Good morning; on the Beacon today, retiring Plum Creek executive Hank Ricklefs, along with his replacement, Tom Ray, who is being promoted from his current post as vice president of Montana operations, believe they see the light at the end of the tunnel, and that Plum Creek’s Montana operations are poised to capitalize on the gradual economic recovery underway. The effects of an international mining and drilling ban in the Upper Flathead Valley are beginning to ripple on local and federal levels, with new limits on gravel extraction and production in the North Fork of the Flathead River and proposed legislation in Congress. Four people including two young children have been killed in a head-on crash on U.S. Highway 2 near Libby. Flathead County is offering a dust-abatement program to rural residents, with a March 26 deadline to sign up. Police say the frozen body of a man found in a snowbank near the northwestern Montana town of Essex appears to have been their for months. Located about 90 minutes southwest of Kalispell, the tiny community of Hot Springs is a pretty great day trip for anyone feeling truly chilled to the bone by winter. And Kitchen Guy Chef Jim Gray writes about how solo diners should be treated by restaurant staff.
The Obama administration could support the logging mandate proposed in U.S. Sen. Jon Tester’s forest bill as a pilot project, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. In private pitches to Democrats, President Barack Obama says he will persuade Congress to pass his health care overhaul even if it kills him and even if he has to ask deeply distrustful lawmakers to trust him on a promise the White House doesn’t have the power to keep. A three-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a challenge by a Montana death-row inmate who sought to have his sentence changed due to ineffective counsel. The city of Missoula will submit an application to be one of Google’s test sites for “ultra-high-speed” Internet connections.