Becky Kramer

Sgt. Greg Moore’s wife and ex-wife sat side by side last week at Kootenai Health, waiting for updates on a man they each loved in different ways. After an officer knocked on Lindy Moore’s door around 2 a.m. to tell her that her husband had been shot during a confrontation with an armed felon, she called Jennifer Brumley, his former wife, and asked her to come to the hospital. In the early morning of May 5, the women waited and wondered: Would Moore survive the head wound? Would he want to survive if he was physically impaired?

Art gave Aria Layton an outlet for expressing her feelings during her cancer treatment. The frequent stays at Providence Children’s Hospital were monotonous for the Airway Heights girl, who was diagnosed at age 4 with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and underwent three years of chemotherapy.

In uniform and in his private life, Coeur d’Alene police Sgt. Greg Moore was a generous man. He was an officer who stopped to talk to kids, complimenting them for wearing bike helmets. He coached youth soccer.

Climate scientists are eager to study our unusual winter. By 2050, it could be the Northwest’s new normal. Average amounts of moisture fell over most of Washington, Idaho and Oregon this winter, but warmer temperatures meant most of the precipitation fell as rain instead of snow.

Climate scientists are eager to study our unusual winter. By 2050, it could be the Northwest’s new normal.

RATHDRUM – After her daughter was born, Cory Campbell had lots of questions. Baby Arya was crying. Was she hungry or just fussy?

With sunny skies and temperatures in the 60s, rafting the Spokane River could be done in a long-sleeved T-shirt and shorts on Thursday. But water temperatures were another story. The swift-flowing river was 43 degrees – cold enough to leave people gasping from a sudden plunge into the water.

About 65 percent of Spokane County residents think global warming is happening, but only about 45 percent believe it’s mostly human-caused, according to a national model of climate change perceptions. The modeling is the first to track public opinions of global warming across more than 3,000 U.S. counties, illustrating geographic variations within most states.

Kootenai County is considering relaxing shoreline regulations, giving Lake Coeur d’Alene property owners more flexibility to clear native trees and shrubs and plant lawns near the water. Current regulations require a 25-foot buffer of native plants, which is already one of the most permissive in the region. The buffers are intended to absorb runoff and protect water quality. But Marc Eberlein, a Kootenai County commissioner, said current regulations put too many restrictions on lakeshore owners, who should be trusted to do the right thing on their land.

A Quincy, Washington, company that shipped fresh fruit to the Midwest is suing BNSF Railway Co., saying the railroad canceled the company’s 72-hour service to Chicago to concentrate on higher profit oil and coal shipments. In a federal lawsuit filed in Spokane this week, Cold Train executives said the loss of timely rail shipments cost the company most of its customers and killed a pending $30 million sale of the business.

Steve Parker had two reactions to last summer’s wildfires in Central Washington: a deep empathy for the people who lost homes and businesses, followed by the thought, “What if that happened here?” It wasn’t hard for the Stevens County commissioner to imagine a catastrophic wildfire sweeping through northeast Washington.

Spokandy’s headquarters smells like chocolate and mint, powerful scents that have permeated Todd Davis’ life since he was a plucky 19-year-old, full of ambition to run his own business. When he interviewed for a job at Spokane’s historic chocolate factory in the late 1980s, Davis told owner Kris Howell that he’d like to buy Spokandy someday.

PULLMAN – If Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories’ manufacturing plant loses power during an outage, the company can turn to huge batteries on its campus for electricity. The batteries could supply enough power to run most of the factory’s operations for about three hours.