News Digest
Friday, August 22, 2008 3:16 PM PDT
GOOD AFTERNOON OREGON
Police find 65 pounds of cocaine in car
PORTLAND (AP) — Two Seattle men are facing drug charges after a traffic stop on Interstate 5 in Southern Oregon turned up about 65 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated $600,000.
An Oregon State Police trooper pulled over 25-year-old Cristian Escalante-Castaneda and 28-year-old Alfonso Garcia-Castaneda near Sutherlin after spotting a car following other traffic too closely on Wednesday.
IDAHO
State board approves scaled-down law school plan
POCATELLO (AP) — State Board of Education officials say they aren’t ready to approve everything the University of Idaho wants in its plans for a law school branch in Boise.
But the board agreed to a scaled-down version of the university’s proposal during a meeting Thursday in Pocatello.
The trustees voted to allow the law school to offer a full program for third-year law students in Idaho’s capital city in 2010.
The board also voted to ask the Legislature next year for the $1 million university officials say is needed to expand legal education at a Boise branch.
Judge dismisses flag desecration charge in Idaho
RUPERT (AP) — A state judge in Idaho has dismissed a misdemeanor charge of flag desecration against a former Minico High School teacher stemming from turmoil over celebration of a Mexican holiday last spring.
Fifth District Judge Mick Hodges dismissed the charge Wednesday. A formal ruling is expected Friday. The former teacher, Dan Luker, was charged in June with one count of ‘‘public mutilation of the flag’’ under a law passed by the Idaho Legislature in 1981.
"The First Amendment is alive and well even in Minidoka County, Idaho," Keith Roark, Luker’s lawyer, wrote in an e-mail to The Times-News of Twin Falls. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down laws forbidding flag desecration, and Roark said Hodges dismissed the charge "based upon the constitutional invalidity of the flag defacement statute."
