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Fears Over Elysian Sale, Is it Time to Kill Bertha & More

The top Seattle news stories you should be reading today

By Lauren Mang January 27, 2015

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It’s Media Day in Arizona for Super Bowl XLIX. King 5 News is on the scene with live updates from the football frenzy, including some super odd moments like a wedding dress-clad Associated Press reporter’s marriage proposal for Tom Brady. Find it all here.

Is it time to kill Bertha? Two state senators seem to think so. According to MyNorthwest.com, Doug Ericksen (R-Ferndale) and Michael Baumgartner (R-Spokane) have proposed measure SB 5646, which would completely kill the Alaskan Way tunnel project and instead use the leftover money to research alternatives such as “shoring up the viaduct.” Seattle’s highway tunnel-drilling project has been plagued with problems since it first began in 2013. Those problems have landed the project near the top of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s list of highway boondoggles.

Last week, we learned that mega beer company Anheuser-Busch has purchased Elysian Brewing Co. Sadness ensued. Now the craft beer community is speaking out and spouting warnings that Elysian will become Anheuser-Busch’s “weapon” against other craft breweries, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports. Washington Beer Blog writer and frequent Seattle magazine contributor, Kendall Jones, told the Journal that beer-lovers should “stay calm” in the wake of this upsetting news. 

When I ride the bus and am lucky enough to score a window seat, I tend to count the number of drivers I spot on the road who are also scrolling through their phones while driving. The count is fairly high: Yesterday I tallied seven out of 12, and we (shockingly) weren’t sitting in traffic. Browsing the web, scrolling through Twitter or checking email on your smartphone while driving technically isn’t illegal under the current ban on texting-and-driving. Lawmakers are seeking to change that, the Seattle Times reports. “Lawmakers, urged by the Washington State Patrol and Washington Traffic Safety Commission, are sponsoring legislation expected to be filed this week that would ban all cellphone use while driving, except for making calls with hands-free devices.”

Were you forced to read a book or talk to other human beings last night? Facebook is sorry. The social network (and its photo-sharing social site Instagram) experienced an hour-long outage yesterday evening. The disruption was caused by a technical change and was not the result of any cyberattack. You hopefully are back to your regularly scheduled postings of baby photos, Internet memes and uber-patriotic diatribes.

 

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