Chad Sokol

“Due to record-breaking snowfall, the staff at 49 Degrees North Ski Area is running at max capacity to keep the resort functional and is unable to safely engage in the repairs to the lift or acquire the part for repair at this time,” owner John Eminger said in an announcement Saturday.

Protestors returned to downtown Spokane on Monday afternoon to denounce President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to secure funding for his long-promised border wall.

While there is a chance to see some more flurries Saturday, forecasters don’t expect it to bring the mass amounts we saw earlier this week.

Environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers were quick to criticize the plan, saying it effectively delays much-needed regulations on PFAS chemicals, which have been linked to cancer and other health defects after decades of use in consumer products and firefighting foam.

Spokane will see an inch or less of new snow through early Friday morning, but temperatures are expected to dip back into the teens early next week, according to the National Weather Service.

Five businesses were destroyed Monday morning after a fire tore through a historic brick building in downtown Sandpoint.

Gonzaga Prep administrators are reckoning with the discovery of a photo in the school’s 1968 yearbook that shows at least three students dressed as Ku Klux Klan members during an assembly in the school’s gym. A member of G-Prep’s Class of ’68 pointed out the photo to fellow alumni and notified the president of the Jesuit high school on Thursday. That followed revelations that Virginia’s governor and attorney general donned blackface in the 1980s, and a wave of headlines about racist images in college yearbooks.

The Feb. 14 performance, hosted by Gonzaga’s theater department and YWCA Spokane, will be part of an annual “V-Day” campaign that aims to end violence against women and girls.

Scott D. Rhodes, the neo-Nazi who plagued several parts of the country last year with hate-filled robocalls from his home in Sandpoint, is now living in Libby, Montana. But some people in Sandpoint continue to receive anonymous letters that reflect Rhodes’ brand of extremism and his disdain for the local newspaper that first exposed his activities.

“Ozzie Knezovich is gonna get a bullet in his skull,” one of the Facebook posts said.

The sheriffs in Grant, Lincoln and Okanogan counties joined at least seven other county sheriffs who previously pledged to ignore Initiative 1639, which adds requirements on gun storage and background checks and raises the minimum age to purchase semi-automatic assault rifles.

Officer Shawn Audie, a former Spokane County sheriff’s deputy, had been accused of excessive force several times before the Jan. 24 incident at Ferris.

Sgt. Jerad Kiehn had been driving east on Appleway Boulevard – a one-way road – when an SUV traveling the wrong direction slammed into his patrol car, the sheriff’s office said.

Even when the Border Patrol books suspects into a county jail and eventually into the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, immigration officials generally refuse to disclose the names of those arrested.

The Vandal Alert system, like similar tools in use at other schools, was designed to promptly notify the campus community of ongoing threats to public safety, such as violent crimes, severe weather events and the occasional wild animal. So it was, at the very least, unusual when a Vandal Alert on Wednesday urged people to call police if they saw a certain journalism professor on campus.

“Denise Bennett has been barred from Moscow Campus,” the university said Wednesday morning in a text message alert sent to students and employees. The alert came almost a week after the university placed Bennett on administrative leave for sending a profanity-laced email in which she lambasted school officials for perceived problems in the School of Journalism and Mass Media, including misuses of grant funding.

The funding comes in addition to another $1.9 million that the foundation awarded to the county in 2015 and 2016 as part of its Safety and Justice Challenge.

Spokane Mayor David Condon weighed in Tuesday on the detainment of a Portland comedian at the Spokane Intermodal Center, again insisting city leaders don’t have the authority to prevent federal agents from operating at the downtown bus station.

“The Lion Sings Tonight” was a benefit concert for the Spokane AIDS Network and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, two nonprofits that work to raise awareness about the disease and ways to prevent its spread.

“They walked around before they asked me and few others to step outside and took my documents and interrogated me for around 20 mins then claimed my papers were fake and that I’m ‘illegal,’” Elshieky wrote in a viral Twitter thread that reignited debate over U.S. Border Patrol sweeps at the downtown transit hub.

In a room at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes, homeless people were treated to chili, hot dogs and potato salad courtesy of Spokane’s Catholic diocese. One veteran attended because he needed a new pair of boots. Others came to pick up donations of hygiene products, socks, gloves and winter jackets.