Tom Banse
Regional CorrespondentTom Banse covers national news, business, science, public policy, Olympic sports and human interest stories from across the Northwest. He reports from well known and out–of–the–way places in the region where important, amusing, touching, or outrageous events are unfolding. Tom's stories can be found online and heard on-air during "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" on NPR stations in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
Before taking his current beat, Tom covered state government and the Washington Legislature for 12 years. He got his start in radio at WCAL–FM, a public station in southern Minnesota. Reared in Seattle, Tom graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota with a degree in American Studies.
When not sifting through press releases, listening to lobbyists, or driving lonely highways, Tom enjoys exploring the Olympic Peninsula backcountry and cooking dinner with his wife and friends. Tom's secret ambition is to take six months off work and travel to a faraway place beyond the reach of email.
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The presence of eleven skiers, skaters and sliders with ties to the Northwest should add intrigue to the 2022 Beijing Olympics, although the upcoming sports spectacle beset with extreme COVID precautions, a diplomatic boycott and scarce snowfall hardly needs more drama. Several late additions to the Team USA Olympic roster upped the regional representation at next month’s Winter Games to similar levels as in past editions. -
A roller skating rink in Federal Way, Washington, has a remarkable track record of minting future ice skating Olympians. The rink is probably best known for being the early training ground for Apolo Ohno, among others. The streak continues now for an eighth consecutive Winter Olympics with a new short track speedskater on Team USA named Corinne Stoddard. But meanwhile, the storied roller rink is for sale.
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Washington state senators are trying a new gambit to stop the twice-yearly ritual of changing our clocks from standard time to daylight time and back again. A previous effort to move the whole West Coast onto permanent daylight saving time failed to win requisite congressional support. So now, a bipartisan group of state lawmakers is pushing for Pacific standard time to be observed year-round.
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Washington state workers and perhaps many others could get an extra day off in honor of women getting the right to vote. That idea for a Women's Suffrage Day holiday got a friendly reception on the opening day of Washington's 2022 legislative session.
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The year 2021 isn’t even over, yet Oregon and Washington have already smashed their previous records for total annual deaths. Those records were just set last year. The coronavirus pandemic is only one piece of the explanation.
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An informal network of consumer activists, bereaved parents and green burial advocates are building websites to advise and empower families who may wish to handle funeral arrangements themselves. "Home funerals" are legal, yet just one of a widening set of options for how to lay a loved one to rest.
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The American Red Cross says blood supplies going into the holidays are "dangerously low." One reason for this is that fewer donors are coming forward during the pandemic. Another is short staffing among the blood collectors, also known as phlebotomists.
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Fossil fuel use in buildings looks to be the next frontier for climate activists at the state and local level. There's a convergence of activity in the Pacific Northwest right now aimed at phasing out natural gas furnaces and water heaters. Cities from Eugene to Bellingham have teed up bans on natural gas in new commercial buildings. But natural gas has its defenders, too, who have beaten back proposed phaseouts before.
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You're not imagining things if driving in Pacific Northwest traffic feels as busy these days as it was before the pandemic. Traffic data from the Oregon and Washington transportation departments show highway volumes are nearly back to 2019 levels.
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E-commerce giant Amazon confirmed to public radio that it has begun flight testing of package delivery drones at a test range in Pendleton, Oregon, as well as continuing near Seattle and elsewhere. Routine delivery of online orders to consumers by aerial drones remains a long ways off, though.
