Good morning; on the Beacon today, two state champions, Maddey Frey and Taylor Hart, return to the track for another season at Glacier High. A trial is under way in the case of a Whitefish man charged with scalding a 5-year-old boy in a tub of hot water. Nomad Technologies has landed a contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to send their mobile command centers on disaster-response missions across the nation. High winds Thursday had Kalispell Public Works employees hustling to clean up downed branches and trees around the city. A new cooperative made up of tribal representatives and non-American Indian landowners will take over management Friday of a federal irrigation project covering about 135,000 acres in the Flathead Indian Reservation. And sports columnist Mick Holien turns his sights to the spring football season.
Russian metals company Norilsk Nickel is exploring the sale of its Montana platinum and palladium mines after prices for the precious metals rebounded sharply in recent months. Plans to sell 91,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota were put on hold Thursday until federal land managers study how oilfield activities contribute to climate change. U.S. Sen. Max Baucus is not shying away from his role in health care reform in a new television commercial airing in Montana. A pneumonia outbreak that killed about half the bighorn sheep around Bonner and Rock Creek this winter has left biologists with much to ponder, hunters with fewer opportunities and scavengers with plenty to eat. A 32-year-old medical marijuana patient is facing felony drug charges after a search of his Missoula home turned up 95 pot plants — 89 more than he was allowed to have under state law. Montana’s spring turkey season opens Saturday across the state and runs until May 16. Filing bogus liens from prison against federal judges cost Montana Freeman Daniel E. Petersen more time in federal prison. The gang rape of a Lame Deer woman who was stuffed naked into a car trunk after the attacks brought long prison sentences to two of the men convicted in the case.