Good morning; on the Beacon today, Holding signs reading “No Neo-Nazis,” and “No Hate in My Backyard,” hundreds of valley residents turned out Thursday evening to protest the showing at the library in Kalispell of the film, “Epic: The Story of the Waffen SS,” a film that takes an admiring view of the combat arm of the Nazis during World War II. The inaugural Montana Flathead Rapids 2010 Spring Soccer Academy in Whitefish introduces a European philosophy to teaching kids the game. Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation will host a guitar virtuoso concert on May 1 in Bigfork, featuring nationally recognized musicians, and it has also scheduled a weeklong guitar workshop and festival for later in the summer. A state research biologist estimates the grizzly bear population in the northern Rockies is growing by an average rate of 3 percent per year.
President Barack Obama on Thursday interviewed federal appeals court Judge Sidney Thomas of Montana for an opening on the Supreme Court, a person familiar with the conversation told The Associated Press. University leaders finalized cuts of 4.5 percent Thursday even as new projections provided mixed news about the state’s budget picture. A task force has thrown everything – including fire – at the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to keep it from sloshing into an area that holds 40 percent of the lower 48 states’ coastal wetlands. The economy grew at a solid 3.2 percent pace during the first quarter of this year as consumers boosted their spending by the most in three years. If current revenue trends hold, the 2011 Legislature could be facing a $405 million general fund deficit for the next two years. That would require a 10 percent budget cut. The Montana National Guard will deploy 10 soldiers and a helicopter next month to assist ongoing humanitarian efforts in Haiti. A federal bankruptcy judge this week denied developers of Black Bull, a bankrupt luxury golf-course community in west Bozeman, permission to borrow $2.6 million from the same company that owns the Yellowstone Club. A 25-year-old airman has been sentenced to 10 months in prison and ordered to pay $48,000 in restitution for stealing and reselling U.S. Air Force equipment, including night vision goggles and a laser aiming device. And Bryon Wilson, the men’s freestyle skiing moguls event bronze medalist from the 2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver on Thursday toured Butte schools, took the traditional fire truck ride and visited and signed autographs at the Butte Civic Center.