(FORTUNE Magazine) – Civil Liberties: Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, should be known best as a tranquil tourist retreat, but instead it's become infamous for something more sinister than wickedly beautiful scenery. It's home to the Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi group that has marched through the downtown brandishing swastikas, spouting racist rhetoric, and shouting homophobic and anti-Semitic slogans. The Aryan Nations have attracted lots of media attention and scared away plenty of tourists. Tired of seeing their city's image trashed by media-hungry white supremacists, local small-business leaders are waging a publicity war to restore Coeur d'Alene's appeal. "If just 1% or 2% of our tourist business drops off, you're talking about losing thousands of people and lots of money," says Ken Burchell, a local jeweler and president of the city's 325-member Downtown Association. Why? Because tourists' dollars account for roughly 22% of the county's retail revenues, and 30% of Coeur d'Alene's jobs now involve serving vacationers. Mayor Steve Judy and a search committee of store owners are hiring the city's first "Aryanbuster." That's the nickname; the official title is human rights coordinator. The goal of the new post is to develop a campaign to promote the city as a tolerant and tourist-friendly haven, not a hate group stronghold. Coeur d'Alene's officials and business owners admit they may never silence the Aryan Nations, but they hope their Aryanbuster can send out the message that Idaho has more to offer visitors than potatoes and Brown Shirts....

Undergrad Upstarts: Venture capitalist Joshua Newman starts his morning at 8 A.M., sifting through a stack of business plans and sorting through nearly 100 e-mails from people hitting him up for money, but by ten o'clock, he's gotta go to school. The Yalie is one of a new class of undergraduate VCs. Newman, 20, recently sold his dorm-based Web-consulting firm, parlaying his earnings to start Paradigm Blue, an $8.5 million venture fund in search of his generation's next big idea. Newman's got collegiate competition. Across Yale's quad, freshman Peter Venech and sophomore Michael Stern's Aquarium Ventures already has $1 million from shaking down Ivy contacts at Dagim Capital. At Duke, four seniors formed incubator StartEmUp.com. Can these Doogie Howser VCs find and foster firms that will rate an "A" and make a profit? "They're operating on creativity and enthusiasm," says Cornell management prof David BenDaniel. "But they're unprepared to do what they're doing. They're going to lose their shirts." ...

Spice Wars: There may be more room for competition on supermarket spice racks, thanks to a landmark decision by the Federal Trade Commission. This spring, it ruled against McCormick & Co., the nation's leading spicemaker, for offering persuasive discounts to retailers if they agreed to stock their shelves--sometimes as much as 90% of the spice section--with mostly McCormick products. The FTC said that McCormick's space grab came at the expense of smaller rivals and violated antitrust laws. Known as slotting, the practice of paying for shelf space is common, but it can price out the small fry, which often must pay $1,000 to $20,000 per product to appear on supermarket shelves. The McCormick decision could be the first of many that favor small manufacturers....

Adieu, Eternal Entrepreneurs: Hotel matriarch Alice Sheets, 92. She and her husband, John, transformed their 1927 root-beer stand into the $9 billion Marriott hotel chain.... Mark Hughes, 44, hooked a new generation on nutritional supplements when he started Herbalife in 1980.

WITH Josh Feit, Beth Kwon, Maggie Overfelt, and Julie Sloane