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A severe thunderstorm struck Billings just before 9 p.m. packing hail, frequent thunder and lightning and wind gusts of up to 73 mph.
Crews responding to multiple outages in and around Billings. Be aware of downed lines. Call 888-467-2669 to report.
Good thing we already need a new roof because here comes the quarter size hail and wind!
Got us some flash floods in Billings???? intersections have like 3 feet of water... Rocks are all over the roads. ???????? bright side= new college best friends ???????????????????? #flashfloods #billings #raining #thunder #lightening #floods #football #bestfriends #rcm #followme #funtimes @riss_glover Cody loves me????????
i almost flooded my engine on rimrock tonight. billings. what the crap?
Crews working to restore power to more than 5K customers in #Billings . Lots of downed lines. No ETR but may be awhile for some of you.
A large rock blocked Zimmerman Trail, and officers closed the road at the top and the bottom. Highway 3, west of Zimmerman Trail, had drifts of hail alongside the road.
The rain that washed off the Rimrocks pushed debris, including mud and rocks, onto North 27th Street near Montana State University Billings. Police were on scene and most of the road was closed to traffic.
High water at the corner of First Avenue North and Main Street caused multiple cars to stall on the road.
All of the underpasses in the downtown area were closed due to flooding, according to the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office.
The Billings Mustangs were playing against the Missoula Osprey at Dehler Park on Saturday night. Just minutes before the storm hit, the game's announcer advised everyone to leave the baseball field and head for their vehicles.
One spectator said he got to his car just as the torrential rains started falling.
Hey Billings, hope you all are safe and/or not flooding.
Foodmakers, fast-food chains, and media companies have teamed up to battle government efforts to create voluntary nutritional guidelines for foods marketed to children, The Washington Post reports Sunday. And the group is being managed by former White House communications director Anita Dunn.
The group, called the Sensible Food Policy Coalition, includes General Mills, Kellogg, PepsiCo, and Time Warner. Disclosure records show they spent $6.6 million on lobbying in the first quarter of this year, and the members of the group collectively have spent nearly $60 million on lobbying since the start of the Obama administration, the newspaper reports.
Media giant Viacom is one of the members. It owns the Nickelodeon television network, whose animated characters such as Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants are featured prominently on food products marketed to children. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is also weighing in.
Dunn, who is now at SKDKnickerbocker, is managing the campaign, the newspaper said. She was White House communications director under President Obama in 2009 and is married to Robert F. Bauer, the former White House counsel.
First lady Michelle Obama has made childhood obesity her signature issue, and she has urged food manufacturers and retailers to curb the marketing of unhealthy foods.
“Mags,” as he is known, has nine records out as a leader and has appeared on numerous other releases as a sideman. A semifinalist in the 1990 Thelonious Monk International Trumpet Competition, he has toured and recorded with Lionel Hampton, Jack McDuff, Toshiko Akioshi, Glenn Miller Orchestra, Harry Connick Jr. and the Hard Bop Quintet.
Magnarelli’s most recent release as a leader is “My Old Flame” (2010).
He is an adjunct professor of music at the Juilliard School of Music and Rutgers University.
With this extra spending, the budget had to be balanced by drawing down federal stimulus money that had been earmarked for 2011, said Hill, R-Reidsville. There are also new cuts across state departments, Hill said.
The extra stimulus money amounts to about $90 million, Hill said. Depending on whether the economy recovers between now and next year, that could make the 2011 budget more difficult to balance.
Specifics about the new cuts weren't immediately available early this afternoon, but Hill said there are no teacher furloughs contemplated in the agreement. State employees won't pay extra for health insurance either, he said, though Perdue's administration has the authority to change that.
Hill also said that departments that charge the public fees were encouraged to raise them to ease the hit of larger cuts.
"A lot of cuts," Hill said. "There's some real pain."
Most Middle Georgia projects appear to have survived the budgeting process. That includes funding for the aviation campus at Middle Georgia College and building renovations at Fort Valley State University, Hill said.
"I don't know any Middle Georgia projects that might have slipped out," he said.
The incident was reported by a passerby at about 7:14 a.m. Sunday.
A 40-year-old man died after a one-car crash Sunday morning on state Route 221 in the Town of Willet, New York State Police said.
Police say Israel P. Vidales, of Willet, was the sole occupant of a 2008 Dodge Caravan that was overturned and wedged between trees.
Marathon Ambulance, TLC Ambulance and Willet Fire Department also responded to the incident.
Wild bees and honey bees pollinate crops; pollinator conservation is important.
When it comes to almond pollination, it’s more the merrier for growers when wild bees work alongside honey bees, says pollination ecologist Neal Williams.
For Williams, pollination isn’t just a buzzword.
"Pollination by bees is a critical input to many crops — as essential as irrigation, fertilizer or labor," says the associate professor of pollination and bee biology in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
One of Williams’ main goals is to provide practical information to California farmers for improving the long-term stability of pollination. He also wants to promote pollinator conservation and management.
Focusing on “alternative managed” bees, such as blue orchard bees and bumble bees, Williams likes to point out that on a per-bee basis, bumble bees are more effective than honey bees in pollinating tomatoes and watermelons. And the blue orchard bee is used to pollinate California’s No. 1 crop, almonds.
Williams advocates that national and global strategies be developed to support the diversity of bees and to enhance their habitat, especially with the decline of honey bees and bumble bees.
Thirty-five percent of primary food crops benefit from animal pollinators.
The global value of pollination surpasses $220 billion per year. In the United States alone, honey bees account for $14.6 billion, and wild or nonmanaged bees, more than $3 billion.
Williams was part of an international research team that found that honey bees are more effective at pollinating almonds when other bee species, including the blue orchard bee, are present.
The groundbreaking research, which took place in California’s almond orchards in Yolo, Colusa and Stanislaus counties, “is especially important because it increases the pollination effectiveness of honey bees as demand for their pollination service grows,” Williams said.
Williams’ research on pollination spans the disciplines of conservation biology, behavioral ecology and evolution. A primary element of his research focuses on sustainable pollination strategies for agriculture. His interest in sustainability, in fact, has made him a core faculty member of the UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute.
Whether pollinators interact in ways to increase the overall effectiveness of crop pollination.
Williams’ past research in the Eastern and Western U.S. helped form the basis for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service planting guidelines to enhance pollinators in agriculture.
Currently, Williams is looking at how landscape affects pollinators.
“Although other colleagues in our region investigate the importance of habitat for bees, we are unique in developing methods to identify best plants for bees and then applying these methods to select the plants,” Williams said.
His lab’s approach involves extensive field data, original computational modeling and controlled experimental testing. They are also testing how the resulting native plant mixes perform in real landscapes.
The Williams lab is working with more than 20 different growers and landowners in California and a variety of different crop types from orchard to row crop.
“We have helped to determine best practices for planting bee habitat, protocols for monitoring pollinator use and developed widely used methods for assessing pollinators’ contribution to pollination service,” he said.
The lab is compiling a database on “Honey Plants of California,” to be posted on the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility website. It will include plant type, common name, genus, species, drought tolerance, honey value, honey color, pollen value and flower color.
Taking his practical findings to the next level, Williams says his next goal is to work with theoreticians to model bee communities and pollination.
LOOK out Ballarat, Bollywood is heading our way. After five years of teaching as part of the world's biggest Bollywood dance academy in Melbourne, dancers of the world famous Shiamak Dance Academy are coming to Ballarat. The academy held its first ever workshop in Ballarat on Saturday, the start of what is hoped will become a permanent fixture. Dance instructor Vihang Nikalje, who has lived in Australia for five years, said he hoped the dance would catch on in Ballarat in a similar way to what it had in Melbourne. In Melbourne he teaches 350 people on a weekly basis. As a trainer for the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, he was a teacher for 600 dancers at one time. "We've never had a chance to come down to Ballarat and showcase it so we are glad to be here," he said. "Hopefully it catches on like it did in Melbourne. It's great exercise for people, but they also get to have a lot of fun while doing it." Organisers hope to hold further dance lessons in the near future. Visit www.facebook.com/shiamakmelbourne or call 0403 137 963 to learn how to get involved.
LOOK out Ballarat, Bollywood is heading our way.
After five years of teaching as part of the world's biggest Bollywood dance academy in Melbourne, dancers of the world famous Shiamak Dance Academy are coming to Ballarat.
The academy held its first ever workshop in Ballarat on Saturday, the start of what is hoped will become a permanent fixture.
Dance instructor Vihang Nikalje, who has lived in Australia for five years, said he hoped the dance would catch on in Ballarat in a similar way to what it had in Melbourne.
In Melbourne he teaches 350 people on a weekly basis.
As a trainer for the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, he was a teacher for 600 dancers at one time.
"We've never had a chance to come down to Ballarat and showcase it so we are glad to be here," he said.
"Hopefully it catches on like it did in Melbourne. It's great exercise for people, but they also get to have a lot of fun while doing it."
Organisers hope to hold further dance lessons in the near future.
Visit www.facebook.com/shiamakmelbourne or call 0403 137 963 to learn how to get involved.
Discuss "Bollywood comes to Ballarat"
For his Monday night appearance on the Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Kane Brown opted to highlight not one of his up-tempo radio hits but a ballad album track off his latest LP Experiment.
Displaying a supple baritone, Brown crooned “Homesick,” a love letter to the one he misses when on the road. While he may be out playing the star to adoring fans — Brown even name-checks himself: “It says ‘Kane Brown’ on a sign with a line out the door” — where he really wishes to be is dancing in the kitchen or rocking on the porch swing with his partner.
Experiment, the follow-up to 2016’s Kane Brown, debuted at Number One on the all-genre Billboard 200 upon its release. He’ll launch his headlining Live Forever Tour on January 17th in Independence, Missouri.
If you're looking for a deal on your own personal Irish oasis, a pair of Irish islands are on the market, and the asking price for the pair was recently lowered to $650K.
That's, what, the price of a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan?
Whereas in Manhattan you'd be sharing walls with your neighbors, on Carbery and Cold Islands, located on the south side of peaceful Dunmanus Bay in West Cork, your closest neighbors would be a colony of seals and otters.
Carbery Island is the main island, and comes with a recently constructed two-storey Dormer House, furnishings included. The house has four bedrooms and comes with its private water supply and septic tank waste disposal system and a separate generator house.
Cold Island, just to the east of Carbery, is little more than a scattered rock outcrop of c. 4 acres with some grass. But it is also home to that seal and otter colony!
You'll get your own private beach on Carbery, complete with a floating pontoon dock. On the mainland, Dunmanus and Kilcrohane are the two nearest towns.
Would you want your own private island in Ireland? What's your dream Irish property? Tell us in the comment section.
Apparently, everyone's favorite familial relationship testing board-game Monopoly was first conceived in 1903 as an educational tool by American Elizabeth Magie— the game-play intended to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies. Over a century on, the brand has lost much of its satirical sting—indeed, now something of an icon of good ol' fashioned business to hard-nosed capitalists and presumably an educational tool of a different sorts for their offspring—but the intended message of the original has only increased in pertinence with real estate crisis hitting a large amount of modern cities in recent years.
One of the key failures of Ms. Magie's anti-monolopy propaganda was, of course, starting her players on an even setting with the board's market an untouched open playing field. Creators of Austerity! —journalists at London based blog UsVsTh3m—have remedied this naivety in their satirical reimagining of Monopoly in a cruel post-financial crisis era, splitting players into "bosses" and "plebs" (UK slang for 'ordinary guy') from the get go—the bosses skipping around the fast-track outer-ring of the board and the lower mortals resigned to the slow-progress of the many hurdled inner-ring with only £57 at their disposal (the number being the typical amount received per week as social security payment in the UK).
Of course, UsVsTh3m are not the first to critically reimagine the game—San Francisco State University Professor Ralph Anspach notably having created Anti-Monopoly (in which players fight tyrannical monopolies to return the board to a free market state) in the '70s, having noticed that the original had come to glamourize monopolistic business.
Although not scoring too highly on design execution, Austerity! is layered with lampooning of all sorts of British businesses and institutions from the failing railways and energy companies to politics (the community chest having been replaced by "Big Society Chest" in reference to David Cameron's much mocked, platitudinal policy of Big Society). Perhaps someone will recreate the design for the current economic mess in the USA.
Head over to UsVsThem to see what happened when the creators played their game—illustrating just how quickly the rich get richer and the poor completely destitute—or to download the pieces to recreate it yourself.
Pleb isn't UK slang, it's short for plebeian, a term the ancient Romans used to describe and separate common citizens from the patrician class.
The Washingtonian magazine has announced a new ownership agreement under which Eleanor Merrill will become chairman of the magazine and Catherine Merrill Williams will become its publisher, continuing the Merrill family’s 28-year stewardship of the magazine.
The Merrill family, along with Landmark Communications, owns The Washingtonian under the umbrella of Capital Gazette Newspapers, which also includes the Annapolis Capital, a daily newspaper, and five other newspapers in Maryland. The Merrill family and Landmark have reached an agreement in principle under which the Merrill family will obtain full ownership of The Washingtonian and Landmark will obtain full ownership of the newspapers. The final agreement is to be put into place in the next several months.
Philip Merrill bought The Washingtonian in 1979. Until Mr. Merrill’s death last June, he served as the magazine’s chairman and publisher except for periods of government service when his wife, Eleanor, served as publisher. From 1990 to 1992, Philip Merrill was assistant secretary general of NATO in Brussels, and from 2002 to 2005 he served as president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
The Washingtonian was founded in 1965 and under the leadership of the Merrill family has become one of the nation’s most honored and successful magazines. It has won five National Magazine Awards for public service, reporting, writing, and service to its readers.
Loot boxes provided random virtual objects, such as weapons, in the Save The World version of the game, costing $9.99 (£7.99) of the game's V-bucks currency.
The uncertainty of what may be in the boxes, known in Fortnite as V-Buck Llamas, caused some people to liken the practice to gambling, and led to a petition in 2017 being signed by more than 16,000 people demanding that such practices in video games that target children fall under gambling laws.
Loot boxes provided random virtual objects, such as weapons.
However, people do not know what their box will contain until they buy it.
Many video games use the loot boxes, and they are hugely popular.
The Government responded at the time, saying the Gambling Commission had strong powers to regulate gambling and was monitoring convergence between gambling and video games closely.
A survey of 2,865 children aged between 11 and 16 by the regulator last year found that 31% had paid or used in-game items to open a loot box.
A separate study by experts at the University of York and York St John University previously claimed that spending on in-game loot boxes could be as closely linked with gambling issues as alcohol dependency and drug problems.
The same year, Belgium ruled that loot boxes were in violation of gambling legislation, effectively banning them.
Fortnite's maker Epic Games has decided to show gamers what is inside the loot boxes before they to purchase.
"Previously known as V-Buck Llamas, X-Ray Llamas will now show you the contents before you purchase it," the company said in an announcement.
"Not interested in what the Llama offers? Simply wait until the daily store refresh and there will be a new selection."
The changes will only affect Save The World and not its more-popular Battle Royale counterpart, where the V-Buck Llamas were never available to buy.
It comes as Fortnite continues to smash records left and right.
A new report from gaming data firm SuperData found that the massively successful battle royale game was the top-grossing free-to-play game in the world in 2018.

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