A veteran Washington State Department of Transportation worker has died after being hit by a falling tree during Sunday night's rain storm.  Maintenance Superintendent Jim McBride said the worker was setting up safety cones to alert motorists to downed power lines when the tree fell on his truck and killed him on Highway 203 just south of Carnation. 

Department spokeswoman Kris Olsen identified the man as 66-year-old Billy Rhynalds, a 12-year veteran of the department.

Construction of Washington's new $300 million data center complex is expected to wrap-up this summer. But as state agencies prepare to move in, the rent per square foot is causing some sticker shock.

Not all kids are enjoying a day off thanks to Martin Luther King, Jr.  Teachers and administrators at Hyla Middle School on Bainbridge Island see it as the perfect time to give students a new perspective on the civil rights leader.  

Snow flurries and a fired up Bears team proved too much for Seattle, as Chicago controlled the game through most of three quarters, and held on for a 35-24 NFC semifinal playoff win at Soldier Field.

The NFC North champs scored on their first possession, led by the steady arm of quarterback Jay Cutler, making his professional post-season debut. The Bears offensive line protected Cutler all afternoon, leading to a 28-0 margin in the 3rd quarter. 

Many of us are happy to have a day off, whenever and wherever we can get it. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is no exception. But besides sleeping in and catching up on chores, there is an opportunity to spend part of the day celebrating the life and values of King, honored for his nonviolent activism in the civil rights movement.

Many of the celebrations take place over three days. And many of them are opportunities to participate in service activities such as EarthCorps' event to remove invasive plants. 

Have you ever seen an actual Seahawk? No, we're not talking about Matt Hasselbeck or Marshawn Lynch here, but the natural, feathered namesake of Seattle's NFL team.

The bird's proper name is the Steller's sea eagle and two of them now are now in residence at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo. The pair, which arrived last month from the Los Angeles Zoo, have just emerged from a standard 30-day quarantine and can be seen in the zoo's Northern Trail section.

Seniors who graduate from Chief Sealth High School in West Seattle have a new price for their first year of college – free.  The president of South Seattle Community College says it’ll give one-year tuition scholarships to any student who gets a diploma and fills out a couple of forms. 

Legislators on both sides of the aisle are rejecting Governor Gregoire's proposal to fix the state ferry system's chronic deficit by making it into an independent taxing district. 

At a House Transportation Committee hearing yesterday, lawmakers nixed the idea, saying they don't think it has the votes to pass.  And as John Stang of the Kitsap Sun reports, the Chairwoman of the Senate Transportation Committee says she won't even give the proposal a hearing. 

Being a pioneer in adding calorie and nutrition labels to menus at fast-food restaurants has made King County a good place for researchers to visit.

A team based at Duke-National University of Singapore has been watching consumers at Taco Time restaurants, both in King County and in other counties, and found that adding all that info to the menus appeared to have no impact on people's choices. They published their results today in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.