A Louisiana triple-murder suspect, believed to be headed to California, was captured in Lewiston Friday night.

Lewiston Police say Robert McCoy, 34, was caught riding as a passenger in a Swift Transportation truck in the Normal Hill area.

McCoy is the prime suspect in the slayings of his estranged wife’s 17-year-old son and her parents Monday night in Bossier City, Louisiana. He is believed to have killed them during a search for his wife, who remains in protective custody.

Bossier City police say McCoy eluded authorities for nearly four days by fleeing to Texas, Arkansas and Washington, traveling as a passenger in 18-wheelers. Authorities tracked the truck McCoy was in to Spokane and notified Idaho State Police he was headed their way.

Officers spotted the vehicle and both LPD and ISP patrol cars surrounded the vehicle in the 500 block of Sixth Avenue. McCoy was taken into custody without incident, while the truck driver was not charged.

A .380-caliber pistol was retrieved from behind the passenger seat of the truck, and Louisiana authorities believe the gun was used in the Bossier City murders.

McCoy was booked into the Nez Perce County Jail on three murder warrants and may face a charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. McCoy will be extradited back to Louisiana this week.

A 14-year-old Lewiston boy has been sentenced to probation and community service for his involvement in damaging headstones at Lewiston’s Normal Hill Cemetery.

The teen was charged with felony malicious injury to property after he and two others caused thousands of dollars of damage to over 170 headstones in early April.  He was given a suspended sentence of 180 days in the Nez Perce County Juvenile Detention Center, three years’ probation, and 180 hours of community service.

The boy was on probation for a previous charge, and sentenced this week to serve 90 days in the juvenile detention center on a probation violation.

Steven Goss, 19, and a 15-year-old boy are also charged in the incident. Goss is scheduled to be in court May 28 for a probable cause hearing in the case, while the status of the 15-year-old’s case is unclear.

The Idaho Attorney General’s office has concluded that researchers at a University of Idaho center in Post Falls broke no state laws in mixing the interests of the university and two private companies that benefited the researchers.

The Center for Advanced Microelectronics and Biomolecular Research and then-director Gary Maki were the subject of a university audit in 2005 that found the center’s officials deliberately and improperly used university resources to “further private business interests” – namely, two businesses formed by CAMBR researchers and run in close alignment with the center.

The audit concluded that company work was done on university time, that university employees had a profit-sharing arrangement with one company, and that university resources were used for company business, such as testing products. The audit said the conflicts were a violation of university policy and possibly of state law.

The Idaho attorney general’s office opened a criminal investigation into the audit findings in 2006, but a lawyer for former CAMBR researchers that sued the UI for allegedly being punished for raising questions about conflicts of interest, says that she was notified in March by the AG’s office that it had concluded its investigation and decided there was no violation of Idaho law.

Still, investigators with the space agency NASA, which provides a large share of funding for CAMBR, are still probing how the center’s officials handled federal grants over the years.

In the meantime, the UI has reorganized its staff at the center, bringing in a new director and allowing Maki to focus chiefly on leading the research.

CAMBR researches computer chips and microprocessors that routinely go into space on major projects like the Hubble Space Telescope. The center has brought in more than $17 million in grants since setting up in Post Falls in 2002.

Thirteen candidates are running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, as absentee voters have begun marking their ballots for the state’s May 27 primary.

Eight Republicans, two Democrats, two independents and a Libertarian are vying for the chance to replace Craig.

Lt. Governor Jim Risch, who served as governor for seven months when Dirk Kempthorne was named Interior Secretary, is considered the front-runner in the Republican primary - his campaign co-chairs are Senator Mike Crapo and former Governor Phil Batt, and he has endorsements from the state GOP party chairman and governor.

Other Republican candidates are Post falls businessman Richard Phenneger; Wilder real-estate broker and Army Reserve colonel Scott Syme; former Idaho National Lab attorney Fred Adams; McCall electrical engineer Neal Thompson; Sweet machinist Brian Hefner; Las Vegas civil engineer Bill Hunter, who recently moved back to his family home in southeastern Idaho; and California real estate broker who has never been to Idaho. By law, Senate candidates are required only to reside in the state on the date of the November election.

On the Democratic ticket, former two-term Congressman Larry LaRocco will square off in the primary against Fort Hall tribal court advocate David Archuleta.

Also running are Libertarian Kent Marmon, and independents former elk rancher Rex Rammell and Pro-Life, whose name was legally changed from Marvin Richardson.

An advisory report to be presented to the Lewiston City Council on Monday recommends that council members reject a proposal by Valley Transit to continue providing bus service to residents.

The city’s community development director suggest that the city can run the program for less money than what Valley Transit proposed in its April 18 outline to continue its operation of a single-loop bus service and dial-a-ride, door-to-door services. Valley Transit’s proposed five-year budget totals about $6.4 million, without new services, while the report claims the city can carry out the same program for an estimated $2.45 million, using what appears to be 6 percent annual increases plus $130,000 for a new route in fiscal year 2011.

Valley Transit officials acknowledge their higher bid, saying it includes the flexibility to take potential cost increases for the commodities, goods and services into account.

Nine buses are charged to Lewiston’s service, which has one fixed route that operates from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. five days a week, plus dial-a-ride buses and backups.

A smaller-than-expected return of chinook salmon prompted Washington regulators to close chinook fishing at the end of the day Sunday on sections of the Snake and mid-Columbia rivers, which had been scheduled to remain open through mid-June.

The current forecast is for 180,000 returning chinook, down from 269,300 initially projected by Washington and Oregon fishery managers.

Columbia River treaty tribes also agreed to close their main stem spring chinook fisheries Sunday.

Areas covered by the early closures include the Columbia near the Ringold Springs hatchery in Franklin County; the Snake from the railroad bridge at confluence with the Columbia upstream to the no-fishing zone below Ice Harbor Dam; and the Snake from the Texas Rapids boat launch upstream seven miles to the boat launch about a mile upriver from Little Goose Dam.

Sport and commercial fisheries below Bonneville Dam on the Columbia have been closed since mid-April, and the recreational fishery between Bonneville and McNary dams closed Saturday.

In addition, almost all recreational salmon fishing has been closed on rivers throughout California, and a chinook closure was ordered on the lower Willamette River in Oregon.

Boise State University will play host to a scientific conference this week addressing the potential risk of lead poisoning from high-velocity bullets in wildlife and venison for humans.

The four-day gathering will cover issues ranging from lead poisoning among subsistence hunting Inuits in Alaska and Russia, lead levels in ravens in southern Yellowstone National Park, lead found in swans in Western Washington, and the politics of nontoxic ammunition.

The issue has been heightened since North Dakota and Minnesota officials told food bank operators to clear their shelves of venison donated by hunters this year.

Researchers realized there might be a connection between lead poisoning, bullets, venison and humans after 1996, the year rare California condors were reintroduced in northern Arizona. As many as 60 now fly over the Grand Canyon and southern Utah, but researchers and the Arizona Game and Fish Department found the scavengers were ailing from lead poisoning after eating hunter-killed deer and leftover gut piles. In 2006, five condors died of lead poisoning and 90 percent of the rest had signs of exposure.

One North Dakota researcher used a CT scan to examine about 100 packets of venison from local food giveaway programs and found 60 percent had multiple lead fragments. While no cases of lead poisoning from venison had been reported, his research helped lead to the warning to food banks in North Dakota in March.

Days later, Minnesota followed suit after separate tests in that state.

The executive director of the Idaho Water Users Association says the group is against a federal bill to designate portions of the Snake River as “wild and scenic” because it could harm historic water rights.

Norm Semanko says the group is dead-set against any federal protection designation for a 42-mile stretch of the Snake River below Jackson dam. That portion of the Snake River flows mostly in western Wyoming before reaching Palisades Reservoir in eastern Idaho.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday approved a bill to designate 387 miles of the Snake River as “wild and scenic,” which affords protection of parts of the river and its immediate environment.

The bill now goes to the full Senate.