News you can use
News you can use
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HELENA (AP) — Another candidate Democrats were hoping to recruit for Montana's open Senate seat said Tuesday she won't be running for the office. Stephanie Schriock, who helped run U.S. Sen. Jon Tester's 2006 campaign and is currently president of the Washington, D.C.-based group Emily's List, said she considered the idea, but ultimately rejected it. Some Democrats had been touting her as a skilled fundraiser capable of taking on a big race and hoped she would step into fill a void. "Montana raised me, and it will always b... Full story
MISSOULA (AP) — The police chief is turning over the handling of daily operations to his assistant chief so he can focus on Missoula's response to a federal investigation over how his department handled reports of rape and sexual violence. The U.S. Department of Justice DOJ investigation, released in May, found some investigative practices by Missoula police made it more difficult to uncover the truth and discouraged women from cooperating. A city agreement with federal agency requires the Police Department to better i... Full story
ANACONDA — A Washington state man pleaded not guilty Wednesday to beating and stabbing to death his 3-year-old son in a southwestern Montana field this month after taking him from their Lacey, Wash., home. Jeremy Brent Cramer, 38, was arraigned in District Court in Anaconda, about five miles from where Broderick Cramer's body was found July 9 next to a knife and two rocks covered with blood and hair. The 38-year-old Cramer, wearing a black-and-white striped jumpsuit and o... Full story
HELENA (AP) — A U.S. Senate subcommittee is again taking up bills from U.S. Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester that deal with federal land protections in Montana. Tester told the Public Lands, Forests, and Mining Subcommittee Tuesday that it is time to pass his bill that aims to both mandate more logging and expand wilderness area. The measure was first introduced in 2009 and is billed as a compromise between timber mills and environmentalists. It stalled last year amid partisan differences accentuated by his heated r... Full story
BILLINGS — A Richland County prosecutor is asking a judge to accept a confession from an illiterate man charged in the killing of a high school teacher. Defense attorneys have sought to suppress Michael Keith Spell's alleged confession to the 2012 murder of 43-year-old Sherry Arnold of Sidney. Deputy Richland County Attorney T.R. Halvorson said in court papers filed Friday that there was no evidence of police misconduct during interviews with Spell after his arrest. Halvorson says officers made sure Spell understood he did n... Full story
Gov. Steve Bullock made a surprise visit to Afghanistan Wednesday to meet with Montana troops in his first trip overseas since taking office in January. The Democratic governor was in Kabul as part of a delegation that included Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. The two-day trip to Afghanistan includes meeting members of the Montana National Guard's 495th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion operating in the country's southwestern sector. Tuesday, Bullock was in Kuwait to visit... Full story
BANNACK (AP) — Flash-flood damage at Bannack State Park will keep the southwestern Montana ghost town closed to tourists for at least a month, state officials said. Lt. Gov. John Walsh and State Parks Administrator Chas Van Genderen toured the site Monday to survey damage caused by the July 17 flooding. About 80 percent of the town's buildings were damaged by hail, mud and water. The Assay Office was destroyed, boardwalks were torn out, and last weekend's annual Bannack D... Full story
MISSOULA (AP) — The lightning-strike victims lay inert on a Glacier National Park trail late last Wednesday afternoon. "I was a little freaked out," Steven Keith recounted Monday of the scene on St. Mary Falls Trail. "I've never seen a dead body myself, other than in a casket." But while a woman he knows only as Beth began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation to Travis Heitman of Kalispell, Keith mustered up recollections of his last CPR brush-up a couple of years ago and went to work on Kensey Leishman, a Missoula n... Full story
GREAT FALLS (AP) — The Cascade County health department and the owners of several casinos in Great Falls are in a battle over a workaround the casino owners believe allows their customers to gamble while smoking. Brothers Doug and K.C. Palagi and their attorney and business partner Gregory Smith filed a lawsuit against the Cascade City-County Board of Health after they were threatened with a misdemeanor citation alleging their smoking shelters violated Montana's Clean Indoor Air Act, the Great Falls Tribune reported Sunday. T... Full story
HELENA (AP) — Montana's pension funds have returned to their pre-recession market value. The state Board of Investments learned Thursday that the state's nine pension funds posted a net gain of just over 13 percent for the fiscal year ending June 30, and now have a total value of $8.54 billion. The funds were valued at $8.5 billion in October 2007, before losing a quarter of their value in the 2008 financial meltdown. Board of Investments Executive Director David Ewer tells Lee Newspapers of Montana that the funds b... Full story
HELENA (AP) — The Democratic Party can still win the Senate seat being vacated by Max Baucus, but it's going to take a lot more work now that former Gov. Brian Schweitzer isn't running, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester said Friday. Schweitzer was the Democrats' best chance of winning the 2014 election, but there are good potential candidates in the state Legislature, administration and the private sector who can the 2014 election if they're willing to do the work, Tester said. Losing Baucus' seat to a Republican candidate would make i... Full story
HELENA — A foundation run by a New York private equity firm pledged $2 million Friday to help pair young entrepreneurs at the University of Montana and Montana State University with businesses that can help get their ideas off the ground. Blackstone Group president Tony James announced Montana as the fifth state with a Blackstone LaunchPad program, a $50 million initiative that aims to encourage entrepreneurship across the nation. "I think entrepreneurship is absolutely the core of the American character," James told a p... Full story
BOZEMAN — The state Board of Regents has voted to broaden the university system's anti-discrimination policy to require campuses to ensure there's no discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Board members voted 4-0 in a conference call Monday to add the new wording. The policy previously prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, creed, political ideas, sex, age, marital status, physical or mental disability, national origin or ancestry. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports seven of the s... Full story
HELENA (AP) — Gov. Steve Bullock said Tuesday that he would like to work on improving schools in a number of ways. The governor discussed a laundry list of broad ideas at a meeting of the Board of Education, which includes leaders of both the college and K-12 systems. Bullock says his administration helped increase education funding, backed a college tuition freeze, and made other improvements during his first legislative session. He plans other ways to improve schools. "From my perspective, public education is one of the g... Full story
KALISPELL (AP) — Blackfeet authorities have arrested a tribal member who has been critical of the tribe's governing council, accusing him of violating a law that protects council members from threats, slanderous material or misleading information. Relatives of Bryon Scott Farmer say the Great Falls man was arrested Friday while attending a family gathering in Browning for doing nothing more than expressing himself. "I felt violated by what the police did," Farmer's aunt, Carol Grant, told the Flathead Beacon (... Full story
HELENA (AP) — A civil-rights organization filed a new lawsuit against the state Monday on behalf of seven gay couples in an attempt to win for them the same benefits that married couples receive in Montana. The American Civil Liberties Union of Montana filed its amended complaint after the state Supreme Court rejected its first lawsuit in December for being too broad and not identifying specific laws that are discriminatory. In the amended lawsuit, attorney James Goetz identifies numerous statutes, including laws he says p... Full story
GREAT FALLS (AP) — Six members of a northern Montana Hutterite colony have pleaded not guilty to possessing two illegally killed grizzly bears. Pondera colony minister Leonard Kleinsasser and five other members entered their pleas Tuesday during an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Great Falls. Federal prosecutors charged the colony members in June after investigators found the bears buried on the Hutterites' land. Kleinsasser told a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent that colony members were chasing the p... Full story
GREAT FALLS (AP) — State Sen. Shannon Augare has pleaded not guilty to DUI, reckless driving and obstructing an officer. The Browning Democrat and Blackfeet tribal leader appeared Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Great Falls. He is accused of fleeing a Glacier County sheriff's deputy who pulled him over for erratic driving May 26 on the Blackfeet reservation. Prosecutors say Augare told the deputy he had no jurisdiction to arrest him and then sped away when the deputy attempted to take his keys. The sheriff's office t... Full story
HELENA — Another top potential Democratic candidate is rejecting a run for Montana's open U.S. Senate seat. Insurance commissioner Monica Lindeen said in a release Tuesday that she doesn't want to leave Montana and will stay in her current job. Democrats are scrambling to find a candidate after former Gov. Brian Schweitzer announced Saturday that he would run and had no interest in serving in the Senate. Lindeen has twice won statewide elected office and was considered a top option for Democrats. Superintendent of Public I...
HELENA (AP) — Brian Schweitzer's surprise announcement that he won't run for the U.S. Senate dealt a big setback to Democratic plans to retain Max Baucus' seat. However, party officials said Monday they still believe they are in a strong position to hold the seat even without the former governor. Attention shifted to Insurance Commissioner Monica Lindeen and Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau and others. Lindeen said Monday that she would like to make a decision before Labor Day. Other names being c... Full story
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Montana prison officials revised lethal-injection procedures after a judge ruled the previous methods were unconstitutional, but a civil rights organization and attorneys for a death row inmate say the changes still put condemned prisoners at risk of unnecessary suffering. The ACLU, which filed its lawsuit in 2008 on behalf of inmate Ronald Allen Smith, said Monday the changes still fall short of protecting the rights of people sentenced to death. "This new policy, written by Department of Corrections' s... Full story
GREAT FALLS (AP) — Federal wildlife officials say a bear mauled a woman who was hiking north of Duck Lake on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator Chris Servheen says that the woman told Blackfeet tribal wildlife authorities that the bear was a grizzly, but that hasn't been confirmed. Servheen says tribal officials told him the woman was hiking with dogs late last week when they came upon a horse carcass that the bear was likely defending. The Great Falls Tribune r... Full story
EKALAKA (AP) — One of the 19 firefighters killed by a wildfire in Arizona has been buried in a cemetery in the tiny eastern Montana town where he spent most of his childhood. The Billings Gazette reports (http://bit.ly/1aEZ4ZI) that more than 1,800 mourners attended the funeral Saturday of 24-year-old Dustin DeFord. He was one of the members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots killed when a windblown wildfire overcame them in Yarnell, about 60 miles north of Phoenix, on June 30. DeFord was remembered for his desire to join an e... Full story
HELENA (AP) — The ousted president of Montana's Northern Cheyenne tribe says he will show up at a tribal council hearing Monday to challenge its decision to remove him from office while he was in a Billings hospital having surgery. John Robinson was released from the Billings Clinic on Thursday after an emergency appendectomy, only to find that he had been voted out over his move to fire the head of a center for neglected and abused children who had been accused of child abuse. Robinson was taken to the hospital by ambulance... Full story
BILLINGS (AP) — A 28-year-old Billings man faces two DUI charges for two incidents that damaged two vehicles in less than three hours. The Montana Highway Patrol says Christopher Iron was booked into the Yellowstone County jail Wednesday morning on two counts of DUI and felony theft. Investigators believe Iron was intoxicated when the car he was driving crashed into a light pole in front of Lockwood School shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday. The driver left before officers arrived. Officers believe Iron was still intoxicated at a... Full story
