It's Friday when thoughts turn to the weekend and the wonderful country we North Idahoans live in. Here, Hayden photographer Doug Fredericks features a viewtiful scenic he calls "Palouse Homestead."

1. Top-notch freelance cartoonist Milt Priggee shows there are some homeless more important than other ones here.

2. Oprah Winfrey's broadcast of photos of violent sex offenders on the run and offer of reward money during her show spotlighting the Groene Family Murders this week has helped nab one of them, William C. Davis, here.

3. You know that Julia Sweeney earned fame as the genderless, fashion-disaster geek named Pat on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s. But did you know that she now writes for "Desperate Housewives"? Further, did you know that her love of movies began at Spokane's Fox Theater, where she was an usher in the 1970s. The Inlander tells you all about it here.

4. Spokane enviros trying use an obscure 1872 law to stake a mining claim on one of the most prime piecest of real estate on the Coeur d'Alene waterfront was thwarted by another little-known Idaho law here.

5. Don't want a black widow spider shimmying out of your cluster of grapes purchased in a Northwest grocery store? Then, you'd better soak them in water first, sez John Dodge/Olympian, here.

6. IMHO-NW: Dan Hammes/St. Maries Gazette-Record (Smelly man raises stink), D.F. Oliveria/Spokesman-Review (Oprah quest: Good TV, bad policy), Sam Taylor/UI Argonaut (Oh, Canada!), Missoulian (Flushing money down Glacier latrine), and G. George Ostrom/Bigfork Eagle (How to punish a car).

*Special recall election for Spokane Mayor Jim West is scheduled for Dec. 6 here.

*Glacier female bear attack on 2 Californians ruled "defensive" here.

*2 charged in plot to kill stepfather of Seattle Sonics guard Ray Allen here.

Orbusmax provides the rest of the Northwest here.

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