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PROSSER, WA- Fireweed Farm made history Saturday after they hosted the first marijuana auction in the state. Nearly 500 pounds of marijuana were auctioned off Saturday to approved producers, retailers, and processors. Those bidders came from all over to get in on the marijuana action. There is a first time for everything, and many did not know what to expect. “I expected nothing to be quite honest with you and everything at the same time,” said Jack Ron, marijuana grower. Nearly 100 producers, processors, and retailers from Spokane, Vancouver, Bellingham, and other areas around the state, bid on marijuana from...

The ward boy fractures his arm, while his colleague sustains serious injuries, including a punctured urinary bladder and severe internal bleeding. Two employees of the Tata Memorial Hospital's treatment and research centre in Khargar in Navi Mumbai suffered grievous injuries on Saturday evening when one of them walked into the centre's MRI room holding an oxygen cylinder, activating the machine's monstrous magnetic field. The two employees - one a technician and the other a ward boy - were pulled to the machine like a toy magnet pulls a pin and remained stuck to it for nearly four hours before an...

Is the Affordable Care Act Working? After a year fully in place, the Affordable Care Act has largely succeeded in delivering on President Obama’s main promises, an analysis by a team of reporters and data researchers shows. But it has also fallen short in some ways and given rise to a powerful conservative backlash.

Bulb shines brightest right before it goes...poof!

Twenty-five minutes after Friday’s shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, two air ambulances hovered near the campus, prepared to transport the critically wounded to the region’s highest-rated trauma hospital. After the Marysville-Pilchuck High School shooting, an empty Airlift NW helicopter leaves Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett at 12:30 p.m. But at 1:35 p.m. the crew was called back to transport one of the victims to Harborview. Firefighters, medics and hospital staff move one of the Marysville-Pilchuck High School shooting victims from an ambulance into Everett’s Providence Regional Medical Center on Friday. Twenty-five minutes after Friday’s shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School,...

PORTLAND — The National Weather Service says dangerous sneaker waves are possible this weekend on the coast of Oregon and Southwest Washington. Waves as high as 18 feet could unexpectedly reach farther up the beach than expected or knock people off jetties and rocks. The weather service says people at the beach shouldn’t turn their back on the surf. end nothing follows 0 Comments | More in General news, Weather Beat | Topics: National Weather Service, Oregon, sneaker waves

PORTLAND — Matt Price sells 100 different kinds of edibles, tinctures, buds and other marijuana offerings to the patients who frequent Cannabliss, the medical dispensary he opened up in a historic brick building that once served as a fire station. Unlike in Washington, Price’s medical-marijuana business is licensed by the state, and all the pot he sells is subject to mandatory testing and labeling. The 28-year-old entrepreneur says he’s now ready for his next step — an expansion into recreational marijuana if Oregon voters pass a measure this fall that would legalize pot sales to anyone 21 years of age...

Useful links that FReepers familiarface and ray76 found, and an embedded link from one of those articles. Thanks.

FINLEY, WA - Some medical marijuana growers in our area are not getting much sleep lately. Especially after another marijuana burglary early Thursday morning. The latest marijuana burglary happened just before 6 a.m. Thursday morning in the area of highway 397 and East Finley Road. Benton County Sheriff's Deputies said a medical marijuana grower shot at a suspect as he ran from the property. NBC Right Now found out this may happen more often this time of year because it is prime marijuana harvest season and medical growers are worried. "If you don't have sophisticated cameras, alarm systems, (are)friends with...

The American health-care system is befuddling in so many ways, but the variation in hospital prices is among the most confounding. The price for back surgery at Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center can cost $46,000 — three times as much as it costs at Seattle’s Virginia Mason Medical Center. If you’re looking for knee or hip replacement, at $92,000 you could wind up paying four-times more at Multicare Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup than the $23,000 price tag at Wenatchee Valley Hospital. Across the state and for services ranging from urinary tract infections to strokes, the prices for care...

GREAT FALLS, Mont. A Roman Catholic bishop says a central Montana parish is about evenly divided over a new priest's decision to prohibit a gay couple from receiving Communion unless they divorce, live separately and write a statement affirming that a marriage is between a man and a woman. Bishop Michael Warfel of the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings met Saturday with about 300 parishioners of St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Lewistown, where he also led a Mass. About half the parishioners supported the Rev. Samuel Spiering's decision, while the other half were very angry, the Great Falls Tribune...

With more people obtaining health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, places like Harborview Medical Center are providing much less “charity” (uncompensated) care. The Emergency Department there is as busy as ever, though. Nowhere illustrates the complexity of delivering medical care in the era of health-care reform better than Harborview Medical Center’s 47-bed Emergency Department. As King County’s largest safety-net hospital, Harborview’s specific mission is to care for patients who are most in need, giving it a disproportionate share of patients who are poor or homeless and uninsured. Last year alone, Harborview provided $219 million in so-called “charity” care, nearly...

Retail sales of state-licensed weed in Washington topped $12 million by Sept. 8 … and sales keep climbing. The improvement of sales in recreational marijuana here mirrors the steep growth in sales in Colorado, where the recreational market out-sold medical for the first time in July (the latest numbers from that state). The Cannabist reports: “In July 2014, customers purchased more than $29.7 million in recreational marijuana — up from $24.7 million in June. Medical marijuana patients spent more than $28.9 million on marijuana in July — comparable to June’s $28.6 million in sales.” In Washington, there are now 55...

Health clinics in Washington that largely serve low-income and minority residents will receive nearly $7.5 million in federal grants to increase access to primary care. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is awarding more than $295 million to community clinics nationwide, according to an announcement made Friday. In Washington, the money will go to 25 community health centers that treat medically underserved communities. The grants will help pay for an estimated 104 full-time health-care providers and benefit roughly 40,000 new patients (see full list of recipients below). The Affordable Care Act and its expansion of health-care coverage has...

The immediate burst of energy from the big flare yesterday had some effect on high frequency radio waves already (check out the first image in the gallery above), according to NOAA’s Space Weather prediction Center, but the hard-to-take CME particles are likely to go just above the Earth, singing us just a bit. The Associated Press reports: New calculations from satellite data show that the worst of the energetic particles streaming from the sun likely will go north or above Earth this time, , said Tom Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center late Wednesday. So while the power...

Pot-infused edibles are trickling onto shelves at marijuana stores, and more products are coming, despite a shortage of legal pot and new last-minute state regulations. Entrepreneurs have bemoaned the slow pace, but regulators are being cautious about public health. Statewide pot-supply shortages slowed edibles’ arrival, but manufacturers also were stifled, and frustrated, by emergency regulations from the state Liquor Control Board (LCB), which has taken a cautious approach to opening the marketplace. So far, the LCB has given its blessing to products — including chocolate bars, sodas and energy shots — from three new businesses. Nine more kitchens have been...

Extremely low levels of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active compound in marijuana, may offer a novel and viable treatment for Alzheimer's disease (AD), preliminary research suggests. Investigators at the University of South Florida in Tampa found that THC both decreases the production of amyloid beta (Aβ) and inhibits its aggregation in cell cultures. In addition, it does so at extremely safe doses. These observations have implications for a potentially new therapeutic approach to the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD), as researchers suggest. "Our group believes that amyloid aggregation is the initiator of AD, so we wanted to see if THC can...

In the shrub steppe of Grand Coulee on the banks of the Columbia River, the town’s two family doctors practice at an unrelenting pace, working on call every other night and every other weekend. In the coastal town of Port Angeles, the doctor shortage is so acute that a clinic is turning away 250 callers a week seeking a physician. George and Lynne Rudesill are two of those people. Since learning earlier this summer that their primary-care doctor in Sequim was retiring, the couple have scrambled to find a replacement. Their calls are being met with waiting lists hundreds of...

Ninety individual health plans sold by 10 insurers will likely make their way into Washington’s exchange marketplace for 2015, if the Washington Health Benefit Exchange board approves them Thursday, as expected. ... The reviewers appeared to have taken a tight approach to premium rates, lowering requested rates from all but one insurer. On a weighted average, the actuarial review squeezed an overall rate increase of 8.6 percent in the insurers’ original proposals down to 1.9 percent. ... Washington’s insurance exchange for small businesses got off to a slow start its first year when no one offered coverage statewide. For 2015,...

The WA Alliance for Gun Responsibility continues to pad its war chest. The independent spending group is leading the push to get voters to approve in November I-594, a measure that would require background checks for gun sales. Ex-Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer (and new LA Clippers owner) and his wife Connie were already big donors to the group, but they kicked in an additional $250,000 between them, according to public records. That brings the group’s total fundraising to about $3.2 million, records show. The group has spent about $2.2 million and still has about $1 million still on hand. Meanwhile,...