News you can use
News you can use
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Your daily look at news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today. JUDGE-OBAMA EMAIL BILA group of American Indians wants a court to preserve and eventually release an investigative file containing inappropriate emails sent by a federal judge, including a racist message involving President Barack Obama. Their attorney said the contents of the emails will show if retired District Judge Richard Cebull made biased decisions from the bench in cases. MURDER FOR HIRE A Polson man who was charged with trying...
Your daily look at news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today. RAPE SUSPECT FACES NEW DRUG CHARGE: A Bozeman man who is charged with trying to rape a former girlfriend in February and then escaping from police custody for three weeks now faces a drug charge. Gallatin County prosecutors charged 28-year-old Kevin Anthony Briggs with criminal possession of dangerous drugs. County Attorney Marty Lambert says a syringe found in Briggs' backpack had traces of a drug called etizolam, which has amnesic,...
Your daily look at news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today. NEW TRIAL DATE IN EXCHANGE STUDENT SLAYING: The trial date for a Missoula man charged in the shooting death of a German exchange student has been moved up to December after District Judge Ed McLean last week scheduled a Jan. 5 trial date for 24-year-old Markus Kaarma in the death of 17-year-old Diren Dede. Dede was shot while he was in Kaarma's garage early on April 27. Kaarma has claimed self-defense. Dede's defense attorneys had...
HELENA (AP) — A judge facing suspension for saying a 14-year-old rape victim appeared "older than her chronological age" says he believes the penalty isn't warranted. Judge G. Todd Baugh (baw) of Billings proposed Friday in a written response to the Montana Supreme Court that it withdraw its order for a 31-day suspension. But he added he won't remove the consent to judicial discipline he previously gave. Baugh says he found no other cases in which the Supreme Court went beyond the recommendations from the state Judicial S...
HELENA — The candidates in Montana's U.S. Senate race traded jabs this week over campaign donations from politicians blocking the North Fork Watershed Protection Act. Here's a look at the week's most interesting and important developments in Montana's election campaigns. DAINES, WALSH SPAR OVER CAMPAIGN DONORS: Democratic U.S. Sen. John Walsh criticized his Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Steve Daines, for fundraising with and taking campaign donations from U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pennsylvania, one of three senators who b...
Your daily look at news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today. NEW SETTLEMENT TALKS IN CHURCH SEX ABUSE CASE: A Helena judge has postponed a church sex-abuse trial so attorneys for an order of nuns and hundreds of plaintiffs can try to work out a settlement. The first three of hundreds of plaintiffs who say priests and nuns abused them as children in western Montana had been scheduled to go to trial July 14. District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock pushed that date to December on Thursday after the sides...
BC-MT--5 Things to Know in Montana-Wednesday/341 Your daily look at news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today. FUNERAL FOR THREE FORKS FIRE CHIEF: A funeral is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in Three Forks for fire chief Todd Rummel, who died last Thursday in a collision that also killed a family of five from Townsend. The service will be held at the town's high school. Investigators say they are being meticulous in their effort to determine what caused the fiery crash between the fire engine...
BILLINGS (AP) — Disclosures from railroads about volatile oil shipments from the Northern Plains show dozens of the trains passing weekly through Illinois and the Midwest and up to 19 a week reaching Washington state on the West Coast. The Associated Press obtained details on the shipments Tuesday under public records requests filed with state emergency officials. Details on the shipments were turned over to states under an order from the U.S. Department of Transportation. That came after fiery accidents including an oil t...
Your daily look at news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today. CHARGES IN FATAL AUGUSTA SHOOTING: An Augusta man has been charged with deliberate homicide in the shooting death of a neighbor. Joseph Campbell was charged Monday in the Oct. 18 slaying of Timothy Newman following years of legal disputes between Newman, Campbell and other neighbors over access to public land. Campbell has said he shot Newman in self-defense. CRASH VICTIMS IDENTIFIED: Authorities say a 4-year-old boy and 3-year-old...
BILLINGS (AP) — Montana Republicans resolved Saturday to close their primary elections to nonparty members and adopt a runoff system for the general election, following a fierce internal debate that underscores lingering divisions within the party heading into the general election season. The proposals were adopted by a voice vote taken of roughly 200 delegates at the party's election-year convention in Billings. The changes will not go into effect automatically. They would have to be approved by the state Legislature or i...
Your daily look at news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today. PSC SAYS NO TO CONSTITUTIONAL CONSULTANT: Montana utility regulators have dropped a proposal to spend $3,000 to hire a former University of Montana law professor to point out constitutional problems with proposed federal regulations to reduce carbon dioxide pollution. Public Service Commission member Roger Koopman withdrew his proposal to hire Rob Natelson after other commissioners said constitutional questions are a matter for the...
HELENA (AP) — Montana utility regulators dropped a proposal Tuesday to spend $3,000 to hire a former University of Montana law professor known for his conservative views to point out any constitutional problems with proposed federal regulations to reduce carbon dioxide pollution from power plants. Public Service Commission member Roger Koopman said he believes the proposed Environmental Protection Agency regulations are an overreach of federal power, but he doesn't specifically know how. Robert Natelson, who specializes in c...
HELENA — Montana utility regulators on Tuesday approved a NorthWestern Energy request to boost electricity rates by 6.44 percent starting July 1 so the company can recover $32 million in underestimated supply costs. Public Service Commission members said it is an interim increase and whether it remains will be contingent on further study. The money can be returned if commissioners find the increase wasn't justified, commissioners said. NorthWestern officials say the company's rates don't reflect actual market costs over t...
BILLINGS (AP) — The remaining defendants in a corruption scheme on Montana's Crow Indian Reservation have avoided prison, after a judge rejected the prosecution's claims of significant financial damages. Former Crow historic preservation director Dale Old Horn, his son, Allen, and Shawn Talking Eagle Danforth were convicted of theft, fraud and other charges. The case stemmed from cultural monitoring work they did for the tribe and private companies. Prosecutors asserted the defendants gouged companies out of roughly $...
HELENA (AP) — Montana's parole board on Wednesday rejected a clemency application from Barry Beach, meaning he will continue to serve a 100-year prison sentence for the 1979 slaying of a high-school classmate on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. The decision from the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole marked the fourth time since 1994 that the panel has declined to hold a full clemency hearing for Beach. Beach has argued police in Louisiana coerced the 1983 confession used to convict him in the beating death of 1...
HELENA — Montana voters set the stage Tuesday for a November election that will determine whether a U.S. Senate seat that has been in Democratic hands for a century will stay there after the resignation of six-term Sen. Max Baucus. U.S. Rep. Steve Daines is leaving his House seat to challenge incumbent Sen. John Walsh, who was appointed in February to replace Baucus. Both easily won their primary elections Tuesday. The GOP sees Daines as the best chance to win back a seat it hasn't held since 1907. "This would be historic f...
BILLINGS (AP) — A White House plan to address climate change by reducing carbon dioxide pollution would have a magnified impact in coal-rich Montana and consequences for both mining and electricity generation. Draft rules for power plants unveiled Monday call for Montana to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 21 percent by 2030. Montana has the largest coal reserves in the U.S. — almost 120 billion tons of the fuel. It's also home to the second largest coal-fired power plant west of the Mississippi at Colstrip, a 2,1...
BILLINGS — The chairman of the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee says he wants the Obama administration to address the "dysfunction" that is hobbling Native American health care and causing rising dissatisfaction over poor and delayed care on reservations. Chairman Jon Tester has invited tribal leaders from Montana and Wyoming to a Tuesday field hearing in Billings to air grievances about the U.S. Indian Health Service — a $4.4 billion agency that provides health care for 2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives. The...
HELENA (AP) — Four gay couples are suing Montana over its constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. That leaves North Dakota and South Dakota as the only two states with gay marriage bans and no lawsuits seeking to overturn them. The Montana lawsuit was being filed Wednesday in federal court in Great Falls, with help from the Montana ACLU. It lists as plaintiffs four Montana couples who are either unmarried or were married outside the state. The lawsuit alleges the ban denies same-sex couples the freedom and dignity a...
HELENA — The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has ordered BNSF Railway to reinstate workers in Montana and Wyoming, with back pay, after an agency investigation determined the employees were illegally fired after reporting they suffered a back injury at work. OSHA said Monday it found that BSNF violated the whistleblower portions of the Federal Railroad Safety Act for firing an employee in Greybull, Wyoming, in 2010 and one in Havre in 2011 within weeks of when the men reported work-related injuries. OSHA o...
BILLINGS (AP) — Prosecutors say they no longer will pursue the death penalty against a Colorado man suspected of killing a teacher in eastern Montana's oil patch. Tuesday's move by Richland County Attorney Mike Weber comes after psychiatrists determined 25-year-old Michael Keith Spell is mentally disabled. Spell is charged with killing 43-year-old Sherry Arnold, who disappeared while jogging along a Sidney street in 2012. Weber cited a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said executing mentally disabled criminals c...
HELENA — Laura Juarez is supposed to receive close to $1,200 as her share of a $3.4 billion settlement among hundreds of thousands of Native Americans whose land-trust royalties were mismanaged by the government for more than a century. The Bakersfield, California, notary public was going to pool that money with her husband's share, along with a portion of what was coming to her father's estate, to send her 17-year-old daughter to a student-ambassador program in Australia. But the money, which she expected in December, s...
HELENA — Tribal law-enforcement officers Friday arrested a state senator and Blackfeet leader accused of not complying with the terms of a plea agreement for drunken driving, a charge he has called false and politically motivated. Sen. Shannon Augare was found in a home east of Browning on Friday afternoon after two weeks of avoiding arrest, Blackfeet Tribal Business Council member Paul McEvers said. The arrest was made because Augare did not pay his fine after pleading guilty to driving drunk and then fleeing a Glacier C...
BILLINGS (AP) — A judge says a mentally disabled Colorado man is fit to stand trial in the killing of a Montana teacher who disappeared after she went jogging in the Bakken oil patch. District Judge Richard Simonton in a Friday ruling cited testimony from a state psychiatrist that the mental disabilities suffered by 25-year-old Michael Keith Spell are not so severe to make him incompetent. Spell is charged with the attempted kidnapping and murder of 43-year-old Sherry Arnold. The Sidney High School math teacher disappeared i...
BILLINGS — A high school teacher who served one month in prison for raping a 14-year-old student is asking the Montana Supreme Court to reconsider a decision that could send him back to prison for at least two more years. The high court in April ruled that the original sentence given to former Billings teacher Stacey Dean Rambold was illegal. Justices cited in part comments from Judge G. Todd Baugh, who said during Rambold's sentencing that the victim shared control over the situation. Under state law, children younger t...
