A 20-year-old Columbia Falls woman has pleaded guilty to felony assault on a minor for injuries suffered by her 1-year-old daughter last December. Samantha French initially denied injuring her daughter, but later told investigators she became angry when the child refused a bottle and she “grabbed her face really hard.” The girl suffered bruising on […]

HELENA — Montana is on pace to issue a record number of oil drilling permits this year while natural gas development has nearly come to a halt, state officials said. The state issued 228 oil permits through June, or one more than it issued in all of last year, the Montana Board of Oil and […]

With the U.S. House of Representatives unlikely to vote on a postal reform bill before August recess, it’s unclear whether comprehensive legislation to address the U.S. Postal Service’s deep financial woes will make it out of Congress this year. Last week, Montana Sen. Max Baucus expressed concern that lack of congressional action could harm rural […]

A Whitefish man recently pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to a methamphetamine distribution charge. Kenneth Daniel Chrestensen, 27, entered his plea in front of U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy on July 19. According to confidential sources in the case, Chrestensen trafficked dozens of pounds of meth from California to Flathead County from the spring […]

Wednesday 7/19 8:22 a.m. Someone drove a forklift into the corner of building at a work site in Columbia Falls. 9:47 a.m. A diabetic in need of sugar, according to another driver, nearly caused 30 accidents at the Olney turnoff. 12:42 p.m. A Lakeside resident accused her neighbor of tearing up her “No Trespassing” sign. […]

In the two years Katie Brady has worked as a shuttle bus driver on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, she has seen a lot of inclement weather on Logan Pass. But nothing can compare to what she saw on Tuesday, July 17, when a series of dramatic mud and rock slides inundated the iconic road through Glacier […]

The Montana Department of Agriculture has announced a temporary closure of Beaver Lake in northwestern Montana to watercraft after finding an invasive weed has grown tall enough to get caught on boats, increasing the chance it could spread to other water bodies. The agency on Wednesday announced the closure after learning a patch of Eurasian […]

HELENA – Backers of pro-marijuana and anti-abortion measures in Montana have failed to get enough signatures to get the proposed constitutional initiatives on the November ballot, organizers said. Lee Newspapers of Montana reports that Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch also said backers of the two measures didn’t appear to have enough signatures by the […]

HELENA – The latest campaign finance report for U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg shows he continues to receive a significant number of donations to his U.S. Senate campaign from people whose occupations were not disclosed. Rehberg, a Republican, is challenging Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, and has criticized the incumbent for accepting donations from lobbyists. However, an […]

If you asked me what my most memorable birthday was, I would have to say it was my sweet 16. Not because I got a car, nor was it because I had a huge party. It was because that was the day I was given “The Ham Pan.” You’re probably wondering what’s so special about […]

By John Fuller My atheist friends often ask me how can I “accept on faith” such things as the existence of God, Christ’s atonement for my sins and other canons that are the foundation of religion. But when I ask them about their beliefs regarding “global warming” or now that the planet might actually be […]

For decades, the Kootenai has been caught in a tug-of-war between factions wishing to set the future of this lush and productive piece of national forest. The good news is, some of those folks – including loggers, timber mills, local communities, and conservationists – have realized they can get further when they pull together, instead […]

Up on a hillside west of Kalispell sits a piece of land where dragonflies and hummingbirds thrive, flowers of all shapes and colors work in harmony to create living art and exotic swans paddle around in the summer sunshine. Breezes flow up from Foys lake, cooling the grounds at the Bibler Gardens, counteracting the heavy […]

Congressman Denny Rehberg is doing a lot of chest-thumping about how he’s in the fight to repeal Obamacare. While thousands of Montanans suffer without access to affordable health care and health insurance, he and the GOP are using words like “socialism” and “unprecedented” to alarm their base. What they call socialism is actually similar to […]

It’s not fair to say Tim Fain merely plays the violin. A more accurate portrayal would be that Fain pulls out the potential lying dormant in the instrument – the classic and the contemporary, the sweet and the aggressive. He’s an accomplished musician, who has worked with well-known artists; American composer Philip Glass wrote a […]