One of the parachutes connected with the hijacker known as D.B. Cooper will be on display at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma later this month. 

It’s the first time in a decade that the parachute has been on display. It is one of the most requested items in the museum’s collection, according to a museum press release. 

The infamous hijacking took place on Nov. 24, 1971, on a Northwest Orient 727 airliner between Portland and Seattle. A man who had reserved the ticket under the name Dan Cooper told a flight attendant he was carrying a bomb in a briefcase and demanded $200,000 and four parachutes, which he received upon landing at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. 

The plane took off for Mexico City with only the pilots and Cooper on board. With two of the parachutes and the money, Cooper jumped from the plane – possibly over southwest Washington, where some of the money was found years later on a riverbank – and was never heard from again. After a decades-long investigation involving hundreds of suspects, the FBI closed the case in 2016. 

The parachute on display will be one of the two that Cooper left on the plane. It will be on display from Sept. 22 through March 16, 2025. The Washington State History Museum is at 1911 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma, WA 98402. 

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, a Turkish American woman and a recent graduate of the University of Washington, was allegedly shot and killed in the occupied West Bank on Friday around noon local time, a UW professor told Cascade PBS.

“I taught her once, but she’ll be forever my teacher,” said Aria Fani, UW assistant professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures.

Eygi recently graduated from the UW earlier in the spring, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, according to Fani. She was part of the university student encampment on campus by the UW Progressive Student Union and the United Front’s “Popular University for Gaza.”

Fani was not shocked to know Eygi was in the West Bank but was devastated by the news of her death. He said he is still in the denial stage after receiving the news.

“Even as she was spending time with her family in Turkey, she still remained committed to fighting injustice, and this is after a year of activism on campus that really wore her down on multiple levels,” Fani said.

University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce released a statement of condolence to her family.

“Aysenur was a peer mentor in psychology who helped welcome new students to the department and provided a positive influence in their lives,” Cauce wrote. “This is the second time over the past year that violence in the region has taken the life of a member of our UW community and I again join with our government and so many who are working and calling for a ceasefire and resolution to the crisis.”

Eygi was participating in a protest on a hilltop in the town of Beita against Israeli settlements when she was shot in the head and pronounced dead in Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, according to Fouad Nafia, the hospital’s doctor, The New York Times reported.

Eygi lived in Seattle and had recently arrived in Israel to volunteer with pro-Palestinian activist group International Solidarity Movement, according to The Washington Post. The group blamed Israeli troops for Eygi’s death.

The group released a press statement that cited a protester who witnessed the shooting, “Our fellow volunteer was standing a bit further back, near an olive tree with some other activists. Despite this, the army intentionally shot her in the head.”

The Israeli military released a statement on social media platform X that “forces responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.” They are also investigating.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew shared on X condolences to Eygi’s family and said that the U.S. Embassy in Israel is investigating the cause of her death and prioritizing the “safety and security of American citizens.”  

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Öncü Keçeli also shared an official statement on Eygi’s death: “The Israeli authorities who commit crimes against humanity and those who unconditionally support them will be held accountable before international courts.”

All services at the Seattle Public Library have been restored after a cyberattack took down all systems in May, according to the library’s account on social media platform X.

The public can now access public computers and all services that had been unavailable since the attack on Memorial Day. Other restored services include wi-fi, printing, the online catalogue, e-books and audio books. The library is also allowing people to return their books and other physical materials, after asking patrons to hold onto them during the outage.

After the cyberattack, the library had limited service through the end of the school year and during the summer, disrupting many heavily used programs. In 2023, the library logged more than 13 million checkouts and offered 340,000 public computer sessions at its 27 locations. During the ransomware attack, all public computers were shut off and people were unable to access their library accounts online.

Seattle Public Library had no clear idea of when all its services would return, but slowly brought them back up over the summer.

Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail 1 line will open its extension from Northgate to Lynnwood on Aug. 30. This 8.5-mile extension includes stops in Shoreline and Mountlake Terrace before ending at the Lynnwood City Center, where the transit center is located.

The new stops mean Link Light Rail now connects directly to Snohomish County for the first time. Sound Transit offers the Sounder commuter rail service that connects Everett and Tacoma to Seattle by train, as well as runs a light-rail system in Tacoma called the T line.

Lynnwood Link’s opening-day festivities include a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 11 a.m. with remarks from elected officials, board members and stakeholders. Riders can stop at the new stations in the afternoon to celebrate. Each station will have different festivities including activities, exhibits and entertainment hosted by community organizations.

The 1 line includes the Link Light Rail’s first line through Seattle. This extension will now allow riders to ride this line from the stations south of Seattle, like Angle Lake and SeaTac/Airport, to as far north as Shoreline and Lynnwood.  

Earlier this year, the long-anticipated 2 line opened, connecting Bellevue to Redmond. Also known as East Link, the 2 line will open more stations next year, including Marymoor Village and Downtown Redmond. The Interstate 90 bridge Link connection from Seattle to Redmond is also expected to open at that time, after that project was pushed back due to faulty concrete.

The Washington State Patrol admitted to losing an unknown amount of emails and public records after a data migration failure last year led to the permanent deletion of those documents.

Internal communications reviewed by Cascade PBS warned that “hundreds of thousands” of emails were potentially missing, but Chris Loftis, the patrol’s communications director, told the news outlet in an email that “the specific extent of unrecoverable emails is yet to be fully realized” as the agency has “no accurate inventory or method to calculate the total number.” Loftis stressed that the initial speculation of hundreds of thousands of missing documents is now determined to be excessive.

The issue became known to State Patrol staff in mid-2023, and internal emails show the issue was first noticed when folders for certain lawsuits, which should have contained emails, legal filings and attachments, were found to be empty. Emails regarding audits, policy changes, accreditations and claims are also missing, as are certain vaccine mandate emails.

“Importantly, we do not foresee impacts on active or past investigations and criminal records as any email would be replicated and recorded separately as part of a case file,” Loftis added. “Thus, at this point, we see this as a procedural and administrative challenge and not a challenge to our core responsibilities in law enforcement.”

Internal communications at the State Patrol showed concerns that the records management department would be “hampered in civil legal defense for years to come” as a result of the missing documents.

“Not only will we be blind to information we need and surprised in litigation, we may need to duplicate huge volumes of work,” the email read.

Loftis said the agency continues to “monitor the situation to mitigate potential challenges related to the unrecoverable emails,” but that so far they have not seen any “material impacts” and “are hopeful that trend continues.”

Asked if the agency had notified the governor’s or attorney general’s offices of the missing documents, Loftis confirmed that both offices were notified after Cascade PBS began inquiring about the issue, but he was “not sure what other communications may or may not have transpired” since 2023.

A new state audit found that the future of the Marysville School District could be in jeopardy as the financial condition of the district declines.

The report from the Office of the Washington State Auditor, released on Monday, said the eroding financial situation in the district, with approximately 9,700 students, “raises substantial doubt about its ability to continue.”

“This is the most alarming audit of a public school’s finances in 17 years,” said State Auditor Pat McCarthy in a news release. “Local leaders have a financial and a community responsibility to right their ship. The stakes are too high for Marysville and its children.”

The last time a public school district in Washington was in a comparable situation was when the smaller Vader School District dissolved in 2007 after its financial condition deteriorated and a maintenance and operation levy failed.

Revenue decreases in Marysville stem from declining enrollment as well as a double levy failure in 2022, the report noted. Additionally, executive management and the school board have not “taken the necessary steps to guarantee the district can meet its financial obligations.”

Those challenges were amplified by staffing transitions in key decision-making roles, the report added.

Ideally, school districts should have more than 60 days’ worth of operating expenses in their general fund, but at the end of August 2023, Marysville School District maintained only about 18.6 days’ worth of operating expenditures. Recent audits of the district’s financial reports through June 2024 showed more expenditures than funds — a negative balance equaling 11.6 days of operating expenses.

Auditors originally set out to review Marysville’s finances ending in August 2023, but they continued to work through the current fiscal year due to “subsequent events involving the school’s financial condition.”

The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and the local educational service district assisted the district in August of last year, after it was unable to submit a balanced budget and OSPI placed it in binding conditions. OSPI then convened a financial oversight committee to work with the Marysville School District. 

The Washington State Library and its counterpart in Wisconsin will work together for the next three years to encourage libraries at the public, tribal and community college level to implement tabletop role-playing game activities. 

The federal Institute of Museum and Library Services gave Wisconsin and Washington a $249,500 grant to make it happen. 

Seattle nonprofit Game to Grow, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Heart of the Deernicorn, an Olympia-based gaming studio and workshop, will collaborate on creating a digital toolkit guide for libraries to implement games-based services. 

The Wisconsin/Washington project builds on an existing program that has awarded more than 50 grants to Washington libraries for tabletop game programs. 

Wizards of the Coast donated 75 boxes of the popular tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons to the Washington State Library in March so all library system in the state could have a gaming kit for patrons to use. Break from Reality Games, a Seattle-based company, also donated grip mats to Washington libraries. 

“We are so thankful for the support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services,” Washington State Librarian Sara Jones said in the press release. “This project will provide libraries with recommendations for equitable and accessible games-based services that will greatly benefit the community.”

CORRECTION: This brief has been updated to state that 75 boxes of the game Dungeons & Dragons was donated for all library systems, not all libraries in the state. 

Several Washington state agencies were affected by Friday’s global technology disruption.

An outage at the Employment Security Department has been fixed, but the agency warned that some unemployment benefit payments might be delayed.

The Secretary of State’s Corporations & Charities Divisions suffered some technical problems, but was back online by 1 p.m. Phone, chat and in-person services were expected to resume on Monday. The outage did not delay the mailing of primary election ballots, which were mostly mailed by local election offices before the disruption. 

The problem was related to a Thursday software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to computers running Microsoft Windows. The computer issues widely impacted hospitals, airlines, government agencies and businesses. 

“CrowdStrike said the issue with the update has been identified and a fix has been sent to customers. This is a software issue and is not related to a cyberattack. State agencies in Washington are using the new software fix provided by CrowdStrike and restoring impacted computer systems,” said a news release from Washington Technology Solutions, which handles information technology for the state government.

Thousands of flights were delayed or canceled out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Washington hospitals and clinics reported computer problems, and closed some clinics and non-emergency operations. 

Washington’s ban on high-capacity magazines for semi-automatic weapons will stay in effect, at least for now, the Washington Supreme Court ruled on Monday.

The decision, written by Chief Justice Steven Gonzalez, acknowledges the Second Amendment concerns of the petitioners against the 2022 state law, but also notes that many other courts have upheld the constitutionality of high-capacity ammunition bans.

The Supreme Court decided the ban would remain in effect until it can hear arguments on the case in the state’s appeal of the lower court ruling. That hearing could potentially happen this fall.

The decision involves a September 2023 lawsuit by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson against Gator’s Custom Guns in Kelso alleging the store had offered more than 11,400 high-capacity magazines for sale since the state ban went into effect in July 2022.

Cowlitz Superior Court judge Gary Bashor ruled in April that Washington’s ban on magazines with more than 10 rounds of ammunition violated the state and U.S. Constitutions. Ferguson filed the successful motion to the state Supreme Court for a temporary stay of ruling. Monday’s ruling solidified that temporary stay.

More than 400 new housing units will be built near the Link Light Rail Mount Baker station, including affordable housing. The City of Seattle Office of Housing announced a partnership with Mercy Housing Northwest and El Centro de la Raza to develop these new housing units to “promote community-centered development” in the neighborhood, according to a press release. 

After the pandemic, residents proposed to transform the areas around the station by using them for art, music and other community events to deter crime. 

The University of Washington transferred this property, including the former UW Laundry site, to the city in June 2020. The redevelopment will include affordable housing, child care and an early-learning research facility. The child care center will serve 160 students and provide job training for early-learning educators. The city budgeted $5 million for the project, which will receive additional funding from partners. 

Mercy Housing Northwest and El Centro de la Raza’s plans call for a total of 431 new homes at 2901 27th Ave. S.; 2700 S. Winthrop St.; and 26th Avenue South and South Forest Street. 

About a third these homes are reserved for families earning at or below 30% of the Area Median Income, which currently is $45,200 for a family of four. More than half of the development will be for family-sized homes. The city says this is part of the One Seattle strategy for inclusive and sustainable communities.

The two organizations will receive city funding from the Seattle Housing Levy, the JumpStart/Payroll Expense Tax and the Mandatory Housing Affordability program for the first phase of the project.