Chad Sokol

Candidates for the two House positions representing the 4th Legislative District shared vastly different views on health care, organized labor, immigration and other issues during a pair of debates Tuesday evening hosted by the Greater Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce.

The victim of Wednesday’s fatal shooting in downtown Spokane has been identified as Eddie Daniels III, a 15-year-old student at Lewis and Clark High School.

The union representing Spokane County’s deputy prosecutors has launched a public pressure campaign in hopes of rebooting contract negotiations and obtaining wage increases. Mediated negotiations stalled in August when the union, Local 1553-PA, voted to reject the county’s “last, best and final offer,” which would have immediately raised wages for senior attorneys by 2.5 percent and wages for the two lower attorney classifications by 4.25 percent.

The “New Code of the West” conference will be a reunion of sorts for the Spokane Valley state legislator and public-lands opponent Ammon Bundy, both of whom rail against what they consider systemic abuses of power by the federal government.

Sherry Shaver felt some solace on the day in 1997 when a jury recommended capital punishment for the man who killed her daughter in Spokane Valley. But the ensuing 20 years brought more grief and frustration, as Shaver watched the killer, Dwayne Woods, exhaust his legal appeals and repeatedly stave off his execution. Woods’ sentencing, it turns out, played a role in the state Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw the death penalty. As a black man, he had become part of a troubling statistic in Washington’s criminal justice system.

Five women from the Westboro Baptist Church met a wave of unified opposition in Spokane as counterprotesters turned out in droves Thursday to support soldiers, environmentalists, members of the LGBT community and others who have been targeted by the fundamentalist hate group.

A few years ago, Native Americans in Spokane would not have celebrated this day. A few years ago, it was called Columbus Day. But in August 2016, the Spokane City Council voted to rename the holiday, recognizing the Italian explorer’s role in the slave trade and the spreading of disease to indigenous tribes.

Members of the hatemongering Westboro Baptist Church plan to demonstrate at several locations in Spokane on Thursday and Friday, including Lewis and Clark High School, Gonzaga University and the Spokane Convention Center.

A Medical Lake woman and her three young daughters survived after another driver veered into their lane and caused a crash late Saturday on state Highway 902, according to the Washington State Patrol.

Ted Cummings admits he didn’t pay much attention to state Rep. Matt Shea until early this year, when he noticed the Spokane Valley legislator had introduced a bill that aimed to cripple labor unions. The so-called “right to work” proposal, which never passed out of committee, was anathema to Cummings, a longtime Kaiser Aluminum employee and member of the Steelworkers union. The phrase “right to work,” he said, is “a misnomer,” that's “designed to steal from working men and women.” He recalled thinking, “Why would I elect a representative for my state to actively work against my interests?”

Kristina Anderson, a 19-year-old sophomore at Virginia Tech, was seated in her Intermediate French class in Norris Hall when gunfire erupted in a classroom down the hallway. Like many other students on that overcast morning in April 2007, she couldn’t immediately identify the source of the racket. “I thought it sounded like construction noise,” she recalled in an interview this week.

An anonymous tipster this week alerted several local news outlets to the investigation, saying a large amount of taxpayer money had been stolen by an employee of the county’s risk management department.

The Washington State Patrol has completed its investigation into an allegation of sexual misconduct against a Pullman police sergeant. The WSP forwarded its findings last Friday to the Whitman County Prosecutor’s Office, which will decide whether to file charges against the sergeant, who is on paid administrative leave.

It was Vice President Mike Pence who visited Spokane on Tuesday. But the focus of protesters outside his campaign fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers was his boss.

Justin Beights has sought a permit to stage a whimsical, extremely annoying demonstration outside the Sandpoint-area home rented by Scott D. Rhodes – a man who appears to be responsible for sending racist, anti-Semitic robocalls to thousands of phones across the country.

Billions of robocalls are sent each month, but a tiny fraction of them have attracted extra scrutiny. In recent months, an estimated 10,000 robocalls in at least five states have been linked to Scott Rhodes, a 49-year-old neo-Nazi who rants about Jews and other minorities from his rental home just outside Sandpoint.

In their first public debate, U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Democratic challenger Lisa Brown lobbed criticism on numerous issues, including health care, tax reform, gun control, the farm bill, the special counsel investigation and “dark money” in campaigns. The debate, hosted by The Spokesman-Review and KHQ, drew more than 500 people to the Bing Crosby Theater on Wednesday evening.

The Stevens County Sheriff’s Office has released the names of four suspects after deputies raided two illegal dog breeding operations last week.