Good morning; on the Beacon today, nearly everybody in Whitefish considers Halloween one of the biggest days of the year for the town, and some stake claim to the holiday as the biggest of all celebrations. More and more gun manufacturing firms are sprouting up in Northwest Montana. Flathead County court officials say they do not expect a new judge to be chosen until early next week in the case against state Sen. Greg Barkus, who faces several charges stemming from an August boat crash that injured all five people aboard. A 62-year-old Kalispell man, Lawrence Sheehan, has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for years-long sexual abuse of his young stepdaughter. A Boston-based investment firm has agreed to pay $1.3 million in restitution to Montana investors for a Ponzi scheme run by an independent broker in Kalispell. Officials say a downed power line near Eureka in northwestern Montana electrocuted more than a dozen animals over a period of months, including a wolf that was “still warm” when it was found earlier this month.
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester told seniors on Wednesday that he may yet support a health care bill that lets people buy into a government insurance plan if they choose — but said he wants to first make sure it works. Some non-Native American bar owners on the Flathead Reservation are defying the statewide smoking ban. A second dead grizzly bear that had its claws removed has been discovered along the Rocky Mountain Front, prompting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to announce a $3,000 reward for information Wednesday. Gov. Brian Schweitzer defended state law in a flap over a software contract through the Department of Public Health and Human Services that will be exporting labor to overseas workers. And the Bozeman Chronicle’s Daniel Person has an interesting story about how the wolf hunt is conflicting with the research of scientists studying the wolf population around Yellowstone.