Scott Maben

The president of a Washington State University sorority has apologized for the behavior of students who urinated in the open in a Coeur d'Alene park during a sorority-sponsored outing May 3.

Coeur d’Alene City Administrator Wendy Gabriel resigned Wednesday after 25 years with the city. No reason was given for her sudden departure. Gabriel resigned effective immediately under terms of a mutual agreement reached with the city.

Washington State University will charge a sorority with disorderly conduct and alcohol violations after a group of students were seen and photographed urinating in a downtown Coeur d’Alene park Saturday before boarding a cruise boat. The WSU chapter of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, which sponsored the Lake Coeur d’Alene outing, will be charged with violations of the university’s student conduct standards, WSU Dean of Students Melynda Huskey said Wednesday.

Washington State University says it will charge a sorority with disorderly conduct and alcohol violations for an incident Saturday in Coeur d'Alene involving students urinating in City Park in front of families.

Washington State University is looking into a report that a group of its students – males and females – urinated in full view of the public Saturday in Coeur d’Alene’s City Park. The university was contacted Monday morning by a resident and advised of the incident, said Robert Strenge, assistant director of WSU News.

Washington State University is looking into a report that a group of its students – males and females – urinated in full view of the public Saturday in Coeur d’Alene’s City Park.

A Las Vegas man who stole $124,000 from ATM machines around the West, including in Spokane Valley, was sentenced today to more than five years in prison.

Six current and former Coeur d’Alene elected officials were honored Monday night for supporting a change in city law making it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation. The Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations gave its Civil Rights Award to former Mayor Sandi Bloem, former City Council members Mike Kennedy and Deanne Goodlander, and current Councilmen Woody McEvers, Ron Edinger and Dan Gookin. Bloem helped bring the matter before the council last year, and those five council members voted for the change on June 4.

In just seven days, three pit bull attacks in Spokane left a young girl and several adults bloodied and scarred. Two of the dogs were shot and killed by police, and a third awaits euthanasia. The cluster of attacks April 3-9 has recharged a decades-old debate about the pit bull: Is it dangerous or more prone to bite? Are such attacks to be blamed on negligent owners? And should the city restrict or even ban pit bulls?

The Boy Scouts of America has no plans to sell or swap Camp Easton on Lake Coeur d’Alene. In fact, the organization’s Inland Northwest Council wants to invest in upgrades there, and topping the list is a pedestrian tunnel under state Highway 97. “We’re going to further develop what we have right where we’re at. And that’s our complete plan for the future,” Boy Scouts Council Executive Tim McCandless said.

Primary care physicians, already in short supply, are expected to grow scarcer still from a wave of family doctor retirements in the next few years. But there’s renewed interest in family medicine among medical school graduates, and for the first time a group of them will do their graduate work in Coeur d’Alene.

The contractor racing to finish a major rebuild of McEuen Park and Front Avenue in downtown Coeur d’Alene has added weekends to the work schedule in anticipation of a May opening. Contractors Northwest, Inc. will keep workers on the $20 million project seven days a week until it’s finished, the city said Thursday.

A super-strong engineered wood product popular in Europe is coming to America under a joint venture involving a Coeur d’Alene-based lumber producer. Idaho Forest Group, which operates five mills in North Idaho, will jump into cross-laminated timber, or CLT, in a partnership with the Johann Offner Group, a global manufacturing company headquartered in Wolfsberg, Austria.

Hydroplane racing will return to Lake Coeur d’Alene this summer, even as the sponsor works to pay off bills from last year’s resurrection of the Diamond Cup. “We’re really no different than any other business that didn’t make money its first year,” Diamond Cup President Doug Miller said Monday.

Samuel Eismann, a longtime criminal defense attorney in Coeur d’Alene, was found dead Monday morning in the frigid waters of Lake Pend Oreille at Bayview. Eismann, who had practiced law nearly 50 years and continued to work, spent time on a float home at the north Scenic Bay dock. Emergency responders recovered his body from the water there.