North Dakota

20080312
• Barack Obama - Hillary Clinton - 2008 Election - Lawmakers - Illinois - New York - South Carolina - Mississippi - Georgia - Virginia - North Carolina - Tennessee - Alabama - North Dakota - South Dakota - Kentucky - West Virginia - "Eyeing Obama coattails." ... "Democratic lawmakers are becoming persuaded that [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate and Illinois Senator] Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.[Democratic-Illinois]) would have a more positive impact on other Democrats on the November ballot than [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate and New York Senator] Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.[Democratic-New York])." ... "Obama’s advantage over Clinton would be most pronounced in the Southern and Western states President Bush carried in 2000 and 2004, say lawmakers interviewed by The Hill. In total, 32 members of Congress from these “red states” have endorsed Obama. Twenty-two lawmakers from those states have backed Clinton." ... "Obama will “bring new people into the process in Southern states, there’s no question about it,” said Rep. James Clyburn, the House Democratic whip from South Carolina. “In these Southern states he’s bringing out more people, young people, African-Americans. They’re being energized by him.”" ... "Clyburn, who has stayed neutral in the primary, said Obama at the top of the ticket would “certainly” do more to help other Democratic candidates, citing South Carolina and Mississippi specifically." ... "Obama has picked up congressional endorsements from Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, North and South Dakota, Mississippi, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Clinton has not collected congressional endorsements from any of these states, according to a tally kept by The Hill." -By Alexander Bolton with contributions by Sam Youngman -TheHill.com

  ---

20080208
• Food - Agriculture - Markets - History - Consumer - Minnesota - South Dakota - North Dakota - US - Worldwide - "Record wheat price ignites food inflation fears: It's $15 a bushel at Minneapolis Grain Exchange [Minneapolis, Minnesota] and expected to keep climbing." ... "The highest wheat price in U.S. [United States] history - more than $15 a bushel - was reached Thursday in Minneapolis as a trading frenzy inflames the grain markets, fans fears of spiking food costs and revives worries about food shortages." ... "With wheat stockpiles dwindling, a worldwide scramble is under way for bushels of high-protein spring wheat, the variety grown in Minnesota and the Dakotas [South Dakota and North Dakota] and traded at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange [Minneapolis, Minnesota]. Already, spring wheat prices have tripled in the past year and are poised to move even higher." ... "Thursday's closing price of $15.23 a bushel may be jubilant news for wheat farmers and the rural Midwest, as the historic rally pushes corn and soybean prices near records, too. But it could mean new price shocks for consumers, and it already alarms food companies that need wheat for such consumer staples as bread, cereal, crackers and pasta." ... "In 2007, the rate of U.S. food inflation more than doubled to a 17-year high of 4.8 percent. Some expect that pace to nearly double again this year." ... "The [Minneapolis Grain Exchange] exchange was founded more than a century ago in an era when Minneapolis was the flour milling capital of the world, and it nourished local companies like General Mills, Pillsbury and Cargill. It remains the U.S. marketplace for spring wheat, a tough, high-protein variety that makes bread rise and bagels possible." ... "On Thursday, the local grain elevator in Halstad, Minn. [Minneapolis], was paying $16.13 per bushel for spring wheat. " -By Tom Webb -TwinCities.com

  ---

20080108
• Agriculture - Plant - Energy - Economy - Food - Nebraska - N Dakota - S Dakota - "Grass Makes Better Ethanol than Corn Does: Midwestern farms prove switchgrass could be the right crop for producing ethanol to replace gasoline." ... "Farmers in Nebraska and the Dakotas [North and South] brought the U.S. [United States] closer to becoming a biofuel economy, planting huge tracts of land for the first time with switchgrass—a native North American perennial grass (Panicum virgatum) that often grows on the borders of cropland naturally—and proving that it can deliver more than five times more energy than it takes to grow it." ... "Working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the farmers tracked the seed used to establish the plant, fertilizer used to boost its growth, fuel used to farm it, overall rainfall and the amount of grass ultimately harvested for five years on fields ranging from seven to 23 acres in size (three to nine hectares)." ... "Once established, the fields yielded from 5.2 to 11.1 metric tons of grass bales per hectare, depending on rainfall, says USDA plant scientist Ken Vogel. "It fluctuates with the timing of the precipitation,'' he says. "Switchgrass needs most of its moisture in spring and midsummer. If you get fall rains, it's not going to do that year's crops much good."" ... "But yields from a grass that only needs to be planted once would deliver an average of 13.1 megajoules of energy as ethanol for every megajoule of petroleum consumed—in the form of nitrogen fertilizers or diesel for tractors—growing them. "It's a prediction because right now there are no biorefineries built that handle cellulosic material" like that which switchgrass provides, Vogel notes. "We're pretty confident the ethanol yield is pretty close." This means that switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies." -By David Biello -SciAm 

  ---

20080103
• United States - Mexican - Trucks- Transportation - Safety - Politics - Corporate - Government - North Dakota - "Mexican trucks allowed deep into U.S. in defiance of Congress, lawmaker says." ... "The [Republican President] Bush administration is allowing Mexican trucks to continue to travel deep into the United States despite what critics say is a congressional mandate to ban the trucks from U.S. [United States] highways." ... "Congress voted last year to halt funding for a pilot program that allows Mexican 18-wheelers to begin traveling freely into United States as part of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]. The Department of Transportation contends, however, that the congressional action permits the current program to continue while banning any new program." ... "The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the DOT [Department of Transportation] agency that regulates the program, quietly acknowledged last week that the program is still under way, adding that it's issued permits to 11 Mexican companies with a total of 56 trucks. Mexican trucks previously were confined to a 25-mile border zone." ... "[North Dakota Democratic Senator] Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., in a letter Thursday to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, scoffed at that interpretation and called on the Bush administration to end the program immediately." -By Dave Montgomery -McClatchyDC.com

  ---

20070905
• Military - Flight - North Dakota - Louisiana - "Air Force official rapped after nuclear flyover: Official relieved of command after 5 warheads are flown across the U.S.." ... "An Air Force squadron commander has been relieved of his command after five nuclear weapons were mistakenly loaded aboard a B-52 bomber and flown cross-country last week." ... "Five 150-kiloton warheads were attached to cruise missiles that were flown Aug. 30 from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to be dismantled, but the warheads should have been removed." ... "Military officials insist the warheads remained “under control” at all times and did not pose a danger." -MSNBC 

  ---

20060426
• Internet - Business - Telecommunications - Legislation - Intel - Maine - ND - "Intel throws support to Net neutrality push." ... "Intel Corp. has waded into the debate over the future of the Internet, joining major Web companies in supporting legislation that would force Internet service providers to treat all traffic equally." ... "The House Committee on Energy and Commerce approved a telecommunications bill Wednesday that did not contain the kind of safeguard the "net neutrality" proponents are seeking." ... "With the defeat in the House, attention on the issue is expected to shift to the Senate, where Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., plan to introduce a net neutrality bill." -AP via -MSNBC 

  ---

20060207
• US - Foreign - US_Debt - Education - Health - Money - Politics - Military - ND - "Bush's Budget Sparks Bipartisan Protest." ... "The administration defended President Bush's $2.77 trillion budget plan on Tuesday against congressional attacks that the cuts it sought to deal with exploding budget deficits would unfairly harm government efforts in education, health care and farm programs." ... "Democrats said Bush's proposed budget for Fiscal 2007, beginning Oct. 1, was seriously understating spending that will be needed to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and did not include the billions of dollars needed in future years to make sure the alternative minimum tax designed for the wealthy does not pinch more and more middle class taxpayers." ... "Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., produced charts showing that the amount of federal government debt held by foreigners before Bush became president totaled $1 trillion and now in the first five years of his administration has more than doubled."  -AP via -CBSNews 

  ---

20050415
• Tom DeLay - "10 Ex-G.O.P. Lawmakers Attack Changes in Ethics Rules." ... "Ten former members of Congress, all Republicans, joined in a letter to the House leadership on Thursday to say they believed that revisions in House ethics rules this year were an "obvious action to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay" from investigation. They said the changes needed to be reversed "to restore public confidence in the People's House."" ... "The letter, to be presented Friday to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, is signed by Mark Andrews, a former member of both the Senate and the House from North Dakota, and nine other former House Republicans. While it offers no conclusion about the merits of ethics controversies now swirling around Mr. DeLay, it says "the consensus in our respective districts" is that "the previous admonitions to Mr. DeLay for casting discredit on the House were well-merited."" -By Philip Shenon and Sheryl Gay Stolberg -NYTimes

  ---