Jessica Robinson

The owner of the troubled Lucky Friday Mine in north Idaho hopes new safety upgrades will prevent future accidents. Hecla Mining announced Tuesday that it’s reopened the silver mine in Mullan, Idaho, after a year-long closure.

Hecla President Phil Baker made the announcement at a press conference in Spokane.

“It's nice to be able to give you guys a good news story.”

The U.S. Forest Service says the death of a 20-year-old firefighter in Idaho last summer was a “chance” occurrence. The new report is in sharp contrast to the findings of federal workplace safety investigators.

The newly released report determines fire managers did not violate any safety protocols at the fire where Anne Veseth died. She was killed when a 150-foot fire-damaged cedar came crashing down last August. The young firefighter from Moscow, Idaho, was working the Steep Corner Fire in the northwest part of the state.

SANDPOINT, Idaho - The sport of skijoring sounds like an awesomely bad idea someone cooked up on a long winter's night. Picture this: You navigate an obstacle course, on skis, while being pulled by a galloping horse. Yet equestrian skijoring has taken off as a sport in the snowy climes of Switzerland, Canada, and now, parts of the Northwest. This weekend, teams will go ski-to-ski and hoof-to-hoof at a competition in Sandpoint, Idaho.

SPOKANE, Wash. - As Congress prepares for a debate over immigration reform, one group of immigrants in the Northwest quietly completed their paths to citizenship Tuesday. Fourteen people became U.S. citizens at a ceremony in Spokane, Wash.

One of them was Mukti Ryan. She wanted to be able to travel more easily with her American husband and daughter, even though she had to give up her Indian citizenship.

“India doesn't allow dual citizenship, so I can't call myself an Indian citizen anymore," Ryan says. "It's a bittersweet feeling.”

If Teddy Roosevelt were to go big game hunting today, he might bring home slightly less-impressive trophies. That's because, according to a new analysis, the horns and antlers of North American wildlife have shrunk over the last century.

SPOKANE, Wash. - Leaders at Gonzaga University are asking What Would Jesus Do about climate change? The Jesuit school in Spokane, Wash., has adopted a plan for zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050.

Over the next four decades, Gonzaga University plans to make a dramatic switch to green energy, some of it generated at new facilities on campus. Meeting the goal will also require major cuts in energy use. Car travel to campus by students and faculty, and Zags basketball trips to away games are all part of the final emissions tally.

Researchers say the economic benefits of prisons often don't materialize for rural communities. That's according to a new paper by Northwest sociologists. In fact, they found communities with private prisons fare worse than they did before.

Washington State University sociologist Gregory Hook says rural areas that opt to build prisons, even courting them with tax breaks, have one main goal in mind: jobs.

“You know, you look across the way and you say 'Oh there's a prison. Fifty people have a job there. So that's 50 new jobs in my community.' … Only it's not.”

SPOKANE, Wash. - This week, a Republican lawmaker who represents eastern Washington ranch country introduced what many see as a poke in the eye for his colleagues who support wolf recovery. The new bill would move wolves to the west side of the Cascades. The proposal was immediately taken as a joke. But some conservationists say: moving wolves west is not a bad idea.

Idaho is starting to see the education gap narrow for Latino students. That's according to the state's Commission on Hispanic Affairs. Latinos are the fastest growing segment of Idaho’s school system.

The commission's director Margie Gonzalez told a legislative panel the days of double digit drop-out rates for Hispanic kids are gone. More Latinos are enrolling in college. And last month, a national assessment of vocabulary showed huge gains among Hispanic students in Idaho.

People in the Northwest are among the most likely in the nation to have pets. That's according to a new survey by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Washington, Oregon and Idaho rank in the top 10 for pet-owning households – with Oregon at No. 4, Washington at No. 6 and Idaho at No. 9.

Tom Meyer is a veterinarian in Vancouver, Wash. and sits on the board of the national vet group. He says it's not clear why the Northwest ranks so high, though rural states tend to have greater rates of pet ownership than more urban ones.

COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho - School districts across the Northwest are revisiting their safety plans in the weeks following the shooting at Newtown, Conn. Now, one district in north Idaho is taking it a step further. Leaders there hope to raise taxes to pay for bullet proof glass, metal detectors and video monitoring systems.