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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Fair Trade festival today in Sandpoint

From staff and wire reports The Spokesman-Review

A Festival of Fair Trade at the Sandpoint Community Hall today will feature vendors with fairly traded goods from Mexico, Thailand, Tibet, Guatemala, Siberia, Africa, Burma, India, Chile and Nepal.

At 2 p.m., Denise Attwood of Spokane’s Ganesh Himal, a fair trade business, will lead a discussion on globalization and fair trade. Following the discussion, the film “Behind the Labels: Garment Workers on U.S. Saipan” will be shown. The film shows the harsh conditions of the garment industry in Saipan, a U.S. territory in the Northern Mariana Islands.

Admission to the festival is free. It runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sandpoint Community Hall is at 100 N. First Ave.

Panel to discuss end-of-life issues

People who plan ahead for the end of life save family members from difficult decisions, doctors, chaplains and attorneys will tell the public Monday at an End of Life Choices Forum at Kootenai Medical Center.

KMC’s Clinical Ethics Committee will present a panel with Coeur d’Alene Dr. Richard McLandress, chairman of the ethics committee, attorney Michael Wytychak, Kootenai County Coroner Dr. Robert West, KMC Chaplain Jennifer James and Susan Herbst, an oncology nurse practitioner.

The panel will offer information on advanced directives, living wills, durable powers of attorney for health care and more. Panelists will discuss religious issues and ending life with minimum pain through palliative care.

The free forum will run 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Fox Auditorium in the KMC Health Resource Center. For more information, call (208) 666-2030.

Wedding of ex-teacher, student top-secret

Seattle Telephone calls with secret instructions. Private e-mails outlining a hush-hush rendezvous. Identity checks and pledges of silence. Security leading up to Friday night’s wedding of Mary Kay Letourneau and her former sixth-grade pupil rivaled that of top-secret government ops.

Letourneau and Vili Fualaau have been in the national spotlight since she was jailed in 1997 for raping Fualaau, now 22. The couple have two children together.

When she got out of prison last August they reunited and pledged their love. Letourneau has since moved to Normandy Park, a waterfront suburb south of Seattle.

Details of their nuptials have been closely guarded in recent weeks, except for a series of interviews by “Entertainment Tonight” and its sister TV show, “The Insider.” The shows had exclusive rights to coverage of the wedding, but show officials said they did not pay for the festivities.

About 200 guests were collected from a predetermined pickup location Friday evening for a bus ride to the wedding site, the Columbia Winery in Woodinville, about 20 miles northeast of Seattle.

Shortly after 10 p.m., Letourneau and Fualaau exchanged vows they had written themselves, said Janet Annino, ET’s co-executive producer in Seattle for the wedding.

Scott Stewart, a lawyer and family friend, presided over the 12-minute ceremony, Annino said. The bride, who is taking her new husband’s name, wore a long, white empire-style dress handmade in London by Christiana Couture, the producer added.

Letourneau’s teenage daughter, Mary Claire, one of four children from her earlier marriage, was on hand to serve as her maid of honor, Annino said. Also present was her son Steven.

The couple’s two daughters, Audrey, 8, and Alexis Georgia, 7, were selected to be flower girls.

Insects killing Pocatello’s spruce trees

Pocatello, Idaho The city’s spruce trees are dying from an insect infestation, officials said.

Michael Kuhns, a forestry extension specialist and Utah State University professor, was invited by city officials to examine the dying trees. He said tiny Ips beetles, not drought, are to blame.

“I assumed (beetles) couldn’t have been the primary cause, certainly not for such quick, imminent death,” said Sandra Thorne-Brown, a certified arborist and member of the Pocatello Tree Commission.

Thorne-Brown said city workers will cut down the infested trees and cover the wood with a plastic tarp so the sun’s rays will bake the beetles to death. Remaining healthy trees will be well-watered to help protect them from the insects, she said.