Washington State

Portrait for @ericof
by @ericof
2020-08-23T16:00:01+00:00
Regional News • Americas • United States
Workers in Washington defy USPS orders and reinstall mail sorting machines
United States Post Office mail collection boxes
United States Post Office mail collection boxes Credit: EraserGirl (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

Postal workers in Tacoma and Wenatchee reinstalled machines for high-speed mail sorting that were dismantled after orders from the head of maintenance of USPS.

The orders have led to widespread fear that the USPS could not handle the millions of mail-in ballots expected during the November election.

According to an NPR report, 40 percent of the high-speed sorting

machines in the Seattle-Tacoma are were already dismantled and

disconnected.

Portrait for @ash
by @ash
2020-05-28T17:41:08+00:00
Science • Nature
Asian giant hornets surfaces in British Columbia, Canada

The Asian giant hornet, colloquially known as the murder hornet, has been spotted in Lower Mainland, British Columbia, miles away from Washington State where it was spotted first. Provincial Apiculturist Paul Van Westendorp confirmed the identity of the specimen, who will perform both an autopsy and a DNA sequencing to determine its origin.

Portrait for @ash
by @ash
2020-05-03T12:36:49+00:00
Science • Nature
Asian giant hornets spotted in the US
Asian giant hornets spotted in the US
Credit: wikimedia/NUMBER7isBEST (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0)

The Asian giant hornet, also called murder hornet, has been spotted in the US, mainly in Washington State. Beekeepers have reported thousands of dead bees with their heads ripped off. The hornets are over two inches (5 centimetres) long and can kill a beehive in hours. It's still unclear how the hornets came to the US.