News you can use
News you can use
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HELENA — A federal appeals court has handed a new setback to developers of a proposed $550 million railroad that would link southeastern Montana's untapped coal reserves to Midwestern and overseas markets. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the Surface Transportation Board did not take a hard enough look at the environmental risks when it approved the 130-mile Tongue River Railroad line in 2007, including the effects of developing the vast Otter Creek coal tracts. The Tongue River Railroad Co. has b...
HELENA — A medical marijuana provider indicted on federal drug charges is warning other caregivers to shut down their businesses or they'll be next. Jason Burns of Helena says that federal agents told him before his arraignment Thursday that the Department of Justice plans to indict every Montana caregiver raided this spring. U.S. Attorney spokeswoman Jessica Fehr says she cannot comment on whether criminal charges are pending against other providers. Queen City Caregivers, operated by Burns and Jesse Leland, was among m...
In Montana, a plan to empower local sheriffs MATT VOLZ, Associated Press HELENA — The line of people stretched out the door of the committee room, all waiting for their turn to condemn or express their fears about the federal government. Most identified themselves as ordinary Montana citizens or tea party supporters united by the belief that the government is chipping away at their rights and abusing the constitutions of the state and the nation. They'd arrived for a public hearing on the so-called "Sheriffs First Act," a Mon...
HELENA — A Helena judge has indicated he may temporarily block at least parts of a restrictive medical marijuana law before it takes effect July 1. District Judge James Reynolds concluded a three-day hearing Wednesday by saying he is wrestling with the new Montana law. He specifically mentioned concerns with a provision that bars marijuana providers from making a profit or being reimbursed for their expenses. A medical marijuana industry group is asking Reynolds to block the entire law, saying it violates patients' c...
HELENA — Montana's medical marijuana overhaul is due to take effect in less than two weeks, but the new law has been difficult to interpret and may have unintended consequences, the state's chief health regulator said Tuesday The law will ban commercial marijuana sales on July 1, leaving patients to either grow their own or find a provider who will be limited to care for a maximum of three patients. About a third of Montana's medical marijuana users grow their own currently, while the rest obtain the drug from registered p...
HELENA — A judge is expected to finish hearing arguments on whether to block Montana's new medical marijuana law from taking effect July 1. AP Photo/The Independent Record, Eliza Wile Dr. Jack Hensold, a Bozeman oncologist, testifies via teleconference Monday in Judge Jim Reynolds' district courtroom in Helena. Hensold is concerned about the ability of patients to obtain medical marijuana after a new law takes effect July 1. The two-day hearing continued Tuesday before Helena District Judge James Reynolds. The Montana C...
HELENA (AP) — A single-engine plane that crashed and killed two people in eastern Montana was conducting a prairie-dog survey for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, an agency spokesman said Friday. The Piper PA-18 Super Cub with two people on board took off from Miles City on Thursday morning and crashed in a rugged, remote area near the small community of Vananda, bursting into flames after impact. Rosebud County Sheriff Randy Allies said the men killed in the crash Thursday were 39-year-old pilot Chad H. Cyrus and 4...
HELENA — A debt collection agency filed negative credit reports against more than 8,000 Montana residents in an attempt to recover late fees they supposedly owed the bankrupt Movie Gallery Inc. and Hollywood Video rental stores, a state prosecutor said. The volume of negative credit reports filed by National Credit Solutions was discovered by the state Department of Justice as part of a legal settlement last month between the state and the Oklahoma-based company, Chief of Consumer Protection James Molloy said Tuesday. In e...
HELENA — An attorney for a medical marijuana industry group is asking a judge to block a new Montana law eliminating the sale of medical pot before it takes effect next month. James Goetz, attorney for the Montana Cannabis Industry Association, told Helena District Judge James Reynolds Monday that the law is unconstitutional. Assistant attorney general Jim Molloy defended the new law, saying it is in line with what voters intended when they authorized medical marijuana use in 2004. Molloy says the plaintiffs are trying to p...
HELENA — A new Montana law eliminating medical marijuana sales and implementing strict checks to verify a patient's condition is unconstitutional and must be blocked before it takes effect next month, an attorney for an industry group suing the state argued Monday. The law passed by state lawmakers earlier this year will effectively put commercial growers in Montana out of business by barring pot providers from making a profit and limiting them to a maximum of three patients. It also places additional checks on conditions f...
HELENA — Lawyers for BP asked a judge Wednesday to dismiss a Montana lawsuit that alleges the oil giant and its subsidiaries collected millions of dollars in insurance money while letting the state foot the bill for cleaning soil and groundwater contaminated by their leaky storage tanks. The state and the Montana Petroleum Tank Release Compensation Board filed the lawsuit in February, accusing the British company and its North American subsidiaries of fraud and negligence when it came to paying for the cleanup of decades o...
HELENA — Two Montana groups are trying to do what has only been done once in 18 years: block a bill by petition. One proposes to prevent sweeping changes to the state's medical marijuana law. The other wants to block a law that gives utilities the power of eminent domain. If they get signatures from 5 percent of the registered voters in 34 districts, a referendum will be held in the 2012 general election. If they get the signatures of 15 percent from 51 districts, they can suspend the bill from becoming law until that e...
HELENA — The trail has gone cold more than a month after a former militia leader disappeared into western Montana woods after a shootout with police, though authorities vow to nab David Burgert if and when he eventually resurfaces. Missoula County authorities said they are no longer actively pursuing Burgert, 47, who led deputies on a low-speed chase June 12 near Lolo, then shot at them before running into the woods. AP Photo/Missoulian, Kurt Wilson A Missoula County Sheriff's Department SWAT team drives on U.S. Highway 12 n...
HELENA — State and federal education officials have reached a compromise on Montana's No Child Left Behind benchmarks for the 2010-2011 school year. Monday was the deadline for the state to comply with the law's requirements for determining adequate yearly progress or else risk losing funding. Under the law's Annual Measurable Objectives, 92 percent of Montana schoolchildren are supposed to be proficient in reading and 84 percent in math. But the students measured 83 percent proficient in reading and 68 percent in math. T...
HELENA — State and federal education officials reached a compromise on Montana's No Child Left Behind benchmarks Monday, the deadline for the state to comply or risk losing some of its funding. The compromise lowers the state's 2010-2011 goals to measure adequate yearly progress, called Annual Measurable Objectives, which aim for 100 percent student proficiency in reading and math by 2014. The deal eliminates the U.S. Department of Education's threat to withhold at least a portion of the state's share of Title I, Part A f...
HELENA — Police arrested a 48-year-old woman they say shot and killed her husband and another woman early Thursday, leading to a police standoff outside a Helena apartment building. Helena Police Chief Troy McGee said Michelle Coller Gable has been charged with two counts of deliberate homicide. She was treated at a hospital for an undisclosed injury and released into police custody. AP Photo/The Independent Record, Eliza Wiley SWAT team moves around the corner at scene of a double homicide Thursday near downtown Helena, M...
HELENA — Federal regulators have fined Bozeman Deaconess Hospital $3,500 after hospital officials lost a vial of radioactive material used to treat cancer patients, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday. It was one of two recent enforcement actions taken by the commission in Montana. During an unannounced inspection of the Bozeman hospital's records on Jan. 27, 2010, NRC officials discovered a vial containing samarium-153 was missing. The substance, which goes under the brand name Quadramet, is used to treat p...
HELENA — Now that a $3.4 billion settlement has been approved in a lawsuit over past mismanagement of Native American land royalties by the federal government, a panel is being formed to recommend changes to ensure it doesn't happen again. The U.S. Department of the Interior is taking nominees over the next month to serve on the five-member Commission on Indian Trust Administration and Reform. Its formation comes after a judge last month approved a $3.4 billion settlement over claims that U.S. officials over the last c...
HELENA — A Bozeman restaurant listed in the phone book under "Animal Carcass Removal" became the butt of a Jay Leno joke earlier this year, but it's no laughing matter to the owner now suing the publishing company over the business he's lost. Hunter Lacey says in his lawsuit that business at his Bar 3 Bar-B-Q restaurants in Bozeman and nearby Belgrade has dropped off since the Dex Media Inc. listing and that his brand and reputation have gone down the tubes. The listing first appeared in 2009 in the yellow pages of Dex's t...
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — Word spread quickly through Yellowstone National Park about a fatal grizzly bear mauling — the park's first in 25 years — but few visitors at the height of tourist season seemed inclined to change their vacations because of the news. Thousands of people streamed into the park Thursday, a day after a 57-year-old California man was attacked and killed by a female bear on a backcountry trail. Officials said the sow was only defending its cubs, had not threatened humans before, and would be le...
HELENA — Federal education officials are warning that Montana must get in line with its No Child Left Behind benchmarks by Aug. 15 or risk losing some of its funding. Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent Montana education superintendent Denise Juneau a letter on July 1, followed by a formal notice, saying the state is out of compliance with its requirements for determining Montana schools' adequate yearly progress for the 2010-11 school year. The written notice says the state has until Aug. 15 to comply with the annual m...
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — Yellowstone National Park authorities will not try to capture a female grizzly that killed a backcountry hiker because the bruin was trying to defend its cubs when it was surprised by the man, a spokesman said Thursday. The mauling of Brian Matayoshi, 57, of Torrence, Calif., was a purely defensive act, park spokesman Al Nash said. He added that Yellowstone typically does not try to capture or remove a bear in what he called "a wildlife incident." AP Photo/Jim Urquhart A grizzly bear roams n...
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — A killer grizzly is roaming Yellowstone National Park's backcountry after mauling a man who apparently surprised the female bear and its cubs while hiking with his wife. Officials closed remote campgrounds and trails near the scene of Wednesday's attack close to Canyon Village, which sits in the middle of the sprawling park. The identity of the 57-year-old victim was being withheld until his family could be notified, said Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash. The mauling occurred just after Y...
HELENA — Federal prosecutors pursuing drug charges against Montana medical marijuana operators want to keep jurors from hearing any evidence at trial about the state's medical pot law or whether the operators were complying with it. U.S. Department of Justice attorneys have made motions in at least two cases stemming from federal raids on dozens of pot operations this spring, asking those judges to forbid any testimony or evidence at trial about medical marijuana or related issues involving state and federal laws. "...
BILLINGS — Yellowstone National Park officials captured a grizzly bear Friday near the site of a fatal attack, but they were not sure whether it is the bruin responsible for a Michigan hiker's death last week, a park spokesman said. The 25-year-old, 420-pound male grizzly was to be collared and released back into the park after officials take hair samples, spokesman Al Nash said. If the bear's DNA matches that of samples found at the site and additional evidence from the scene links the grizzly to 59-year-old John W...
