Regional News

Long-time Coeur d'Alene Indian tribe leader Ernie Stensgar thinks it's time to take away control of Native American trust funds from the federal government and let tribes handle the money. Stensgar, who is now chair of the Trust Reform Committee of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, has some powerful allies in his quest to control more than $4.5-billion in money held in trust for Indians - the entire Idaho congressional delegation.

Jokes about inaccurate weather forecasts are some of the oldest around. But a University of Washington atmospheric science professor says bad weather predictions are no joke.

Avista Utilities celebrated its 125th anniversary by building Spokane a new City Hall Plaza, and sprucing up the adjacent Huntington Park. Paige Browning reports on the celebration at city hall on Friday. At Avista’s celebration, there was sun, a big crowd, and live music. Local teenage band Acuff and Sherfey played to the crowd outside city hall, where people gathered for the first time at the new plaza.

40 years ago, Spokane leaders were on the brink of hosting the world’s fair. Expo ‘74 made Spokane the city it is today, with a large park along the river, a major performing arts center, and a downtown core. On Saturday, the Spokane Parks Foundation invites the public to remember what happened here in 1974.

A new federal judge for the eastern district of Washington, centered in Spokane, has been confirmed by a unanimous vote of the U.S. Senate. He's 56-year old Stanley Bastian, managing partner of a Wenatchee law firm and a former president of the Washington State Bar Association.

Cars can do amazing things these days - up to and including driving themselves. So some specialized researchers at a WSU lab in Spokane figure a car ought to be able to tell when its human driver is about to doze off.

The Saturday Earth Day celebration will be in a familiar place. After a couple of years holding the event on the streets of downtown Spokane, the location has been changed back to Riverfront Park.

Sherry Urann is an Earth Day organizer. She says "moving Earth Day back in to the park is an opportunity to bring awareness to the beautiful river and the falls, and also to remind us of all the intentions that came with the building of the park during the 1974 World's Fair."

A flat, dry desert expanse out in the middle of nowhere may seem an odd place to build a cutting-edge research lab. But Idaho has one.A whole host of state, congressional and federal officials gathered at the Idaho National Laboratory the other day to celebrate opening of a new research lab they call the Energy Innovation Laboratory.

The national zombie craze is going to mean some exciting business for the Spokane area. A local film production company made a big announcement Wednesday, that caught the attention of Mayor David Condon and other city officials.

At the start of this year's wildfire season, some new research may prove unsettling for forest managers and property owners in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Wildfires in the western U.S. have been growing larger and more frequent over the past 30 years. And a team of geophysical researchers fears that trend will continue as climate change pushes up temperatures and droughts become more severe in coming decades.

The US Supreme Court's decision upholding Michigan's ban on affirmative action criteria in college admissions is unlikely to set off ripples in Washington State's legal and social fabric. Washington has had a similar ban in place since 1998.

In a long-running wage dispute between the Washington Department of Social and Health Services and hundreds of its disgruntled case workers, the state agency demanded to know the identities of whistle-blowing employees. In an unusual case, a federal appeals court panel firmly said "no."

Plans for a new span on the Columbia River I-5 corridor are dead, but some spending in the long and expensive planning process is rising zombie-like to bedevil the Washington State Department of Transportation. Washington State Auditor Troy Kelly has found more than $17-million in questionable - or undocumented - expenditures in the state's bill of $188-million for a long, fruitless study of a new bridge to link Washington and Oregon.

Inland Northwest Girl Scouts got a rare visit from their national CEO Wednesday. Girl Scouts of America CEO Anna Maria Chavez gave the keynote address at the Spokane chapter’s annual leadership luncheon. With her direction, young girls are ignoring the label ‘bossy’.

Washington Senator Patty Murray leaned hard on the horn this week, trying to warn Congress that the federal highway trust fund is going broke faster than anyone thought. The Department of Transportation warned the trust fund will run out of gas completely by the end of August, rather than in October as first projected.