- From staff reports

The Burley Junior High School lost $2,900 in media equipment this week when burglars broke into the building and swiped two television sets and a projector.

According to a Cassia County Sheriff's report police responded to an alarm at the school at about 3:20 a.m. Wednesday and found the north door to the building propped open by a television on a large metal cart.

Police officers checked the building and found no one inside. Because a person with a key could not be located, officers secured the building and left.

Later that day school custodian Alvino Martinez filed a burglary report with the sheriff's department.

Martinez said the morning after the burglary he noticed two television sets were missing along with a projector from the media room at the school. Martinez showed officers the security tape that revealed two to three people in the school prior to the alarm being set off.

INL wins bulk of $7.3 million nuclear waste research contract

Teams led by the Idaho National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory have signed a $7.3 million contract to study a new way to destroy waste from spent nuclear fuel.

The teams will study nuclear fuel "Deep-Burn," in which plutonium and higher transuranics recycled from spent nuclear fuel are destroyed while generating energy, the U.S. Department of Energy announced. The "revolutionary" technology could advance nuclear power production while reducing the amount of waste produced in the end, agency officials said in a press release.

The two teams were selected through a competitive process and will partner with other national laboratories, universities and industry for the work. The Argonne lab is about 25 miles southwest of Chicago, Illinois.

Research and development will be carried out in two parts: $1 million for Argonne to model the reactor needed for such a system, and $6.3 million for INL to study "transuranic management capabilities."

For more info: http://www.nuclear.gov/.

Online calculator can help estimate retirement benefits easily

Trouble adding up your Social Security benefits? A new online calculator can help.

Developed by the Social Security Administration, the calculator - at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/estimator - is tied to a person's actual earnings record and eliminates the need to manually key in years of earnings information, according to a press release.

Users can compare different retirement options and print out up to three scenarios at one time. The calculator is secure, officials said, and does not show earnings record information or other personal information.

The calculator is one of several changes planned by the agency. This fall, officials plan a total overhaul of its online retirement application, cutting filing time from 45 minutes to about 15.