OMAK — A man was shot in the head shortly after midnight Friday in Omak in what may have been a drive-by shooting.

Without expansion, said John Hamilton, in five years “we’d be routinely transferring patients out of the valley for care, to Seattle or Spokane. That’s terrible, but it would be the truth of it, and when you’re sick is no time to be out of town.”

The list of amenities in the 173 rooms of the new hospital tower make it sound like a five-star hotel.

WENATCHEE — With bond sales behind it, Central Washington Hospital is beginning a $118 million expansion project that will add 188,000 square feet of space in a five-story tower.

WENATCHEE — Like an invisible force field, relatively sound lending and stable home prices once shielded this area from the epidemic foreclosure levels elsewhere in the state and country.

EPHRATA — Katana Summit, maker of towers for wind turbines, laid off 14 employees at its plant here Thursday and another 70 at its home base in Columbus, Neb.

WENATCHEE — Flames had already engulfed Fire Commissioner Phil Dormaier's house when firefighters first arrived early this morning.

WENATCHEE — Steve Cole, assistant superintendent of human resources, has resigned from the Wenatchee School District to take the same job with the Yakima School District.

CASHMERE — Traffic may be restricted to one lane on Highway 2/97 at the Aplets Way intersection near Cashmere as construction crews carve a channel for fish passage in the Wenatchee River.

ORONDO — Chelan County PUD biologists conducting a bird survey on the Columbia River discovered the body of a missing Edmonds boater in the Columbia River near Chelan Falls Thursday morning.

Ardeth Rae (Radach) Eggers, who died Aug. 3, had been a bartender. She is also survived by her sister, Susan DeWitt of East Wenatchee. Her brother, Michael Radach, is a resident of Lacey. The funeral home provided incomplete and incorrect information for an obituary on Page A4 Wednesday. A corrected version appears on Page A4 today.

Continuing advertising-revenue shortfalls in a faltering economy caused The Wenatchee World to reduce staff by 12 people this week.

WENATCHEE — It took six long, very painful, sometimes blurry years for David Harris to summon the emotional strength to read a newspaper story about the man whose life his son unknowingly saved.

EAST WENATCHEE — Brad Hitzel credits a 1995 Wenatchee World article with getting him hooked on astronomy. The article about an annual astronomy club gathering on Table Mountain near Blewett Pass offered him the names of local stargazers, some of whom talked philosophically in the article about how man's existence and destiny is tied to the cosmos.

ORONDO — Chelan County PUD biologists conducting a bird survey on the Columbia River discovered the body of a missing Edmonds boater in the Columbia River near Chelan Falls this morning.

KELOWNA, B.C. — Sometimes baseball teams get the good fortune of having a few guys find their stroke at the plate at once.