On today's morning newscast: the Flathead County commissioners unanimously voted to ban the use of fireworks throughout the county, on both public and private lands, due to a weekend forecast that calls for warm temperatures and sustained winds. Numerous other counties in western Montana have banned fireworks, as has Butte-Silver Bow County and the town of Deer Lodge.
Highway funding will likely be near the top of the Congressional agenda when business resumes after the holiday break.
The founder of a Montana club for the ultra-rich will stay in jail until a federal judge is satisfied that he understands what happened to the money from a Mexican resort sold in violation of a court order.
A second complaint has been lodged with the state contending the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes omitted reports of their lobbying efforts at the Montana Legislature this year.
A tornado picked up a single-wide trailer in eastern Montana and threw it onto a storage shed about 60 feet away, injuring a 79-year-old man and his dog.
The City of Whitefish has cancelled its 4th of July public fireworks display, citing a fire weather watch for Saturday issued by the National Weather Service. There are numerous fireworks bans in effect across Western Montana, including Missoula, Ravalli, Lake and Lincoln counties.
At this time, the federal government is only tracking one major wildfire in Montana, the Glacier Rim fire just south of Glacier National Park. Authorities now say that fire is 45% contained, and have reduced the number of people working on it from 120 to 85. Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke met Wednesday with crews fighting that fire.
Low water levels have state wildlife officials reducing fishing hours in certain western and southwestern Montana waterways heading into Independence Day weekend.
The leader of the Little Shell Band of Chippewa Indians says new rules for the recognition of Native American groups could ease the way for the landless Montana tribe to be formally acknowledged by the U.S. government.
Government researchers have lost their license to a set of radio frequencies used to track more than 100 radio-collared wolves and elk at Yellowstone National Park.