As of Friday, January 29, 2021, Montana reports 93,246 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 353 new cases reported in the last day: 78 in Yellowstone County, 50 in Gallatin County, 34 in Cascade County, 26 in Missoula County, 25 in Flathead County, 25 in Lewis & Clark County, 19 in Silver Bow County, and more new cases in 29 more Montana counties. The number of active coronavirus cases in Montana is 3,728. Statewide, 4,217 people have been hospitalized. Currently, 103 people are being treated in Montana hospitals for COVID-19. The most active cases are in Yellowstone, Flathead, Cascade, and Gallatin Counties. 1,227 people have died in Montana of COVID-19. Seventeen more deaths have been reported since yesterday. Nationwide, more than 433,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. There have been 25,800,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, and counting.

Two brothers from Montana were among the first to break into the U.S. Capitol while Congress was certifying the Electoral College vote, the FBI said in charging documents. Joshua Calvin Hughes and Jerod Wade Hughes climbed through a broken window into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and Jerod Hughes helped kick open a door to allow other rioters inside, the FBI said in charging documents filed on Thursday. The brothers were right behind the primary aggressor who pursued Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up the stairs, investigators said. The brothers later found their way onto the Senate floor, where they sat in senators’ chairs and opened their desks, charging documents said. The brothers were captured in numerous images and videos from the riots, court records said. Joshua and Jerod Hughes reported to the Helena Police Department on Jan. 11, saying they’d seen themselves on news coverage and believed they were wanted by the FBI. An FBI agent responded. The brothers face charges for entering a restricted building, being on the Senate floor with the intent to disrupt the orderly conduct of official business, impeding a law enforcement officer, obstructing an official proceeding and damaging or aiding in damaging property of the United States.

About a dozen sailors aboard the USS Chafee have tested positive for Covid-19 and have been removed from the ship, the Navy confirmed Friday. News of the twelve sick sailors on the heels of a Navy Times report that 41 sailors out of a crew of 350 had either tested positive or had “been in close contact with infected shipmates,” including several of the ship’s cooks. And because of equipment shortages, some sailors on the trip over from Hawaii have had to “wear dirty N95 masks for five days,” the Navy Times reported.

A freshman legislator from Bozeman is withdrawing a bill that unleashed a flood of outrage this week for its language that opponents argued would strengthen parental rights for rapists. Rep. Jane Gillette, R-Bozeman, was scheduled to present House Bill 209 to the House Judiciary Committee on Friday, but said she won’t bring the legislation to any committee this session after the fury that erupted this week over the bill’s language. The attorneys who have been crafting the bill language say the intent of the legislation was to amend existing law to require the judge to consider “the child’s best interest” during a parental termination proceeding in which a mother has claimed the child was conceived through rape, as long as the child had established a relationship with the father. A victim advocacy coalition, however, says the proposed legislation would open the door for victims to be forced into co-parenting with someone who had been convicted either by trial or through a fact-finding hearing of the alleged rape.

Helena native Jesse Jerome Smith won big on a Wheel of Fortune episode that aired Thursday. The 2003 Capital High School graduate won about $20,000 in cash and prizes, including an all-expenses-paid vacation to Antigua, an island in the Caribbean.