The Idaho Statesman

BOISE, Idaho -- The smoke in Treasure Valley air got so bad Thursday that the state posted the year’s first orange - unhealthy air - alert, and singer-songwriter k.d. lang canceled her outdoor concert at the Eagle River Pavilion.

EAGLE, Idaho -- Zack Phillips was preparing for one of the biggest days in his 19 years of life last month. Friends were coming. Family was gathering.

Phillips was about to receive his mission call, a letter from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He would be officially notified of where he would spend the next two years advancing his faith.

But on that special day, one person was missing in the room of the Phillips family’s Eagle home: Jon Phillips, Zack’s father.

BOISE, Idaho -- Neighborhood Firewise practices, alert residents and a bunch of hungry goats are being credited with averting what could have been a disastrous fire in the Warm Springs Mesa neighborhood in the East Boise Foothills.

The baby brown trout has become the symbol of a 15-year effort to clean up phosphate mine waste in Southeast Idaho that has cost millions of dollars but is years from completion.

The tiny fry was the progeny of trout taken from two streams below the J.R. Simplot Co.'s Smoky Canyon Mine and raised in a hatchery in Wyoming. Its photo was one of several dozen in an appendix to a 2,070-page study Simplot did in an attempt to show that allowing higher levels of selenium could be allowed in creeks below the mine.

Mutated Yellowstone cutthroat fry, raised from hatchery fish that never swam in Idaho, also were pictured. One of those fry also grew two heads. But that fish had not been subjected to higher selenium.

BOISE, Idaho -- Wind gusts of 66 mph knocked down more than two dozen 120-foot-tall trees near a compound Monday night.

BOISE, Idaho -- Ogden's Own Distillery owners say overwhelming community support has caused them to reconsider pulling out of the Boise Music Festival even though Five Wives Vodka won't likely be available for purchase in Idaho.

Ogden's Own Distillery, which makes Five Wives Vodka, took offense to the state taking offense to its liquor, with a name that plays on a Mormon stereotype and a label that some might find risque.

The Idaho State Liquor Division sent a letter to the vodka's distributor earlier this month, letting it know that Five Wives wouldn't be sold in Idaho because it was "offensive to a prominent segment of our population" and "in poor taste with respect to our citizens."