News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1992 - 2016 of 2820
Montana mail ballot bill fails amid racism allegation MATT GOURAS, Associated Press HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A plan to use only mail-in ballots for the state's main elections, which haltingly moved forward with fragile bipartisan cooperation, failed Friday after allegations of racism from a Native American lawmaker and defensive counter-accusations. The simmering tensions between Republicans and Democrats erupted, somewhat surprisingly, over a bill that modifies the way elections are run. The House had abruptly changed its m...
MISSOULA, (AP) — The president of the University of Montana has set some ambitious goals for the next decade, saying he wants to increase graduation rates from 44 percent to 60 percent and more than double the amount of research money the school generates from $67 million to $140 million. The Missoulian reports (http://bit.ly/n6hGwa ) Montana President Royce Engstrom announced his goals during his first State of the University address Friday. Engstrom, a former UM provost who has been with the university since 2007, was s...
TWIN BRIDGES (AP) — As the 10th anniversary of the al-Qaida attacks on the United States approaches, the man who crafted America's military response in both Iraq and Afghanistan believes that the terrorism threat will continue to evolve — and the country's defense systems must remain well funded to be vigilant. Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense for presidents George W. Bush and Gerald Ford, is retired and spends a portion of his summers on a gentleman's ranch along the Big Hole River in southwest Montana. His 40-...
MISSOULA (AP) — An education group says Montana families spend a higher percentage of their household income sending their children to public, in-state colleges and universities than families in other Western states. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education reports that tuition and fees to attend a two-year college in Montana costs 8.1 percent of a family's median household income, compared with a regional average of 5.9 percent. At the state's four-year universities, excluding the University of Montana and M...
CROW AGENCY — Crow tribal officials sent search teams Wednesday to remote parts of their reservation to look for people stranded by flooding, as cities and towns across Montana tried to stave off rivers and streams spilling from their banks. Flood waters in hard-hit southeastern Montana have receded enough for Crow reservation residents to return to find dozens of homes damaged by the flooded Little Bighorn River. AP Photo/Matthew Brown A flooded house and pickup near the Little Bighorn River in Crow Agency, Mont. are s...
NEW YORK — Huguette Clark, a 104-year-old heiress to a Montana copper fortune who once lived in the largest apartment on New York City's Fifth Avenue, died Tuesday at a Manhattan hospital, but prosecutors are still pursuing a legal battle over her money and care. The reclusive Clark spent the last two decades of her life in New York City hospitals. "Miss Clark's passing is a sad event for all those who have loved and respected her over the years," her attorney, Wallace Bock, said in a statement. "She died as she wanted, w...
HELENA — The Obama administration says states that have not adopted their own insurance exchanges may get a second chance to avoid one run by the U.S. government. Only 11 states have fully embraced the idea of taking federal money to set up their own state-run insurance exchange, a key part of Obama's health care overhaul designed to help uninsured people buy coverage from a choice of plans with federal tax credits. But states that have been slow to accept the idea, or outright rejected it in resistance to the law, will h...
BUTTE — A Montana wildlife official says a federal trapper has shot and killed three wolves from the Table Mountain pack near Silver Star in southwestern Montana blamed for killing a calf on a ranch earlier in May. Pat Flowers of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks tells The Montana Standard that the wolves were killed Tuesday on private land. Flowers says one of the wolves was an adult fitted with a radio collar after a previous attack on livestock. Flowers says the pack is still viable though it's unclear h...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has approved a $3.4 billion settlement over mismanaged Indian royalties that represents the largest claim ever made against the U.S. government. The plaintiffs, including Elouise Cobell of Montana, claimed in the 15-year-old suit that the individual accounts of hundreds of thousands of Indians were mismanaged by the government for more than a century, costing them billions of dollars in oil, timber and other royalties. The two sides settled in 2009 after years of court battles. Congress a...
HELENA — Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is unhappy with federal land managers over a land conservation proposal he says was bungled. The governor met Monday with federal officials from several agencies who were pitching the America's Great Outdoors Initiative. Schweitzer said he is interested in the conservation plan. But he's skeptical about its success, given other lingering land management problems. Schweitzer said he wants Yellowstone National Park to allow bison hunting. He also wants land managers to seriously look at h...
ANACONDA — A 59-year-old Anaconda man faces trial this fall on charges that he allowed his pit bull-cross dogs to run loose, enter another house and kill five cats. The Montana Standard reports John Griswold made an initial court appearance on May 11 and pleaded not guilty to two counts of owning nuisance animals and two counts of letting his dogs run at large. Trial is set for Sept. 10. Court records say Griswold's dogs jumped into a fenced yard, got into a house through a pet door and attacked five cats on April 7. Four w...
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Sen. Charles Schumer says Homeland Security will begin tapping into Canadian military radar later this year to detect low-flying aircraft used to smuggle drugs from Canada into the United States. The New York Democrat chaired a hearing of the subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security in Washington Tuesday. Afterward, he told reporters that the Department of Homeland Security will begin integrating the Canadian radar feeds by November. The technology was used with success in Washington state f...
HELENA (AP) — ?An East Helena woman is trying to put a constitutional initiative to the voters to decriminalize marijuana so that it is regulated like alcohol. Lee Newspapers State Bureau reports that Barb Trego filed the paperwork this week with Secretary of State Linda McCulloch Trego is a 56-year-old medical marijuana patient and former Lewis and Clark Sheriff's Office employee. State agencies must review the proposal before the petition language is approved and she can start collecting signatures. To qualify for the b...
HELENA (AP) — Six local governments have filed a lawsuit against Gov. Brian Schweitzer over his line-item vetoes of money for their local bridge and water projects, which the governor said were done either because lawmakers did not support the spending or a lack of need. Carbon, Fergus, Madison and Sweet Grass counties, the city of Roundup and the town of Sheridan filed the lawsuit in District Court in Helena last week. They also named Commerce Director Dore Schwinden and the state of Montana, according to the Lee N...
BILLINGS — A federal judge threw out a lawsuit claiming federal agents illegally raided Montana's Custer Battlefield Museum during an investigation into the alleged sale of fraudulent artifacts and eagle feathers. The judgment was filed in U.S. District Court in favor of two dozen federal agents who participated in the raids in 2005 and 2008. Judge Richard Cebull dismissed as frivolous claims by museum director Christopher Kortlander that the raids were illegal and the agents had violated his constitutional rights. The i...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to George W. Bush have designated public land as national monuments, using a federal law to protect from development sites judged to have natural, historical or scientific significance. Now some House Republicans, saying the 105-year-old law has been misused, have introduced bills to limit or block the president's ability to make such designations without approval from Congress. GOP Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana compared the 1906 Antiquities Act to the mythical sword of Dam...
BILLINGS (AP) — It may be two or three weeks before Montana officials can safely launch boats on the Yellowstone River to determine the extent of damage to wildlife from the July 1 oil spill, officials said. The river near is running high from late snowpack melt, making it difficult to accurately assess the effects of an estimated 1,000 barrels of oil that spilled into the river after and Exxon Mobil Corp. pipeline failed near Laurel. "We haven't seen 99 percent of the riverbank yet," Bob Gibson, a spokesman for Fish, Wildlif...
LODGE GRASS — A 22-year-old man suspected of killing his elderly grandmother and two others on Montana's Crow Reservation was arrested Wednesday night in Washington state after a daylong search, the FBI said. Sheldon Bernard Chase was arrested without incident in Spokane, Wash. He is suspected of using a rifle around noon Tuesday to kill his grandmother, Gloria Sarah Goes Ahead Cummins, 80; his cousin, 21-year-old Levon Driftwood; and her boyfriend, 20-year-old Rueben Jefferson. AP Photo/The Billings Gazette, James W...
BILLINGS — The search for an armed suspect in a triple shooting on the Crow Reservation spanned the southeast Montana countryside Wednesday as people were warned to stay inside for their safety. Authorities were seeking Sheldon Bernard Chase, 22, in the deaths of a his grandmother and a young couple at a rural residence about 10 miles outside of Lodge Grass, a town of about 500 people near the Wyoming border. AP Photo/The Billings Gazette, James Woodcock Law enforcement officers remove a shooting victim's body from a home a...
POWELL, Wyo. — Hearing about devastation across the border has prompted northern Wyoming residents to help Montanans struggling with flood conditions. Flooding in Montana has damaged at least 200 homes on the Crow Indian Reservation and many more homes and businesses in other areas. Water levels had dropped in the central Montana town of Roundup this past week, but warmer weather is expected to cause a new round of flooding in parts of the state as mountain snows melt. Photo/The Billings Gazette, David Grubbs Vernelle M...
HELENA — Montana health officials have begun issuing new medical marijuana cards as part of the state's overhaul of its marijuana industry. The new law granted the Department of Public Health and Human Services powers on Wednesday to write temporary rules to issue the cards. Agency spokesman Jon Ebelt said the department has processed about 500 applications so far. The new card rules involve a more restrictive system of forms and procedures for patients and growers to register with the state. There are several new a...
BOZEMAN — Two charter bus drivers have been arrested for allegedly taking a group of Bozeman seventh-graders on a field trip to Yellowstone National Park while under the influence of alcohol. KBZK-TV reports schools Superintendent Kirk Miller has written a letter to parents of the Sacajawea Middle School students saying the park received a call Friday morning from a person unrelated to the trip who was concerned the bus drivers might be impaired. Miller says that while the students were exploring the park, rangers "...
BILLINGS — Gray wolf hunts are under way in Montana and Idaho as state officials seek to sharply reduce the predator's numbers in hopes of curbing attacks on livestock and big game herds. Montana's hunt kicked off at sunrise Saturday with a six-week, archery-only wolf season. A general wolf hunting season opens Oct. 22 and runs through the end of the year. Montana wildlife officials have set a statewide harvest quota of 220 wolves, which would reduce the state's population to a projected 425 animals. Idaho's hunt began T...
BOZEMAN — A Montana State University investigation has found an assistant music professor at the school had a relationship with a female student and violated policies against sexual harassment and gender discrimination, a newspaper is reporting. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports 47-year-old MSU Orchestra conductor Shuichi Komiyama denies the allegations. The newspaper received a copy of an 18-page report from the university's investigation into claims against Komiyama from the student's attorney earlier this week. MSU l...
BILLING — A new U.S. government report highlights serious gaps in mental health care for many American Indians and Alaska Natives, groups that suffer from problems including a teenage suicide rate more than twice the national average. One in five hospitals and clinics in Indian Country provide no mental health services, according to the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Health and Human Services. Only half provide drug therapy treatments, and at dozens of facilities some drug treatments are handled by n...
