Sorted by date Results 1 - 20 of 20
A judge on Monday rejected a request to block a San Jose State women's volleyball team member from playing in a conference tournament on grounds that she is transgender. The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Kato Crews in Denver will allow the player, who has played all season, to compete in the Mountain West Conference women's championship opening this week in Las Vegas. The ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by nine current players against the Mountain West Conference challenging the league's policies for allowing transgender players to...
BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump headed to Montana for a Friday night rally in hopes of ousting the state's Democratic senator, but his plane first had to divert to an airport on the other side of the Rocky Mountains because of a mechanical issue, according to airport staff. Trump's plane was en route to Bozeman, Montana, when it was diverted Friday afternoon to Billings, 142 miles to the east, according to Jenny Mockel, administrative assistant at Billings Logan International Airport. Mockel said the former president was c...
Thirteen popular books have been banned from all public schools in Utah in the first wave of bans expected under a new law that prohibits books when at least three of the state's 41 school district boards claim they contain pornographic or indecent material. Allowing just a few districts to make decisions for the whole state makes the law one of the most lenient for book banning in the United States, according to PEN America, an organization that advocates for free speech and tracks book banning around the U.S. The state school board released...
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A surprise eruption of steam in a Yellowstone National Park geyser basin that sent people scrambling for safety as basketball-sized rocks flew overhead has highlighted a little-known hazard that scientists hope to be able to predict someday. The hydrothermal explosion on Tuesday in Biscuit Basin caused no injuries as dozens of people fled down the boardwalk before the wooden walkway was destroyed. The blast sent rocks, steam, water and dirt high into the air, according to a witness and a scientist who reviewed video f...
The Downtown Aquarium in Denver has a new resident — a rare orange lobster that was rescued from a shipment of crustaceans delivered to a Red Lobster restaurant in Pueblo, Colorado. A long-term employee who is a dishwasher and head biscuit maker spotted the bright orange lobster while unpacking a shipment last Friday and alerted restaurant managers, aquarium officials said. The staff named it Crush after the Denver Broncos' legendary Orange Crush defense from 1976 to 1986. "Myself and many of my team are born and raised Denver Broncos fans, s...
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Ceremonies and celebrations are planned Wednesday near the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park to mark the recent birth of a white buffalo calf in the park, a spiritually significant event for many Native American tribes. A white buffalo calf with a dark nose and eyes was born on June 4 in the the park's Lamar Valley, according to witnesses, fulfilling a prophecy for the Lakota people that portends better times but also signals that more must be done to protect the earth and its animals. "The birth of this calf is b...
SANDY, Utah (AP) — Two backcountry skiers were killed and one was rescued after they were swept up and buried in an avalanche Thursday in the mountains outside of Salt Lake City that occurred after several days of spring snowstorms, authorities said. A rescue team went to the area mid-morning after the avalanche was reported near Lone Peak in the Wasatch Range southeast of Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said. One of the skiers, who was able to dig himself out of the snow, was rescued and taken to a hospital, Rivera s...
The sound of a vehicle backfiring spooked a circus elephant while she was getting a pre-show bath in Butte, Montana, leading the pachyderm to break through a fence and take a brief walk, stopping noontime traffic on the city's busiest street before being loaded back into a trailer. Viola, an Asian elephant with the Jordan World Circus, still participated in two performances Tuesday after her time on the lam in the southwestern Montana city of about 35,000 people that in the late 1800s was the world's largest copper-producing area. Viola was...
DENVER (AP) — Colorado authorities issued an arrest warrant Friday for a former funeral home owner they say kept a deceased woman's body in a hearse for two years at a home where police also found up to 30 cremated remains. The grisly discovery occurred Feb. 6 during a court-ordered eviction of a Denver house rented by 33-year-old Miles Harford, who owned Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Denver police said. It had been closed since September 2022. The discovery is the latest in a string of horrific cases...
Initially unsure of which orangutan was the father of a new baby primate, the Denver Zoo decided to have a little fun with the results and turned to the paternity announcement guru himself: former daytime talk show host Maury Povich. Just as he would do on his long-running show, Povich pulled the purported DNA results for 4-month-old Siska out of an envelope and declared: "Berani. You are the father!" The zoo posted the video on social media this week. Siska, a female who was born on Aug. 27, is the first baby for Eirina, a 15-year-old...
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Social media company TikTok Inc. filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to overturn Montana's first-in-the-nation ban on the video sharing app, arguing the law is an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights and is based on "unfounded speculation" that the Chinese government could access users' data. The lawsuit by TikTok, owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, follows one filed last week by five content creators. They made similar arguments including that the state of Montana has no authority to take action on matters o...
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr asked a court Monday to allow for her return to the House floor after she was silenced and barred for chiding her Republican colleagues over legislation to restrict gender-affirming health care and for encouraging protesters. Attorneys for the first-term lawmaker sued in state district court in Helena on behalf of Zephyr, a transgender Democrat who represents a liberal district in the college town of Missoula, and several constituents who the attorneys said were being denied their right to a...
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A little girl who lost a special teddy bear she'd had since being adopted from an Ethiopian orphanage thought it was gone forever when she forgot it along a trail in Glacier National Park last year. Her parents and family friends still held onto a glimmer of hope. Hope won out. Thanks to a social media plea, the sharp eyes and soft heart of a park ranger and the closure of a hiking trail because of grizzly bear activity on the same day a family friend visited the park, the teddy bear is back in the arms of 6-year-old N...
CHESTER, Mont. (AP) — Trevor Fossen was running late for a wedding Saturday afternoon when he turned onto a dusty, gravel road in rural Montana as a westbound train approached the crossing in front of him. The train never made it to the crossing. The next thing Fossen saw was a wall of dust fill the sky. "I started looking at that, wondering what it was, and then I saw the train had tipped over and derailed," said Fossen, a 29-year-old farmer. It was an Amtrak Empire Builder en route from Chicago to Seattle that had derailed, killing three p...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Postal Service is warning states coast to coast that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted, even if mailed by state deadlines, raising the possibility that millions of voters could be disenfranchised. Voters and lawmakers in several states are also complaining that some curbside mail collection boxes are being removed. Even as President Donald Trump rails against widescale voting by mail, the post office is bracing for an unprecedented number of m...
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — More than 17 years after he slashed the throat of a teenage clerk while robbing a Montana video store, Zachary O'Neill says guilt overcame him and he tried to tell authorities. But it was another three years after he first confessed in a psychiatric hospital, and later to sheriff's investigators, before the admitted drug addict and petty criminal was prosecuted for the 1998 murder of 18-year-old Miranda Fenner. "I was wondering why they didn't even follow up and investigate," O'Neill said about his April 2016 c...
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — About 66 million years after two dinosaurs died apparently locked in battle on the plains of modern-day Montana, an unusual fight over who owns the entangled fossils has become a multimillion-dollar issue that hinges on the legal definition of "mineral." The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the "Dueling Dinosaurs" located on private land are minerals both scientifically and under mineral rights laws. The fossils belong both to the owners of the property where they were found and two brothers who k...
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A Microsoft co-founder's mission to locate sunken warships in the South Pacific has chalked up another victory with the discovery of the USS Helena nearly 75 years after it was sunk by Japanese torpedoes in the waters off the Solomon Islands, reviving stories of the battle-tested ship's endurance and the nearly unbelievable survival of 165 of the crewmen. Paul Allen's team searches for the ships to "bring the history back into a relevant conversation," said Janet Greenlee, a spokeswoman for Allen's Vulcan Inc. "He wants to...
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The spruce tree destined to serve as the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree was carefully selected from a Montana forest and hauled across the country in a special truck to preserve its freshness. The 79-foot-tall (24-meter-tall) tree, which was lit up last month during a ceremony with congressional members, had its own website and social media presence. Now, some Montana companies hope to keep its fame alive by trucking it back home so it can be used to help rebuild a historic chalet in Glacier National Park that was destroyed in...
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A U.S. magistrate judge is siding with independent beef producers in their challenge over the way beef is marketed in Montana. Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America — or R-CALF USA — challenged the fact that half of the $1-per-head federal tax on cattle sales collected in Montana is used by the privately incorporated Montana Beef Council. The Montana Beef Council collects the checkoff dollars and sends half the money to the Cattlemen's Beef Board, a national promotional group. Public Justi...
