HELENA — Carroll College running back Chance Demarais has been named the NAIA Player of the Year. The 6-foot, 227 pound junior from Malta was honored at a banquet in Rome, Ga., on Friday night. The nation’s No. 1 running back has 312 carries for 1,748 yards and 19 touchdowns on the ground this season, […]

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Saturday to temporarily avert a Jan. 1 payroll tax increase and benefit cutoff for the long-time unemployed, but forcing a reluctant President Barack Obama to make an election-year choice between unions and environmentalists over whether to build an oil pipeline through the heart of the country. With the still-reeling economy […]

A third-party presidential candidate is likely in 2012, introducing considerable uncertainty into the battle to win control of Congress, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg says. “There is going to be a third-party candidate,” Mr. Greenberg said Friday at a Monitor-hosted breakfast for reporters. Greenberg, who served as President Bill Clinton’s pollster, also has worked with international […]

Just days after hundreds of wreaths were placed on veterans’ graves at a cemetery north of Kalispell, about 170 of them were stolen. The wreaths were placed at Glacier Memorial Gardens on Saturday by members of the Flathead Composite Squadron MT053 of the U.S. Civil Air Patrol as part of a national Wreaths Across America […]

Kalispell city officials have agreed to terms with the retiring city attorney in Helena to fill in as interim city manager starting Jan. 1, 2012. Pending city council approval, David L. Nielsen will take over as the temporary chief administrative officer for Kalispell after Jane Howington vacates the position Dec. 31. “My goal is to […]

DENVER — U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell has signed off on a new approach for dropping retardant on wildfires from the air. Last year, a federal judge in Montana gave the Forest Service until the end of 2011 to do a tougher environmental review of how toxic retardant affects water, plants and wildlife. The […]

When putting together a musical production, veteran performers Luke Walrath and Betsi Morrison are used to planning for contingencies. The list of “what ifs” for this year’s Yuletide Affair concert includes a first for the couple: the arrival of their twin babies. For Walrath and Morrison, the executive director and artistic director of Alpine Theatre […]

HELENA — Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock says nearly 11,000 alcohol breath tests have so far been conducted in the state’s new drunk driving enforcement program. The 24/7 Sobriety Program forces repeat DUI offenders to undergo daily alcohol tests at their own expense. It went into place Oct. 1. Bullock says that more than 99 […]

Monday 12/12 10:00 a.m. The window of someone’s vehicle was smashed while parked outside of a Marion bar. 10:03 a.m. A woman on Vonderhide Lane claimed that stray dogs were running her neighborhood. 12:53 p.m. A woman on Sulky Lane complained that a white dog and a brown dog had been in her yard two […]

It is unfortunate when laurels are awarded posthumously when they mean so much to the living. But sometimes it takes a person’s death for people to realize how much someone accomplished or what that person meant to a community or team. That was the case with the recent selection of Chicago Cub third baseman and […]

A contractor accused of swindling homeowners and former employees in multiple states across the West, including Montana, was found guilty by a jury Dec. 9 on three felony counts of wire fraud in U.S. District Court in Missoula. John Robert Mulinski, 50, a resident of Covington, Wash., faces possible penalties of 20 years in prison, […]

Basketball season is underway for our local high school teams and it’s shaping up to be an exciting few months of action. The last time Kalispell had a Class AA state champion basketball team was 10 years ago. The Flathead Bravettes repeated as state champs with a five-point victory over Billings West on Dec. 1, […]

The future of the Keystone XL pipeline is still uncertain at the federal level, but from Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s perspective, the issue has been all but cleared up at the state level. Schweitzer announced Thursday that TransCanada, Keystone XL’s owner, has fulfilled its obligations under Montana’s Major Facility Siting Act (MFSA). Within the next […]

I read with interest Tom Crimmins’ guest column (Nov. 16 Beacon: “Release Inventoried Roadless Lands”) and would like to commend him for 32 years of service with the U.S. government (Forest Service). But he has several opinions that are unsettling to me. The Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE) and RARE II were good for […]