Montana

A federal jury on Friday acquitted W.R. Grace & Co. and three of its former officials of charges that they knowingly exposed residents of Libby, Mont., to asbestos poisoning associated with a mining operation and conspired to hide it. The verdict brings to an ignominious end one of the most significant criminal prosecutions the government had ever filed against a corporate polluter.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday declared its first public health emergency, saying the federal government would funnel $6 million to provide medical care for people sickened by asbestos from a mine in Montana. The declaration applies to the towns of Libby and Troy, where for decades workers dug for vermiculite, a mineral used in insulation.

A federal judge Monday restored protections for grizzly bears near Yellowstone National Park, overturning a George W. Bush administration finding that the animals had made an "amazing" and sustainable recovery. In a strongly worded order, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy said that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's conclusion that the bears would find adequate food and protected habitat in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho was not supported by the government's own science, and that protections put into place for the grizzlies were not enforceable.

UCLA plays Washington Saturday, and Bruins coach Rick Neuheisel has never lost to one of his former teams. He is 2-0 against Colorado and 2-0 against the Huskies. Then again, he had never lost to Stanford until this season. Times staff writer Chris Foster looks at some of the game's key matchups and issues: Shine or whine? UCLA's next three games are against teams in the bottom half of the Pacific 10 Conference standings -- the Huskies, Washington State and Arizona State.

Montana officials on Monday ended the first-ever general wolf hunt in the southern part of the state, just a day after it started, when the number of animals killed exceeded the season quota for the region. The Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks earlier had suspended a backcountry hunt in a remote area north of Yellowstone National Park after nine gray wolves were shot. That hunt raised controversy because four of the wolves belonged to Yellowstone's much-studied Cottonwood pack -- including the alpha male and female.

Ever since the 1992 movie "A River Runs Through It," I've wanted to go fly-fishing in Montana, and I recently found a ranch hideaway that fit the bill. After four days of nonstop fishing, I have a sore shoulder, a scarred finger -- I hooked myself with a fly -- and my own Norman Maclean stories. Alta Ranch is a 150-acre property tucked in the shadow of the Bitterroot Mountains in southwestern Montana. Guests at its four cabins and one log home can try their luck in a stocked, catch-and-release trout pond or on a stretch of the west fork of the Bitterroot River that runs through the ranch.

With four gray wolves having been killed in Idaho since Sept. 1, a federal judge has cleared the way for legal hunting of the once-endangered predators to proceed. U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy in Montana found that there would be no irreparable harm if the limited hunt in that state and Idaho were allowed to go forward. But the judge also wrote that the Fish and Wildlife Service, in continuing to list Wyoming wolves under the Endangered Species Act while delisting them in the two neighboring states, "has distinguished a natural population of wolves based on a political line, not the best available science."

Far from the gay-rights battlefields of Los Angeles and San Francisco, where supporters of a ban on gay marriage risk business boycotts and landing on the social D-list, a Baptist church in Montana has scored a quiet victory in its campaign to keep its books and defense-of-marriage backers out of the limelight.