Good morning; on the Beacon today, we wonder who is keeping track of high school athletic records, and the answer is no one. In a midterm election characterized by palpable partisan divides in some areas of the Flathead Valley, the race for House District 9 has largely been a quiet one. In a business community hit hard by the recession, several local manufacturing companies are seeing diversification and expansion efforts pay off. Whitefish edged Fergus to claim its fourth straight Class A girls cross country title, while the boys just missed out on a title of their own.
Grizzly bear numbers in the three-state region in and around Yellowstone National Park have hit their highest level in decades. Helena tea party activists angry over the way a former president was ousted from the Big Sky Tea Party over anti-gay rhetoric said they are forming their own group. A Montana man who was arrested after DNA linked him to the death of a Spokane woman in 1986 is being investigated in at least three other unsolved slayings. It’s millionaire versus millionaire in the race for Montana’s House seat between Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg and Democrat Dennis McDonald. A midmorning bank robbery in downtown Missoula on Tuesday involved a leisurely suspect who – after allegedly taking cash from a Sterling Savings Bank teller – sat down and ate breakfast at Liquid Planet, called a cab, stopped for smokes and then tipped the driver $5 for the $7.50 ride that delivered him to the DoubleTree Edgewater Hotel. An execution date for a 53-year-old Canadian man on Montana’s death row, Ronald Smith, will be set during a Nov. 3 hearing in Philipsburg. The Montana Democratic Party on Tuesday questioned the appointment of Jake Eaton as the new treasurer of the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee after he was accused of suppressing voter turnout in 2008.