A federal judge in Boise has denied a motion by Idaho and Washington news organizations to know the results of a recently completed psychological exam of convicted killer Joseph Duncan that was ordered to help decide whether he is competent to act as his own attorney in his federal sentencing hearing.

U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge ruled that with jury selection still going, unsealing the exam results could potentially taint the jury, and that any release of the results could be a violation of Duncan’s privacy rights. Lodge reasoned that Duncan’s fundamental Constitutional rights outweigh the public’s First Amendment right of access. He added that there is no proper alternative than to seal the documents.

Duncan faces life in prison or the death penalty for the 2005 kidnapping and molestation of Shasta and Dylan Groene, and killing of Dylan. The children were kidnapped from their Coeur d’Alene-area home after Duncan murdered three members of their family. He has already pleaded guilty in Idaho state court to the killings of the family members – he was sentenced to life in prison, but Kootenai County prosecutors say they could seek the death penalty depending on the outcome of the federal case.

Jury selection for the federal hearing is on hold until Lodge decides whether to grant Duncan’s request to serve as his own attorney.

Legislation that expands the borders of Idaho’s Minidoka Interment National Monument is now law.

President Bush on Thursday signed into law a larger public lands bill that includes the Minidoka measure, as well as the bill to create Washington’s Wild Sky Wilderness.

Minidoka was one of 10 detention camps in the West and Arkansas that the federal government operated between 1942 and 1946. The camps held thousands of West Coast residents who were deemed a security risk because they had at least 1/16th Japanese ancestry.

The measure, authored by Idaho Sens. Mike Crapo and Larry Craig and Rep. Mike Simpson, allows the Minidoka monument to stretch its borders through a series of acquisitions of adjacent public and private land. Backers of the project have identified more than 200 acres to add, an amount that would more than triple the monument’s size.

The legislation also clears the way to allow private groups to raise money for the expansion and pay to refurbish the camp and rebuild a block of barracks.

President Bush on Thursday signed into law a bill to establish the first new wilderness area in Washington state since 1984.

The House gave final approval to the Wild Sky Wilderness bill last month. It designates 167 square miles in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest north of Seattle as federal wilderness, the government’s highest level of protection.

Wild Sky, first introduced in 2002, covers approximately 106,000 acres of low-elevation forest on the west slope of the Cascades. The wilderness designation will block development and other economic activity in a sprawling area north of U.S. Highway 2 that includes habitat for bears, bald eagles and other wildlife, as well as streams, hiking trails and other recreation.

The bill signed on Thursday also designates a site on Bainbridge Island, where hundreds of Japanese-Americans were forced from their homes on the way to internment camps during World War II as a national historic site.

(AP)

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden and Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna on Thursday announced that social-networking site Facebook has agreed to take significant steps to better protect children on its Web site.

Wasden and McKenna joined attorneys general nationwide in signing an agreement with Facebook, in which they emphasize their shared goal of protecting children from inappropriate content and unwanted contact by adults.

Facebook agreed to provide automatic warning messages when a child is in danger of giving personal information to an unknown adult; restrict the ability of users to change their listed ages; require users under 18 to affirm they have read Facebook’s safety tips when they sign up; act more aggressively to remove inappropriate content and groups from the site; and maintain a list of pornographic websites and regularly sever any links to such sites.

In addition, companies offering Facebook users services called “widgets” will now have to implement and enforce Facebook’s safety and privacy guidelines.

The agreement is similar to one that MySpace reached in January with 49 states and the District of Columbia. MySpace agreed to head a task force, which Facebook has joined, focused on developing technology to verify the age and identity of social networking site users. The task force will report back to the attorneys general every three months and issue a formal report with findings and recommendations at the end of 2008.

A second-degree murder charge has been filed against a Genesee man in the shooting death of another man last year.

James Leonard’s voluntary manslaughter trial in the June 19th death of 25-year-old Tyler Lee was scheduled to begin last week. However, the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office says new evidence shows that Lee knew of Leonard having an extramarital affair, giving motive to Leonard to kill Lee before Lee could share that information with Leonard’s wife.

Leonard had told police that Lee attacked him and that he acted in self-defense when he shot Lee outside Leonard’s home near Genesee – Lee was shot three times and an autopsy showed that Lee died instantly after Leonard’s first shot.

Leonard remains free on bail with a preliminary hearing scheduled for June 26.

The American Legion Baseball World Series will be coming to Spokane in August of 2010.

Avista Stadium will host the eight qualifying high school age baseball teams from across the country for five-days Aug. 13-17, 2010.

A bid committee comprised of representatives from Spokane American Legion baseball and the Washington State American Legion, Avista Stadium and the Spokane Regional Sports Commissioned traveled the American Legion headquarters in Indianapolis on May 4 to present the bid.

Yakima is the only other city in Washington to host the American Legion World Series in 1954, 1978, and 2001.

Also in 2010 will be the U.S. Figure Skating Nationals in January and the NCAA men’s basketball subregionals in March.

A federal judge in Montana has rejected the government’s request to delay a lawsuit seeking to place the gray wolf back on the endangered species list.

The judge said Thursday he’s unwilling to risk more wolf deaths.

At least 39 of the Northern Rockies’ 1,500 gray wolves have been killed since they lost federal protection in March. Wolves are now under the authority of state wildlife agencies in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. The states have relaxed rules for killing wolves that harass or harm livestock and plan the first public hunts in decades this year.

Environmentalists say the loss of federal protection threatens the wolf’s recovery. State officials pledge to keep wolves on the landscape but say hunts are needed to reduce livestock conflicts.

(AP)