Washingtons Columbia Basin, where the first drilling projects in decades raised hopes last year for a natural-gas strike, has yet to become the site of a producing well, though some drillers still believe the basin has potential to yield large of

Some Inland Northwest bank-holding companies reported higher loan charge-offs, nonperforming assets, or provisions for loan losses in their third-quarter earnings reports, reflecting a softening in the real estate markets they serve.After an in

Mid-size businesses, or tweeners, that have both storefront and Internet operations and a substantial amount of gross sales, stand to be hit hard by compliance burdens in a new effort by Washington state to boost tax collections and level the a

Northwest Farm Credit Services has posted second-quarter net income of $25.6 million, compared with $34.9 million in the year-earlier period.In the second quarter of 2006, however, the Spokane-based, federally chartered ag-lending net income to

The Institute for Systems Medicine Planning Authority, fresh from persuading the Washington Legislature to approve a long-term multimillion-dollar funding package, hopes to open its planned biomedical research institute in Spokanes University the

The presence here of two companies that finish and heat-treat metal was instrumental in the recently announced recruitment to Hayden, Idaho, of Titan Spring Co., a North Hollywood, Calif., manufacturer that makes many of its products for the Titan

The unemployment rate in the Spokane metropolitan area fell in May to its lowest level in almost nine years.At 4 percent, the rate dipped to its lowest point since September 1998, when it came in at 3.6 percent.That is mighty low, Jeff

Liberty Lake-based Itron Inc., the No. 1 supplier of automatic meter-reading equipment in North America, is striving to compete in the next big meter-reading markettechnology that gives utilities and their customers two-way communication.The

Advantage IQ, the Avista Corp. subsidiary that specializes in handling utility bills and other facility costs for companies with multiple locations, is investing heavily in its computerized systems, and those outlays could limit profits in the its

The state of Washington expects to seek bids in late summer or early fall for a project that will capture imaginations in this railroad towna 1,330-foot-long at-grade tunnel that will carry Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railways tracks the state