Good morning; on the Beacon today, we report on the case of Byron Nelson, whose wife has kept their son in the Bahamas in what the authorities are considering a case of parental child abduction. The family of NorthWestern Energy gas serviceman Jim Hilton, who was killed in an explosion in Columbia Falls last week, has created a memorial fund thorough Energy Share of Montana. The common-law wife of a Kalispell murder suspect pleaded not guilty to accusations that she was involved in a burglary and evidence tampering connected to the beating death of 49-year-old Wesley Collins. A combination of soil removal and containment should be used to keep asbestos that is still in the ground from reaching the air near two former vermiculite processing areas in Libby, the Environmental Protection Agency said. And a new documentary by MontanaPBS revisits a fateful 1967-night in Glacier National Park when grizzlies killed two visitors.
The state Board of Pardons and Parole has set a May 28 parole revocation hearing for a man who fled the state while on parole for a 1951 murder. Carbon County authorities say two men are dead after a shooting in the town of Bridger in south-central Montana. The June 8 primary election will see Rhoda Cargill and Chas Vincent each seeking the Republican nomination to run in November for the state Senate District 1 seat in Lincoln County. A former congressional aide serving a 10-year sentence for driving drunk and causing a crash that killed one of his friends has asked for a reduced sentence after completing a state boot camp program. At the end of its Monday night meeting, which stretched well into Tuesday morning, Billings City Council members voted 8-2 to temporarily ban new medical-marijuana businesses and freeze the businesses already in place. Montana’s Highway Patrol troopers wrote almost 30 percent fewer citations for drunken driving last year than they did four years ago, a new report shows. Malmstrom Air Force Base will land 48 more civilian employees starting this fall, but most of that increase will come from jobs being converted from private contractors to regular Department of Defense employment.