Spokane’s Annual Pride Parade and Rainbow Festival was Saturday, June 11, 2011.

The third annual Purina Incredible Dog Challenge’s surfing competition was held in San Diego, Calif. on Friday, June 10, 2011. This premier canine sporting event features dogs competing in a variety of events including dog surfing, dog diving, freestyle flying disc, head-to-head weave poles, Jack Russell hurdle racing and agility.

This week much of eastern US and other parts of the world have been experiencing hot weather. The mercury climbed into the 90s across half the country Wednesday in a record-breaking blast of August-like heat, forcing schools with no air conditioning to let kids go home early and cities to open cooling centers. And scientists say we had better get used to it.

Every June, hundreds of thousands of asthma sufferers gather in Hyderabad to swallow live sardines smeared with secret herbs, convinced the ritual will cure them. The two day free treatment by the Goud family, which claims to have received the formula from a Hindu saint 162 years ago

Allen and Emmy Widman, of Rosalia, Wash., gave up pheasant raising to venture into the world of organic, free-range chicken farming. They hope to fill the need for local, organic meat.

Heavy rain hammered southern Haiti for a seventh straight day Tuesday, triggering floods and mudslides and causing houses and shanties in the capital to collapse. The official death toll was 23 but could rise as remnants of the storm lingered.

An erupting Chilean volcano sent a towering plume of ash across South America on Monday, forcing thousands from their homes, grounding airline flights in southern Argentina and coating ski resorts with a gritty layer of dust instead of snow.

An enormous wildfire that forced the evacuation of several mountain communities in eastern Arizona grew Monday to more than 300 square miles, sending smoke and haze across five states and as far east as Iowa, authorities said.

Uranium ore was blasted out of the Spokane Reservation’s arid hillsides and sold to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The truckloads of radioactive material that rumbled daily through the reservation helped build the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal in the 1950’s. The mines closed 30 years ago, but they’ve left a complex legacy of pride, patriotism and radioactive pollution on the 157,000-acre reservation west of Spokane.

People gathered at the Felts Field Neighbor Day Open House at Felts Field on Saturday, June 4, 2011. Attractions included biplane rides, Boeing B-17 WWII bomber tours and rides and formation flyovers.

The Historic Races at the 2011 Spokane Festival of Speed was held at the Spokane County Raceway, Saturday, June 4, 2011. The event was put on to benefit Parkinson’s Resource Center of Spokane.

U.S. WWII veterans attend a ceremony in honor of the 67th anniversary of D-Day at the Pointe du Hoc in Cricqueville en Bessin, western France, Monday, June 6, 2011. The June, 6, 1944, invasion and ensuing battle for Normandy helped change the course of the war.

Over 140 artisans from around the Inland Northwest set up for ArtFest 2011 in Coeur d’Alene Park in Browne’s Addition on Friday, June 3, 2011. ArtFest runs through Sunday, June 5, 2011.

Seventh grade teacher Maureen Howard is among dozens of teachers in the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene area who have turned to the online educational charity organization donorschoose.org as school budgets have tightened.

Residents of 18 communities in central and western Massachusetts woke to widespread damage Thursday, a day after at least two late-afternoon tornadoes shocked emergency officials with their suddenness and violence and caused the state’s first tornado-related deaths in 16 years.

Environmentalists are trying to head off a European Union plan to deepen shipping channels that they fear could eliminate the last shallows where the sturgeon deposit their eggs - dooming the fish to vanish in its last stronghold in Europe.

The Melvin M. Smith Detachment #586, Marine Corp League, and, VFW Post #51 conducted a Memorial Day Ceremony at Fairmount Memorial Park on Monday, May 30, 2011.

A dandelion bloom gone to seed awaits a strong gust of wind to spread the noxious weed’s seed onto lawns and gardens on the South Hill Tuesday, May 31, 2011.

Angel Delgadillo, 84, has witnessed the rise and fall of America’s most historic byway and gets credit for helping it rise again as Historic Route 66. Telling his story and the road’s has become his life’s work. Delgadillo was the driving force behind the formation of the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona, which lobbied the state to dedicate U.S. 66 as “Historic Route 66.”

The Round the Clock mountain bike race at Riverside State Park kicked off at noon today, with more than 850 riders who’ll attempt to ride for 24 hours solo or in relay-style teams.