The Washington State University board of regents has given President Elson Floyd a 21 percent pay raise, boosting his salary from $600,000 a year to $725,000.

Floyd took over in May of 2007 as WAZZU’s tenth president.

The contract also increases the incentive for Floyd to remain at the Pullman university.  The retention bonus is $500,000 if he stays through June 2012. (AP)

The Clarkston Fire Department has determined that an early Sunday morning fire at Shirley’s Dance Studio originated in the business’ office but the cause has been undetermined.  The blaze is estimated to have caused more than $50,000 in damage, destroying the business office and a storeroom. Clarkston Fire officials say the investigation is now closed.

The studio has temporarily moved classes to the Clarkston VFW at 829 15th Street.

The Washington State football team opens its season Saturday afternoon in Seattle against Oklahoma State in the Cougar Gridiron Classic.
Wazzu first year head coach Paul Wulff says at first the notion of playing a home game on the state’s west side wasn’t appealing.

Cougar Head Coach Paul Wulff comments

Kick off is set for 12:30pm Pacific at Qwest Field and the game will be televised live on Fox Sports Net Northwest.

Household incomes rose in Washington last year and the number of people living in poverty showed a slight decline, according to estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The number of residents without health insurance also is dropping, reflecting a national trend, the Census Bureau found.
The figures do not take into account the economic downturn that began late last year.
Nationally, 15.3 percent of the population was uninsured in 2007, down slightly from 2006. In Washington, the proportion without health insurance dropped from 12.8 percent of the population in 2004-05 to 11.6 percent in 2006-07. That still left about 770,000 uninsured people in the state last year.
The nation’s poverty rate held steady at 12.5 percent, about the same as the year before. In Washington, the poverty rate fell from 11.8 percent in 2006 to 11.4 percent — 725,000 people — in 2007.
The poor were not spread evenly. The Census Bureau reported that the poverty rate was 10.9 percent in the state’s metropolitan areas, basically communities with more than 100,000 residents, rising to 14.9 percent in micropolitan areas, which had more than 30,000 residents and to 16.9 percent in rural areas. Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington State football team, which has been hit hard by injuries this fall, has sustained another setback as senior defensive lineman Andy Roof has been dismissed from the university by the WSU Student Conduct Board.

The 22-year old Roof was allegedly involved in a fight at a party on Pullman’s College Hill last April.  First year Cougar head coach Paul Wulff says the board’s decision is disappointing, and creates potential depth problems at the position.

Cougar Head Coach Paul Wulff comments

Wazzu opens the season Saturday against Oklahoma State in the Cougar Gridiron Classic at Qwest Field in Seattle.  Game time is set for 12:30pm with live television coverage on Fox Sports Net Northwest.

Federal prosecutors told a jury Monday that convicted killer Joseph Duncan had killed at least three times before 2005, when his attack on a northern Idaho family left four dead.
The testimony in U.S. District Court is designed to convince a jury that Duncan should be executed for the kidnapping, torture and murder of 9-year-old Dylan Groene in 2005. In the next few days Duncan will be given the option to present evidence to balance against the heinousness of the crime in an effort to sway the jurors toward a life sentence.
Duncan pleaded guilty last year to 10 federal charges related to the kidnapping and torture of Dylan and his sister Shasta Groene, and to Dylan’s murder. He’s already been convicted in state court to murdering 13-year-old Slade Groene, his mother Brenda Groene and her boyfriend Mark McKenzie at the family’s Coeur d’Alene-area home.
Monday FBI agent Mike Sotka testified that Duncan confessed to three other murders after his arrest in the Groene case - the slayings of half-sisters Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias in Seattle, Washington and the slaying of Anthony Martinez in Riverside County, California.
Of the seven people believed to be his victims, only two are adults - the rest are between the ages of 9 and 13. All but one were bludgeoned to death. Dylan Groene was shot twice.
Testimony continues Tuesday in Boise. (AP)

The U.S. Department of the Interior says the world’s first full-scale nuclear reactor is now a National Historic Landmark.
The B Reactor at the Hanford nuclear reservation in southcentral Washington produced plutonium for the first man-made nuclear blast, as well as for the second bomb dropped on Japan during World War II.
Local officials have been seeking the landmark designation for years, hoping to save the reactor from being permanently cocooned as part of the cleanup of the highly contaminated site. (AP)

California law enforcement officials are watching the sentencing hearing for convicted killer Joseph Duncan closely in expectation of eventually trying him for at least one murder there.
The Riverside County District Attorney’s office charged Duncan in January 2007 with a Beaumont, California boy’s death in April 1997. Anthony Martinez, 10, was forced into a car at knifepoint; his body was found 15 days later. Duncan has also been linked to the 1996 slayings of two young half-sisters in Seattle.
His federal sentencing hearing in Boise is entering into its second phase after jurors last week found him to be eligible for the death penalty in the abduction and molestation of two north Idaho children, and the killing of one of them. (AP)