Some freshmen engineering students at Washington’s largest universities will get an extra year to find their footing, thanks to a new “academic redshirting” program.  

The idea of redshirting comes from college sports, and here’s how it works: When Huskies quarterback Keith Price joined up as a freshman in 2009, he didn’t take the field. Instead he got a year of practice and workouts to acclimate before starting his four years of eligibility.

Now the University of Washington, along with Washington State University, want to apply that to academics.

Several inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla are taking part in a new program to try to ease violence and reduce the number of inmates in solitary confinement.

So far, the program is voluntary, and it targets dangerous, confrontational inmates who have been locked away in isolation.

Seattle's own Roosevelt High School's jazz band took third place at the prestigious Essentially Ellington festival in New York this weekend. 

The Tucson Jazz Institute placed first, and Jazz House Kids of Montclair, New Jersey came in second. 

"In the Rain Shadow," a new release by trombonist Chris Amemiya & Jazz Coalescence is one of the features on this week's Jazz Northwest. This sextet includes several top Northwest jazz musicians, including Jay Thomas, Travis Ranney, John Hansen, Jon Hamar and Steve Korn in a live studio session at Music Works Northwest.  The CD has the benefit of imaginative arrangements as well as  the immediacy of a live performance and the quality of a studio recording.  The individual musicians are all at the top of their game.

Gunmen opened fire on people marching in a neighborhood Mother's Day parade in New Orleans on Sunday, wounding at least 19.

The shooting — described by the FBI as a flare-up of street violence — shattered the festive mood surrounding the parade that drew hundreds of people to the 7th Ward neighborhood of modest row houses not far from the French Quarter. Cell phone video taken in the aftermath of the shooting shows victims lying on the ground, blood on the pavement and others bending over to comfort them.

Three area high schools jazz bands are in New York this weekend to compete in the 18th annual Essentially Ellington Festival, the most prestigious high school jazz band competition in the country. 

Edmonds-Woodway High School, as well as bands from Seattle's Garfield and Roosevelt high schools are among the 15 national finalists from across the U.S. and Canada. 

Small businesses in Washington state will not be able to participate in the new health care law, because not enough insurance companies were willing to sell them coverage. 

The biggest part of Pres. Barack Obama’s new health care law is aimed at people with no health insurance. Starting this fall, they’ll be able to buy individual health policies from an online system where they can compare prices. It's also where you can get subsidies for insurance. In Washington state, it's called Washington HealthPlan Finder.

If you work for a business with fewer than 50 employees, the law says your employer has the option of getting insurance for low and middle-income workers—with subsidies. That won’t happen in Washington, at least not on time.

An annual march to support legalization of marijuana will take to Seattle streets Saturday. The Cannabis Freedom March will feature a mock funeral procession for cannabis prohibition, complete with a hearse. Organizers say the time has come to lay anti-marijuana laws to rest.

“2013 is the year to really push,” said organizer Sharon Whitson with Hempfest. “We have legalized cannabis in Colorado, and here in Washington state. We have a number of other states seriously looking at it. And a few states, over the course of this year, have legalized medicinal cannabis, as well.”

The U.S. attorney in Seattle has stepped in to block the release of information about the once-secret program in which the state of Washington issued fictitious driver’s licenses for CIA agents.

In a letter to the state, Jenny Durkan’s office said the documents are “classified national security information.”

With Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson already celebrating his city’s victory in the bid to keep the Kings in town, Chris Hansen and his Seattle-based investment group upped the ante on Friday.

Hansen said his group has raised the proposed purchase price for the franchise by $75 million, bringing the total to $625 million “in an effort to further demonstrate the extent of our commitment to bring basketball back.” The group also guaranteed to the league that the franchise would be a revenue sharing payer, Hansen said.