News you can use
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HELENA (AP) — U.S. Sen. Max Baucus is marrying his girlfriend and former state director Melodee Hanes at the Sieben Ranch north of Helena on Saturday. AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais Sen. Max Baucus dances with Melodee Hanes during the Congressional Picnichosted by President Barack Obama on the South Lawn of the White House inWashington, June 15. A spokeswoman for the 69-year-old Baucus said the wedding will be a small, casual event with close friends and family. Kate Downen says the office is not discussing the guest l...
HELENA — A family of Montana medical marijuana providers has been indicted on federal charges after their business locations across the state were raided by agents in March. The three new indictments bring the total to six marijuana providers charged with alleged crimes stemming from the searches of more than two dozen businesses, residences and warehouses this spring. Richard Flor, his wife Sherry Flor and their son Justin Flor appeared Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Carolyn Ostby in Billings on 11 counts. The c...
HELENA — A judge on Thursday blocked Montana from enforcing a new law ending commercial medical marijuana operations, saying banning pot providers from making a profit will deny people a fundamental right to seek health care by legal means. Helena District Judge James Reynolds issued a preliminary injunction against parts of a restrictive overhaul of the state's voter-approved medical marijuana law, which was due to take effect on Friday. One part of the law would have limited marijuana providers to distributing to a m...
HELENA — The second phase of Montana's new medical marijuana overhaul will go into effect Wednesday, allowing the state health department to issue pot cards under new regulations — but patients are confused about what happens next under the new restrictive law. When Gov. Brian Schweitzer allowed the law to go into effect May 14, the power to issue cards under the old marijuana law was immediately repealed for the Department of Public Health and Human Services. The new restrictive law isn't fully implemented until July 1, but...
OMAHA, Neb. — Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has reported a 43 percent jump in fourth-quarter profit thanks to the strong performance of BNSF railroad and a paper gain of $1.4 billion on the company's derivative contracts and investments. Buffett said in his annual letter that the acquisition of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad was the highlight of 2010 for his Omaha, Neb.,-based company. Berkshire reported $4.38 billion net income, or $2,656 per Class A share, in the fourth quarter. That's up from the $3.1 b...
Session watchers weigh in on the Legislature CODY BLOOMSBURG Community News Service UM School of Journalism HELENA – From his office in Missoula, University of Montana political science professor Jim Lopach has watched legislative politics for decades. This session, he said, is different. He said he is surprised by the boldness of lawmakers looking to get at the roots of things, to shake up what has long been settled, and by their willingness to challenge the powers that be, from President Barak Obama down to city and c...
ROUNDUP — Another Montana town Thursday was swamped with floodwaters that have washed out roads and rushed though houses across the state — and hundreds more homes downstream in the Dakotas could be hit as heavy rains and melting mountain snow force record releases from bloated dams on the Missouri River. Ongoing flooding in beleaguered Montana could end up being the worst in decades, officials warned. The conditions are ripe: unusually heavy snowpack in the mountains, persistent spring rains and waterlogged ground inc...
BILLINGS — More rain is on tap this week for Montana communities besieged with flood waters that have swamped neighborhoods and rural farmland and isolated a town near the Wyoming border, officials said. Authorities in Yellowstone County were searching for a man reported missing after a backhoe he was operating along Pryor Creek tipped into the water. AP Photo/Billings Gazette, Paul Ruhter A man walks across South Canal Road in Huntley, Mont. on Sunday as flood water from Pryor Creek inundates a neighborhood and spills o...
BILLINGS — Camelina, the biofuel that five years ago Gov. Brian Schweitzer called his new girlfriend, now struggles for a planting date with Montana farmers. "The biggest challenge of all is the price of wheat," Schweitzer said Thursday. With wheat prices historically high, there's no incentive to mess with an oilseed still relatively unproven as a cash crop. "I'm not going to wish for cheap wheat to get the camelina acres up, but that's what it's going to take," the governor said. The National Agricultural Statistics S...
Maligned stream access bill tabled in committee The Associated Press HELENA — The Montana Senate is tabling revisions to the state's stream access law amid stiff opposition from anglers. House Bill 309 reopened a simmering dispute over a slough running through the Bitterroot Valley property of 1980s rocker Huey Lewis and others. The courts ruled several years ago that the slough be open to fishermen under the state's stream access law. Ranchers and others had sought to make clear that irrigation ditches are not open to a...
AP Photo/Mike Albans,File In this Jan. 19, 2011 file photo, Brigadier Gen. Mayhew "Bo" Foster, 99, speaks to the Associated Press at his nursing home in Missoula, Mont. Foster, a retired brigadier general of the Montana National Guard who flew captured Nazi leader Hermann Goering into Allied hands at the end of World War II, has died at 99. Montana pilot who flew captured Nazi leader dies MATT VOLZ, Associated Press HELENA — Mayhew "Bo" Foster, a World War II Army pilot who transported the one-time heir to Adolf Hitler for i...
Senate rejects texting while driving ban HELENA — A bill to make texting while driving illegal in Montana has failed to pass the state Senate. Senate Bill 251 would have let police pull a driver over for using a cell phone to send text messages, with a $100 fine for violators. The Senate rejected the proposal Friday on a 31-18 vote. Sen. Christine Kaufmann, the Democrat carrying the bill, says texting while driving is a dangerous epidemic in the state and law enforcement needs to be able to stop it. Those opposing the bill s...
Man charged with threat to Amtrak train arraigned The Associated Press GREAT FALLS — A Minnesota man charged with making a threat that led to the evacuation of an Amtrak train in northern Montana pleaded not guilty to federal charges of false information and hoaxes. The U.S. attorney's office says 24-year-old Hussein Abdi Hassan of Minneapolis was arraigned by U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Holter in Great Falls on Thursday. An Amtrak spokesman has said Hassan was removed from the Empire Builder train in Browning on Feb. 14 f...
HELENA — The commissioner of political practices is reviewing a complaint over Attorney General Steve Bullock's move to raise campaign cash without stating which office he seeks. But the ethics chief says the office historically has not had any problem with the practice prior to the filing deadline, which in this case is next year. Bullock is mulling a possible run for governor instead of seeking another term as attorney general while he raises campaign cash. His campaign finance forms filed with the state show he is r...
St. Patrick's Day parade organizer cited for DUI BUTTE — The organizer of Butte's St. Patrick's Day parade has been arrested on a drunken driving charge. The Montana Standard reports 61-year-old Mollie A. Kirk was stopped at about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday after an officer reported seeing a vehicle being driven recklessly. The officer conducted a field sobriety test and Kirk was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving. Kirk is the longtime director of Butte Celebrations, which organizes the city's St. Patrick's Day parade, the F...
BRIDGER — Officials in south-central Montana say a Bridger man and his horse died after being struck by lightning in the Pryor Mountains. Carbon County Sheriff Tom Reiger tells KTVQ-TV that the lightning strike occurred about 1:40 p.m. Saturday about 12 miles east of Bridger. Reiger says the man was taking part in a branding party when the lightning strike occurred. The man's name has not been released....
AP Photo/Matthew Brown Crews from the Montana Department of Transportation use heavy equipment to pass through floodwaters in Roundup, Mont., Wednesday. The Musselshell River swamped portions of the small agricultural town for the second time in two weeks Wednesday as heavy rains continued to cause widespread flooding in Montana. Work crews in central Montana on Sunday began repairing two washouts of a backcountry road as part of a plan to get to another washout on a larger road that has for a week cut off more than 300 peopl...
HELENA — The Secretary of State's office has determined that medical marijuana advocates need at least 31,000 signatures to block the Legislature's overhaul bill from becoming law. Marijuana advocates say they plan a petition of the strict regulations that Gov. Brian Schweitzer is expected let become law. If successful, they would block the law from taking effect this summer and put the issue on the 2012 ballot. Secretary of State chief legal counselor Jorge Quintana wrote in a memo Tuesday that 15 percent of voters in at l...
GREAT FALLS — Blackfeet tribal officials want to make sure the tribe's indoor smoking ban is enforced at a tribally owned casino. The Great Falls Tribune reports the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council voted 5-4 Monday to ban smoking in the Glacier Peaks Casino. The Blackfeet Tobacco Free Act of 2005 bans smoking in enclosed public places. Casinos were exempted until September 2007. However, a local tobacco initiative group told the council that the ban wasn't being enforced at the casino. Tribal Chairman Willie A. Sharp Jr. w...
HELENA (AP) — It's not a violation of Montana's election laws for a candidate to post a photograph of a marked absentee ballot on Facebook. That decision was among a handful released Wednesday by the commissioner of political practices' office. Former state GOP executive director Jake Eaton and tea party activist Jennifer Olsen had filed separate complaints against state Sen. Kendall Van Dyk. The Billings Democrat had posted absentee ballots on his Facebook page showing that he had voted for himself in the 2010 primary and g...
LAUREL — Crews responsible for cleaning up an oil spill on the Yellowstone River faced difficult conditions Tuesday as the scenic waterway rose above flood stage and raised fears that surging currents will push crude into undamaged areas and back channels vital to the river's prized fishery. Conditions on the swollen river have prevented a thorough assessment and hampered efforts to find the cause of Friday's break in the 12-inch pipeline, which spilled an estimated 1,000 barrels of crude oil. The river was flowing too high 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...
HELENA — Bob Kelleher — an attorney, perennial political candidate and delegate to the 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention — has died at age 88. David Kelleher, of Kalispell, tells Lee Newspapers of Montana that his father died Sunday in Billings. Kelleher, who many will remember for his bushy eyebrows, ran for office 16 times between 1964 and 2008, mostly as a Democrat. He won the six-way Republican primary nomination for U.S. Senate in 2008 but lost to Sen. Max Baucus in the general election. He also ran on the Green...
WASHINGTON — Under pressure from Congress, the Obama administration is backing away from a plan to make millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West eligible for federal wilderness protection. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a memo Wednesday that his agency will not designate any of those public lands as "wild lands." Instead Salazar said officials will work with members of Congress to develop recommendations for managing millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West. A copy of the memo was obtained by The A...
HELENA — A former organizer for the Ku Klux Klan said Wednesday he is running as a Republican for Montana's U.S. House seat because he believes people will back him as part of a backlash to the nation's first black president. But John Abarr, a 41-year-old night auditor at a Great Falls hotel who lost a local Republican legislative primary in 2002, could have a hard time getting any backing from Montana Republicans. His platform promises to legalize marijuana, increase mental health programs, keep abortion legal, abolish t...
