Thumbs up to a combination of private and state funding designed to provide expensive AIDS medicine to the 22 Montanans languishing on a waiting list to receive the life-extending drugs.

About $220,000 will be donated by the Flowers Heritage Foundation to fund the program for a year. The foundation wants to ensure that nobody nationwide has to go without the medication. Funding for the second the third year would come from the state at $150,000 a year if that portion of the governor's budget is approved by the Legislature.

Thumbs up to the findings that rainbow trout below Holter Dam on the Missouri River are holding their own against whirling disease. The parasitic disease has had some impact on the fish, but there were early fears that it might essentially wipe out rainbows in the blue-ribbon stream.

Thumbs down to a rash of recent house fires. Ken and Jodi Gardner's house on Strawberry Lookout Road was destroyed last Friday, and Ed and Missy Wisdom's house in the 700 block of Aspen burned Monday. Other recent fires destroyed a trailer and a home in Lincoln.

Thumbs up to the city's plan to burn methane gas at the waste water treatment plant on Custer Avenue into electricity to help run the plant. Officials say the energy-saving equipment should pay for itself within five years.