For hundreds of public employees in the state of Washington — where a new vaccine mandate for state employees went into effect this week — Monday was their last day on the job. That includes a sergeant with the Washington State Patrol who told KUOW that he had made an appointment to turn in his patrol car and equipment.

Fists curling and uncurling. People who don't look each other in the eye. Food, and everyone coming together around it. These are the images at the core of Jane Wong's second collection of poems, How To Not Be Afraid Of Everything.

"That turning around when I walk down the street, always feeling like I have to look behind me?" Wong says. "That's the feeling of this book."

In her poems, Wong depicts how fear accompanies Chinese immigrant life in the United States by bringing us her family's history of migration, and their relationship with food.

Most orchestras emphasize music by composers we're all familiar with: Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and so on. But a small organization received a big honor this month at the Gramophone Classical Music Awards for its extraordinary service to overlooked American composers of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

Natalie Saldana would love to put her 1.5-year-old daughter in a quality child care program while she works and goes to school, but the $700 monthly price tag makes it impossible.

"Seven-hundred dollars is almost my rent," Saldana said.

Lawmakers looking to gain or keep a political edge during redistricting over the years have carved up some inventive electoral districts: Ohio's "snake by the lake," Pennsylvania's "Goofy kicking Donald Duck," and two centuries ago, the snake-like district in Massachusetts that inspired the term "gerrymander."

In Virginia, House of Delegates District 72, sometimes called the "toilet bowl" because of how it curves around Richmond, became the gerrymandering poster child in the state as advocates pressed for a redistricting commission to create fairer political maps.

The American statesman Colin Powell died on Monday due to complications from COVID-19. He was 84 years old.

Head football coach Nick Rolovich was fired by Washington State University for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine as required by a mandate for state employees.

Four of Rolovich's assistant coaches, Ricky Logo, John Richardson, Craig Stutzmann and Mark Weber were also terminated by the university for failure to get fully vaccinated by Monday.

Former President Donald Trump is suing the Democratic-led House select committee that's investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as the National Archives, to try to stop documents related to the riot from being turned over to the panel.

Colin Powell became a household name because of the four stars on his Army uniform and his iconic statements about Iraq.

In the first Iraq war in 1991, he famously described what the U.S. would do to the Iraqi army that had invaded neighboring Kuwait: "We're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it."

Such chilling bravado — and the subsequent victory over Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein — made him one of the most formidable and admired public figures.

Colin Powell has died at the age of 84 from COVID-19 complications, according to his family. He had also been treated in recent years for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, and had Parkinson's disease.