Susan Drumheller

WORLEY, Idaho – Fireworks sales on the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation were pretty well doused last weekend, and salesmen said it wasn't thundershowers that kept customers away. "They just weren't stopping," said fireworks salesman William Bigman, who runs the Uncle Sam Fireworks stand at the corner of U.S. Highway 95 and state Highway 58.

It's been about 30 years since Coeur d'Alene Police patrolled on motorcycles. Today they'll return to the saddle when the police force's new Motor Unit makes its debut during the Car d'Lane Friday Night Cruise through downtown Coeur d'Alene.

It's been about 10 years since the Environmental Protection Agency started cleaning up heavy metal contamination from a history of mining in the Silver Valley. Within two years, the EPA expects to be finished up with cleanup within the Bunker Hill Superfund "box," which is the 21-square-mile site in the immediate vicinity of the old Bunker Hill Mine.

A new law authorizing fees for recreation on public lands has some folks wondering where cash-strapped public land managers will stop. Sandpoint resident Ken Fischman says he fears it won't be long before visitors to Roman Nose Lake in the Selkirk Mountains will have to pay a fee.

A 12-year-old boy is facing misdemeanor charges and possible expulsion from school after being caught with a BB gun at Hayden Meadows Elementary School on Wednesday. According to a report from the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department, the student took a Smith and Wesson air pistol out of his backpack and showed it to other students in the school's breakfast room. Principal Patty Woodworth told Deputy Justin Bangs that students reported the weapon to her.

Post Falls has grown by more than 20,000 people since Sharon Jennings moved there 30 years ago. She notices the crowds when she's trying to get around town. And to get from the north side of town to the south side can require a lot of driving around.

A public television production on mining pollution in the Silver Valley already has its critics, even though it's not scheduled to air until October. Film crews from Idaho Public Television's "Outdoor Idaho" program recently spent a week in Shoshone County interviewing players in the story of the Bunker Hill Superfund site and ongoing disagreement over cleanup of the Coeur d'Alene Basin.

Bonner County Prosecutor Phil Robinson has forwarded a request to review the Sandpoint City Council's vote in favor of a new height ordinance to the Idaho attorney general. A group of citizens concerned about the vote, and the possible conflict of interest with two council members, had asked Robinson to look into the matter and whether it was legal for the full council to vote on the issue.

The summer season started with lots of traffic tickets and several arrests in Shoshone County over the Memorial Day weekend. Deputies with the Shoshone County Sheriff's Department were out in force over the holiday weekend, stopping speeders and looking for drunken drivers along the Coeur d'Alene River.

A missing Spokane Valley woman was found in her car Monday morning, alive and cold, about 24 hours after she got it stuck in a ditch on the east side of Lake Coeur d'Alene. She was unable to exit the driver's side of the car because it was lodged against a tree, and the car's broken windows did nothing to keep the rain out all night. But rescuers freed her by simply opening the passenger door, according to the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office.

From flash floods to devastating lightning, the Inland Northwest has had its share of extreme weather in the last couple of days. But the violent rainstorm that hammered the Palouse countryside and smote a Wilbur, Wash., home with lightning Monday mostly bypassed the Coeur d'Alene and Spokane areas.

A Canadian-Korean man guilty of smuggling Korean women across the Canadian border into Idaho will soon be going home. In one of two such cases to come before him within about an hour on Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Larry Boyle sentenced Randell Chong Park to time served for his role in smuggling five women across the border late last year.

At his sentencing hearing in federal court Monday, outdoors writer Dennis Nicholls borrowed a metaphor from his public life to describe his experience in court. "I feel like a rainbow trout that's been pulled out of a stream and filleted and laid out for everyone to see," he told U.S. Magistrate Court Judge Larry Boyle.

Curt Hecker, CEO of Panhandle State Bank, has an ambitious vision for the future of his rapidly growing bank. Starting in Sandpoint, Hecker wants to build financial centers that offer one-stop "knowledge centers" for customers to take care of their banking, investment and legal needs. Last week, Hecker unveiled an architectural rendering of his vision – a city-block-size building rooted in underground parking and capped with penthouses that surround a four-story atrium. The $40 million building would contain a large community meeting room with a cafeteria and state-of-the-art technology for teleconferencing.

Soupy's Auto Sales in Post Falls doesn't have a guard dog. Instead, a self-described "hound dog" chased off would-be thieves Wednesday night, thwarting their attempt to steal at least one car, if not more, in the used car lot and launching a high-speed chase to the state line.

Jake Dorn looks the part of the all-American kid with his blond hair and broad shoulders in a Billabong surf T-shirt. But this earnest 18-year-old high school student has seen more trouble and hardship than many men his senior.

A dispute between Sheriff Rocky Watson and John Weick, who is a former sheriff's candidate and the man who bought Watson's security business, is back in 1st District Court following an Idaho Supreme Court ruling issued Friday. The state's highest court upheld most of the lower court's ruling favoring the sheriff, but remanded the case back to 1st District Judge John T. Mitchell for more proceedings on two issues – Weick's claim of fraud and one claim of breach of contract for nonpayment of payroll taxes.

When the idea of North Idaho's Centennial Trail was conceived in the late '80s, the vision was to follow the Spokane River as closely as possible as the paved pathway entered Coeur d'Alene from the west. The road's milelong shoulder along busy Northwest Boulevard was to be just a temporary route.

A Coeur d'Alene woman who reported she was raped near the east entrance of Tubbs Hill told police Wednesday that she made up the report. Charges are now pending against 22-year-old Brandy Ingraham for filing a false police report, said Sgt. Christie Wood, of the Coeur d'Alene Police Department.