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Highline School District is currently undertaking an ambitious plan to renovate most of the school buildings in and around Des Moines. The City is also home to Highline Community College, and a satellite campus for Central Washington University. Des Moines is easily accessible from Interstate 5, Pacific Highway South, and Sea-Tac International Airport. "The Waterland City" welcomes you to our community.

  
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Over the last two days, we brought you the most commented-on stories of the year. Here are the Big Blog's picks for the five biggest stories that affected Seattle this year.

Fluctuating gas prices were confusing to many families this year (Brad Vest/P-I)

5. Snowstorm paralyzes Seattle
One of the biggest snowstorms in memory dumped almost a foot of white stuff on Seattle, keeping people indoors and bringing everything to a halt for nearly a week. Though the snow melted, the debate over the city's seemingly tepid response has stuck around for a while.

4. Gas prices go crazy
First gas prices were manageable. Then they shot into the stratosphere. Now the price of gas has collapsed to levels unseen for years. What will happen next? Nobody knows, but the prices changes have stimulated fear in many families.

3. Youth violence becomes a big issueViolence among young people hit the headlines this year and local authorities struggled to find a way to end it. In September, the P-I reported that violent crime was decreasing markedly, but violence among youngsters continued to be a major concern.

2. Sonics leave SeattleAfter 40 years of basketball, the Seattle Sonics disappeared in a puff of smoke because of a group of nefarious Oklahomans. Re-christened the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team may be cursed because of the horrid way we were treated -- it has the worst record in the NBA.

1. Obama elected President
Barack Obama's ascendancy to the Presidency created an exuberant sense of change and renewal in throughout the Pacific Northwest and country. It may be a national story, but Obama's election seemingly has touched everyone.

· Return to Big Blog picks the biggest stories of the year

County's new rules aim at healthier eating

Last updated December 31, 2008 8:55 p.m. PT

By TOM PAULSON
P-I REPORTER

One of King County's New Year resolutions for 2009 is to get you to eat healthier.

ON THE WEB

Find out more about the labeling program at kingcounty.gov/health/ healthyeating

No offense, but health statistics show that many of you (nearly 720,000 people) could stand to lose a few pounds.

As of Jan. 1, based on the assumption that informed consumers will make healthier food choices, more than 1,500 fast-food and chain restaurants throughout Seattle and King County will be required to post on their menu boards or some other "easily readable" sign how many calories, milligrams of sodium or grams of saturated fat and carbohydrates are contained in that burger, fries, salad, smoothie, mocha latte or other comestible.

Like similar ordinances in New York City and perhaps a dozen or more other jurisdictions nationwide, the new King County regulations do not apply to all restaurants, mostly to fast-food chains, are by design a little vague and will take some time before anyone can show they actually work to improve health.

"People are living longer today, but they aren't necessarily living healthier," said Dennis Worsham, a regional health officer with Public Health -- Seattle & King County charged with implementing and evaluating the new labeling regulations. Part of the problem, Worsham said, is that many folks just don't know how badly they are eating.

"There's been a huge shift in where people get their food and how they eat," said Dr. Jim Krieger, chief of the chronic disease program at the health department.

Studies show that Americans today eat a third of their calories (and spend about half their food budget) outside the home, Krieger said, a behavioral trend that correlates with an increasing obesity problem nationwide, persistently high rates of death from heart disease and nearly a doubling of King County's diabetes rate over the past decade.

"What we want to do with this (menu labeling regulation) is give people the information they need to make good food choices," the physician said.

It's not going to be quick or easy to demonstrate the health effect of this program, he acknowledged, but the concept is also justified based simply on consumer rights.

"Without the information, you don't have any choice to make," Krieger said.

Restaurateurs and their representatives say they are fully supportive of the consumer's right to know what he or she is eating but aren't completely convinced that this kind of regulation is the best way to accomplish the goal.

"We'd love to find an approach that truly gets consumers to choose healthier options," said Anthony Anton, president of the Washington Restaurant Association.

Consumers are increasingly saying they want to eat healthier, Anton said, and the highly competitive restaurant industry is always eager to respond quickly to consumer demand.

But the regulations are still a little vague as to what kind of labeling will -- or won't -- be acceptable to the health department, he said. And it remains hard to imagine how individual restaurant owners who change their menus will be able to ever comply with this regulation, he said, if the goal is to someday expand this practice to all restaurants.

The King County Board of Health, which passed the regulation last spring, limited it to chain restaurants with 15 or more national locations because they tend to use fairly fixed menus. But Worsham said the goal is to see it expand in use, if proved effective.

"It just made sense to start with the chain restaurants," Worsham said. Studies show most people do want this information, he said, and the hope is further expansion will come more from consumer demand than new regulation.

Not everyone is convinced that giving consumers the information they want will change what they want to eat.

"We've had the information posted now for about five or six weeks, and I haven't noticed it making any difference," said Mark Escamilla, an owner-manager of more than 30 Burger King franchises in Seattle and throughout Western Washington.

It's still too early to judge, Escamilla acknowledged, but he said most people who come to Burger King probably already know what they want and aren't likely to be too influenced by calorie counts.

Burger King and some other fast-food companies have for years distributed nutritional information at their stores or posted it on the Web. On the company's Web site, a Double Whopper with cheese, for example, is listed at 1,010 calories (690 from fat). Add to that a medium order of fries (330 calories), a large Coke (290) and Dutch apple pie (300) and you will have met your total daily caloric need (about 2,000 calories, as an average).

"It can be pretty surprising when you count it all up," said Barbara Bruemmer, a nutrition scientist at the University of Washington who will be working with Krieger and others (thanks to a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant) to evaluate the effect of the new regulations.

This is all still something of an experiment that needs to be proved out, Bruemmer said, which is why she, public health researchers and the restaurant industry are all cooperating to track how information may, or may not, alter our dietary practices.

Public health officials say they will be fairly relaxed initially when it comes to enforcing the labeling regulations, checking establishments only for compliance during routine food-safety inspections or perhaps in response to citizen inquiries.

Menus displayed outside, for drive-in ordering, do not have to comply until later in the year.

P-I reporter Tom Paulson can be reached at 206-448-8318 or tompaulson@seattlepi.com.

© 1998-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

MSNBC.com

Microsoft said Wednesday that a leap year issue caused problems with the 30-gigabyte versions of its Zune digital music player, following a flood of online customer complaints about the devices freezing up.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

The company issued a statement pinpointing “a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year.”

Microsoft also said that “the issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to Jan. 1, 2009.”

This year, an extra day was tacked on to February, making this a leap year. By international agreement, the world’s timekeepers are also adding a “leap second” tonight to keep Earth apace with very precise clocks.

The internal clocks on what is known as the Zune 30 should reset at noon GMT on Thursday, the company said. After that, 30-gigabyte Zune users should follow these three steps:

Israeli warplanes have attacked government buildings in the Gaza Strip after Jerusalem and its Islamist Hamas foe both spurned ceasefire calls.

A wounded Palestinian woman in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip

Hostilities that erupted on December 27 have left about 400 Palestinians dead and wounded 1,600.

Israeli tanks and troops were massed near the border of the densely-populated coastal enclave.

The Haaretz newspaper reported that the Israeli army had recommended a major but short-term ground offensive.

Hamas rockets fired from Gaza hit an Israeli city on Wednesday, scaring residents but hardening Israel's resolve to stamp out a threat that has killed three Israeli civilians and a soldier.

Foreign pressure grew on both sides to end the attacks.

But Israel brushed aside as "unrealistic" a French proposal for a 48-hour truce that would allow in more humanitarian aid for Gaza's 1.5 million residents.

In New York, the UN Security Council discussed the violence, with Arab countries pushing for a demand an immediate ceasefire.

But the emergency session adjourned without a vote.

Western delegates described the Arab-drafted resolution as unbalanced in its present form and said negotiations would continue to reach an agreed text.

In the latest attacks, Israeli warplanes struck again having carried out 10 raids on Wednesday.

Hamas security officials said buildings housing the education and transportation ministries had been virtually destroyed.

The Palestinian parliament building was also hit, they said.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli attacks must stop before any truce proposals could be considered.

Israel must also lift its economic blockade of Gaza and open border crossings, he said.

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