News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 722 - 746 of 2820
HELENA (AP) — A panel advising U.S. Sen. Max Baucus on his plan to rewrite the nation's tax code told him on Thursday that the government should maintain deductions that benefit the poor, small businesses, education, retirement savings and innovation. Baucus is working with the chairman of the House, Ways and Means committee, Republican Dave Camp of Michigan, on a plan to get rid of many tax credits, deductions and loopholes viewed as unproductive. They also want to reduce tax rates. Baucus said he hopes the effort will resul...
MISSOULA (AP) — Gov. Steve Bullock ordered two Montana Army National Guard helicopter teams and 18 checkpoint teams to join firefighting efforts on the Lolo Creek Complex west of Lolo. A total of nearly 110 Guardsmen are expected to be on duty by Thursday morning. The UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter teams will be stationed at the Montana Department of Natural Resources state land office in Missoula, while the checkpoint teams will report to their locations at 8 a.m. Thursday. The soldiers will be placed on active duty for up to 1...
LOLO (AP) — Fires have burned at least four homes so far in western Montana and high temperatures and increasing winds made the blazes likely to keep spreading, a state fire official said Tuesday. The two fires west of Lolo had been holding most of the day at nearly 8 square miles burned, but the wind speed started picking up Tuesday afternoon, state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation fire spokeswoman Crystal Beckman said. By evening, the Lolo Creek complex of fi...
HELENA (AP) — Authorities say a woman may be headed to South Dakota with her four children who are not in her custody. The Montana Department of Justice issued a Missing/Endangered Person advisory Tuesday at the request of the Helena Police Department. The agency identified the mother as 36-year-old Jennifer Marie Raymond. She is 5 feet, 4 inches tall and 150 pounds. The children are two sets of twins. Melena Marie Frost and Rena Ruth Frost are 7 years old, and each is 4 feet, 1 inch tall and 50 pounds. Therron Joseph F...
LOLO (AP) — Authorities are searching for a man who went berry picking near Lolo Creek just before a wildfire moved into the area. The Missoula County Sheriff's Office says 60-year-old Mark Hannah went with a friend Monday to pick huckleberries off U.S. Highway 12. The Missoulian reports (http://bit.ly/19GYPgr) the men headed back when they noticed increasing smoke, but became separated. Hannah's friend made it to a dirt road that led back to the highway, and a sheriff's d...
GREAT FALLS (AP) — An attorney representing a Blackfeet tribal leader accused of fleeing an officer during a drunken-driving stop has asked a judge to dismiss the charges. Federal prosecutors have charged Blackfeet Tribal Business Council member and state Sen. Shannon Augare with misdemeanor counts of DUI, reckless driving and obstruction of a peace officer. Tribal attorney Joe McKay says in Friday's motion to dismiss that the federal court lacks the jurisdiction to hear the case. The tribe has its own law and order code t...
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — A B-1B bomber crashed in a remote area of southeastern Montana on Monday, but its four crew members survived after ejecting from the South Dakota-based aircraft, Air Force officials said. Two pilots and two weapons system officers ejected before the bomber crashed about 9:30 a.m. near Broadus, said Col. Kevin Kennedy, commander of the 28th Bomb Wing. He said they were taken by ambulance and air to two South Dakota hospitals, but none of them suffered life-threatening injuries. Aerial photos of the c...
BOZEMAN (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court is making decisions that should be left to Congress or the people, from wiretapping to "inventing" new classes of minorities, Justice Antonin Scalia said Monday. In an apparent reference to the court's recent decisions on gay marriage and benefits for same-sex couples, Scalia said it is not the function of the courts to create exceptions outside the Constitution unless a majority of people agree with them. "It's not up to the courts to invent new minorities that get special p...
HELENA — More than two years after an audit that showed nearly a quarter of the sexual and violent offenders were unaccounted for on the state registry things have improved — but the whereabouts for about one in eight are still unverified despite increased focus and campaign promises. The Associated Press analyzed a copy of the registry database, received in a public records request. It found that about 13 percent of the 5,432 offenders on the registry as of early August were past due with their address verification, com...
BILLINGS (AP) — Police in Billings have arrested a man in connection with two home-invasion robberies in which three elderly women were assaulted, including two nuns. Officers say Christopher Pine of Billings is believed to have been involved in the late-night break-ins this week. Pine, 32, was arrested Friday on suspicion of aggravated burglary and robbery, The Billings Gazette (http://bit.ly/19y4bL9) reported. Yellowstone County jail records indicate Pine was being held on $2,000 bond on a motion to revoke a suspended or d...
BILLINGS (AP) — The director of the Crow Tribe's business development department hopes creating a tribal currency will spur tribal members to spend money on the reservation and encourage the creation of more businesses. The tribe is minting copper, silver and gold coins called "scouts" to serve as its sovereign currency, The Billings Gazette (http://bit.ly/13qhIl6) reported Friday. Ceivert LaForge, director of the tribe's LLC Department, has been working on the project since March with Eddie Allen, director of the D...
HELENA (AP) — Planned Parenthood and two other groups have been awarded a combined $738,000 in federal grants to help uninsured Montanans sign up for new subsidized, private coverage under the health care overhaul law. At the same time, the state's insurance commissioner is warning residents to watch out for scammers trying to sell fake insurance or bogus identity cards under the guise of the Affordable Care Act. Planned Parenthood of Montana will receive $295,000 to hire and train "navigators" to tell people their options fo...
LAME DEER (AP) — The unsolved death of a 21-year-old Lame Deer woman on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana last month prompted a rally in which as many as 200 people marched through Lame Deer and demanded justice for victims of unsolved murders on American Indian reservations nationwide. Hanna Harris went missing early on July 4 and her body was found four days later along Muddy Creek, a few miles from where her car had been found. FBI spokeswoman Patricia Speelman said the agency is awaiting t...
SIDNEY (AP) — One of the men accused of killing a Sidney high school teacher has made a deal with prosecutors that would spare him the death penalty in exchange for testifying against his co-defendant. Lester Van Waters Jr., of Colorado, has agreed to plead guilty to deliberate homicide by accountability in the January 2012 slaying of Sidney High School math teacher Sherry Arnold, according to the plea agreement filed in state court Monday. Prosecutors have agreed to drop an attempted kidnapping charge and will recommend a s...
BILLINGS (AP) — Evan Saitta, a rising senior at Princeton who has been digging dinosaur fossils north of Billings for five years, made the history books Thursday. While scanning a series of 150-million-year-old stegosaur fossils at Billings Clinic, he made a breakthrough step in finding a way to differentiate between male and female stegosaurs. The elephant-sized herbivores have two pairs of defensive tail spikes and two rows of plates that run along their spines. At a d...
HELENA (AP) — Advocates say it is too soon to end a temporary increase in government-provided food assistance that's set to expire Nov. 1. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said roughly 130,000 Montanans will see reductions in their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. Advocates estimate an 8 percent reduction in monthly benefits, or about $10 per month out of the average benefit of $124 per person. The increase was originally put in place as part of the federal stimulus efforts. The M...
GREAT FALLS — Seven framed pictures hang on a wall of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Great Falls, each bearing the name of an operation that is part of a major push to root out corruption and theft from federal programs in Montana's Indian Country. The 2-year-old Guardians Project is the only one of its kind in the nation, and it aims to curb the theft of federal money intended for Montana's seven Indian reservations. So far, the project has netted the indictments of 25 people, including six arraigned Thursday on fraud, c...
HELENA, (AP) — A Montana judge has rejected a lawsuit filed by a California food distributor that tried again to abolish the rule requiring that milk sold in Montana to be stamped with a "sell-by" date of 12 days after pasteurization. District Judge Mike Menahan, in a decision handed down Friday, ruled that Core-Mark International had failed to show the rule was either unreasonable or created harm to consumers and competition. The decision also upholds a 2012 finding by the state Board of Livestock to reject Core-Mark's reque...
MISSOULA (AP) — A series of new oil exploration leases on the border of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and Glacier National Park has renewed the anger and motivation of those opposed to energy development along the Rocky Mountain Front. The leases were found last week among records held by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. They include nine lease blocks, two of which include a portion of Chief Mountain — the square-shaped landmark mountain along the eastern border of the national park. "We're still kind of in sho...
HELENA (AP) — U.S. Rep. Steve Daines has a new committee leadership appointment. Daines says he has been appointed vice chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency. The Republican's office said in a release that the panel helps oversee the Department of Homeland Security, and efforts to improve that agency's efficiency and transparency. Daines also serves on the Homeland Security Subcommittees on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, and the House Committees on Natural R...
HELENA (AP) — The state insurance commissioner says Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana is reimbursing customers for erroneous charges. Monica Lindeen said Friday that more than $700,000 has been paid so far after her office discovered the company wrongly charged customers for services listed as free. Customers were being asked to pay a large deductible on some services that had been advertised as not having any co-pay. Lindeen said an investigation spurred by complaints found that Blue Cross had changed its policy w...
HELENA (AP) — An appeals court has dismissed the Fort Belknap tribal government's request to prevent the federal government from recovering millions in overpaid housing subsidies. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development determined it overpaid the central Montana reservation $2.86 million between 2000 and 2010, after earlier findings of overpayments stretching back to 1998. HUD gives Fort Belknap annual grants to subsidize housing units in a lease-to-own program for reservation residents. The payments are s...
GREAT FALLS — Six people who oversaw a Blackfeet program for troubled youth were arraigned Thursday on charges they embezzled from the $9.3 million project and doctored invoices to embellish the tribal contributions needed to keep the federal money flowing. The indictments kept under seal until Thursday include the two former leaders of the Po'Ka Project, director Francis Onstad, 60, and assistant director Delyle "Shanny" Augare, 57. Po'Ka means "child" in the Blackfeet native language Augare is the father of Blackfeet T...
HELENA (AP) — U.S. Sen. Max Baucus says Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will attend his economic development summit next month in Butte. Baucus says Schmidt will help host an online workshop for businesses on Sept. 17, the second day of the meeting. Google experts will help small-business owners create websites. They will also get help with a domain name, web hosting and other Google tools. Baucus' office says most Internet users look online for local products, but most small businesses do not have a website. Other s...
HELENA (AP) — One of the two men accused of kidnapping and killing a Sidney High School teacher wants state prosecutors to turn over information from the personnel files of the law-enforcement officers who investigated the case. In addition, Michael Keith Spell's attorneys want District Judge Richard Simonton to order prosecutors to hand over the criminal histories of co-defendant Lester Van Waters Jr. and a jailhouse informant, any deals prosecutors made with witnesses and any witness testimony given to the grand jury. D...
