How's this for emergency preparedness? An elementary school located in the tsunami inundation zone in Cannon Beach, Oregon, has equipped every student with a personal disaster survival kit.

In a dusty, sagebrush-covered ravine, a gunner unit moves with the speed of a pit crew to load a shell the size of a small bomb into a howitzer. Seconds later: boom! The wheel-mounted gun fires the shell thousands of meters down range.

Boeing is running out of space to park grounded 737 Max jets in the Puget Sound region and is now sending some of its Renton, Washington, factory output to Moses Lake's spacious airport.

Nearly four decades ago, Washington became one of the first states to abolish parole and adopt a “fixed” sentencing grid with the goal of ushering in an era of “truth-in-sentencing,” while also reducing disparities in sentences.

The tally of dead gray whales washing up on Pacific Northwest beaches during this year's northbound migration keeps going up. That's prompting an unusual request for volunteers from a federal agency.

Oregon State University has established what it considers to be the nation's largest hemp research center. This comes amid a surge of farmer interest in the Pacific Northwest to grow the non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana.

Cormorants by the thousands have taken up residence under the landmark Astoria-Megler Bridge over the Columbia River. Their poop can corrode the bridge and that is unacceptable to the Oregon and Washington transportation departments. But what actions to take against the protected birds and whose responsibility that is are up in the air.

Several years ago, Union Wine Company of Tualatin, Oregon, put some wine in cans for a food festival. It was such a hit, says owner Ryan Harms, he decided to do it as his main business.  

“I think there are a lot of indicators that are helping us feel confident about our continued investment and what we’re doing,” Harms says.

Now, Union ships its Underwood-branded cans to 49 states and 11 countries. Other big wineries have noticed.

When you think of made-in-the-Northwest products, diamonds are probably not on your list. But soon, they could be. A contract signed Thursday for Columbia River hydropower clears the way for a foundry to make lab-created diamonds in Wenatchee, Washington.