Pictured is a billboard print sample in Helena, Mont., Wednesday, depicting a mother beaten after confronting her child for using methamphetamine. The new Montana Meth Project media campaign focuses on the adverse effects methamphetamine use has on family members and friends of addicts here/Jon Ebelt, AP Photo by Independent Record. Helena Independent Record edit here.

Rep. Tom Loertscher: Idaho day-care centers are sufficiently regulated here.

1. Basketball drove a wedge between NBA coach George Karl and his son, all-conference Boise State player Coby Karl, and basketball has brought the two back together again here.

2. University of Montana students marched into Main Hall on Wednesday afternoon, demanding the end of sweatshop-manufactured Grizzly gear. Standing outside the offices of President George Dennison and Vice President Jim Foley, a throng of students chanted loudly “Dennison Foley Grizzly Sweat-free” here.

3. Paul deLay, the larger-than-life Portland bluesman who redefined the harmonica and its musical potential, died Wednesday morning at Providence Portland Medical Center from end-stage leukemia diagnosed just days before. He was 55 here.

4. Blues Traveler singer and harmonica player John Popper was arrested near Ritzville after the vehicle he was riding in was clocked going 111 mph, the Washington State Patrol said here.

5. Rockie Jacobsen of Kamiah, Idaho, kept a family tradition alive when he won the annual pro division of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation's world elk bugling contest at Reno, Nev. It was his third world championship here.

6. IMHO-NW: John Blanchette/SR (Aussie produces for Cougs), G. George Ostrom/Hungry Horse News (Aunt Mimi's ashes), Dean Ferguson/Lewiston Tribune (In Boise, paranoia, government go hand in hand), Gary Kawamura/WSU Evergreen (Loud U.S. travelers annoying), Lenna Harding/Moscow-Pullman Daily News (Base vaccine choice on facts), Frank Mieli/Kalispell Daily Inter Lake (Morality is "inconvenient truth"), and Spokesman-Review (Don't target newborn citizens w/pointless rules).

Online Poll: A plurality of 44% of 797 respondents to an Idaho Statesman poll favor the "60s" as the ideal temperature for this time of the year in the Boise area.

*Washington ag inspectors are checking reports that numerous cows have died at a NE Washington daily here.

*Studded tires could be legalized all year ’round in Idaho and Washington – if the studs could retract at the push of a remote-control button here.

*UIdaho students protest VandalMail Live e-mail system here.

*Oregon father, girlfriend imprisoned for locking boy in bathroom for two weeks here.

Orbusmax Special: More people sought assisted suicide in Oregon last year -- report here.

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