Good morning; on the Beacon today, contractors in Montana are coping with a steep increase in lumber prices. Toni Wells of Kalispell has led an extraordinary life that has included 70 years of volunteer service for the Red Cross. A drifter charged with trying to steal foreclosed houses in Polson has been found competent to stand trial. And Wild Bill decides a proposed Forest Service plan to allow ATV’s and bicyclists to share a certain trail foolhardy.
Several Dawson County area landowners expressed concern at a public hearing in Glendive on Wednesday about a proposal to build a pipeline through eastern Montana that would move crude extracted from Canada’s oil sands to refineries in the United States. Homeland Security and Pentagon officials are at loggerheads over a plan to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, even as President Barack Obama is pledging to bolster security there. Dazed and confused. The biggest primary night of the season has the two parties struggling to figure out their next steps in an increasingly volatile election year. One day after six Bigfork golfers were disqualified from the State B tournament for violating a practice rule, the coach and an administrator from the school were left wondering if the penalty was a bit excessive. Leaders of Custer Country, the tax-funded tourism promotion group that includes Billings, broke state contracting laws and later lied about it to their own board members and a state investigator, a Montana Department of Justice probe has concluded. A Roosevelt County sheriff’s deputy is recovering at home two weeks after he broke both his arms during a training session in which he was zapped by a stun gun. The 16-member crew with the Volga-Dnepr Group and its massive jet — once the largest in the world — crossed the North Pole on Tuesday during a nonstop flight from Siberia to Helena. Nursing home operators from across Montana urged the Schweitzer administration Wednesday to reconsider a budget cut that freezes payments to homes for Medicaid-funded patients, saying it will make it increasingly difficult to provide quality care.