FORTINE – Decades ago, John Chase spent his childhood summers in East Glacier Park. While most kids were itching to head for the hills of the national park, one of Chase’s favorite activities during those months away from home was watching passing trains at the Great Northern Railway depot.

Chase can remember the names of the trains that once called on East Glacier Park, like the Empire Builder, the Mail Express and the Oriental Limited, and how he longed to climb aboard and ride the rails.

Candidates spar in Butte

HELENA — The state Fish and Wildlife Commission has adopted guidelines for the agency’s response to illegal fish introductions into Montana waterways.

The commission on Thursday approved the rules that give the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks 30 days to respond to reports of an illegal introduction. Fisheries managers could decide to remove the fish by netting or poison or change fishing regulations.

BILLINGS — More than two dozen newly drilled oil and gas wells with a high pollution risk went uninspected on federal and tribal lands in Montana during a recent three-year period, according to an Associated Press review.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management data examined by The Associated Press show that 25 out of 144 wells in high-priority areas were not inspected between fiscal year 2009 and 2012. That’s equivalent to about 1 in 6 wells that weren’t assessed.

Newspaper takes home 31 awards and 11 first-place plaques

TRACK TODD OGDEN CLASS: Senior SCHOOL: Glacier STATS: Todd won his fourth consecutive Class AA state championship in the javelin with a state-record throw of 210 feet, 10 inches. The list of three-time state champions in Montana history stretches fairly long and features prominent names like David Vidal, Steve Heberly and Jamison Banna. But when […]

A renewed effort from within City Hall is giving downtown Kalispell a chance to reinforce itself as the vibrant, historic center of the community.

City planners and development managers are embarking on a public campaign this month to gather feedback from business owners, residents and other stakeholders about the downtown corridor, an area that stretches south from Center Street to the county courthouse and encompasses a two-block radius west and east of Main Street.

Dubbed “THE Downtown Plan,” the project is taking a similar approach to the well-documented Kalispell Core Area Revitalization Plan, the city’s ambitious redevelopment vision that grew from public input into a popular renewal effort.

GREAT FALLS — A 20-year-old Kalispell man is charged with sexual abuse of children after prosecutors say he talked a 12-year-old Great Falls girl into sending him nude photos and then used them to threaten her.

Michael Selders made an initial appearance in District Court in Great Falls on Thursday. His bond was set at $100,000.

The Great Falls Tribune reports Cascade County sheriff’s detectives obtained access to the girl’s Facebook account while investigating another sex crime. Court records found that Selders exchanged hundreds of messages with the girl in May, including asking her for nude photographs. Prosecutors say he then threatened to post them online if she didn’t do what he wanted.

Charging documents say Selders asked a detective posing as the girl if she could travel to Kalispell.

HELENA — Here is a look at the week’s most interesting and important developments in Montana’s election campaigns.

Whitefish man embarks on 2,711-mile cross-continent bike-packing odyssey to support Flathead Valley Ski Education Foundation

Was I nervous? You bet! In the end of 1949, three feet of new powder snow had fallen overnight at a brand new ski resort called Squaw Valley.

Donner Summit was closed, and for the first time in my life I was pointing my brand new 16MM Bell and Howell camera at the ski school director, Emile Allais. Emile was twice a world champion prior to World War II and had a unique ski technique. I had learned about the French technique during the previous winter when I was teaching the Arlberg technique for Otto Lang in Sun Valley.

The Missoula County coroner has identified the man whose body was pulled from a vehicle in the Clark Fork River as a 71-year-old from Missoula.

Officials recovered Melvin Arthur Beedle’s body Wednesday, a day after a maroon SUV drove off a fast-food parking lot and into the river.

CANNON BALL, N.D. – When Alma Thunder Hawk moved back to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation five decades ago, she, her parents and six relatives had to live in a tent on the North Dakota prairie.

Now, with her government-issued trailer uninhabitable, Thunder Hawk moves from house to house among friends in Cannon Ball, the Native American community of less than 1,000 that President Barack Obama will visit Friday. It’s his first trip to Indian Country as president and only the third such visit by a sitting president in almost 80 years.

Montana will open satellite voting offices on the Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Fort Belknap reservations in October as part of a settlement in a federal voting-rights lawsuit.

The offices will be open twice week for late registration and for voters to cast absentee ballots for the Nov. 4 general elections, the Great Falls Tribune reported.

A representative for Iraq’s top Shiite cleric on Friday urged Iraqis to defend their country as militants who have seized large swaths of the nation’s Sunni heartland captured two towns in an ethnically mixed province northeast of Baghdad.

Neighboring Shiite powerhouse Iran signaled its willingness to confront the growing threat from this week’s militant blitz, which the United Nations estimates has claimed hundreds of lives.