Solange Knowles hates on Idaho • Unemployment as low as anywhere in Idaho Falls • State sues car dealership • Sidewalk biking on the agenda • Obama preps for Denver in Billings • Talkin' nukes in Idaho Falls

Solange Knowles hates on Idaho

The Los Angeles Times profiles Beyonce Knowles' younger sister, Solange, who recalled (not fondly) the time she lived in Moscow.

In 2004, Solange Knowles married football player Daniel Smith at age 17. Later that year, she gave birth to a son, and the family moved to Moscow while Smith attended college.

"We were probably the only black people there other than those on the football and basketball teams," Knowles told the Times. "There was no sense of diversity or culture."

Solange released her sophomore album, "Sol-Angel and the Hadley Street Dreams," this week.

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Unemployment as low as anywhere in Idaho Falls

Reuters reports that unemployment rates were higher in most U.S. metropolitan areas in July when compared to a year earlier.

The lowest rates were found in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, at 2.4 percent, and Rapid City, South Dakota, at 2.5 percent. Idaho Falls was the second lowest with an unemployment rate of 2.5 percent.

El Centro, California, had the highest unemployment rate of 23.3 percent, followed by Yuma, Arizona, at 20 percent.

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State sues car dealership

The Spokesman-Review reports that the state of Idaho is suing the former Post Falls Mazda dealership, saying it sold third-party service contracts then pocketed the money, leaving at least 19 consumers without that coverage.

The Idaho Attorney General Consumer Protection Division said it believes that Post Falls Mazda, and Mark Gibson, the president of its parent company, "retained more than $50,000 of consumers’ money for goods or services that were never provided."

However, Stephen McCrea, Gibson's attorney, said the attorney general is making a "mountain out of a molehill." Post Falls Mazda is a business that failed, he said. As with any business failure, many debts were not paid.

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Sidewalk biking on the agenda

A current Idaho Falls City ordinance states that anyone over 15 can't ride a bicycle on any sidewalk within the city limits.

The city plans to repeal that law this week and go by the state law that allows bikes to be on sidewalks if cyclists yield to pedestrians.

Idaho Falls Police Chief Steve Roos expects this ordinance to be repealed at Thursday night's city council meeting, forgoing the usual three readings since it's not a controversial issue.

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Obama preps for Denver in Billings

You could say that the speech Barack Obama will give tonight at the Democratic National Convention was inspired by the rugged beauty of Montana.

The Illinois senator was working on it when he made his fifth trip to Montana to address a group in Billings’ Riverfront Park on Wednesday.

The Billings Gazette talks about the speech, preparations for it, the crowd and Obama’s traveling entourage, among other things.

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Talkin' nukes in Idaho Falls

Workers from Department of Energy sites and national laboratories around the country converged on Idaho Falls this week for the federal agency's annual Integrated Safety Management Workshop.

Shane Johnson, principal deputy assistant energy secretary in the DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy, discussed the hot topic of nuclear energy.

The Post-Register says the DOE expects 23 license applications for new nuclear plants to be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of the year.

It's been nearly three decades since the last application for a new nuclear reactor in the United States. Currently, there are 104 reactors in the U.S. producing 20 percent of the country's energy.

Idaho National Laboratory has been identified by the DOE as the place where a new reactor will be developed as part of the Next Generation Nuclear Project.

Read more at the Post-Register's Web site. (Subscription required).