News you can use
News you can use
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BILLINGS — Montana's state parks will be overseen by a board dedicated to parks and recreation matters under a new law that splits up the duties of the former Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission. Legislation signed Monday by Gov. Steve Bullock during a ceremony at Pictograph Caves State Park near Billings establishes a five-member commission over Montana's 54 state parks. Bullock and the bill's Republican sponsor, Rep. Duane Ankney of Colstrip, says that will allow the state to take adequate care of natural and historic a...
DECKER (AP) — From the time coal is scooped from the depths of the Spring Creek strip mine in Montana's wide-open Powder River Basin until it travels more than 6,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean to power plants in South Korea, the price can increase more than fivefold. Mining companies, however, are only paying government royalties on the price of the coal when it is mined from federal lands, not when it is sold for more overseas, saving them millions of dollars in the process. As the Interior Department investigates the i...
BILLINGS (AP) — Energy companies behind the oil boom on the Northern Plains are increasingly turning to an industrial-age workhorse — the locomotive — to move their crude to refineries across the U.S., as plans for new pipelines stall and existing lines can't keep up with demand. Delivering oil thousands of miles by rail from the heartland to refineries on the East, West and Gulf coasts costs more, but it can mean increased profits — up to $10 or more a barrel — because of higher oil prices on the coasts. That works out...
ROUNDUP — Gov. Brian Schweitzer has extended his emergency declaration to include six counties and an American Indian reservation in eastern Montana threatened by wildfires. The emergency order signed Wednesday morning is for Musselsshell, Rosebud, Custer, Treasure, Yellowstone and Big Horn counties, along with the Northern Cheyenne reservtion. AP Photo/The Billings Gazette, Larry Mayer Lights from a fire truck streak across a burning hillside in a time exposure as the Dahl fire burns, south of Roundup, overnight W...
BILLINGS — Authorities on Wednesday started extradition procedures against two men held in North Dakota in the kidnapping of a Montana teacher who is presumed dead. Richland County Attorney Mike Weber said he expects a hearing within the next 30 days on whether to extradite 47-year-old Lester Vann Waters Jr. and 22-year-old Michael Keith Spell. The two requested the hearing in an initial court appearance Tuesday in Williston, N.D. The pair face aggravated kidnapping charges in the Jan. 7 disappearance of Sherry Arnold, a 4...
BILLINGS — Authorities on Wednesday started extradition procedures against two men held in North Dakota in the kidnapping of a Montana teacher who is presumed dead. Richland County Attorney Mike Weber said he expects a hearing within the next 30 days on whether to extradite 47-year-old Lester Vann Waters Jr. and 22-year-old Michael Keith Spell. The two requested the hearing in an initial court appearance Tuesday in Williston, N.D. The pair face aggravated kidnapping charges in the Jan. 7 disappearance of Sherry Arnold, a 4...
SIDNEY (AP) — Two men charged in the kidnapping of a high school math teacher were extradited Tuesday to Montana, where they appeared in court less than a mile from where Sherry Arnold disappeared during her morning run. Sidney City Judge Gregory Mohr told Lester Van Waters, 47, and Michael Spell, 22, that they could face the death penalty if convicted of aggravated kidnapping. The judge set a Feb. 28 appearance in Montana district court. AP Photo/Elijah Nouvelage Lester Van Waters Jr., one of two suspects charged with a...
LODGE GRASS — Rain-swollen rivers that have swamped Montana towns could keep flooding the region for another month or more as melting mountain snow delivers a second slug of water to the soggy Northern Plains. AP Photo/Matthew Brown Kathryn Old Crow, 73, describes flooding that forced her from her home near Lodge Grass,to U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, left, and Gov. Brian Schweitzer, as her grandson, Wade Old Crow, watches Friday . Recent flooding displaced hundreds of residents of southeastern Montana's Crow Indian Reservation a...
BILLINGS — A preliminary study of an asbestos-plagued Montana town indicates health dangers remain in some areas already addressed in a federal cleanup that, so far, has cost more than $370 million. Tuesday's release of a long-awaited draft toxicity study for the town of Libby comes more than a decade after the Environmental Protection Agency started its cleanup operation. Health workers say more than 400 people have been killed over the last several decades in Libby, which is considered the nation's deadliest Superfund s...
