Been having a hard time finding a space at park-and-ride lots? Sound Transit feels your pain.

The transit agency says it's started to crack down on drivers who violate parking rules at Sounder train stations and park-and-rides. Transit riders are complaining that it's getting harder to find parking spaces, at least in part because of other drivers parking inconsiderately.

Sound Transit began giving warnings last week, but starting this week, cars violating Sound transit parking rules will be immediately towed.

At risk? Vehicles that are ...

Lawmakers face stark choices when it comes to the budget. Those choices were on display Monday as the House voted on a cost-cutting bill. Democrats and Republicans split over what to cut next: education or social services.

Making headlines this morning: 

• Feds Begin Seattle Police Review
• Details Emerge in Port Orchard Shooting
• Business Push Back on Seattle Parking Rate Hike
• Most Painful Education Cuts Yet

One-hundred seventy million Americans watch, listen to or use public media each month.

KPLU is participating in 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting, a national, grassroots effort to rally the support and energy of listeners and viewers in communities from Homer, Alaska to Fort Myers, Florida. KPLU and its Seattle colleagues, KUOW and KCTS, are part of this national effort.

Today’s big global health news: An international fund that was created (with significant support from the Gates Foundation) to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in poor countries has identified episodes of fraud or at least misappropriation of funds amounting to tens millions of dollars.

Kirby Wilbur is the new Republican Party chairman in Washington, unseating former state lawmaker Luke Esser over the weekend in a party's leadership vote. The former KVI talk radio host beat Esser by a vote of 69 to 36, with seven votes for Puyallup Republican Bill Rennie, according to The Seattle Times' Jim Bruener.

Despite GOP gains in the state, Wilbur told the Times the party's advances should have been bigger: 

You might not have realized it, but weather forecasts have been getting more accurate for the past ten to twenty years. Forecasters have a lot more precision about when and where different weather systems will hit.  But, this isn’t always communicated very clearly.

Growing populations and increasing pollution are contributing to more and more “dead zones” in bays and oceans around the world.

Now there’s an interactive online map pinpointing more than 760 spots across the globe—including 22 in Washington – that either are dead zones or are in danger of becoming one.

What’s a “dead zone?”

It happens when excess nutrients in the water help trigger an algae bloom. Mindy Selman explains that when all the algae die, they sink to the bottom.

The US Army is phasing out the UH-1 "Huey" helicopter by October, 2012. The workhorse of the Vietnam war is one of the most widely recognized helicopters in the world. The Yakima Training Center Air Ambulance Detachment retires its Huey in a final flight ceremony at 10 a.m. this Wednesday, January 25.