Planet Seattle

This roundup covers British Columbia’s decision to stop changing its clocks and the technical challenges that come with it, a CFL semifinal in Vancouver amid worrying pedestrian collision statistics, and the designation of the Vancouver port expansion as a project of national interest to diversify exports. British Columbia skips the clock change for the first time in decades: What it means for residents and technology For the first time in decades, residents of the Canadian province of British...

The Supreme Court of Canada overturned the acquittal of a driver who struck and killed a child in Vancouver, and ordered a new trial. Jennifer Whiteside became interim leader of the B.C. NDP after its defeat by the Conservatives. The Holdom Overpass in Burnaby received Envision’s Platinum certification for sustainability. Supreme Court of Canada overturns acquittal of driver who killed child in Vancouver The story began in July 2021 at one of downtown Vancouver’s busiest intersections and...

Vancouver is preparing for changes in city leadership: Robert Weeks will head the fire department, while mayor-elect Pete Fry is assembling a transition team and appointing a deputy mayor. Meanwhile, a woman was fatally struck by a cement truck near the airport, renewing questions about pedestrian safety. Robert Weeks to lead Vancouver Fire Rescue Services, bringing experience and continuity The City of Vancouver has announced the appointment of a new fire chief. Robert Weeks will officially...

In this edition: a scandal at a Vancouver school, where a teacher crossed professional boundaries with a seventh-grade student and was suspended; a cooling housing market in British Columbia, where sales are falling, prices are sliding and construction is rising amid economic uncertainty that could last until 2027; and a roundup of family-friendly Halloween events across Greater Vancouver from immigrant services organization ISSofBC, with six ideas ranging from a “pumpkin train” and a glowing...

A political conflict is heating up in British Columbia over the repeal of DRIPA, the law on Indigenous rights. Meanwhile, two pedestrian collisions have occurred in Vancouver within days of each other, one of them fatal, and a humpback whale has collided with a BC Ferries vessel in Howe Sound. British Columbia changes course: what lies behind the promise to repeal DRIPA British Columbia’s incoming Conservative government is reaffirming its intention to repeal the Declaration on the Rights of...

News roundup: Uniqlo will open in downtown Vancouver in the former Nordstrom space, the B.C. Greens held on to two seats in the legislature, and Vancouver rock bands raised money to protect bats. Uniqlo heads to downtown Vancouver: Japanese retailer to take Nordstrom’s place at Pacific Centre The opening of the first Uniqlo store in downtown Vancouver is more than just another expansion by the chain. It signals tectonic shifts in Canada’s urban retail landscape, where Asian brands are moving in...

The British Columbia election ended in a crushing victory for Lorne Doerkson’s Conservative Party, which is forming a provincial government for the first time since 1928. The Conservatives won 48.1% of the vote and 64 seats, taking 15 Metro Vancouver ridings from the NDP. David Eby held on to Vancouver-Point Grey but resigned as NDP leader, accepting full responsibility for the failure of the snap election. Bowinn Ma was re-elected in North Vancouver, but her party is heading into...

British Columbia has drawn attention on several fronts at once: the province’s resorts dominated a prestigious Condé Nast Traveller ranking, with eleven of Canada’s top fifteen located there, while a tense campaign is underway ahead of the snap election on October 24. Voters will have to navigate 93 electoral districts, and five on Vancouver Island could change political colors. The NDP’s traditional stronghold may swing to the Conservatives, making the coming vote especially...

Residents of key regions in British Columbia gave their communities an average C+ for quality of life: nature and parks scored highly, while housing policy received the lowest marks. Sixteen-year-old musician Richard Lee raised more than $22,000 for BC Children’s Hospital, and Vancouver’s First Christian Reformed Church is marking its centennial as it stands on the brink of leaving its denomination. British Columbia gives its cities a C+: housing falls short, parks save the day Residents of...

Across three stories, Nintendo Switch 2 emerges in several roles at once: a platform for reviving classics, a home for indie games, and the subject of a technical experiment. Nintendo is promoting a new version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and showcasing a selection of independent games for Switch and Switch 2, while the arrival of an early emulator shows that interest in the console’s hardware extends beyond the official ecosystem. Together, these stories reflect different aspects...

In the days before the U.S. midterm elections, two trends intensified at once: early voting reached record levels by the standards of recent midterm campaigns, and tensions grew over who controls the election process and how. National polls show Democrats holding a significant lead over Republicans in preferences for the House of Representatives, while the outcome of the Senate race remains less clear. Against this backdrop, the Justice Department sent all states warnings about criminal...

The stories cover different markets, but they share one question: how much are companies and consumers willing to pay for a technological edge? Samsung touts its longstanding leadership in foldable phones while releasing an especially expensive model for China. In artificial intelligence, by contrast, investors are demanding ever stronger evidence that record investments in infrastructure will pay off. Together, these stories show how technological promises become marketing arguments and...

Three articles describe different threats: possible measles exposure at a store in Pennsylvania, the spread of bird flu among dairy herds in Washington state, and a drop in technology stocks amid rising AI spending. They share a broader question: how to respond to a risk that grows faster than society can assess its consequences. The first two cases concern the spread of infectious diseases; the third involves financial losses and investor confidence. But the events cannot be directly compared:...

Two of the three articles describe the same dangerous moment: the United States and Iran are signaling that they are open to negotiations while preparing for a possible resumption of hostilities. US Vice President JD Vance’s letter and the visit to Tehran by representatives of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey show that diplomatic channels remain open. But they have yet to resolve the key disagreements or remove the threat of a new strike. The third article, about the dwarf planet candidate...

Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, the political landscape in the United States looks both favorable to Democrats and uncertain. Their advantage in the race for the House of Representatives is bolstered by dissatisfaction with the Donald Trump administration and concerns about the cost of living, but the Senate map gives Republicans a chance to hold on. Meanwhile, the information environment is also changing: Samsung is shutting down its own news feed, which failed to compete with Google...

The Federal Reserve faces a difficult combination of risks: the investment boom surrounding artificial intelligence is supporting economic growth and markets, while also intensifying inflationary pressures and resource shortages. Market participants are divided over whether high interest rates can cool the boom. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh believes borrowing costs affect AI investment, while those taking a more radical view argue that the technology’s enormous potential returns could weaken the usual...

Amazon’s latest announcements point to a common strategy: Alexa is becoming not just a voice assistant, but a hub for everyday digital services and home controls. The company is bringing the assistant to a photo frame, moving its tablets to a more familiar version of Android, and introducing a 3D map of the smart home. In all three cases, the goal is the same: to make Amazon’s technology more accessible and intuitive, so people can interact with it in familiar ways—by voice, touch, or through a...

The Donald Trump administration is seeking to have Washington state set aside more than 400 ballots cast by voters whom federal officials consider potentially ineligible to vote. The move echoes a similar request to California and puts a broader dispute in the spotlight: how to identify possible violations of election rules without jeopardizing citizens’ right to vote and trust in elections. According to The Washington Post, the US Department of Justice asked Washington state officials to set...

María Corina Machado’s return to Caracas after ten months in exile, and the appointment of a new foreign minister almost simultaneously, who met with a U.S. diplomat the next day, saw Venezuela lay out the full spectrum of its relations with Washington over the course of two days: from gratitude for a military operation to sharp criticism of an oil deal. The focus of local media and experts is not so much the fact of rapprochement with the United States as the question of who will manage the...

Fierce clashes between illegal armed groups broke out in Syria’s southern Suwayda province, leaving members of the groups and civilians wounded. According to the SANA news agency and the provincial information office, gunfire spread from the city’s eastern neighborhoods toward Suwayda’s market and other areas. A lawyer was among those injured. Preliminary reports indicate that the dispute began as a personal quarrel at a fuel station between members of the Abu Sarhan and Radwan clans. One side...

The Venezuelan government has launched the “Renace Team” program, with 244 crews set to work across the country repairing problems in public utility infrastructure. President Delcy Rodríguez said their work would be directly linked to residents’ reports: complaints about outages submitted through the VenApp platform are to be promptly forwarded to field teams. The crews will address problems with electricity, drinking water and household gas, and respond to weather emergencies such as heavy...

The U.S. Department of Justice said a federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia sentenced 32-year-old Syrian national Ahmed Omar Agha to 42 months in prison. He was convicted of taking part in cyberattacks on American and allied media outlets, companies, organizations and governments that prosecutors said were carried out on behalf of the regime of ousted President Bashar al-Assad. According to the department, Agha, known by the handle TH3 Pro, took part in attacks on around 47...

The return of María Corina Machado after ten months in exile, the appointment of a new foreign minister, and a scandal over the largest oil deal with Washington: three events that, over two days (October 28–30, 2026), set the tone for Venezuela’s debate about America. The dispute is not about whether to support the United States — in Caracas, that is now barely questioned — but about the price of that support: who gets the oil, who gets the elections, and who pays for the silence. Machado...

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani announced that a joint investigative committee had begun work in Damascus to determine the circumstances of the Jordanian air force strike on Daraa province. He said Damascus had received no prior notification or request to coordinate, and that Syria insists on fully protecting the rights of those killed and injured, as well as respecting its sovereignty. Al-Shaibani said the committee was set up after Jordanian and Syrian intelligence officials and...

Dinorah Figuera, a representative of Venezuela’s 2015 National Assembly, published a timetable for renewing the country’s Supreme Court (TSJ). The selection process for new judges, which organizers say is intended to strengthen judicial independence and civil and political safeguards, is taking place as part of political negotiations to restore the functioning of state institutions. Applications will be accepted from October 28 to November 11. From November 5 to 11, a commission will review...

Syria’s Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management said Thursday evening that the death toll from flash floods and flooding in the countryside around Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor had risen to five, four of them children. The tragedy followed heavy rains that battered the country’s eastern provinces. According to the ministry, one child drowned in a body of water in the village of Hanida, west of Raqqa; two children drowned in a pond in the village of Abu Hayya in the Ain Issa area, north of Raqqa;...

For the past two days, attention in Venezuela has focused on a knot of contradictions: the country whose president, Nicolás Maduro, was flown out by U.S. special forces in January 2026 is now governed by Delcy Rodríguez’s interim government, receiving oil concessions from Washington—and at the same time hearing Donald Trump say it should become the United States’ “51st state.” The return of opposition leader María Corina Machado after ten months in exile has sharpened the central domestic...

Imagine building a big city out of building blocks with your friends. Every time you build a school or a bridge, you set one block aside out of every hundred—not for a wall or a roof, but to make the city beautiful. That’s exactly what Seattle came up with in real life. In 1973, the city launched its “1% for Art” program, and ever since, sculptures, mosaics, and unusual benches have been brightening its streets. How It All Began Seattle is a large city in the northwestern United States, with...

Imagine you had to build a home but had no money at all. All you had were boards found along the shore, rusty sheets of metal, and a couple of old barrels. Could you make anything out of that? More than ninety years ago, in the American city of Seattle, hundreds of people faced this challenge in real life, not in a game. That’s how Hooverville came to be—a remarkable settlement that was considered a real city, even without a mayor or brick walls. When the Jobs Disappeared In 1929, the Great...

Picture an ordinary rainy evening in Seattle. A mother walks by with a bag, schoolchildren hurry past with backpacks, and the window of a small café glows on the corner. Inside, pieces of chicken sizzle on a hot griddle, and the whole street smells of sweet sauce. It’s a teriyaki café—and in Seattle, these places seem to be on almost every block. The story began with one small kitchen and one person who came up with a simple dish. What Is “Teriyaki,” and Who First Made the Seattle Version? The...

Imagine a big hill right in the middle of a city. Now imagine that adults decided to get rid of it not with shovels or explosives, but with... water! That’s what happened in Seattle more than a hundred years ago. A hill called Denny Hill literally dissolved under powerful jets of water and washed into the bay. This story is about boldness, ingenious engineering, stubborn residents, and how even the smartest ideas can sometimes come at too high a cost to nature. Why the City Needed to Remove the...

Imagine enormous rusty towers, pipes and strange metal structures that look like sets from a science-fiction movie. Nearby, children are flying colorful kites on a green hill. This isn’t a movie set: it’s Gasworks Park in Seattle, America. This was once a dirty, unhealthy site, but now it’s a favorite place for local residents. How did that happen? It all began with one bold architect and the people who believed in his unusual idea. When the Gas Plant Was Here More than a century ago, in 1906,...

Imagine that your school suddenly banned the sale of ice cream. Would anyone want ice cream less? Probably not: someone would start selling it secretly out of a backpack. That’s what happened in Seattle a hundred years ago—except that instead of ice cream, the product was a strong drink for adults, and instead of a backpack, there was an entire sea route through foggy straits. A Ban That Came Early Many people think that Prohibition began everywhere in America at once, in 1920. But Washington...

Imagine a quiet autumn stream in the middle of a big city. Cars rush past, while in the water, after a long journey from the ocean, red coho salmon swim upstream. They are returning home to spawn. But when it rains, the fish suddenly start circling, surfacing and gasping for air as if they can’t breathe. Within a few hours, many of them die. For more than 20 years, no one could figure out why. The answer turned out to be closer than anyone thought: it was right beneath car tires. The Mystery of...

Imagine a dark night in Seattle almost a hundred years ago. Thick fog drifts over the water as a fast, unlit boat glides silently through the strait. Its crates conceal a drink that the law forbids transporting. And the man running this entire secret network spends his days walking around town in a police uniform. It sounds like an adventure story, but it’s a true tale from the Prohibition era. And it ended with an important decision that people still debate today. When alcohol was banned In...

In late November 1999, representatives of more than a hundred countries gathered in Seattle. They had come for a conference of the World Trade Organization—the club of countries that negotiate the rules of trade. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets to make their views on those rules heard. Those days went down in history as the “Battle of Seattle.” But alongside the dramatic events, a quiet invention also took shape: people figured out how to report the news without waiting for...