Becky Kramer

A new sign announcing “The Philanthropy Center” went up this month at the old Chamber of Commerce building on Riverside Avenue. The landmark building – with its distinctive Italianate columns – is the new home of Empire Health Foundation. In the warm, light-filled space, the foundation’s staff and community leaders will grapple with solutions to pressing social issues, such as reducing obesity rates, helping families stay together and improving access to health care.

A federal judge on Monday ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider a decision that reduced critical habitat for the South Selkirk caribou herd by 90 percent. Six environmental groups sued the agency over its 2013 decision to designate 30,000 acres of habitat as critical to the recovery of the last caribou herd in the Lower 48 states, instead of the 375,000 acres originally proposed.

Wendi Dunlap lives in a house in Hillyard with an old furnace. Last winter, the social worker qualified for energy assistance to help pay her Avista bill. Many Spokane families are like hers – working, but struggling to make ends meet, Dunlap told an Avista executive at a recent neighborhood meeting.

Max Pavesic wasn’t sure what awaited him as the train rolled into the station in Jackson, Mississippi. During the summer of 1961, Pavesic was a 21-year-old college student and one of 436 “Freedom Riders” – activists committed to ending segregation on public transit in the South.

Catherine Perusse spoke at a suicide prevention conference Tuesday about the anguish of having two sons who killed themselves. Their deaths came six years apart. At one point during the grieving process, Perusse – now chairwoman of Idaho’s Suicide Prevention Action Network – was so concerned about her husband’s depression that she stole the ammunition from his gun collection.

Health care organizations are investing millions of dollars in emergency and urgent care centers across the Spokane region to treat the growing number of patients who have gained insurance and access to health care. CHAS Health will open two clinics this year to help meet a growing demand for health care from the newly insured.

Compensation for Avista Corp.’s top executive nearly doubled last year, as a result of bonuses and increases in pension values. Scott Morris, chairman and chief executive officer of the Spokane-based utility, received nearly $5.5 million in total compensation in 2014, compared to $2.9 million in 2013.

University of Idaho researchers hope to stamp out an infestation of Asian clams in Lake Pend Oreille by smothering them. Beginning this weekend, they’ll be sprinkling lye pellets on the lake’s bottom near Ellisport Bay in Hope, Idaho, and placing rubber mats over the pellets. Together, the pellets and the mats create a low-oxygen, alkaline environment that’s been effective at killing the clams in other locations.

Efforts to get people signed up for health insurance are paying off in Spokane County, where the percentage of residents without insurance has dropped to less than 3 percent of the population, according to estimates from the nonprofit Better Health Together. More than 50,000 people have signed up for insurance since late 2013, about half of whom relied on trained “assisters” to help them navigate the state’s online benefit exchange. The sign-ups have occurred at libraries, jails, food banks, health fairs and bus stops, as well as clinics and hospitals.

Aside from a noisy pair of mallards, it was a tranquil morning at Neacham Bay on the east side of Lake Coeur d’Alene. Mellow strains of jazz drifted from an aluminum fishing boat, where Idaho Department of Environmental Quality employees were collecting and processing water quality samples.

The cause of a large silt plume in Lake Coeur d’Alene remained a mystery on Tuesday.