News For Reasonable People

Austin, Texas, police are urging the public to call 311 instead of 911 to report nonemergencies, authorities said.   Starting Friday, individuals in the city are asked to use 311 when reporting crimes that are either no longer in process, when the suspect is no longer on the scene, or when there is no immediate threat to life or property, according to the Austin Police Department.  "Please un...

The White House believes vaccine requirements for large private companies are still weeks away from being implemented, weeks after President Joe Biden announced the new mandates were coming. During a press briefing on Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration hopes to have "more detail" on the regulations "in the coming weeks." Asked if this signa...

The Delta variant of Covid-19 is spreading across the United States, but stores and restaurants that people walk into on a daily basis aren't requiring vaccines for customers. Representatives for retailers and restaurants and HR consultants who work with companies say it's too risky for frontline staff to be put in the position of enforcing vaccine rules for customers. Half of the US pop...

YouTube will block all anti-vaccine content, moving beyond its ban on false information about the COVID vaccines to include content that contains misinformation about other approved vaccines, it said in a blog post on Wednesday. Examples of content that won't be allowed on YouTube include claims that the flu vaccine causes infertility and that the MMR shot, which protects against measles, mum...

Seattle Police says it was unable to respond Friday after security at the Capitol Hill-located Consulate of Mexico in Seattle called for assistance as protesters reportedly surrounded employees attempting to leave the Harvard Ave diplomatic facility.  According to the SPD brief on the Friday incident, consulate security called for help around 4:15 PM saying 20-25 people were protesting outside the...

Gov. Jay Inslee announced last week that he is extending a statewide eviction moratorium “bridge” period another month to Oct. 31. Meanwhile, landlord Don Cullen is trying to rally support and get the attention of lawmakers in the form of multiple full page ads in the Seattle Times. “In this particular ad, I’m trying to get the landlords to band together and refuse to rent anything in the month of...

Costco has joined Home Depot in renting its own container ships to prevent delays and keep costs down as the global shipping crisis rages on. In a call with analysts Thursday, Costco CFO Richard Galanti said the company had chartered three ships to import products from Asia to the US and Canada. This would help Costco avoid spending six times the normal price on shipping or containers through a th...

Voters have overwhelmingly backed a radical proposal to take properties away from some of Berlin’s biggest landlords and put them into public ownership. Just over 56 percent of people voted in favour of a referendum calling on authorities in the German capital to expropriate flats and apartments from all landlords who own more than 3,000 properties. In total 1,749,923 valid votes were cast, with 1...

Are companies like Zillow ZG, 3.21% and Redfin RDFN, 2.02% manipulating home prices by purchasing properties across the country? That’s what one real-estate agent claims in a video that went viral on the social-media platform TikTok — but real-estate experts say the reality is much more complicated. In a video that’s garnered more than 2.4 million views on TikTok, Nevada real-estate agent Sean Got...

Are workplace vaccine mandates prompting some workers to quit rather than get a shot? A hospital in Lowville, New York, for instance, had to shut down its maternity ward when dozens of staffers left their jobs rather than get vaccinated. At least 125 workers at Indiana University Health resigned after refusing to take the vaccine. And a number of surveys have proven that as many as half of unvacci...

President Joe Biden‘s call for OSHA to enact a Covid-19 vaccination and testing mandate for employers with 100 or more employees puts the agency in new territory for rulemaking. “There is no precedent for a 100-person threshold,” said Thomas McGarity, who teaches administrative law at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law and follows the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s re...

Hundreds of first responders, medical workers and state employees are joining a lawsuit over Washington’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. William Cleary and his wife Sherra Rae said they are unvaccinated and don't plan to get the shots. He's a firefighter in the Seattle area, she works at a major hospital, and both could lose their jobs after October 18, which is the state’s vaccine deadline f...

U.S. single-family homebuilding fell for a second straight month in August as builders continued to struggle with shortages of materials and labor, suggesting the housing market could remain a drag on economic growth in the third quarter. The report from the Commerce Department on Tuesday also showed the number of houses authorized for construction but not yet started raced to a record high last m...

The Milwaukee Police Department faces a third straight year of staff reductions under Mayor Tom Barrett’s 2022 budget proposal. Mayor Barrett says he plans to use $6 million in federal coronavirus funds to hire and train 195 new officers next year to address a surge in retirements, but additional budget cuts are set to once again shrink the department. In what’s expected to be Mayor Barrett’s fina...

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan on Tuesday extended an eviction moratorium until January, as a city council committee pushed forward two new measures to help renters. After falling earlier in the pandemic, rents in the city are rising again. “We brag about our higher minimum wage but it doesn’t even come close to covering the average apartment,” said Kate Rubin of the housing justice group Be:Seattle....

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law two housing bills allowing denser housing on single-family lots, which proponents say will help alleviate the housing crisis in California but which opponents worry will change the character of single-family neighborhoods and increase gentrification at the benefit of real estate interests. After signing into law Senate bills 9 and 10, Newsom said, "The housin...

With the national coronavirus vaccination effort stalling amid hesitancy among roughly one-third of Americans, President Joe Biden has announced tougher measures aimed at getting more shots in arms and the delta variant under control.  On Sept. 9, Biden set out three major steps to tighten vaccination requirements: - A mandate for federal employees to be vaccinated, with limited exceptions and no...

Federal prosecutors plan to criminally indict Mark Forkner, the former Boeing 737 Chief Technical Pilot who is alleged to have deceived aviation regulators and airlines about a critical new flight control system on the 737 MAX, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Bringing Forkner to trial could shed more light on why the flaws in the MAX flight controls that killed 346 people in two crashes w...

International investors that have been piling into China in recent years are now bracing for one of its great falls as the troubles of over-indebted property giant China Evergrande come to a head. The developer's (3333.HK) woes have been snowballing since May. Dwindling resources set against 2 trillion yuan ($305 billion) of liabilities have wiped nearly 80% off its stock and bond prices and...

A Florida landlord will require all new and existing tenants show proof of vaccination to reside in his buildings.  As of Aug. 15, Santiago Alvarez, who owns eight apartment buildings in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, will mandate that tenants prove they have received at least an initial COVID-19 vaccination before renewing their lease, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.  “You don’t wa...

Seattle is currently experiencing a building boom with new high-rises going up throughout the city but a parked RV in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood that has added a makeshift second story has shocked people like Alex Hardy who live or work in the area. "Over the weekend they put up walls," said Hardy, referencing the vehicle on 8th Avenue NW that has . "It’s insane." Hard...

Last week, President Joe Biden claimed “this is not about freedom or personal choice” regarding COVID-19 vaccinations. The value of personal responsibility far outweighs government mandates, especially as we learn more about COVID-19, the vaccine and therapeutic treatment options. The Constitution grants public health authority to the states. We will not be mandating COVID-19 vaccinations in South...

Over the last four days, there’s been an explosion of encampment fires across Seattle. From Ballard to downtown to even the side of Interstate 5. But in the heart of South Lake Union, at Bite Society, a packaged foods and gift basket business another line of work is underway, which has come unexpectedly. “We've put out fires here in the back in the camp with extinguishers,” said Lendy Hensley...

The Treasury Department said Tuesday it plans to award the remaining $13 billion in federal rental aid to states and localities that have been the most effective at delivering the assistance, in a new bid to speed up the housing rescue. Houston, Philadelphia and New Orleans are among the cities expected to receive additional aid. State and local programs that have “substantially expended” their fi...

Since late last week, Karen Michael says local businesses she consults have been reaching out with concerns surrounding President Biden’s order that companies with more than 100 employees will require a COVID-19 vaccine as part of employment. The order undoubtedly faces legal challenges, but the final language of it is yet to be published. “I’ve been inundated with employers concerned about Presid...