In brief: Box contest benefits homeless

The public is invited to participate in Cardboard Box City on Friday night in Coeur d’Alene to raise awareness about homelessness.

Participants are asked to bring and decorate a cardboard box, along with at least $100 in donations for Family Promise of North Idaho, an organization that helps homeless families.

The box city will be at Lake City Community Church, 6000 N. Ramsey Road. Setup is from 5 to 7 p.m. and live music and a program on homelessness will be offered from 6 to 9 p.m. A pancake breakfast will be served Saturday. Prizes will be given for most creative box design and for most money raised. Call (208) 777-4190 or (208) 611-2776 for information.

Callers mistake Jupiter for UFO

PORT ANGELES, Wash. – Clallam County Undersheriff Ron Peregrin says his dispatchers received several early morning calls from folks worried that a shiny object in the dark sky might be a UFO.

He says staffers grabbed their binoculars and were able to reassure the Thursday morning callers that the object was just Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.

Jupiter has been dramatically big and bright in the night sky in recent days. Last week it passed 368 million miles from Earth, its closest approach since 1963.

OLYMPIA – Washington’s community and technical college enrollment for the previous school year broke another record.

State education officials said the equivalent of 161,000 full-time students attended, beating the previous year’s record enrollment by 9 percent.

College enrollment last year beat by 15 percent the number of spaces paid for by state dollars.

The president of the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges said the schools say they are running out of money to support their students’ education goals.

The community and technical college system’s state funding has been cut by $127 million over the past two years.