Good morning and happy birthday George Harrison.
There’s a dusting of snow in the Flathead and a lot of local news this morning. Check out the Beacon’s game center for results from this weekend’s divisional basketball tournament. Ronan won for the boys, and Bigfork won the girls competition. A woman accused of embezzling thousands of dollars from Kalispell’s two high schools made a voluntary court appearance Friday, and was released on her own recognizance. Flathead National Forest officials are drawing up plans to manage what they anticipate will be an extremely active harvest of morel mushrooms this spring in areas that burned last summer. Montana lawmakers are criticizing the funding cuts to Amtrak in President Bush’s budget proposal. At a salmon hatchery in Somers, little has changed in 95 years of doing business. And for a few more days, the paper-cutting art of Shelley Jo Isaak is on display at Ceres Bakery in Kalispell.
Tomorrow a Bush-appointed forest official will go before a judge in Missoula to defend himself against charges that he has skirted the law to keep using a fire retardant that kills fish. In Washington, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., continues to push to re-establish the Amtrak line between Billing and Missoula. And this spring work will begin on the state’s biggest wind farm, 85 miles north of Great Falls.
And finally, in France, the latest viral video has President Nicolas Sarkozy being insulted by a bystander, and replying, “Get lost, dumb a–.” The video is in French, but worth watching just for Sarkozy’s expression as he says it. Happy Monday.