News
Economist, panelists: Child Tax Credit will support Montana jobs, families
A twisted joke about not being able to make ends meet goes like this, said Destini Vaile: “You can be too low income to have a job.” That means maybe your car is broken, and you don’t have money to fix it to drive to an interview, or you can’t pay for new clothes for […]
‘We don’t want to be a punching bag’: Meet the new bosses fighting COVID
VIRGINIA CITY — Emilie Sayler’s roots run deep in southwestern Montana. She serves on a nearby town council and the board of the local Little League. She went to college in a neighboring county and regularly volunteers in the schools of her three kids. Just a few months into her new job as public health […]
FDA panel approves COVID vaccine for kids 5 to 11
WASHINGTON — A federal vaccine advisory panel on Tuesday recommended authorizing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, a decision that means as soon as next week everyone in the U.S. over age 5 is expected to be eligible for a shot. The vote by the Food & Drug Administration panel, with 17 […]
National school boards group apologizes for requesting probe of threats against local officials
WASHINGTON — The National School Boards Association is walking back its letter to President Joe Biden asking for federal help for school board members who have been harassed and threatened over masking requirements and discussions of race in public schools. The shift came after Republican members of Congress led by Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley raised strong objections […]
Coming soon to a clinic near you: COVID vaccines for kids ages 5 to 11 may be ready next week
WASHINGTON — The next wave of the massive COVID-19 vaccination campaign could begin as soon as next week, after federal regulators decide if elementary school students across the U.S. should begin rolling up their tiny sleeves. That multistep approval process kicks off Tuesday, when the Food & Drug Administration’s panel of vaccine experts will vote on […]
Republican leaders approve investigation into AG over reports of threats to St. Peter’s
Republican legislative leadership on Monday approved a special counsel investigation proposed by state Democratic leaders into reports that Attorney General Austin Knudsen used state resources, including law enforcement, to harass and intimidate physicians and staff at St. Peter’s Hospital in Helena. “Speaker (Wylie) Galt and I strongly believe in government transparency and accountability. Serious allegations […]
University of Montana receives ‘windfall’ humanities grant
How do people grapple with grief and dying in the COVID-19 pandemic? Is there a different way to look at people who were slaves that can open new ways to think about racial justice? And when it comes to contemporary Indigenous matters, how have issues connected to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act […]
In hot water: Scientists look at how much heat is emitted on the floor of Yellowstone Lake
Measuring the heat output of a hydrothermal area is not easy—Earth’s surface is often too noisy for accurate measurements to be made easily. But the floor of Yellowstone Lake is a thermally quiet environment and provides a unique opportunity to assess heat flow in one of Yellowstone’s most dynamic hydrothermal areas. Yellowstone is hot. The […]
Contraception is free to women (except when it’s not)
For Stephanie Force, finding a birth control method that she likes and can get without paying out-of-pocket has been a struggle, despite the Affordable Care Act’s promise of free contraceptives for women and adolescent girls in most health plans. The 27-year-old physician recruiter in Roanoke, Virginia, was perfectly happy with the NuvaRing, a flexible vaginal […]
Study: In Missoula County, confidence in elections is high
Buckle in for this one: In Missoula County, 91 percent of voters express confidence in elections, according to a University of Montana study based on poll results after November 2020. You may have heard some allegations — unproven — of election fraud since then in Montana and beyond. Despite the claims, Rep. Geraldine Custer, a […]
With diagnosis at last, Black women with ADHD start healing
Miché Aaron has always been a high achiever. The 29-year-old is in her third year of a planetary sciences doctoral program at Johns Hopkins University, where she researches minerals found on Mars. She’s a former NASA space grant scholar and hopes to become an astronaut one day. But last year, Aaron was barely keeping it […]
Montana tribes want to stop jailing people for suicide attempts, but lack safe alternatives
POPLAR — When Maria Vega was a senior in high school in 2015, she found the body of one of her closest friends, who had died by suicide. A few days later, devastated by the loss, Vega tried to take her own life. After the attempt failed, she was arrested and taken to juvenile detention […]