Northeast Spokane has seen several major transportation construction projects in the past few years, including changes to Crestline and Sprague. An even larger one looms with completion of the North Spokane Corridor. City Council candidates Tim Benn and Michael Cathcart offer their views on those projects, as well as whether car tab fees should be reduced.

With recent national attention on childhood obesity rates, newly released data for Washington show that 7,100 youth ages 10-17 are obese. The state’s rate for this age group is 11%, ranking Washington as the sixth lowest in the U.S.

Candidate for the Spokane Valley Fire Commission Bradley Mertens said he hopes to improve communication and work with unions, while incumbent Patrick Burch said a fire commissioner’s first responsibility is to taxpayers, not unions.

Jewell Marie McDonald and Helen Fay McDonald Wilkinson had been implicated in the mysterious death of the Spokane real estate man. Court paperwork showed that there had been a business quarrel and that the sisters left Spokane “in haste” to California under assumed names.

The Thomas S. Foley United States Courthouse was originally envisioned as a joint federal and municipal building, but voters failed to pass a $10.4 million bond to combine the two governmental buildings.

There have been so many dang debates in Spokane this election season that it’s hard to tell whose heads are swimming the most: the candidates’, the voters’ or the journalists’. I can’t remember if it was Steven Tyler or Ayn Rand who said that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, but judging from my phone’s musical library, a solid guess is Aerosmith. Of course, Shakespeare noted it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Or maybe that was Bon Jovi. It doesn’t really matter.

The war in Europe had been over for almost a year, but the uncertainty continued for some some local parents. Five Washington men, including two from Spokane, were still listed as missing in action, and no word had yet emerged about their fate.

“The world unfortunately has forgotten what has happened, or they never even knew what had happened. It hasn’t really changed. There’s still prejudice, discrimination and wars going on,” Schloss said.

As Ben Stuckart faces November’s vote, he contends with a well-documented, eight-year record at City Hall. But he also offers a deep, hands-on background in local government in politics. Stuckart acknowledged that his nuanced views of complex issues may not fit the political moment of tweet-sized pronouncements and vague hot takes. But he said he wouldn’t change.

Nadine Woodward has been hesitant to bring her political views into the nonpartisan race, declining to seek the endorsement of either political party. Instead, she’s argued that the election is about trust – trust she’s earned over more than 25 years beamed into the living rooms of Spokane families. She hopes that trust will propel her to the mayor’s office, where she aims to bring about change.

Around 400 volunteers planted about 3,000 small plants and 250 trees at two sites as a part of the Lands Council and Avista’s eighth annual Reforest Spokane Day.

Firefighters aided by diminishing winds are taming a Southern California wildfire that damaged or destroyed 30 structures along the northern edge of the city.

President Donald Trump defended his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani on Saturday amid reports that federal prosecutors are investigating whether the former New York City mayor broke lobbying laws in his efforts to oust the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yavonovitch.

Spokane’s main advantage, she said, was that it had “such a wide variety of scenery within so small a radius.”

Park managers at Pinecroft Mobile Home Park are working on getting clean water, but residents still may still end up going a year without safe tap water.