As of Thursday, January 27, 2022. Montana reports 235,967 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 2,978 new cases of coronavirus infection reported since yesterday: 595 new cases in Missoula County, 443 new cases in Cascade County, 316 new cases in Lewis & Clark County, 313 new cases in Gallatin County, and more new cases in 50 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 18,090. Currently, 314 people are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. 2,990 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Nine more people’s deaths have been reported since Friday. Nationwide, more than 875,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 72,900,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

The streaming music app Spotify will remove Neil Young’s music after the famed singer-songwriter said he wouldn’t share the platform with podcaster Joe Rogan, who has been criticized for spreading vaccine misinformation. Young, 76, said in an open letter to his manager and record label, “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

Scientists have detected a ‘Spooky’ object that unleashes periodic bursts of energy in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Astrophysicist Natasha Hurley-Walker was scanning radio signals across huge swaths of the cosmos in late 2020 when she and her colleagues stumbled on something they had never seen before. In a patch of sky that was monitored continuously over 24 hours, the scientists detected the appearance of a mysterious object that unleashed a giant burst of energy every 20 minutes or so and then disappeared several hours later.

A fight among three men in a pickup truck ended with two of the men being shot to death and a third hospitalized with severe trauma to his neck in Billings Tuesday. Tuesday’s shooting deaths bring to 10 the number of people who have died in shootings in Montana just this month.