Good morning; on the Beacon today, check out Lido’s amazing pics from last weekend’s Pond Skim event at Whitefish Mountain Resort. State champions Maddey Frey and Taylor Hart are back for another season of track and field running for Glacier High. A Ronan man accused of stabbing another man to death in a Ronan bar pleaded no contest Monday to negligent homicide.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer finalized about $40 million in state government budget cuts on Monday — but said he would release several million dollars in local stimulus grants that had become the focus of tense disputes with local officials. Missoula County authorities are investigating after a 911 dispatcher apparently broadcast a false report of an explosion last week as an April Fool’s Day prank. An explosion at a coal mine with a history of safety problems killed 25 workers and at least four others were missing early Tuesday more than a thousand feet underground in the worst U.S. mine disaster since 1984. An estimated 50 people plus some children demonstrated Monday in front of Missoula City Council Chambers against a proposed equality ordinance. Crow Nation Tea Party members blasted their tribal chairman Monday for selling water rights to an Australian company that plans to build an on-reservation, coal-to-liquid fuel refinery. The state’s only secure methamphetamine treatment program for female felons, the Elkhorn Treatment Center at Boulder, will lose only four beds instead of eight in budget cuts this coming year, Gov. Brian Schweitzer announced Monday. And Great Falls Mayor Michael Winters blew up at a Tea Party group that was flying the American flag upside down.