WWW . THESKANNER . COM
N OVEMBER 20, 2013
S EATTLE , W ASHINGTON
V OLUME XXXVI, N O . 7
25
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C HALLENGING P EOPLE TO S HAPE A B ETTER F UTURE N OW
New
Website
Launch
BOOK
JAM
The Skanner News
online has a new
look, more news
By Lisa Loving
Of The Skanner News
T
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
Rajah 11, joined over 30 middle
school kids in the annual Reading
Marathon at the Rainier Beach Branch
Library on Saturday Nov. 16. Middle
school kids from Seattle public,
private and home schools could read
at any of the six participating Seattle
Branch Libraries in the 6-hour
marathon reading event. Prizes were
awarded for each hour completed
and a grand prize was given to the
students who read for the entire six
hours.
Insurance Signups Going Great
Report shows that young and old are answering the call to enroll
By Donna Gordon
Blankinship
The Associated Press
SEATTLE (AP) _ Early sign-
ups on Washington’s health care
exchange include both young
and old, according to data
released Friday by state offi-
cials.
The Washington residents
who signed up for health insur-
ance during October come from
across the state and are also eco-
nomically diverse. Most appli-
cations have come from
one-person households and
about 22.6 percent of the
enrollees buying private plans
were in the 18-to-34-year-old
category. More than half are
between the ages of 45 and 64,
about 19 percent were 35-44
and the rest are under 18.
“Young adults are a critical
target for us and it is great to see
that 6,000 young adults between
the ages of 18 and 25 have
signed up for health coverage in
just the first month,’’ said
Michael Marchand, spokesman
for the Washington Health Ben-
INDEX
News ..................2,3,6,8
Calendar ....................2
Opinion .......................4
A&E .............................5
Bids/Classifieds............7
efit Exchange.
Only 328 in that age range
signed up for private policies.
The rest will get free insurance
through Medicaid.
Marchand said the state will
continue to target young adults
with some help from local musi-
cians, at concert venues and
through mobile advertising.
Officials from California say
most of those who have applied
in the state with the largest unin-
sured population are older peo-
ple with health problems. In
Ohio, groups helping people
enroll describe the people com-
ing to them as mostly older res-
idents who lost their jobs during
the recession.
In Washington in the first
month after health care reform
launched on Oct. 1, about
57,730 insurance sign-ups were
completed. Most of those were
for the free insurance offered for
low income individuals through
Medicaid. But a quarter of the
other participants signed up for
insurance and paid full price
because they did not qualify for
See HEALTH on page 3
o mark 38 years of publishing in the
Pacific Northwest, The Skanner News
has updated our website.
Online at www.theskanner.com you will
find an expanded calendar, more local news
and a photo-oriented layout that makes the
site bloom with images. It is best viewed
using the Chrome browser.
It is more beautiful, more functional and
offers more news than ever before, says The
Skanner News Publisher Bernie Foster.
The goal with the new site is to put more
tools into the hands of our readers to, as our
mission states, “build a better future now.”
We’re very excited about this new site,
and after working on it for two years I can
appreciate what healthcare.gov is going
through,” Foster says. “Ours is not nearly as
complex but it is certainly bigger and better
than our last site.
“The Skanner News built one of the first
news websites in our region, and we are still
dedicated to using technology to help our
readers improve their lives,” Foster said.
“We made the extra effort to make it use-
ful, fast and powerful – whether you just
want to look at our slideshows, see which
movies are opening this week or keep up
with breaking news.”
The Skanner News’ first site was regis-
tered in 1995, the first year that commercial
ISPs were made generally available, the
year that the first Wiki was built, and the
same year when the domain name
“Yahoo.com” was registered.
Also that year, Microsoft promoted Inter-
net Explorer 1.0, and Ebay first opened.
By contrast, www.oregonlive.com started
in 1997 as did www.seattletimes.com;
www.willametteweek.com started in late
1998 and www.seattleweekly.com went live
in 1999, all according to the Internet archive
the Wayback Machine.
Web developer Wayne Branch was the
See WEBSITE on page 3
Coal Export Plan Proves to be Hot Topic
Thousands weigh in with public comments on disputed proposal
By Phuong Le
The Associated Press
SEATTLE (AP) — Regulators have
received an unprecedented number of pub-
lic comments on a disputed proposal to
export millions of tons of coal to Asia from
a facility along the Columbia River in
Washington.
The Army Corps of Engineers, Washing-
ton’s Ecology Department and Cowlitz
County are preparing to sift through more
than 163,000 comments to decide which
environmental effects should be reviewed.
``This obviously is more comments than
we’ve had for most projects we’ve been
involved in,’’ said Ecology spokeswoman
Linda Kent. ``What I’m hearing is that they
haven’t seen this level before.’’
Millennium Bulk Terminals-Longview,
owned by Ambre Energy Ltd. and Arch
Coal Inc., wants to build and operate a $650
million terminal at Longview, Wash., to
export coal from Montana and Wyoming to
Asia. The coal would be carried on trains to
the dock, which would ultimately be able to
handle 44 metric tons of coal a year.
It’s one of three coal-export docks pro-
See COAL on page 3