News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 731 - 755 of 2820
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...
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...
GREAT FALLS (AP) — Six people who oversaw a Blackfeet program for troubled youth have been arraigned on charges they embezzled money from the $9.3 million project. They also are accused of doctoring invoices to embellish the tribal contributions needed to keep the federal money flowing to the now-defunct Po'Ka Project. The indictments kept under seal until Thursday include former program leaders Francis Onstad and Delyle "Shanny" Augare. They appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Keith Strong in Great Falls along with Gary C...
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) — A civil-rights group is arguing that the Wolf Point School District is arranged to favor white voters in a predominantly Native American area. The American Civil Liberties Union of Montana filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday arguing the districts are apportioned to give a predominantly white district greater say on the school board than American Indian residents. The ACLU argues it is an unconstitutional violation of the Voting Rights Act. The group is asking a federal judge to force the school board of t...
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...
HELENA (AP) — A judge says a secretive group known for bucking campaign finance laws has to pay the state's attorney fees in one ongoing case. District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock said in an order issued last week that American Tradition Partnership must pay roughly $10,000. Sherlock says he suspects the attorney general's office could have asked for much more given the amount of time spent on the case. Sherlock ruled last year in that case that ATP acted as a political committee in the elections, and not as the educational o...
HELENA (AP) — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has turned over its analysis on the effects of hazing bison back into Yellowstone National Parks on threatened grizzly bears after a conservation group sued for the information. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy dismissed the Alliance for the Wild Rockies' lawsuit on Monday and awarded the alliance $3,531 in attorney fees and costs. Attorney Rebecca Smith of the Public Interest Defense Center filed a complaint on behalf of the conservation group in May asking Molloy to rule t...
HELENA (AP) — Betty Babcock, a backer of the 1972 push to modernize Montana's constitution and the wife of former Montana Gov. Tim Babcock, died in Helena on Sunday. She was 91. Babcock also served as a Republican in the Montana House. Montana Republican Party Chairman Will Deschamps confirmed her death in an email. Babcock was one of 19 female delegates to the 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention where the document was written to replace the 1889 version. Concerns over the older Montana Constitution, including allowances f...
HELENA — A federal investigation is underway into allegations of mismanagement and misspending by the managers of a now-defunct Blackfeet tribal program for troubled youth that received $9.6 million in federal grants over six years. The investigation was prompted by a Blackfeet Tribal Business Council resolution asking federal authorities to look into allegations of the misuse of federal grant money, credit cards, property procured for the program and the direct or in-kind contributions the tribe was supposed to make to t...
BILLINGS (AP) — A former child psychiatrist sent to prison on a federal child pornography conviction wants his medical license back. The Billings Gazette (http://tinyurl.com/lnohyoq) reports Dr. James Peak petitioned the Montana Board of Medical Examiners for reinstatement of his medical license. A decision may come by September. The 51-year-old Peak served nearly 10 months in a federal prison in Washington state after pleading guilty in August 2011 to possessing child pornography. He had been a child and adolescent p...
HELENA (AP) — Gov. Steve Bullock says he still believes it is important that Montana accept federal money to expand Medicaid for the working poor. The Democratic governor said Friday that "everything is on the table" as advocates consider ways to expand Medicaid. Possibilities include a 2014 ballot initiative or a special session of the Legislature. State lawmakers in April rejected plans to use federal money to expand Medicaid to those less than 138 percent of the poverty level. Opponents worried the state could e...
HELENA (AP) — Strong thunderstorms that moved across Montana left a trail of damage to crops and buildings along with downed trees and power outages. The worst damage from Thursday's storm may have occurred in Gallatin County, where winds gusting up to 89 mph devastated wheat and barley crops that likely would have been harvested next week, Montana Grain Growers Vice President Matt Flikkema said. "I've never seen crop damage to the extent we have here in the valley," Flikkema said Friday. "There are very little crops that w...
