Moscow-Pullman Daily News

TWIN FALLS, Idaho -- The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare is suspending Medicaid payments to hospitals around the state for at least one week because an increase in claims is straining its funding.

The suspension to 51 hospitals that accept Medicaid patients began Monday, delaying payment of about $13 million in claims, agency spokesman Tom Shanahan said.

"We're really sorry we have to suspend the payments, but we have to meet our budget," Shanahan told The Times-News.

PULLMAN, Wash. -- A privately-owned horse admitted to Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine teaching hospital for an unrelated emergency intestinal illness has been confirmed positive for Equine Herpes Virus or EHV-1.

PULLMAN, Wash. -- After hours of screwing boards together, a few painful slivers and collaboration with community groups throughout Palouse to build a 15-by15-foot mammoth, all Thad Froio wanted to do is stand back and watch his artwork burn.

Despite this urge to set his creation aflame, the wooden skeleton of Froio's mammoth still stands unsinged in downtown Palouse.

"I'm just too small for how big that idea was, I think," Froio said.

It wasn't rain or weather that put out Froio's fire, it was the Washington State Department of Ecology, which doesn't permit the burning of milled "non-virgin" wood.

PULLMAN, Wash. -- A team of Pullman Christian School students has accepted a Washington State University challenge to lead the world to a brighter future -- but with a lower wattage.

Under the Imagine Tomorrow program, WSU's problem-solving competition that asks high school students to use innovation to lead the transition to alternate energy sources, the Pullman Christian team decided to share some of what they had learned with children and parents at the Palouse Discovery Science Center Saturday.

The topic they chose was vampire or parasitic power -- the power consumed by electronics when they're not even being used -- and how preventing unnecessary energy consumption can save big bucks for parents.

Opponents of Idaho's new education reform laws say they're confident they have collected enough signatures to get a trio of referendums on the ballot in November 2012.

Bed bugs are equal opportunity feeders, says University of Kentucky's entomology department member Kenneth F. Haynes.

"They don't discriminate between the rich and the poor," he said, but there is a link to economic levels. Some people can't afford to hire the best of the best pest control operator.

MOSCOW, Idaho -- While a group of Moscow High School students have serious concerns about Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna's education reform pending before the state Legislature, they knew they didn't want to send the wrong message.

"We know other students have been leaving schools in walk-outs, but we wanted to stay in school to show how much we love our teachers," said Celeste Hufford, a MHS senior and one organizer of Thursday night's Save Our Schools, Stay in School sit-in.

The idea for the sit-in was implemented by a handful of concerned students Tuesday after students around the state walked out of classrooms on Monday in protest of the proposed legislation.

Students spent the night camped out in the high school's commons giving educational sessions, speeches, writing legislators and creating protest signs.