Local attorney and physical therapist Bill Whitman had a brush with the dark side of geo-politics this month. He had scheduled a visit to a clinic in Ukraine, but history in the form of the Russian military intervened: “Things started to get hot and I started looking for alternatives and while on layover in Istanbul,…

The Mountain Area Safety Taskforce’s March meeting provided updates from the agencies responsible for protecting our mountain communities from catastrophic wildfires. Representatives from CalFire, Idyllwild Fire, US Forest Service, Riverside Sheriff’s Office, and the County Emergency Management Department gave briefings, as did the Executive Director of Mountain Communities Fire Safe Council (MCFSC), the nonprofit organization…

According to the Riverside University Health System (RUHS) website, the area of Idyllwild-Pine Cove has seven cases of COVID-19 as of press time. The first reported case for the area was on April 3. No deaths have been reported for the area since the outbreak.  Riverside County is unable to provide recovery data by area….

About 1 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 20, Paul Biner, 88 of Idyllwild, was driving north on Village Center Drive. He went through the stop sign at the intersection with North Circle Drive and collided head on with a 2008 white Toyota Tundra parked in front of the Idyllwild Gift Shop. The impact of the collision drove…