Idaho

An effort to give low-income Idahoans a choice between public Medicaid coverage and private health insurance ran into a federal roadblock Thursday.

BOISE – Idaho must provide gender confirmation surgery to a transgender inmate living as a woman for years but who has continuously been housed in a men’s prison, a federal appeals court said Friday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a federal judge in Idaho that the state’s denying the surgery for 31-year-old Adree Edmo amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

A Nampa woman entered three photos of her grandchildren into contests at the Western Idaho Fair – and one was rejected even before judging began.

A panel of Idaho lawmakers looking for ways to pay for the state’s expansion of Medicaid is considering eliminating county indigent health care funds, dipping into money collected from court fees or tapping cash from a tobacco settlement reached nearly two decades ago. Those proposals and others were discussed Friday by the interim Legislative Committee, which is tasked with coming up with ways to pay for the voter-approved Medicaid expansion.

The Nez Perce Tribe has filed a lawsuit to force a Canadian company to clean up an idle central Idaho mining area – which the company says it plans to do if it gets approval from U.S. officials to restart mining. The tribe contends in the lawsuit filed Thursday that Midas Gold is illegally allowing arsenic, cyanide and mercury to remain in the area where the tribe has hunting and fishing rights. Midas Gold has never mined in the area but has acquired existing mining claims

A Moscow High School student and her mother were killed Saturday in a head-on crash involving a semitrailer on Interstate 90 near Alberton, Montana.

A 26-year-old Florida man has been taken into custody after police say he tried to pawn stolen bicycles in Boise. Boise police say Bradley D. Knirnschild of Kissimmee was arrested Monday afternoon with 11 bicycles worth more than $40,000 that had been reported stolen in Washington.

A 9-year-old Idaho girl who fell out of a tree and was impaled in the head by a steel bar has died. Jesi Bergeson said Friday that her daughter Shaylyn Bergeson died from her injuries Thursday evening at a hospital in Utah. Authorities say Bergeson was playing in her backyard Monday near the city of Rexburg when she fell. Officers found the girl unconscious under a tree near the family’s home.

Idaho recorded a 2.8% unemployment rate for June, marking the 19th consecutive month the rate has stayed below 3%

Idaho State Police say 19-year-old Nicholas Eloe left his Ford pickup trying to retrieve a lost item on U.S. Highway 95 north of Athol just after noon on Sunday. He was struck by a southbound vehicle and taken to the hospital.

A Post Falls woman died Saturday evening after failing to stop at a stop sign on an off-ramp to Seltice Way, according to Idaho State Police.