When computer sales declined 14 percent in the first quarter of this year, fingers immediately began pointing at Microsoft.

The release of a new version of Windows is supposed to stimulate PC sales. But Windows 8 has received a lukewarm reception.

Strategic News Service publisher and KPLU technology commentator Mark Anderson doesn’t mince words. He thinks Windows 8 is a bomb.

Crews have begun removing the mangled steel, crumpled pavement and cars that fell into the Skagit River in Mount Vernon after a span of an interstate highway bridge collapsed.

The Washington Department of Transportation announced that the retrieval of the fallen section began, a day after barges with equipment arrived at the river.

For families who have lost loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, Memorial Day can be a time of unbearable sadness. That’s especially true for Betsey Reed Schultz, a grieving mother in Port Angeles. But the woman is a shining example of someone trying to turn her sorrow into something beautiful.

A mother's worst nightmare

It was two years ago on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. Betsy Reed Schultz got the visit every deployed soldier's mother fears.

The Sixth Annual Bellevue Jazz Festival starts next Wednesday and runs through the weekend.  There will be more than 40 live free performances in restaurants and other public areas in downtown Bellevue, plus three headliner concerts featuring Carlos Cascante y su Tumbao, Kendrick Scott Oracle, and the Cyrus Chestnut Trio + Stefon Harris.   This week we preview the festival and provide more info about other jazz events on Jazz Northwest.

The lead police agency in the investigation of missing Utah mom Susan Powell has said for the first time that investigators believe Josh Powell played a role in killing his wife.

Newly released documents from the West Valley City Police Department show Susan Powell had a tumultuous relationship with her husband, Josh Powell.

Feeling maddened by the madding crowd? Dreaming of a quiet beach, or a mountain lodge? Looking for a way to retreat from the chaos? Perhaps what you need is, in fact, a retreat.

Sand, sun, and surf may be the image you have when you think of a getaway. But for some, the vacation this year has little to do with the beach and more to do with quiet introspection. 

Welcome to the world of monastic retreats. 

The spring's cold snaps will mean not as many cherries this summer. Flower buds and bees don’t like low temperatures. And the cherries—well, they don’t like the rain. But there is a silver lining. a week.

Here’s the good news: When there are fewer cherries on the tree, that means the fruit that remains usually get plumper. Norm Gutzwiler, who farms near Wenatchee, is a bit grumpy about the recent rains on his 100 acres of cherries.

Bryce Kenning saw the void before him in an explosion of dust, and there was nothing he could do.

"It was like time was frozen — like a roller coaster where you're not attached to the tracks," he said Friday. "It's something you never think you will ever experience in a lifetime — driving off a straight cliff."

Federal officials were searching the country for a possible temporary replacement for a bridge that collapsed along the crucial Interstate 5 corridor, but Washington Gov. Jay Inslee cautioned Friday that major disruptions will last for weeks, if not months.

Rain showers will be coming and going this weekend. That's the big picture, but Cliff Mass, professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, says the weekend won’t be a total washout.

“Memorial Day weekend is generally not the best,” he says. “We have a really nice period sometime in the early to mid-May most years, and we’ve had it.”

Now, Mass says, we’re starting to see the infamous “June gloom syndrome,” which he says involves “a lot of low clouds and sprinkles.”