yet to pass comprehensive, modern, federal legislation that addresses the issue. U.S. Rep Suzan DelBene, a Democrat from Washington state, wants to change that. “Technology has created incredible new opportunities, but our laws have not kept up,” she says. “So…

Roll Call: 280 million Americans have no control over their data. A national standard is the only way to fix it

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We’ve all done it — downloaded a new app on our phone, been prompted with an overwhelming and confusing Terms and Conditions pop-up, and immediately clicked “I Agree” and moved on without thinking what hitting that button means. The fact is every time we log on to the internet or use an app, our data is at the whim of the company, and there is largely no accountability for how a…

Politico: Pharmacies score customer data in vaccine effort. Some are crying foul.

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Millions of Americans streaming through retail pharmacies to receive Covid vaccines have no choice but to hand over their personal information to those companies, raising red flags for privacy watchdogs who are pressing for oversight of how the pharmacies may use the data bonanza to boost their profits. Pharmacy chains like CVS Health, Walgreens, Rite Aid and others are playing an…

The Spokesman-Review: $1.9 trillion stimulus bill could be turning point in American law for families with new monthly payments to parents

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WASHINGTON – House Democrats on Wednesday passed a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package that will send $1,400 payments to most Americans, along with monthly payments to parents of up to $300 per child, a dramatic but temporary overhaul of a tax credit program Democrats hope will become permanent. The sprawling legislation also includes $350 billion for state, local and tribal…