Northwest News Network

There’s been a lot of speculation but few answers so far about how genetically modified wheat ended up in an Oregon field. Northwest farmers and seed…

The automaker Nissan says sales of its fully electric Leaf compact surpassed all other Nissan models at dealers in the Seattle and Portland areas this…

RICHLAND, Wash. – News out of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation can sometimes sound like just one critical report after another. In fact, last week a

The U.S. Army will seek the death penalty against Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. The Army announced Wednesday the Washington-based soldier will face a general…

COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho - The protected status of a small population of reindeer in the Northwest is getting a second look. Snowmobilers and an Idaho county that depends on winter snow sports petitioned the government to delist the animal. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to do a status review on woodland caribou in the Selkirk Mountains of Idaho and Washington. They’re part of a larger herd from Canada. Wildlife managers from both sides of the border consider these caribou to be distinct from other herds in North America. But attorneys for snowmobilers and Bonner County, Idaho, are asking U.S. wildlife biologists to re-examine that assumption. Noah Greenwald at the Center for Biological Diversity hopes the U.S. maintains protections for the last remaining caribou found in the Lower 48. “What if we had said that with the bald eagle? What if we had said, 'Well, there's plenty of bald eagles in Canada and Alaska, who cares if they go extinct.' I don't think anyone would have thought that was acceptable.” The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently designated 30,000 acres as critical habitat for the caribou. That was far less than the original proposal of nearly 400,000 acres. On the Web: Southern Selkirk Mountains Caribou (US Fish & Wildlife Service) U.S. Fish & Wildlife's response to petition to delist caribou

Police say three people are dead, including the gunman, after a shooting at a shopping mall in suburban Portland, Oregon.Clackamas County sheriff's Lt.…

RICHLAND, Wash. -- President Barack Obama has been publicly warning Syria’s leaders not to use chemical weapons against their own people. The news is unexpectedly relevant in southeast Washington. Researchers at at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are developing new scientific techniques to trace chemical agents back to their sources. Carlos Fraga is a dapperly dressed Ph.D. chemist, doing research for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. His lab looks normal enough -- that is until he points out a certain cabinet. "This cabinet is a dry cabinet; it’s where we keep our cyanide samples.” Being that close to odorless and tasteless stuff that can kill you is a bit unsettling. But Fraga’s goal with all these locked-up deadly chemicals is to keep people safe. He says terrorists are much more likely to wage a chemical attack than a biological one or nuclear bomb. “Because it’s easy to acquire these chemicals a lot of this stuff can be shipped to your home.” He means the chemical building blocks of some of these weapons. Fraga leads me deep into his brightly-lit lab to show me one of the instruments that he's using. It's a machine about the size of a standard kitchen oven. He puts some tiny samples into it. The whirling machine looks for the tiny bits of impurities in each deadly chemical. The machine runs samples through a very long tube. It looks something like large-gauge fishing line. And spits out a graph of its findings on a computer sitting nearby. “You have a mixture, you have some sort of liquid," Fraga says. "And each of these little peaks that are coming out are individual components …” Fraga isn’t looking at the dangerous chemicals themselves. Instead, he’s interested in the impurities that create a specific pattern. It’s almost like a signature. This machine examines the deadly nerve agent sarin and matches it to the chemical building blocks it came from. Fraga explains another example: cyanide is made with water. And he can tell the difference between water from North America and water from parts Europe through tiny impurities called anions. “We’re looking at anions that are in the parts-per-million, sometimes parts per billion -– they’re really low levels. They don’t really care how much is in there, but we do.” Fraga hopes to one day create a database map of sorts of more and more samples. Then his work might act as a deterrent to people or leaders who want to use chemical weapons. Or, he says, states like Syria. "They might want to take better care of them and not let them get into the black market or something because the United States can match it back to them if it’s ever used.” Fraga hopes he doesn’t have to use his bench science in real life. But he knows that if something does happen, his team will likely be called in to do this new form of chemical-forensics. Copyright 2012 Northwest Public Radio

The kind of finely tuned data crunching that fueled the 2012 election is spreading to another venue: the classroom. You might have heard that campaign…

Reverend Todd Eklof made a vow in 2004 -- the year 11 states, including Oregon and Kentucky -- passed constitutional amendments against gay marriage. He stopped performing any marriages. But starting Dec. 9 same-sex couples can get married legally in Washington. And that day will also marks a turning point for the Spokane minister. Eklof discussed his vow with Northwest News Network's Jessica Robinson. "My name is Todd Eklof. I am the minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane. In 2004 I was living in Louisville, Kentucky. It was just days after the general election and this state law was passed in Kentucky. Quite honestly, it made me angry. I was angry. That following Sunday, I knew I had to address the issue to my congregation and I got up and said, 'Look, I can't marry anyone until I'm free to marry everyone equally including gays and lesbians, including gays and lesbians. "At the time I was actually working two jobs, meaning that I largely supported my own ministry. And about a week about this stance made the local news headlines, both the supervisor and the CEO of the company called me into a meeting and effectively reprimanded and demoted me and within two months I was fired. "I have to say, I've stuck through this decision through thick and thin. I have missed performing weddings during the past decade ˆ for a lot of reasons. It's a joy to be able to participate in a ritual that is so meaningful for a couple. It's very special. "Now, since the state law was passed in Washington, I can perform weddings again. That's what it means to me is that I can, I'm now free to practice my faith, in my church, in my community." Eklof adds: a couple in his congregation has already asked him to officiate their wedding after Washington's law takes effect Dec. 9. He says from now on, he knows he won't always be saying "I now pronounce you husband and wife."

A tribal court on the Umatilla Indian Reservation is one of the first to hand-down a long prison term under new tougher criminal sentencing laws enacted…