Cocaine and methamphetamine seizures in Montana increased sharply during the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same period last year, while fentanyl seizures continued a downward trend, Attorney General Austin Knudsen announced. “Fentanyl and other dangerous drugs continue to threaten communities, and the battle against the cartels that are bringing them into our state Read More…
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum joined Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon and Idaho Gov. Brad Little in Big Sky on Tuesday to announce a proposed federal rule that would give Western states significantly more flexibility to manage grizzly bears — the first major management reform since the species was listed as threatened under Read More…
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador joined a bipartisan coalition of 49 attorneys general in calling on the Federal Communications Commission to strengthen rules that would cut off scammers’ access to legitimate telephone numbers, the latest step in a years-long multistate effort to combat illegal robocalls. “Idahoans are tired of scammers swindling their families and flooding Read More…
A former general in Afghanistan’s Border Force and first deputy speaker of the Afghan National Assembly’s House of the People has been extradited to the United States and charged with conspiring to import hundreds of kilograms of heroin and methamphetamine and provide an arsenal of military-grade weapons to a drug trafficking organization. Abdul Zahir Qadeer, Read More…
JAMESTOWN, N.D.—Economic development officials are looking at the newly announced Opportunity Zones as a chance for people to invest in local communities and shelter some income from capital gains tax. Gov. Doug Burgum announced Friday, April 20, the designation of 25 zones in 15 counties in North Dakota. The Opportunity Zone program was part of Read More…
BAGGS — Carbon County Future Farmers of America chapters proved during the state convention hosted in Cheyenne last week that community impact has more to do with involvement than numbers. About one-third of the size of other chapters across the state, Little Snake River Valley FFA earned Wyoming’s Chapter of the Year and Growing Leaders Read More…
As the flatland flooding around northcentral Montana begins to recede, counties, road departments and ag producers are assessing the toll. At this point the basic assessment is that spring seeding is about a month behind where it should be at this point, and it could be two or three weeks before the ground dries out Read More…
Seth Bodnar, who took the reins as president of the University of Montana in January, sees a world that increasingly values people with diverse, interdisciplinary educations and employment capabilities. His own experience speaks to this assessment: graduate of West Point, “a liberal arts college with a bunch of military training;” Rhodes and Truman scholar who Read More…
Missoula City Councilman Jesse Ramos wants to see how much a private attorney is receiving in compensation for work on the Mountain Water Condemnation lawsuit, but says he has been blocked from seeing the information by city officials. Missoula Attorney Quentin Rhoades explains. “The Mayor, the city attorney, and apparently the private attorney who has Read More…
BILLINGS – In the summer, the field behind the Yellowstone Boys and Girls Ranch is full of fruit. “We had such a huge, I mean huge, amount of fruit last year,” said Jim Klempel, a teacher at YBGR. “Monday mornings we’d start at 6 in the morning and we’d pick all day.” That fruit is Read More…
Sheridan Head Start kids need a new place to go, and if they don’t find a place soon, the program could end for them. Parents say Sheridan needs this program and if they don’t have it, preparation for kindergarten may greatly decline. Sheridan parents and teachers rallied together to save the local head start program. Read More…
CHEYENNE – When Matt Mead was elected to serve as Wyoming’s 32nd governor, his life wasn’t the only one that changed. After Nov. 2, 2010, the lives of his wife, daughter and son were all altered as well. “I remember right after the general election, when Matt had won, then the next morning I woke Read More…
Montana Attorney General Tim Fox is praising his doctor and advocating for cancer screenings after he was diagnosed with colon cancer last month. According to Fox, he went his doctor with symptoms of fatigue and back pain. “[My doctor] recommended some blood tests and asked if I ever had a colonoscopy,” Fox said. “I told Read More…
MISSOULA – It will take a combination of “cuts and curriculum” if the University of Montana is going to solve its on-going budget issues. And UM President Seth Bodnar says that’s going to take some “hard decisions”. Everyone on campus has known this day was coming, as the administration grapples with a way to not Read More…
(HELENA) Paul Jenkins and Freddie Lawrence, convicted for the 1994 murder of Donna Meagher and a robbery, have been ordered to be released from prison. The order freeing Jenkins and Lawrence comes just days after Lewis & Clark County District Judge Kathy Seeley overturned their convictions and ordered a new trial. In her ruling, Judge Read More…
The allegations were shocking: an Army major and his wife accused of abusing their three young foster children through beatings, denial of food and water and forcing them to eat hot pepper flakes as punishment. When John and Carolyn Jackson were convicted of child endangerment in 2015, prosecutors received another shock when the trial judge, Read More…
NEW YORK — The man killed in a blaze at New York City’s Trump Tower was an art collector who spent time with Andy Warhol, but fell on hard financial times in recent years and went through bankruptcy proceedings. Todd Brassner, 67, died on Saturday at a hospital after a fire tore through his 50th-floor Read More…
An independent nonprofit research group says Montana is losing its open space. Headwaters Economics analyzed home construction for the state and laid out the numbers from county to county from 1990 to 2016 in a study titled Montana Losing Open Space. During that period, the study said the number of single-family homes in the state Read More…
CHEYENNE – A Trombone Shorty show isn’t really a place to sit still. The New Orleans phenom floods the room with an ecstatic blend of jazz, hip hop and funk – a portable Bourbon Street party. And that’s what Amy Spieker, 31, had come to the Cheyenne Civic Center excited for Jan. 27 after her Read More…
The number of grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is estimated to be up from the 2016 count. The report from the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study team was delivered in Cody Wednesday. In 2017, the first year that Yellowstone area grizzlies were removed from the endangered species list, scientists estimate there were 718 grizzlies in Read More…
In 2016, students from the Natural History Museum at Kansas University found a relatively small dinosaur pelvis in the Hell Creek formation in Montana. It was the end of their dig season and they didn’t have the time to unearth the rest of the remains. But the fossil was worth the wait; when they returned Read More…
U.S. consumer sentiment slipped slightly at the end of March, after shooting up in the mid-month preliminary report, but still recorded its highest level since 2004. The University of Michigan’s report showed consumer attitudes about the economy inched down to a reading of 101.4 at the end of March. Reuters economists expected the reading to Read More…
A science room at Jackson Hole Middle School is scheduled for a summer makeover, thanks to a $67,000 grant. Teton County School District No. 1’s middle school has been announced as one of 16 recipients of the Steelcase Education’s Active Learning Center Grant program, which “supports active learning strategies by installing a learning space with Read More…
The future of Powder River Basin coal lies overseas, something EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt stressed during a Thursday morning visit to the heart of Wyoming coal country. As the guest of U.S. Sens. Mike Enzi and John Barrasso, both Wyoming Republicans, Pruitt toured Arch Coal’s Black Thunder mine south of Wright, the second-largest producing thermal Read More…
The Montana Supreme Court ruled this week the Southwest Montana Building Industry Association must return $200,000 to the city left over from an old lawsuit settlement around impact fees. The March 27 ruling upholds an order made in Gallatin County District Court. “We’re disappointed,” said SWMBIA attorney Art Wittich. “That money was supposed to be Read More…
A rumbling fleet of snowplows and excavators began the daunting task of clearing Glacier National Park’s roads last week, forging through a winter’s worth of snow and heralding springtime in Northwest Montana as the park prepares its iconic Going-to-the-Sun Road for the summer frenzy. On the east side, crews are plowing the Two Medicine Road Read More…
Since 2017, the Montana Veterans Meat Locker has distributed over 8,000 pounds of meat to over 600 veterans and their families. This is a non-employed, all-volunteer organization so our only cost is the processing fees,” said Chris Grudzinski, founder of Veterans Meat Locker. “We have great ranchers and farmers and hunters who have donated these Read More…
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaked away from California early Friday, boosting the fifth set of 10 Iridium NEXT relay stations into orbit, the latest step in the satellite telephone provider’s push to complete a globe-spanning constellation of next-generation spacecraft. Perched atop pad 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base northwest of Los Angeles, the Falcon Read More…
Denise Juneau is one of three finalists to be the next superintendent of schools in Seattle. There are some 53,000 students in the Seattle schools, and this number includes Huchoosedah, the school district’s Indian education program, designed to close opportunity gaps and deliver excellence to every student. Juneau, a citizen of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Read More…
The sale of Avista Corp. to a Canadian utility passed a major milestone Tuesday when the parties outlined conditions in a proposed agreement with Washington regulators. After the $5.3 billion sale, Avista would operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hydro One Ltd. of Toronto. Hydro One has agreed to keep Avista’s headquarters in Spokane, retain Read More…
HELENA – A Lewis & Clark County District Court Judge says author Jon Krakauer should be given access to university documents concerning a high-profile rape case on the University of Montana campus five years ago. However, the judge ruled that Krakauer will only receive a redacted version of those documents, protecting the identity of the Read More…
DOUGLAS — Even after the Wyoming Legislature agreed to make major changes to the Wyoming State Fair and basically restore its funding levels, the 2018 fair this August has been cut down to four days to save money. Citing a reduced current budget (which ends in June) and having to make decisions based on the Read More…
Workers in Idaho are leading the nation in earnings growth, thanks in part to a buoyant job market and pockets of labor shortages that are putting upward pressure on wages. In 2017, Idaho workers boasted a 5.3% increase in earnings—mostly comprised of annual wages and salaries—compared with the 2016 calendar year, according to the Commerce Read More…
Just more than a week after tiny Los Alamitos voted to defy California’s law protecting immigrants in the country illegally, Orange County is poised to become a counterpoint against the state’s resistance to the Trump administration’s policies. On Tuesday, Orange County supervisors may consider whether to take up a resolution to condemn and possibly take Read More…
Whitefish Mountain Resort broke its record for skier visits in a single season on Sunday, nearly two weeks before the season ends. Resort officials estimate skier visits so far this year will eclipse 350,000 before this weekend. The previous record of 346,859 total skier visits was set last season. Resort spokeswoman Riley Polumbus said these Read More…
GREAT FALLS – A federal judge has put the brakes on coal expansion in the Powder River Basin, ruling that the federal government must find an alternative to a plan that could have opened 15 million acres for development. U.S. District Judge Brian Morris of Great Falls ruled Friday that the Bureau of Land Management Read More…
BOZEMAN, Mont. — Former New York Giants linebacker and Montana State star Corey Widmer has declined his nomination to the Montana Football Hall of Fame, saying the sport “destroyed my life.” Widmer said after numerous concussions he fears he suffers from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease. He has depression and memory problems, suffers Read More…
Helena Public Schools leaders called Wednesday a day to remember, as they kicked off the district’s biggest building project in decades. They held groundbreaking ceremonies for three new school buildings, at Bryant, Central and Jim Darcy Elementary. The new construction was made possible by a $63 million bond, approved by district voters last year. “This Read More…
While not definitively saying yes, Mark Zuckerberg says he’s “open” to testifying before members of Congress regarding Facebook’s recent privacy scandal involving Cambridge Analytica. The data firm, which worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign before the 2016 election, is now embroiled in an ongoing controversy about how it collected user data from the social networking Read More…
Pondera County Sheriff Carl Suta has agreed to resign from his position, following months of legal battles. Two misdemeanor charges against Suta were resolved without trial recently. On Friday, March 16, Suta pleaded no contest to one charge of partner/family member assault, and also agreed to a deferred prosecution on a charge of official misconduct. Read More…
MISSOULA–University of Montana president Seth Bodnar says he’s restructuring the university’s administration to put a greater emphasis on enrollment and student success. Bodnar said Monday he plans to combine the communications, admissions and financial aid offices. Communications director Paul Short will oversee the combined office until a vice president of communications, outreach and enrollment is Read More…
Landowners east of Cheyenne say a major oil and gas firm is developing a monopoly in their county, and they have asked state regulators to put a stop to it by denying thousands of permits to drill proposed by Anadarko Petroleum. Anadarko tried to have the protests dismissed by the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Read More…
On Wednesday, many Missoula County Departments will be discussing the impact of recent budget cuts on their ability to serve the public. County Attorney Kirsten Pabst says she will be discussing at least two major set-backs. “Our trial expenses, the program that used to reimburse us for expert witnesses, transcripts, witness fees and things like Read More…
The Forest Service will be receiving a property tax bill from Mineral County this year. County Commissioners Laurie Johnston, Roman Zylawy and Duane Simons signed the letter March 9 requesting property tax revenue for 2017. The “historic letter” as defined by Rep. Denley Loge, describes the plight Mineral County is facing as options to fund Read More…