Jim Camden

If you saw Air Force One flying low over the West Plains on Thursday, you weren’t hallucinating. One of two Air Force One planes used by the president landed at Fairchild Air Force Base on Thursday afternoon.

Think you saw Air Force One flying low over the West Plains this afternoon? Well, you weren't hallucinating.

COLVILLE – Some Eastern Washington residents at a pair of town hall meetings Wednesday said they don’t trust the government to run their health care in the future. Others said they don’t trust the big insurance companies to run it now. Some told Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers they were afraid they might lose services if Congress passes a historic health care reform plan. Others said they were angry about the services they can’t have or the drugs they can’t get under their current plans.

COLVILLE, Wash. – Some Eastern Washington residents at a pair of town hall meetings Wednesday said they don’t trust the government to run their health care in the future. Others said they don’t trust the big insurance companies to run it now.

The Spokane Park Board approved a 50-year contract Thursday with a group trying to put a science center on the north edge of Riverfront Park. With little discussion and only one dissenting vote at its special 7 a.m. meeting, the board approved changes to a lease in an effort to keep alive a downtown project that’s been discussed in various forms for some 17 years. The contract allows Mobius Spokane, a nonprofit group formed four years ago by the union of the Inland Northwest Science and Technology Center and The Children’s Museum, to use the land for $1 a year, providing it builds the proposed attractions.

Spokane County may close Holmberg Park swimming pool next year because of budget problems. The pool, which is the county park system’s oldest, has the lowest attendance and the highest cost per swimmer, and is the farthest away from recovering its costs from swimming fees, Parks Director Doug Chase told county commissioners Tuesday. The pool, a basic tank with racing lanes, is more than 40 years old and doesn’t have amenities such as splash pads or slides, Chase said. More than half of the pool’s attendance comes from swimming lessons.

More than 66 years after Cpl. Walter Raymond Hahn of Spokane died in the battle for Guadalcanal, his dog tag made it back to his sister in Washington state. “It’s still unreal,” Dorothea Hahn King said as she sat last week at her dining room table in Cashmere, Wash., holding her oldest brother’s battered dog tag in slightly trembling hands. “It just blows your mind when you think, ‘What are the chances of this finding its way back to me after all these years?’ ”

More than 66 years after Cpl. Walter Raymond Hahn of Spokane died in the battle for Guadalcanal, his dog tag made it back to his sister in Washington state.

Spc. Aaron Torrey, 22, of Otis Orchards, has been in the Army since shortly after he graduated from East Valley High School in 2006. Last month he returned from his first tour in Iraq, where he served as a combat engineer with the 14th Engineering Battalion. He spent 10 months stationed in Tallil, about 185 miles southeast of Baghdad, and called the experience “an eye opener.” He recently re-enlisted, but for a new specialty. He’s training to be a dog handler and plans to take some college classes while in the Army. Q.What does a combat engineer do?

Supporters of an effort to disincorporate the city of Spokane Valley say they have more than half the signatures needed to put the proposal before voters. But they’ll have to gather the rest as a Valley business group ramps up its opposition to the plan. Citizens for Disincorporation needs at least half of the city’s 48,000 voters to sign its petitions. Campaign chairwoman Sally Jackson said the group is approaching 16,000 after about five months of leaving petitions in supportive shops and sending signature gatherers door to door. Jackson didn’t have an exact figure, saying, “We don’t count them all the time.”