News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 2952 - 2976 of 3210
Editor: After the horrific shootings in Connecticut, we all hope to find a way to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again. Right now — as in the past — many in our nation are looking to gun control, and the pundits are insisting we act now, while emotions are still high. Being a member of the Montana Legislature, I am in a position to enact law to protect my fellow Montanans, the teachers and children in our schools. Over the past week, I have lost sleep due to the heartache and trying to find an answer. Some have sug...
With the 2013 session of the Montana Legislature about to convene, hunters, anglers and those who value Montana's outdoor amenities had better prepare to become involved. The 2011 Legislature gave us fair warning that things like privatizing stream access (House Bill 309), blocking acquisition of wildlife habitat (House Bill 272), liberalizing laws to restore cyanide heap leach mining (Senate Bill 306) and even efforts to dilute our Constitutional right to a clean environment (House Bill 292), remain on the "conservative"...
New Years is always a time to look back at the year that was and what it means for us all going forward. Many other columnists will be counting down their best/worst lists of events over the year. But since this columnist loves writing about all the wonderful things the Internet can do for you, I'm just going to use Google. As in the past several years, this year Google has launched a website, http://www.google.com/zeitgeist, to tally the sum of people's curiosity and endeavours around the entire globe through 2012. A video...
I felt pretty old this year. My wife and I bought a house last fall, just days before having our first child. Now that I'm both a father and a homeowner, I have more kinds of insurance policies than I even knew existed a year ago, and I suddenly have opinions about property taxes and school boards. Caleb Hutchins As a young bachelor, I found it easy to be disdainful of social welfare and government intervention. Now that my responsibilities extend beyond renting an apartment and playing video games, issues that were black...
I would like to congratulate the U.S. Supreme Court for doing more for the economy than all of the executive and legislative branches of our government combined. So don't be hatin' them. The president, the Senate, the House, all those economic advisors, department heads and think tank intellectuals, they're all a bunch of second rank amateurs for creating economic stimulus compared to the nine member of the highest court in the land of the free. Pam Burke When the Supreme...
One of the only things it appears both parties in this year's election agree on is that the media has done an awful job of tackling the issues that really matter. And Alex Ohanian is in that same boat. Ohanian is the 29-year-old Internet entrepreneur behind what is probably my favorite website, Reddit.com, which he sold to magazine-giant Conde Nast straight out of college. Zach White Since then he has started several new websites and has been a vocal advocate of keeping the Internet as free and open as possible. Ohanian and...
It seems that various teams in the past several Summer Olympics have utilized an amazing secret weapon to help them bring home the Olympic bling: U.S. Navy SEAL training. Go ahead and say it ... Hoo-yah. In March, a group of Navy SEALs went to the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs, Colo., to train the U.S. sailing team in the not-so-subtle art of working as a team while enduring personal physical and mental agony. Pam Burke NBC Channel 9 News reporter Matt Renoux...
Nikki Carlson I remember the day I trekked across the Midwest 1,700 miles to start working as the ag reporter and photographer for the Havre Daily News. I had a garage sale in my home in Shenandoah, Iowa, to sell everything I could to get gas money to get up here to Havre. What I couldn't sell, I gave away or left behind. I loaded up what I could into my 1985 Crown Victoria, said goodbye to my family and began my journey to Montana. It was smooth sailing for the most part. When I had arrived in central North Dakota, the...
This week Victor Miller died. 'Most everybody in the state knew Vic. He was a former mayor of Harlem, a Blaine County Commissioner at two different times, talented drummer who nearly achieved national fame, a tireless storyteller and a man with a heart as big as he was. And Victor was a big man. Victor was my friend. It was a hard week for me. Every morning I walked down to City Shop for my usual coffee with the boys before work. I wanted to hear the report on our friend in th...
Reuters reporter Ben Berkowitz reported Aug. 13 that "Africa's pirates have demands — and letterhead, too." Apparently, professional pirate Jamal Faahiye Culusow wants to be taken seriously by those from whom he and his Pirate Action Group of merry men are extorting money. And they are taking a tip from the many email scammers with questionable English skills: They're putting on the big top with an open memo on letterhead — complete with a logo, official seal and the bos...
There is a lot of chatter on the web. In fact that's pretty much the point, to have as many people sharing as much information as they want. A lot of that info is, or can be, posted without requiring a name be attached, which upsets many people, while others find it freeing and necessary. Anonymity is baked into the structure and culture of the web. While many websites now allow the linking of accounts across websites and identity verification through cellphones or email, the web began with nothing more than usernames for...
The haze was thick at Colstrip last week when I visited, but it wasn't because of the 2,200-megawatt coal-burning facility there. It was because of forest fires. The Rosebud Complex, a group of nearby fires which started August 1, was finally contained two weeks later. This came on the heels of the Ash Creek fire, which burned from late June to mid-July. In all, these fires burned 421,000 acres, destroying everything from ranchland in Tongue River and Rosebud country to timber in the Custer National Forest whose sale had been...
Montana is a powerhouse. For generations, our natural resources have powered this nation's homes, cities and economy. And we stand to keep powering America for generations to come as one of the top producers of biofuels and bio-energy. Through hard work and innovation, Montana can remain one of the nation's top energy producers, preserve our state's natural resources and create new markets and jobs. On top of all that, our growing biofuels industry stands to one day make our nation and military independent from foreign oil. B...
Montana parents want and need choice in K-12 education. Fifty percent of Montanans would choose an option other than traditional public school for their kids, if possible (see EdChoice.org/MTpoll). So we were not surprised when the ACE Scholarship program we launched earlier this year was wildly oversubscribed. ACE provides partial funding to families with financial need so they can access the best educational setting for their child. Using ACE scholarships, this fall 500 Montana families have benefited. Sadly, many kids...
If we assume that this statement is true: That which comes between two true loves is pure evil (and really, what kind of cold-hearted, dirty rotten nogoodnick would think otherwise); we can conclude, then, that stomach flu is pure evil. Only pure evil can come between me and food — my love, my obsession, my four square meals and seven snacks per day. Last week, after explaining to a friend that, no, I could not come out to ride horses because I was violently ill, she c...
Going into a phone store is a lot like taking a car to a mechanic, for the most part you don't know what it is you are actually getting and you're pretty sure it shouldn't actually cost that much. But what can you do? They've developed the ridiculously convoluted and ultimately meaningless breakdown of services, fees and surcharges that, by making a lot of money for one company first, has become the standard that all of us have to deal with. Zach White Even though just about every phone out there today is simply a computer...
Recently your newspaper took issue with myself and the other members of the Havre City Council who voted against joining the Vibrant Futures consortium, calling such disagreement troubling for several reasons, "not the least of which was that it was along partisan — and apparently ideological — lines." Such a baseless charge is insulting and I felt the need to respond. Andrew Brekke As a duly elected member of the Havre City Council, I take my job and the concerns of my constituents very seriously. No matter what the iss...
I wanted to write a column about an app I was using to, hopefully, lose a bit of weight. I was going to say that I'm young enough that many people still make the (usually correct) assumption that I can fix their google for them, but I am no longer young enough to make as many visits to the Pizza Hut lunch buffet as I would like. Zach White When looking for a way to preserve my orangutan-like figure, I decided to ask my best friend for advice and the Internet said I should check out MyFitnessPal.com. When you make an account,...
The only simple explanation I can find for my recent 24-hour flurry of homemaking activity is that the high fever I had a month ago must've caused an important part of my brain to melt, and I was having some kind of delayed seizure-like spastic fit of Betty Crocker-y. Why else, after half of a lifetime of avoiding this particular domestic pastime, would I suddenly construct my own homemade chokecherry syrup using only my own bare hands and a few rudimentary kitchen tools....
Look at what the weatherman dragged in. It looks a lot like one of those old winter storm warning charts being recycled from last year, but it's a brand spankin' new one for this year. Pam Burke Sure we've had snow and some cold already, if you want to think of below freezing as cold, but this winter storm is predicted to be more the real deal. Sub-zero temps. Winds of 20-30 mph with gusts to 40 mph. Blowing and drifting snow. We haven't had that joy for a while. It's no Superstorm Sandy, but I see trouble ahead in this...
A woman walking out in the country sees a rattlesnake close to both her barn and her house. A quick glance tells her no sticks or tools to use as an instrument of reptile death are near enough to fetch without giving the creature ample opportunity to escape. She reaches out to a wooden post buried shallowly in soft, wet ground and discovers that the post is loose. She wiggles the post around to loosen it further, then yanks it from the earth and bludgeons the snake to death...
I get annoyed with people who wish life could come with an instruction manual because they want their life to be easier. Don't be such a noodle, I say. If you're going to wish for it to be easier, ask for a good script, proper lighting and awesome background music. Maybe a hair and makeup artist. And a custom-made wardrobe. Pam Burke Life would be so much easier if I didn't have to figure out what to say and do and wear. My husband John and I went to two parties over the Labor Day weekend. Count 'em — two. Two social g...
(This guest column was submitted by public health officers from throughout Montana.) It is well known that the United States spends a lot of money on medical care, more than $8,000 for each man, woman and child or about $2.6 trillion in 2010. What do we have to show for our investment? Because we spend twice as much on medical care than what the 14 wealthiest nations in the world spend, does that mean we are healthier? No. The U.S. did not even make the top 20 on Bloomberg's recent "Healthiest Countries" ranking. How do we be...
Sondra Ashton I correspond with a small group of Canadian women. There are six of us. We exchange stories, news and encouragement in facing the vicissitudes of daily life. We look at each other as sisters; sisters by choice rather than by birth and blood. I am honored to belong to this group, and, if asked, claim quasi-citizenship in Saskatchewan South. After all, I live barely a hop and skip from the border. My Canadian sisters celebrate Canada Day on the first of July, and w...
For the past five months I have been telling you about people around the world who have been using the Internet in new and interesting ways. Well this week, we at the Havre Daily News will be trying a few new things of our own. Last month we allowed anyone in the world to watch the Havre Festival Days parade as it was happening. More than 80 people tuned in for the live broadcast, and hundreds of people have returned to the video to check for their favorite floats, or themselves, in the weeks since. Zach White We got a lot...
