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Tainted Dairy Products Being Removed from Ethnic Markets 10/1/2008 The North Dakota Department of Health says it`s working to remove recalled products from the shelves of ethnic markets in the state. Kenan Bullinger, director of the department`s food and lodging division, says Mr. Brown instant coffee and milk tea products, as well as White Rabbit Creamy Candies, have been found in ethnic markets in North Dakota. The recalls are the result of Chinese milk suppliers adding melamine to watered-down milk supplied to food companies around the globe to boost its apparent protein content. The compromised dairy products are blamed for...

MINOT, N.D.—An Air Force supervisor says a Minot Air Force Base officer admitted taking a missile launch control device as a souvenir because he thought it would be "a cool thing to have."

Bismarck, N.D. (AP) Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign is pulling its staffers out of North Dakota. Obama has been making a statewide effort to be the first Democratic presidential candidate in 44 years to carry the state. Obama spokeswoman Amy Brundage says the campaign is sending its staffers from North Dakota to other battleground states.

The presidential campaign of Democrat Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has shrunk its original 18 battleground states strategy to 16 today with word that it is pulling staff from the 11 campaign offices in North Dakota and sending them to other states.Just this week, Obama campaign manager released a map of Obama's battleground states that included North Dakota's 3 electoral college votes as still being contested by the campaign.However, a recent poll by the American Research Group showed Obama's Republican rival Sen. John McCain of Arizona leading 52 to 43 percent. A recent Rasmussen poll has the race in North...

Like neighboring Montana, North Dakota has become a lot friendlier to John McCain in the first polling conducted since Sarah Palin was nominated to be the Republican Vice Presidential nominee. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of North Dakota voters shows McCain with a 14-percentage point lead over Barack Obama, 55% to 41%. In early July, the candidates were tied in the state and Obama was looking to the Dakotas and Montana as a way to expand the electoral map for Democrats. Now, the Democratic nominee appears to be more focused on traditional battleground states. McCain now leads by 22...

Like neighboring Montana, North Dakota has become a lot friendlier to John McCain in the first polling conducted since Sarah Palin was nominated to be the Republican Vice Presidential nominee. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of North Dakota voters shows McCain with a 14-percentage point lead over Barack Obama, 55% to 41%. In early July, the candidates were tied in the state and Obama was looking to the Dakotas and Montana as a way to expand the electoral map for Democrats. Now, the Democratic nominee appears to be more focused on traditional battleground states.

In July, federal authorities indicted Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, on corruption charges on the grounds that Alaska's Prince of Earmarks concealed hundreds of thousands of dollars of gifts and improvements to his Alaska home provided by a powerful oil services company. Also this summer, amid the mortgage meltdown, newspapers reported that a number of senators -- including Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.; Kent Conrad, D-N.D.; and Barack Obama, D.-Ill. -- were the beneficiaries of sweetheart home loans. In June, the Senate Ethics Committee began an initial look into Dodd's and Conrad's discounted Countrywide Financial VIP loans, as is...

A poll conducted from August 23-27 by DFM Research of 400 likely voters shows Obama leading 43% to 40% with 5% Other and 12% Unsure (margin of error +/- 5%). This is the first ND Poll since February showing Obama Leading in North Dakota. (Real Clear Politics has McCain up +3, +1, and +6 in the last 3 polls and Obama up +4 in February) I spoke with Dean Mitchell of DFM Research Today and he stated that the poll was conducted during the DNC Convention with polling ending the day prior to Obama's speech. The full results are listed...

BISMARCK, N.D. (Legal Newsline)-North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said Wednesday he opposes a judge's decision to seal all future documents in the University of North Dakota "Fighting Sioux" lawsuit against the NCAA. Northeast Central District Judge Lawrence Jahnke said he wants the parties to move toward a settlement. Stenehjem, whose office is representing the university, said he believes sealing the records violates the spirit of open records.

When the Obama camp announced that it was going to make a play for North Dakota, a lot of people scoffed. I, for one, was skeptical. But then we all started taking a look at the ROI — the fact that the Obama camp could throw relative pennies at the state and win enough votes to make it competitive — and started thinking that maybe it was a smart choice to at the very least annoy McCain there. Well, now the polls are suggesting that maybe the Obama team was on to something. A new Research 2000 poll released today...

Sweetheart mortgages given by Countrywide Financial, the nation’s biggest mortgage lender, to elected officials and government bureaucrats seem tailor-made for an ethics inquiry by Congress, especially as the country is seeing a rising tide of voter anger in this presidential election year due to the massive $300 bn bailout of the housing industry at taxpayers’ expense. The mortgages at issue were allegedly given to Congressional members and staffers championing this record bailout, a bailout that now surpasses the taxpayer cost of the S&L crisis in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. But Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. Mark Souder...

Link only Air Force Times http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/07/airforce_nuclear_072408w/

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Members of a US Air Force nuclear missile crew face disciplinary action for going to sleep while in possession of an invalidated nuclear launch code component, the air force disclosed Thursday. The breach occurred July 12 at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, the scene of two other recent high profile lapses involving nuclear weapons or nuclear-related components, according to the spokesman. An investigation into the violation of procedures "concluded that no compromise of the classified material occurred," the air force said in a statement.

News Release April 10, 2008 Clarice Nassif Ransom 703-648-4299 cransom@usgs.gov David Ozman 720-244-4543 dozman@usgs.gov -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate— Reston, VA - 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. A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, 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. Related Podcasts...

Will there be a MORTGAGE-GATE controversy in the 2008 election? Judicial Watch has filed a complaint against the sweetheart deal that Senator Obama Barack has received in terms of a mortgage. So has Senator Christopher Dodd, D-CT, who is chair of the Senate Banking Committee. One must ask the question are these two Democrats: are they Dumb, Dishonest, or both -- to have accepted these sweetheart mortgage deals for their personal life? Should the US Justice Department start investigating these politicians and others for such deals to receive favorable treatment in legislation now that the mortgage industry is in serious...

North Dakota is as safe a Republican state as any in Presidential elections. George W. Bush carried the state by twenty-seven points in Election 2004 and twenty-eight points four years earlier. The state has voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate just once since 1936 and three times since 1916. Despite that history, John McCain and Barack Obama are tied in the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of North Dakota voters. Both men earn 43% of the vote. When leaners are included, McCain holds a statistically insignificant one-point advantage, 47% to 46%. Last week, a Rasmussen Reports survey showed Obama with...

John Bartelson, who smokes Marlboro Lights through fingers blackened with tractor grease, may look like an average wheat farmer. He isn't. He's one of North Dakota's new oil barons. Every month, he gets a check for tens of thousands of dollars from a company in Houston called EOG Resources Inc., which drilled two oil wells on his land last year. He says the day his first royalty check arrived was one to remember. "I smiled to beat hell, and I went to town and had a beer," Bartelson, 65, says. His new wealth springs from the Bakken formation, a sprawling...

NEW YORK TIMES: "About that Mortgage, Senator . . ." It turns out that the chieftain of Countrywide -- which is smack in the middle of the mortgage mess -- extended privileged borrowing status to two Senators, Chris Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, and Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota. Both Senators deny any ethical violations.   The disclosure of the V.I.P. arrangments by the political website Politico.com left constituents angry and suspicious -- particularly because the revelations came just as Congress was rousing itself to do something about the mortgage foreclosure crisis.   It would be nice to think that...

The Countrywide sixBy John Bender web posted June 16, 2008The news that former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson was one of the sleaze bags who enriched themselves with sweat heart deals on mortgages from Countrywide Financial makes it a bipartisan scandal and eliminates the slim possibility that any of them will be brought to justice.  The ruling political class doesn't like to bring its members to justice. But if one political party can gain political advantage by going after a few members of the political class who happen to be in the other party, they will grab...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee on Thursday said Congress should examine Countrywide Financial Corp's mortgage loans to Democratic Sens. Christopher Dodd and Kent Conrad. "My view is that these allegations should be considered by the appropriate bodies, and I understand that the Senate Ethics Committee has already begun to look into the matter," Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in a statement.

You must have seen or heard it. It's been repeated ad nauseum by Democrats on floors of both houses of Congress, before TV cameras and radio microphones and at recent campaign events. "We can't drill our way out of this." The donkey party's latest mantra has been hammered home by the usual suspects from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to Barack Obama. Like most Democrat talking points, it's a falsehood. Yes we CAN drill our way out of this. Just the announcement of our intention to drill in any one of the Big Three Forbidden Zones (off the Continental Shelf,...

-- snip -- The growing scandal surrounding the "friends of Angelo" loans (so-called by company employees, referring to Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo) should serve as a political wake-up call. Yet the Senate appears intent on pushing forward legislation, co-authored by Sen. Dodd, that would bail out the worst actors in the subprime mortgage banking industry....

Not making many headlines because the perps are Democrats, the sweetheart loan deals that former Obama Vice Presidential vetter Jim Johnson accepted from Countrywide Chairman Angelo Mozilo have ensnared two Democratic senators; Ken Conrad of North Dakota and former presidential candidate Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Conrad's approach was outrageous. Here's how the Wall Street Journal describes Conrad's dealings with Countrywide and Mozilo: Take Senator Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat whose office issued a Friday statement saying that "I never met Angelo Mozilo." What he did not say then but admitted under later questioning by a Journal reporter is that,...

The loud "thud" you just heard over in the corner of the Senate hearing room was Senator Chris Dodd's vice presidential hopes hitting the wall. The Senator was the second major political figure caught up in and possibly brought down by various aspects of the mortgage mess in general and Countrywide Financial in particular. The Senator, a Democrat from Connecticut and Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee which regulates mortgage lending, was named in an article by Julie Hirschfeld Davis of the Associated Press and earlier by Conde Nast Portfolio magazine, as one of two senators – the other being...

When it comes to charging abuse in markets like the mortgage business, American politicians, right up the ladder, should zip their lips. They're not ones to talk. That's becoming ever more painfully clear with reports like the one Thursday from Condé Nast Portfolio suggesting that several key pols got favored treatment on their personal mortgages. The lucky winners included folks like Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Kent Conrad (D-ND), plus several former Cabinet secretaries: ex-Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson; ex-Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala (who is to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom on Thursday) and ex-UN Ambassador and...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Countrywide Financial, the largest mortgage lender at the center of the US housing crisis, regularly gave loans on favorable terms to prominent lawmakers and former cabinet members, according to US media. The preferential treatment for senators including Democrat Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a recent presidential candidate, was approved by Angelo Mozilo, chief executive of Countrywide Financial, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. CondeNast Portfolio magazine first broke the story on Wednesday, saying the recipients of the favorable terms were known as "Friends of Angelo" in internal company documents and e-mails. "Make an...

Dealings with Countrywide Financial Corp. are becoming a liability in political circles. Sen. Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, announced Saturday that he will donate $10,500 to Habitat for Humanity, a charity that builds homes for low-income people, to offset a discount he apparently received on a mortgage loan from Countrywide, an ailing lender that Bank of America Corp. plans to acquire. Sen. Conrad said a review of the $1.2 million loan he received in 2002 to buy a vacation home in Bethany Beach, Del., indicates that he received a discount of one percentage point on fees. The senator said...

WASHINGTON - Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said Saturday he is donating $10,500 to charity and refinancing his loan on an apartment building after reviewing documents showing he received special treatment from Countrywide Financial Corp. Conrad said it appears that Countrywide waived 1 point on his mortgage for a Bethany Beach, Del., vacation home. He said he would donate the equivalent amount of money to Habitat for Humanity. "Although I did not ask for or know that I was receiving a discount, and even though I was offered a competitive loan from another lender, I do not want to...

You're not going to believe this about Countrywide : "Senators Christopher Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut and chairman of the Banking Committee, and Kent Conrad, Democrat from North Dakota, chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of the Finance Committee, refinanced properties through Countrywide’s “V.I.P.” program in 2003 and 2004, according to company documents and emails and a former employee familiar with the loans. Other participants in the V.I.P. program included former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, and former U.N. ambassador and assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke....

When Senator Kent Conrad wanted a mortgage for his beach house,he turned to a Washington insider, Johnson, former head of Fannie Mae, the government mortgage giant, who then put the senator in touch with Angelo Mozilo, chief executive of the mortgage lender Countrywide Financial. The ensuing telephone call between Mr. Conrad of North Dakota and Mr. Mozilo led to two Countrywide mortgages, including one in which the company bent its rules to give Mr. Conrad a loan. Those loans are among a number of Countrywide mortgages at the center of an examination into whether a number of top politicians in...

WASHINGTON - Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd, a leader of Congress' efforts to help homeowners ensnared in the subprime mortgage meltdown, reportedly got special treatment on his own mortgages from the CEO of Countrywide Financial Corp., a company whose practices he has called "abusive."At least one other lawmaker, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., also benefited from the VIP treatment after placing a personal call to Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo seeking a mortgage.Both senators say they weren't aware they were getting special deals.Still, their involvement in a special program that awarded discounts and waived fees for "friends" of Mozilo —...

WASHINGTON - Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd reportedly received two mortgages under a special Countrywide Financial Corp. program that gave preferential interest rates to "friends" of the company's chairman. A spokesman for Dodd, D-Conn., said Friday that the senator did not seek any special treatment.

Two influential US senators got "VIP" loans from a subprime mortgage lender saving them tens of thousands of dollars. Democrats, Chris Dodd, Connecticut and Kent Conrad of NDakota, received highly favorable loans under "Friend of Angelo," a reference to embattled Countrywide head Angelo Mozilo, Condé Nast Portfolio reported. Dodd chairs the Senate Banking Committee; Conrad chairs the Budget Committee and is a member of the Finance Committee. Others who received "FOA" loans include Alphonso Jackson, HUD Secy under Pres Bush ( resigned in April), and Donna Shalala, Clinton's HHS secretary. The report came one day after Democratic heavyweight Jim Johnson...

SEVERE WEATHER STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DULUTH MN 731 PM CDT THU JUN 12 2008 CASS MN- 731 PM CDT THU JUN 12 2008 ...A tornado warning remains in effect until 8:00 p.m. CDT for Northern Cass County... AT 727 PM CDT...National Weather Service Doppler Radar continued to indicated a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado. This possible tornado was located near Walker... or 12 miles West of Leech Lake moving Northeast at 33 MPH. This possible tornado will be near... 7 miles Southeast of Steamboat Lake by 735 PM... Crooked Lake and 6 miles Southeast of Wilkinson by...

The recent spike in oil prices and unemployment is dramatically changing this presidential campaign -- virtually overnight. The near $20 jump in oil to $140 a barrel, the unexpected half-point increase in the jobless rate to 5.5 percent (the biggest monthly increase in twenty years), and the resulting 400-point plunge in stocks has created a new campaign issue right before our eyes. Public worry number one is now oil, jobs, and the economy, with the inflationary woes of the U.S. dollar right underneath. The candidate who can connect with these issues will win in November. But so far neither Obama...

Tears, hugs and American flags welcomed members of a North Dakota National Guard unit back to their home state after nearly a year in Iraq.Most of the 104 members of the 817th Engineer Company arrived at Jamestown airport on two chartered flights Saturday, shortly after 7 a.m., about 45 minutes ahead of schedule. Eleven soldiers had returned earlier and two went directly to homes in Wisconsin and Colorado.Guard officials did their best to notify families of the early arrival, and hundreds turned out to welcome home the troops."The year is done," said Daine Flieth, who was reunited with her husband,...

John Bartelson, who smokes Marlboro Lights through fingers blackened with tractor grease, may look like an average wheat farmer. He isn't. He's one of North Dakota's new oil barons. Every month, he gets a check for tens of thousands of dollars from a company in Houston called EOG Resources Inc., which drilled two oil wells on his land last year. He says the day his first royalty check arrived was one to remember. "I smiled to beat hell, and I went to town and had a beer," said Bartelson, 65. His new wealth springs from the Bakken formation, a deposit...

The Forest Service says it's trying to protect resources by ordering a 30 percent reduction in cattle grazing on grasslands in southwestern North Dakota. Some ranchers were surprised by the order. Doug Pope is the president of the Little Missouri Grazing Association. He says the Medora District has had more than 4 inches of rain this spring. He says a lot of people thought Forest Service letter ordering the cuts was unwarranted. The Forest Service manages grazing on about 1 million public acres on the National Grasslands. Ron Jablonski is the Forest Service ranger for the Medora District. He says...

LAUREL, Md., May 20, 2008 – A group of wounded U.S. military veterans gathered at a Maryland ice rink for some fun, camaraderie and exercise May 17. Marine Cpl. Ray Hennagir goes after the puck at the wounded warrior ice hockey clinic at Gardens Ice House, in Laurel, Md., May 17, 2008. Hennagir lost both his legs and four fingers on his left hand on June 16, 2007, near Fallujah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated. Defense Department photo by Gerry J. Gilmore  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Armed Forces Day is an ideal time to start...

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.”