Other News

A new report ranks Idaho  in the top one-third of U.S. states when it comes to being peaceful.  The state is 16th in the Vision of Humanity 2012 U.S. Peace Index.  Idaho receives high marks for its low murder and violent crime rates, but was hurt by higher incarceration rates and gun ownership. 

Some Olympic hopefuls are lucky. They have six-figure endorsement contracts and can concentrate solely on training for peak performance. More commonly, dreams of Olympic glory mean scrounging for dollars. One runner from Eugene even auctioned his left shoulder on eBay recently. 

Eugene-based runner Nick Symmonds began his outdoor campaign for a spot on the 2012 Olympic team this past weekend.

Sunday saw record high temperatures for much of southwest Idaho and eastern Oregon. In Boise it got to 91 degrees. That unusual heat brings a chance of thunderstorms for much of this week. But the temperature won’t stay at record levels long. Later in the week highs will likely drop to the 50s. 

Jay Briendenbach, the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at NOAA's National Weather Service Office in Boise, says a system of high pressure ridges and troughs is circulating hot and cold air around the country quickly.

Geologists have discovered two previously unknown earthquake faults -- and possibly a third -- near Bellingham, Washington. The scientists working for the U.S. Geological Survey believe the shallow faults are capable of spawning damaging tremors.

The team of geologists from California and western Washington had a hunch there would be active earthquake faults near the U.S.-Canada border. Similar faults run right under Seattle and Tacoma. So they started looking in earnest five years ago.

Lieutenant Colonel Barry Bridger knows a lot about how to overcome obstacles. He survived six years in Vietnam’s infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison camp.  Now he works with other veterans on how to achieve success after they return home from duty. Bridger brings his message to Boise tonight. Samantha Wright talked with him about his two tours in Vietnam and how his experiences shaped the message he brings to veterans.

The African-American lawmaker in Idaho who received a flier from the Ku Klux Klan says she’s using the incident as an opportunity to talk about bigotry in the state. State representative Cherie Buckner-Webb and four other Idaho lawmakers have reported getting the mailings at home.  Cherie Buckner-Webb grew up in Boise and remembers when someone set fire to a cross on her family’s lawn in the 1960s.

She says, a lot has changed since then, but the KKK pamphlet she received is a reminder that racism hasn’t been extinguished.

The story of the Titanic is a familiar one.  The ship sank in the frigid waters of the north Atlantic 100 years ago on April 15th.  Much less familiar, though, is the story of Idaho’s connection to the doomed ship.  That prompted Alan Virta to do some digging.  The retired archivist from Boise State University has researched the six passengers who boarded the ship and listed locations in Idaho as their final destinations.  Alan Virta says there were four immigrants and two visitors headed to Idaho.  

Boise State Public Radio’s news team has won four 2012 Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association! BSPR won more awards than any other radio station in the region. The region includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska and Montana.   Our team led by news director Sadie Babits won for continuing coverage, series, use of sound and feature.  In June, these four winning stories will be entered into the national Edward R. Murrow competition.

A landmark settlement announced this week between the federal government and Native American tribes is expected to have long-term effects beyond the $1 billion in the agreement. Three Idaho tribes are part of the deal, the Coeur d’Alene, Nez Perce, and Shoshone-Bannock.

Forty-one tribes filed lawsuits alleging the federal government mismanaged tribal accounts for generations. The accounts held decades of royalties on timber, farming, grazing and other leases on land held in trust for the tribes.

Get ready to spot a new kind of "bird" in the sky. Within the next month, the Federal Aviation Administration is expected to green light the use of small unmanned aircraft by emergency services.  Some sheriffs' departments in the Northwest are showing interest in these aircraft.

What we're talking about here are scaled up hobby airplanes and helicopters or scaled down military drones. A booth rented by unmanned aircraft systems company Prioria Robotics drew a crowd this week at an emergency management conference in Tacoma.

An Eagle man, who tried to buy the bankrupt Tamarack Resort in Donnelly, was arrested today.  Matthew Hutcheson faces 17 federal counts of wire fraud and 14 counts of theft from an employee pension plan.   

Hutcheson made news two years ago with a bid to buy the Tamarack ski resort for $40 million.  Now, Idaho’s U-S Attorney, Wendy Olson, says $3 million of that money came from a pension plan where he was a trustee.  

Beginning this summer, texting will be illegal for drivers across all three Northwest states. Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed a bill last week that outlaws texting while driving on Idaho roads. But in the age of the smartphone, text messages aren’t the only distraction on the tiny screen.

If you can’t text then all three states say it’s pretty clear that means you can’t send email in traffic either, or, for that matter, surf the web.  And there are already laws on the books that ban watching TV while driving, so that means YouTube is out.