Good morning; on the Beacon today, the Northwest “A” Divisional basketball tournament is on, and we’ve got the best coverage. Stick with our game center for updates. The Whitefish Lady Bulldogs used a tight zone defense and a fourth-quarter offensive run to outlast the fourth-seeded Ronan Maidens in the Northwestern A Divisional tournament. The Ronan Chiefs kicked off the Northwestern A Divisional boys’ tournament with a 56-41 win over the No. 4 Whitefish Bulldogs, led by lights-out shooting from junior Kevin Wroblewski. Officials with the Lincoln County Rural Fire Department say the long-shuttered Stimson Lumber Co. plywood mill in Libby is ablaze. Crews were searching in the Bob Marshall Wilderness for two priority mail bags that might have fallen out of an airplane over the weekend. After more than a year of negotiations, Don K Chevrolet of Whitefish has finalized the purchase of Glacier Subaru in Evergreen.
With tempers flaring, President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans clashed in an extraordinary live-on-TV summit Thursday over the right prescription for the nation’s broken health care system, talking of agreement but holding to long-entrenched positions that leave them far apart. A group of Billings residents with health problems were not impressed. DNA ties a California death row inmate convicted in the killings of seven hikers to the unsolved 1979 slaying of a Montana woman in a San Francisco park, police said. A Missoula city councilwoman has pleaded not guilty to drunken driving. Yellowstone Club founder Tim Blixseth stayed on the attack Thursday as lawyers and accountants debated over who knew what — and when — during the financial collapse of the ultra-exclusive alpine getaway for the rich and famous. Montana is preparing to lease its Otter Creek coal to mine developers for an upfront payment of 15 cents a ton — while recent coal leases in Wyoming have gone for six times that amount. Rum lobbyists seeking Democratic Sen. Max Baucus’ help in a subsidy battle took their case to Montana on Thursday, placing a quarter-page ad in the state’s largest newspaper and contacting journalists about their 40-proof fight. Montana’s mental health community was given a multimillion-dollar boost Wednesday through a settlement agreement between the state and pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly over the marketing and sale of the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.