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A 19-year-old flight attendant angry at having to work a route set a fire in an airplane bathroom, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing, authorities say. Eder Rojas, of Woodbury, Minn., was arrested in Minneapolis on Wednesday. He is being prosecuted in Fargo, where the Compass Airlines flight with 72 passengers and four crew members landed safely on May 7, after smoke filled the back. No injuries were reported. Officials said the plane was flying from Minneapolis to Regina, Saskatchewan. Court documents said Rojas told authorities he was upset at the airline for making him work that route....

LINTON, N.D. – A portion of Ernie Roehrich’s farm hasn’t been plowed for two decades: It’s part of a federal program that pays landowners to idle land for conservation. Payments from the Conservation Reserve Program have helped during lean times. And wildlife – especially pheasants – have flourished on his century-old family farm in south-central North Dakota. But lured by high commodity prices, Roehrich and thousands like him nationwide are opting out of the program – and even paying penalties to exit early. “I’m all for conservation,” Roehrich said. “But the market is the market – farmers are businessmen, too.”...

Poet T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest month. Looking at April 2008, you can add snowiest. Storms late in the month made it the whitest April ever in places such as Park Rapids and Detroit Lakes in Minnesota, with the latter city more than doubling its previous snowfall record for the month. The first 70-degree day of the year usually arrives in April, but the highest the mercury reached in Fargo last month was 68 degrees on the 15th, said John Wheeler, WDAY-TV meteorologist. The last time Fargo saw an April without a 70-degree day was 1996, he said. The...

With Barack Obama drowning in Rev. Wright's waves, all Hillary really needs to do is keep her head down and show up on time to be endorsed today by NC Gov. Mike Easley. The last thing Clinton needs is to make a gaffe of her own. Now let's grant that the one we're about to discuss ranks rather low on the Gaffe-o-meter. If Sniper-gate was a 6.2, this might be a 2.1. But this particular misstep does have the demerit of undercutting a major Clinton campaign theme. Hillary's strategy nowadays consists of appealing to middle- and lower-income voters. Call it...

The Bakken shale formation in North Dakota holds up to 167 billion barrels of oil but only about 1 percent of it can be recovered using current technology, a new state study says. The study released Monday said current technology could lead to the recovery of about 2.1 billion barrels in North Dakota's the "middle Bakken" formation, where oil-producing rock is sandwiched between layers of shale about 10,000 feet under the ground. "The future potential is enormous - it means we will be able to exploit this for the rest of the century," said Lynn Helms, director of the state...

Energy: A North Dakota field holds at least 4 billion barrels of oil and possibly much more. But its Democratic senator demonstrates his party's schizophrenia on energy, preaching independence while doing nothing to achieve it.The price of crude hit a record $112 a barrel last week, just about the time the U.S. Geological Survey released its assessment of the oil and gas potential of a region known as the Bakken Formation. The USGS estimates that the shale formation straddling western North Dakota and Montana contains 3.65 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. The oil is trapped in a thin layer...

Map showing Williston Basin Province boundary (in red), Bakken-Lodgepole Total Petroleum System (TPS) (in blue), and major structural features in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation of the Williston Basin, according to a just-released assessment by the US Geological Survey (USGS). This latest assessment shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency’s 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil. The assessment also identified 1.85...

Crews looking for oil deposits last year in North Dakota. Now an area in the region is estimated to hold vast oil resources.An area of shale and other rock in North Dakota and Montana is estimated to hold the largest potential oil resources in the 48 contiguous states, according to an assessment released Thursday by the United States Geological Survey. The area, known as the Bakken Formation, might contain 3 billion to 4.3 billion barrels of oil that could be extracted using current technology, the survey said. The United States had an estimated 21 billion barrels of proven oil reserves...

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated mean undiscovered volumes of 3.65 billion barrels of oil, 1.85 trillion cubic feet of associated/dissolved natural gas, and 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids in the Bakken Formation of the Williston Basin Province, Montana and North Dakota.

North Dakota Shuts Ballpark Over Studies Linking Mineral in Gravel to Cancer Saturday, April 05, 2008 Killdeer Mayor Dan Dolechek KILLDEER, N.D. — The sounds of children playing baseball has been silenced at one ball field... Officials fear the ground itself is...unsafe. The ballpark...is covered with crushed gravel containing erionite... The rock, used for decades on everything from gravel roads to flower beds, contains fibers that can collect in the lungs of people who breathe it, health officials say. ....Environmental Protection Agency coordinator, said studies have shown that erionite causes cancer in lab rats... ...Killdeer [pop. 700] Mayor Dan Dolechek...

Barack Obama’s campaign distanced itself Saturday from a liberal talk show host who called John McCain a “warmonger” while introducing the Illinois senator at a North Dakota campaign stop the night before, after the McCain campaign called on Obama to denounce the comment. Local talk show host Ed Schultz used the term to describe the Arizona senator while warming up the crowd in Grand Forks, N.D., before Obama’s arrival at the state’s Democratic convention. .... On Friday, however, Obama thanked Schultz and called him the “voice of progressive radio.”

BISMARCK – Sen. Hillary Clinton’s decision to speak in Grand Forks Friday, within hours of rival Sen. Barack Obama’s address to North Dakota Democrats, may lie with the party’s nonbinding Feb. 5 caucus results, some Democrats say. Or it could just be that she’s pleasing supporters who have been asking her to come here “for weeks and weeks and weeks,” another said. Or maybe it has more to do with Obama and Clinton both realizing they will reach thousands of Democrats in three states in a little more than 24 hours in a swing through the Dakotas and its western...

Associated Press Thousands of pounds of venison donated to food pantries this year has become a contentious gift in three states. Officials in North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa warn that the meat could be contaminated by lead from bullets. Hunting groups are calling it an overreaction. "It's alarmist and not supported by any science," said Lawrence Keane, a vice president and lawyer for the Newton, Conn.-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms and ammunition industry. "High quality protein is now taken out of the mouths of needy, hungry people." North Dakota health officials on Wednesday told...

BISMARCK, N.D. - The drilling frenzy in North Dakota's oil patch has now reached beneath the state's biggest lake. Oil companies have begun tapping crude oil and gas underneath Lake Sakakawea, using advanced horizontal drill techniques. Lynn Helms, the director of the state Department of Mineral Resources, said it was a logical extension to the formation known as the Middle Bakken, which lies two miles under the surface in western North Dakota and holds millions of barrels of oil. Wells aiming for the Middle Bakken are drilled vertically to about 10,000 feet, and then "kick out" for as many feet...

The Gamma Phi Beta sorority at University of North Dakota has been put on temporary social probation while the university investigates complaints stemming from a November party during which sorority members and their guests donned mock Indian garb and red face and body paint. The temporary probation was issued by both the UND Dean of Student’s Office, which will investigate the complaints, and by the Gamma Phi Beta International office in Centennial, Colo. The probation means Gamma Phi won’t be allowed to host or participate in social activities with other sororities and fraternities or other student groups, either on...

FARGO — North Dakota State University officials are investigating after complaints about a skit in which a black-faced white student portrayed Barack Obama receiving a lap dance. Presidents of the NDSU Saddle and Sirloin Club and sorority Alpha Gamma Delta publicly apologized for the skit at an NDSU town hall meeting this week. The skit was performed March 18, for 500 people at the Mr. NDSU Pageant, which raises money for diabetes research. People who attended said a pageant contestant from Saddle and Sirloin dressed as a woman from the Internet video "I Got a Crush on Obama" and performed...

FARGO, N.D. (AP) - North Dakota State University is investigating complaints about a campus skit in which a white student in blackface portrayed Barack Obama receiving a lap dance. The same skit, part of a charity fundraiser held at a campus theater, also featured a depiction of cowboys having sex with each other, witnesses told The Forum newspaper, which first reported the backlash Friday. "We're trying to find out the right approaches for accountability, but at the same time try to heal wounds that have occurred and allow the campus to move ahead," Janna Stoskopf, NDSU's dean of students, told...

A skit with a black-faced white student portraying Barack Obama receiving a lap dance has sparked claims of racial insensitivity and an investigation at North Dakota State University. The NDSU Saddle and Sirloin Club and sorority Alpha Gamma Delta are at the center of the controversy for a lip-sync act performed for 500 people at the Mr. NDSU Pageant. People who attended the performance described what happened: A pageant contestant from Saddle and Sirloin dressed as the woman from the popular Internet video “I Got a Crush on Obama” and performed for another student who was wearing dark makeup and...

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant. In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota...

GRAND FORKS, N.D.—A lesbian priest says she wants to start a dialogue with church leaders after the Episcopal bishop of North Dakota refused her request for a license to minister in the state. The Rev. Gayle Baldwin, 62, an associate professor of religion at the University of North Dakota, was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1980. She came out as a lesbian a decade ago in Wyoming, where she has a license to preach and administer the sacraments. She came to UND in 2000.

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant. In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota...

Oil drillers have their eye on a vast oil field in and around North Dakota, which promises a steady flow of domestic crude for years. A new black gold rush is under way, this time in North Dakota. The potential payoff is huge -- up to 100 billion barrels of oil. That’s twice the size of Alaska’s reserves and potentially enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for two decades. Until now, the obstacles to production seemed overwhelming. The crude oil is locked away in rocks that are buried miles underground in the Bakken Play, a field that stretches into...

Using tiny brushes and chisels, workers picking at a big greenish-black rock in the basement of North Dakota's state museum are meticulously uncovering something amazing: a nearly complete dinosaur, skin and all. Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota, a duckbilled dinosaur unearthed in southwestern North Dakota in 2004, is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron. It's among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65-million-year-old rock tomb. "This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large...

FARGO, N.D. — Area business and environmental leaders disagree on whether the benefits of a federal proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be worth the costs. The legislation could eliminate thousands of jobs in North Dakota and Minnesota and cut into household incomes, said Margo Thorning, the keynote speaker and one of five panelists at a Tuesday night forum that focused on the Lieberman-Warner bill. "It's important to get this debate out," said Thorning, director of research for the American Council for Capital Formation. "There's time for us to do this analysis. We don't need to push to adopt...

Wednesday night, people will be gathering with candles, signs, flowers, and photos. Many will be there to protest the war and remember those killed in the line of duty. Beginning at 7 p.m., the candlelight vigil will honor the sacrifice of American military personnel killed in Iraq. Personal accounts written by veterans and members of military families affected by the war will be read on the steps leading up to the State Capitol. Members of MoveOn.org and CREDO Action are holding the candlelight vigil. And in San Marcos, another peaceful protest. A "Circle of Peace" is scheduled for 5 p.m....

WAHPETON, N.D. — More than a half-century after Pvt. Joseph Meyer Jr. disappeared while fighting in the Korean War, the Army has told his family his remains will be coming home. Meyer was 17 when he left Wahpeton to enlist in the Army. He was declared missing in action in 1950, with few clues offered to his family.

Congress is starting to move its annual budget outline, and the Members are lucky there's a hot Presidential race. Maybe the voters won't notice that "fiscal discipline," in the phony Beltway phrase, is less disciplined than ever. Look no further than Kent Conrad, the Senate Budget Chairman and godfather of "pay as you go" budgeting. Paygo requires that new entitlement spending and tax cuts be offset dollar for dollar with spending cuts or tax increases. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it: "Instead of compiling trillions of dollars of debt onto our children and grandchildren, we will restore pay as...

WASHINGTON - During the final allied offensive of the Korean War, Master Sgt. Woodrow Wilson Keeble risked his life to save his fellow Soldiers. Almost six decades after his gallant actions and 26 years after his death, Keeble will be the first full-blooded Sioux Indian to receive the Medal of Honor. The White House announced this morning that Keeble will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously in a ceremony scheduled for 2:30 p.m. March 3. Keeble is one of the most decorated Soldiers in North Dakota history. A veteran of World War II and the Korean War, he was born...

...The trial results were a major breakthrough in neuroscience, says Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. For 50 years, all medicines for the disease had worked the same way — until Dr. Schoepp and other scientists took a different path. “This drug really looks like it’s quite a different animal,” Dr. Insel says. “This is actually pretty innovative.” Dr. Schoepp and other scientists had focused their attention on the way that glutamate, a powerful neurotransmitter, tied together the brain’s most complex circuits. Every other schizophrenia drug now on the market aims at a different...

Frigid Arctic air coming down from Canada broke records in eastern North Dakota on Wednesday, including one that had stood for more than a century. Forecasters said a warmup was in store. The temperature dropped to minus 33 degrees at the Grand Forks airport Wednesday morning, breaking the record for the date of minus 29 set in 1956, said Al Voelker, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the city. Devils Lake hit 34 degrees below zero, breaking that city's record for the date of 30 below set in 1939. Fargo broke a record that had stood for 119 years, with...

Two whistleblowers claim that a $1.9 million fine leveled against their former bosses - who allegedly underweighted the bulletproof material in combat helmets to save money - is too measly and part of a Pentagon cover-up. Jeff Kenner and Tamara Elshaug, who worked at the Sioux Manufacturing Corp. in North Dakota, had charged that their company was involved in the "underweaving" of the bulletproof fabric in more than 2 million "P.A.S.G.T." helmets handed out to National Guardsmen, Army Soldiers and Navy Sailors across the country. ... "Any time there's less Kevlar, there's less protection. The American people should know about...

Mitt Romney has won the GOP caucuses in North Dakota, according to Fox News.

Fox News predicts Barack Obama wins the North Dakota Democratic caucuses.

Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign says it has not been making illegal "robo-calls" to North Dakotans and says some pranksters are trying to pass themselves off as Romney supporters. Two attorneys in Romney's campaign have sent a letter to Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, asking him to investigate the calls. Stenehjem said Sunday his office would check out the complaint. The letter, quoting what it said were reports from Romney supporters, linked some of the calls to a volunteer call center in Michigan that it said had done work for John McCain, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

FARGO, North Dakota – The Romney campaign has complained to the North Dakota attorney general about what it claims are dirty tricks by the McCain campaign. Jason McBride, who is running North Dakota for the Romney campaign, said the campaign has heard numerous complaints from voters here about anonymous and misleading automated phone calls.

BISMARCK, N.D. - Members of the Spirit Lake Nation likely will vote on whether to support the University of North Dakota's "Fighting Sioux" nickname, the tribe's leader says. Chairwoman Myra Pearson said Saturday that the tribe has grown tired of the issue. "It's been something that's not as important as our health care or housing or everything we're faced with out here, but it's been popping up all the time, and I think we need to put it to rest here pretty quick," she said. Under a settlement with the NCAA reached last October, UND has three years to win...

BREVARD, Jan. 19, 2008 - Retired Army Green Beret James T. (Smokey) Taylor got his court martial this weekend and came away feeling pretty good about it. Taylor, at age 79, is one of the oldest members of Chapter XXXIII (The Larry Thorne Chapter) of the Special Forces Association.He was placed on trial by fellow Chapter XXXIII members under the charge of “failing to use a weapon of sufficient caliber” in the shooting of an intruder at his home in Knoxville , TN , in November. The court martial, of course, was very much tongue in cheek. The event itself...

North Dakota goes into its Caucuses Tuesday (tomorrow). I'd like to carry in a page with a short set of factual bullet points in support of Mitt (on one side of the page) and bullet points opposing McCain (on the other side of the page.) If you would be so kind as to post the strongest, simplest bullets that do this, I would appreciate it. I'll consolidate your input by the end of the day and re-post at the end for general use. Sorry for the vanity (my first in a couple of years,) but the combined wisdom and knowledge...

Bakken and Torquay Formations - A Saudi Arabia of oil under Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Datkota, Montana and Manitoba The Bakken oil formation is possibly the largest conventional oil discovery in Canada since 1957. If this oil formation plays out toward the higher end of size and recoverability then it will change the geopolitics of oil and the economies of the United States and Canada. If a lot of the oil proves difficult to recover now, new technologies could still drastically improve the percent recoverable. The motivation to pull out another 100 billion barrels would be $9 trillion at todays...

A 35-year veteran of the Cass County Sheriff’s Department will remain on duty while authorities investigate how he accidentally discharged his weapon while using the bathroom Thursday at the Cass County Courthouse. Detective Dean Wawers was in the men’s restroom on the main floor of the courthouse about 12:45 p.m. when his standard-issue handgun – a .40-caliber Glock Model 23 – accidentally discharged, Sheriff Paul Laney said Friday during a news conference.

Here is the kind of story that really proves how little the MSM bothers to research things, how they often simply print glorified press releases without doing any real "journalism," and how the defective end product gets picked up and regurgitated like it is suddenly a "fact." In this one we have the story of "the Lakota Sioux Indians" announcing that "they" have withdrawn from agreed upon treaties with the US government and that they are now a sovereign nation, no longer to be called citizens of the USA. Problem is "the Lakota Sioux Indians" that have made this announcement...

Lakota Indians Withdraw Treaties Signed With U.S. 150 Years Ago Thursday , December 20, 2007 WASHINGTON — The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States. "We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,'' long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said. A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the...

THE Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the US. "We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," Indian rights activist Russell Means said. A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the US... The group also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and would...

WASHINGTON — The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States. "We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,'' long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said. A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the U.S., some of them more than 150 years old. The group...

The oil industry has known for decades that there was oil in North Dakota's Bakken Formation. But until recently, few thought it was worth chasing. The Bakken, an immense blanket of rock that covers about 200,000 square miles, stretching from Saskatchewan to straddle western North Dakota and eastern Montana, has long frustrated efforts to extract its oil. The oil was two miles down and trapped in tightly packed horizontal layers of shale that were easy to miss with conventional drilling. By 1999, when oil prices were low, the industry had largely given up on North Dakota, recalls Ron Ness, president...

WASHINGTON - One of the most complete dinosaur mummies ever found is revealing secrets locked away for millions of years, bringing researchers as close as they will ever get to touching a live dino. The fossilized duckbilled hadrosaur is so well preserved that scientists have been able to calculate its muscle mass and learn that it was more muscular than thought, probably giving it the ability to outrun predators such as T. rex. While they call it a mummy, the dinosaur is not really preserved like King Tut was. The dinosaur body has been fossilized into stone. Unlike the collections...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2007 – A Maryland group is using its favorite game to positively affect combat-wounded veterans who served in Afghanistan or Iraq. Members of the Salute Military Golf Association believe the rehabilitative benefits of golf can improve the mental and physical condition of wounded servicemembers returning from combat, Jim Estes, the group’s founder, said on the organization’s Web site. “The SMGA believes that every (servicemember) matters and should be given the opportunity to learn and improve his or her golf knowledge and skill,” he said. “The SMGA will provide a venue and mentoring to this end.” Earlier...

A $104 million dollar hockey arena may be forced to remove hundreds of images of "The Fighting Sioux," the logo and nickname of the University of North Dakota for more than 70 years, if officials can't reach an agreement with tribal councils. The university, according to a settlement last month of a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association, has three years to negotiate an agreement with two North Dakota Sioux tribes — Spirit Lake and Standing Rock — to receive approval for the continued use of the "Sioux" name and logo. If an agreement is not reached by 2011,...

FARGO, N.D. - Ozzy Osbourne wants an apology from the Cass County sheriff for staging a sting operation in the rocker's name without his permission. Osbourne claims his reputation was tarnished when Sheriff Paul Laney invited 500 people with outstanding warrants to a phony party at a Fargo nightclub before the rocker's concert with Rob Zombie at a nearby arena. More than 30 showed up and were arrested. "Instead of holding a press conference to pat himself on the back, Sheriff Laney should be apologizing to me for using my name in connection with these arrests," Osbourne said in a...

from Tagg Romney: "I recently returned from a trip to North Dakota and Minnesota, my 21st and 22nd states visited on the campaign trail so far. We had a straw poll in Bismarck, ND and I was a speaker at the GOP round-up. It was a ton of fun to meet so many enthusiastic Republicans. My message could be summed up, as reported in the AP, as, 'Personally, I think the best way to beat Hillary Clinton is not to water down our values, or to try to act more like Hillary Clinton, or try to blur the distinction between...