Stories from Thursday, July 7, 2016

SAT scores for Idaho's public high school students exceeded the national average in overall scoring, which included students in the Mountain Home School District. Information released last week by the Idaho State Board of Education showed that students across the state led the nation in individual reading and math scores with a higher percentage of these students also meeting SAT benchmarks...

Elmore County will receive more than $2.3 million in federal funding through a program aimed at compensating communities across the nation with non-taxable federal land in their jurisdictions. In an announcement last week, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced that Elmore County was among 1,900 local governments receiving a total of $451.6 million under the 2016 Payments in Lieu of Taxes, or PILT, program...

A squirrel was linked to a power outage that affected more than 2,900 homes and businesses in the Mountain Home area Thursday morning. The outage was reported around 6:30 a.m. after the squirrel got into a power transformer located in the vicinity of South 10th East Street and Southeast Freedom Circle, according to Idaho Power spokesman Brad Bowlin...