Spokane’s NAACP branch announced it would take a soda fountain discrimination case to the Supreme Court.

The details of Alvin Hart's death, after capture by the ruthless Japanese military police known as the kenpeitai, remain shrouded in mystery. But why he was in a bomber over Osaka, and the string of events that put him there beginning 80 years ago today with the attack on Pearl Harbor, paint a complicated tale of two countries engaged in a war of obliteration.

The commemoration will occur at the Pearl Harbor memorial at the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena beginning at 9:45 a.m. Tuesday, Mikkelsen said. There will be short remarks and those who choose to may place leis of flowers on the memorial. 

The Spokane City Council’s leader says he wants three top officials in the Spokane Police Department to have the protections of civil services and a union, but the mayor’s office is warning his proposal would force them out of a job.

Despite the excitement the moose brothers caused, South Hill moose sightings are actually common. 

From staff reports

Spokane residents should expect lighter levels of snowfall for much of this week after about 1 to 2 inches fell across the area Monday, according to preliminary estimates from the National Weather Service.

An appeals court in Washington state on Monday overturned the cold-case murder convictions against a man accused of killing a young Canadian couple in 1987, citing juror bias.

At first, Henry Bridger II supported Kshama Sawant, Seattle’s combative socialist city councilmember. A liberal voter in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in an extremely liberal city, he liked her fresh outlook and support for a $15 minimum wage. Seven years later, Bridger is leading an effort to recall Sawant.

The Spokane Police Department launched a program Thursday that, using the public’s help through social media, aims to identify perpetrators and recover stolen items. The department has also dedicated an officer to investigating package thefts using security camera footage obtained by residents.

The Spokane City Council voted last week to form an ad hoc equity subcommittee beneath its Finance and Administration Committee, the body tasked with reviewing city finances and government structure.

More than a year after that test began in October 2020, a Spokesman-Review investigation found problems with the system continue to threaten patient safety and have left employees at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane exhausted and demoralized, with nearly two-thirds saying in a recent internal survey it has made them consider quitting.

In more than 40 interviews with The Spokesman-Review, veterans and current and former VA employees described a system that slows treatment and threatens patient safety more than a year after a transition VA officials described as “flawless.”

Airway Heights is applying for a new water right on the Spokane Valley/Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, the same 10-trillion gallon water source that provides drinking water for tens of thousands of people in Spokane and Kootenai counties. Their existing, contaminated wells are above a different aquifer system, known as the Columbia River Basalt Group formations.