News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 101 - 125 of 349
ANACONDA — A Washington state man pleaded not guilty Wednesday to beating and stabbing to death his 3-year-old son in a southwestern Montana field this month after taking him from their Lacey, Wash., home. Jeremy Brent Cramer, 38, was arraigned in District Court in Anaconda, about five miles from where Broderick Cramer's body was found July 9 next to a knife and two rocks covered with blood and hair. The 38-year-old Cramer, wearing a black-and-white striped jumpsuit and o...
Gov. Steve Bullock made a surprise visit to Afghanistan Wednesday to meet with Montana troops in his first trip overseas since taking office in January. The Democratic governor was in Kabul as part of a delegation that included Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. The two-day trip to Afghanistan includes meeting members of the Montana National Guard's 495th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion operating in the country's southwestern sector. Tuesday, Bullock was in Kuwait to visit...
HELENA — Attempts to settle allegations that hundreds of Montanans were sexually abused as children by Roman Catholic clergy have been stymied by challenges from the church's insurers over which claims they are obligated to cover. So attorneys representing the 360 alleged victims, along with lawyers for the Helena diocese, the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province and District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock began laying out plans Wednesday for the first of what could be many trials beginning in December. Attorneys for both s...
HELENA (AP) — The Democratic Party can still win the Senate seat being vacated by Max Baucus, but it's going to take a lot more work now that former Gov. Brian Schweitzer isn't running, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester said Friday. Schweitzer was the Democrats' best chance of winning the 2014 election, but there are good potential candidates in the state Legislature, administration and the private sector who can the 2014 election if they're willing to do the work, Tester said. Losing Baucus' seat to a Republican candidate would make i...
HELENA — A foundation run by a New York private equity firm pledged $2 million Friday to help pair young entrepreneurs at the University of Montana and Montana State University with businesses that can help get their ideas off the ground. Blackstone Group president Tony James announced Montana as the fifth state with a Blackstone LaunchPad program, a $50 million initiative that aims to encourage entrepreneurship across the nation. "I think entrepreneurship is absolutely the core of the American character," James told a p...
GREAT FALLS (AP) — State Sen. Shannon Augare has pleaded not guilty to DUI, reckless driving and obstructing an officer. The Browning Democrat and Blackfeet tribal leader appeared Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Great Falls. He is accused of fleeing a Glacier County sheriff's deputy who pulled him over for erratic driving May 26 on the Blackfeet reservation. Prosecutors say Augare told the deputy he had no jurisdiction to arrest him and then sped away when the deputy attempted to take his keys. The sheriff's office t...
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Montana prison officials revised lethal-injection procedures after a judge ruled the previous methods were unconstitutional, but a civil rights organization and attorneys for a death row inmate say the changes still put condemned prisoners at risk of unnecessary suffering. The ACLU, which filed its lawsuit in 2008 on behalf of inmate Ronald Allen Smith, said Monday the changes still fall short of protecting the rights of people sentenced to death. "This new policy, written by Department of Corrections' s...
HELENA (AP) — The ousted president of Montana's Northern Cheyenne tribe says he will show up at a tribal council hearing Monday to challenge its decision to remove him from office while he was in a Billings hospital having surgery. John Robinson was released from the Billings Clinic on Thursday after an emergency appendectomy, only to find that he had been voted out over his move to fire the head of a center for neglected and abused children who had been accused of child abuse. Robinson was taken to the hospital by ambulance...
HELENA (AP) — Police charged a Washington state man in the slaying of his 3-year-old son Tuesday, a day after he was arrested while washing blood off his clothes in a southwestern Montana convenience store restroom, authorities said. Jeremy Brent Cramer, 38, of Lacey, has been charged with deliberate homicide, Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Attorney Ben Krakowka said. He made an initial court appearance Tuesday, where he asked to be represented by a public defender. His bond was set at $250,000. The boy's mother told police on Mo...
HELENA (AP) — President Barack Obama's goal of limiting carbon-dioxide emissions has put Democratic leaders in energy-producing states such as Montana in a bind, caught between bellicose Republican statements of a "war on coal" and emboldened environmentalists who are calling for swift action. That has forced leaders such as Gov. Steve Bullock into something of a hedge, telling the public to wait for the details of Obama's plan while assuring them that energy production will remain a major economic driver and a source of e...
HELENA (AP) — The new Montana Healthcare Foundation will have a hefty $40 million bankroll to start, and up to $200 million after Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana's assets are sold in a pending acquisition, but it's not yet clear what the nonprofit will do with that money. Attorney General Tim Fox announced the creation of the new foundation Friday, the same week he and Insurance Commissioner Monica Lindeen approved the sale of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana to Health Care Service Corp. of Chicago. The two companies are r...
HELENA — The Montana Healthcare Foundation will have a hefty $40 million in the bank to start, but just what the nonprofit will do with that money is not yet clear. Attorney General Tim Fox announced the foundation's creation Friday from the pending sale of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana to Health Care Service Corp. Proceeds from the sale of nonprofit health insurers such as Blue Cross must go to a nonprofit foundation under state law. Legal documents establishing the foundation say it will provide financial support to i...
HELENA — Federal prosecutors on Friday charged state Sen. Shannon Augare with drunken driving, obstructing a peace officer and reckless driving after the Browning Democrat allegedly told a sheriff's deputy last month he had no jurisdiction to arrest him and fled a traffic stop. The charges are misdemeanors and, if convicted, Augare would face penalties of between nine and 15 months in prison and up to $1,800 in fines. The U.S. attorney's office has requested a court summons be issued for Augare, said Assistant U.S. A...
HELENA (AP) — Federal prosecutors on Friday charged state Sen. Shannon Augare with drunken driving, obstructing a peace officer and reckless driving after the Browning Democrat allegedly told a sheriff's deputy last month he had no jurisdiction to arrest him and fled a traffic stop. The charges are misdemeanors and, if convicted, Augare would face penalties of between nine and 15 months in prison and up to $1,800 in fines. The U.S. attorney's office has requested a court summons be issued for Augare, said Assistant U.S. Attor...
HELENA (AP) — Three former Blackfeet tribal leaders will serve three years of probation for holding illegal big-game hunts for country musicians that were filming an outdoors television show on the northwestern Montana reservation. U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen on Thursday also ordered Jay St. Goddard, Jay Wells and Gayle Skunkcap Jr. to pay $56,625 in restitution. Prosecutors filed an objection to Christensen's sentence after a lengthy hearing in Great Falls. They had recommended 15 months of prison for each man a...
HELENA (AP) — Montana has collected more taxes than expected, but state spending also is going up. Legislative Fiscal Division analysts said Tuesday state revenue is nearly $1.8 billion with less than a month left in the fiscal year. That's an 11 percent increase compared to this time last year. The main drivers are individual income and corporate license taxes. Income taxes are up 15.3 percent to just over $1 billion, while corporate taxes are up nearly 37 percent to $156 million. Analysts say the state will spend nearly $...
On both pieces of legislation mentioned in this story, Resp. Kris Hansen, R-Havre, Rep. Wendy Warburton, R-Chinook, State Sen. Jonathan Windy Boy and Sen. Greg Jergeson, D-Chinook, voted to override Gov. Steve Bullock's vetoes. Rep. Clarena Brockie, D-Harlem, voted to sustain Bullock's vetoes. HELENA — Lawmakers on Monday upheld Gov. Steve Bullock's final 19 vetoes of the legislative session, including one bill for infrastructure improvements in eastern Montana and another to make one-time payments to providers who care f...
HELENA — Rocky Boy's, Fort Belknap and three other Montana reservations don't report drunken-driving convictions to the state, and county prosecutors say the information void poses a safety risk for both repeat offenders and other drivers. Tribal justice systems generally have jurisdiction over misdemeanor crimes committed by Native Americans on reservations, and a DUI becomes a felony in Montana only upon a person's fourth offense. That means the state has no ability to force tribal courts to share their misdemeanor DUI conv...
HELENA — Five of Montana's seven American Indian reservations don't report drunken-driving convictions to the state, and county prosecutors say the information void poses a safety risk for both repeat offenders and other drivers. Tribal justice systems generally have jurisdiction over misdemeanor crimes committed by Native Americans on reservations, and a DUI becomes a felony in Montana only upon a person's fourth offense. That means the state has no ability to force tribal courts to share their misdemeanor DUI conviction rec...
HELENA — Months before a state senator and Blackfeet leader allegedly fled a sheriff's deputy who suspected him of drunken driving, a tribal judge expunged two DUI convictions from the record of the senator's brother and said the tribe shouldn't have reported them to the state. Those erased convictions by Chief Judge Allie Edwards had the effect of reducing a felony charge to a misdemeanor in the case of Shawn Augare, who had been facing his fourth DUI for a stop on Dec. 31, 2011, in Glacier County off the reservation. As a...
HELENA (AP) — Federal prosecutors are appealing the sentences of a former University of Montana quarterback and three other medical marijuana providers who were convicted in the largest drug-trafficking investigation in state history. The U.S. attorney's office has filed notices with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that it will challenge the sentences handed down to four of the 33 marijuana providers in which prosecutors sought longer prison terms. U.S. Attorney Michael Cotter acknowledged in an Associated Press i...
HELENA — A Montana couple is appealing a judge's dismissal of their lawsuit against gun manufacturer Remington claiming a 1989 shooting that left a man paralyzed was caused by a defect in a rifle. U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull ruled on April 29 that time had run out on the claim by Brad and Dianna Humphrey of Fairfield. The Humphreys filed their lawsuit last year against Remington Arms Co., Sporting Goods Properties Inc. — the name by which the gun manufacturer is now known — and E.I. DuPont de Nemours Inc., which owned...
County can't arrest tribal members on reservation MATT VOLZ,Associated Press HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A state senator and Blackfeet leader who fled a traffic stop appears to have been right when he told a Glacier County sheriff's deputy the officer had no jurisdiction to arrest him. County law-enforcement officers have no jurisdiction over enrolled tribal members or their descendants within the exterior boundaries of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Glacier County attorney Carolyn Berkram said Friday. Berkram declined to discuss...
HELENA (AP) — A state senator and Blackfeet tribal leader fled a traffic stop after telling a sheriff's deputy who smelled alcohol in his vehicle that he had no jurisdiction to arrest him, Glacier County authorities said Wednesday. A sheriff's deputy responding to a complaint of an erratic driver Sunday night pulled over state Sen. Shannon Augare on U.S. Highway 2 about nine miles west of Cut Bank, Sgt. Judd Milender said in a statement. The deputy identified Augare, 33, as a Blackfeet tribal councilman and the Democratic s...
HELENA — Federal officials this week lifted their temporary hold on funding for a $361 million water pipeline for a Native American reservation in northern Montana after Chippewa Cree tribal officials demonstrated they were addressing conflicts and accounting problems. The Bureau of Reclamation notified tribal leaders in March there would be no additional funding for the 50-mile pipeline project until the tribe showed action had been taken. The federal agency found problems that included missing money, a conflict of i...
