http://wcco.com/localen-USSat, 22 Nov 2008 07:32:31 GMT5http://wcco.com/local/laptop.blind.bus.2.871021.html
"It's kind of like my partner. It's like my partner in the business. If there are things that I need to find right away, I know where it's at," explained Zitek.

But on Tuesday her partner was taken from her. She was riding a Metro Transit bus, her laptop was in her backpack tucked under her seat. When Zitek got to her stop she reached for it and realized it wasn't there. Other passengers helped her look but came up empty handed.

"That's when I realized it really, truly is gone," recalled Zitek.

On Friday police produced a picture of the man they think may have taken the laptop. Zitek said that if the thief was hoping to sell it at a pawn shop he is in for a surprise. The $6,500 computer is solely for the blind and only communicates through Braille.

Zitek is hoping the picture helps. She doesn't want sympathy, she just wants her business partner back.

"This has changed my perception of people quite a bit. It just goes to show that although most people are good people, there are some really bad people out there and one of them has impacted my life," said Zitek

Zitek thinks the thief knew she was blind. Initially she said she would not press charges if the thief returned her laptop. Since then, she has changed her mind because she thinks the culprit has had plenty of time to give it back.

]]>http://wcco.com/local/laptop.blind.bus.2.871021.htmlSat, 22 Nov 2008 05:11:42 GMThttp://wcco.com/local/bakken.formation.oil.2.871054.html
Beneath the land known as America's Breadbasket lies a hidden horizon for our nation's energy future. It's a treasure out of sight to most, and to this point, largely untapped.

There's a virtual sea of oil beneath the windblown land. It's a surprising commonality between the Middle East and our own Midwest.

In fact, the latest U.S. Geological Survey reported 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil in an area of western North Dakota.

But many geologists and scientists believe there's more, maybe 200 billion barrels. That's more than 20 times the controversial Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

The oil comes from an area about two miles below the grain fields. It's called the Bakken Formation.

Traveling far enough in the Bakken formation leads to Parshall, North Dakota. On the side of the road is the Paul Broste Rock Museum. Seventy-five million years ago, North Dakota wasn't the North Dakota thought of today, not snow and cold and wind. It was a tropical rain forest covered with water and sequoia trees.

Petrified sequoia trees are what's left of the lush green that over millions of years and incredible pressure has been converted into the oil that's flowing now.

Until recently, the Bakken was known in the oil industry as "fool's gold." WCCO met a Minnesota businessman willing to make the bet.

"We started paying $35 an acre in 2006 and recently acreage traded for as high as $33,000 an acre," said Mike Reger with Northern Oil and Gas, Inc.

Reger's company currently holds leases on 70,000 acres in the Bakken. He's got a dozen wells underway with an expected one million barrels of oil from each.

"The price of poker is definitely going up in the Bakken," he said.

The price of poker is going up based on the fact that new technology makes it possible to capture the oil that's trapped deep in the rocks.

It does mean the cost of drilling in such a well lands somewhere around the $5.5 million mark.

The casing pipes loaded on the derrick are intended to do conventional drilling straight down, just like all the oil wells in the world over. But in North Dakota once they hit pay dirt, the pipes will turn and run horizontally

The new technology is environmentally conscious, leaving the smallest footprint possible.

All across the Bakken flares mark the horizon, releasing the natural gas that's been trapped along with the oil.

"This well will flare about 500,000 cubic feet a day for the next few months until we get it connected to the pipeline, but this will eventually be sold," explained Reger.

He says there are no worries with oil prices falling below perhaps $50 a barrel.

"When we started drilling Bakken wells, the price of oil was $48. The fact that there's so much oil that's coming up in every one of these wells makes our return significant," he said.

There's significance in where the oil is coming from too. Reger's business partner, Ryan Gilbertson, says it's an important factor in gaining energy independence.

"Every barrel that we produce out of the ground stays in the U.S. and for that matter, it stays in the Midwest, which directly impacts consumers, both in Minnesota and throughout the Midwest," said Gilbertson.

Nowhere is that impact felt more than by the residents in nearby Stanley. At Joyce's Cafe, oil workers from down south come to spend money. Brothers Jack and Skip Wing have lived there all their lives.

"The country benefits from having more available oil on our own soil. And a boost to a corner of the country that's actually thriving," said Wing.

Like all oil fields, the Bakken will run out some day. They recently discovered another oilfield just below it. The Three Forks field is expected to have just as much, if not more, oil than the Bakken.

]]>http://wcco.com/local/bakken.formation.oil.2.871054.htmlSat, 22 Nov 2008 05:04:04 GMThttp://wcco.com/local/reply.all.questions.2.871014.html
Jane in Minnetonka wanted to know why we only hear about the White House dog. What about the White House cat?

Jason DeRusha said he's not a big cat guy, but neither are our Presidents.

But, George Bush had India the cat. Bill Clinton had a cat named Socks. The Kennedys, Calvin Coolidge and Teddy Roosevelt all had felines.

John Quincy Adams had an alligator.

Does the first lady get paid? - Brian, Coon Rapids

Nope. She has an office and a budget, and her chief of staff makes more than $100,000. But the First Lady is unpaid.

Why do we see stars when we hit our heads? - Isaac, Maple Grove

This is part a cartoon thing, but part real.

It's the pressure of your skull crashing against the visual cortex, your visual center. The pressure causes trauma to the cortex, and that can cause you to see tiny flecks of light which may look like stars.

Why doesn't arm hair grow as fast as the hair on your head? - Wendy

The body's programmed that way. Each hair comes from a single follicle. Hair cells inside the follicle tell the hair when to grow and when to rest. On your arms, they stop growing every couple of months. On your head it grows for years at a time.

]]>http://wcco.com/local/reply.all.questions.2.871014.htmlSat, 22 Nov 2008 04:55:38 GMThttp://wcco.com/local/us.bank.takeover.2.871049.html
The failures of Downey Savings and Loan Association, based in Newport Beach, and PFF Bank & Trust of Pomona brought the number of U.S. bank failures this year to 22.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the two thrifts. U.S. Bank, based in Minneapolis, acquired all the deposits of both.

Downey, the 23rd-largest U.S. savings and loan, had assets of $12.8 billion and deposits of $9.7 billion as of Sept. 30. PFF, the 38th-largest, had assets of $3.7 billion and $2.4 billion in deposits.

Also Friday, Georgia regulators shut down The Community Bank, a small bank in Loganville, Ga. The FDIC was made receiver of the bank, which had $681 million in assets and $611.4 million in deposits as of Oct. 17. The FDIC said all the bank's deposits and about $84.4 million of its assets will be acquired by Bank of Essex, of Tappahannock, Va. Its four branches will reopen Monday as offices of Bank of Essex.

The Office of Thrift Supervision, the federal regulator for the two California thrifts, said they both suffered mounting losses since last year. Downey's business focused on nontraditional, high-risk home mortgages such as payment-option and adjustable-rate loans.

The Treasury Department agency recently boosted the minimum capital requirements for the parent, Downey Financial Corp., as the company struggled with the slumping mortgage market. Downey was hit hard by rising mortgage defaults, especially in its option adjustable-rate mortgage holdings. Option ARMs allow customers to choose a different payment option each month -- including a payment that is smaller than the interest due on the loan.

Option ARMs have been among the worst-performing loans during the downturn in the real estate market.

PFF, established in 1892, had a large concentration of housing construction loans hit hard by the deteriorating real estate market on the West Coast, the thrift agency said.

"The closing of these two thrifts once again demonstrates the tremendous impact of the housing market distress on the state of California," said John Reich, director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, in a statement. This year, four of the five failures of institutions regulated by the agency -- and all the ones of significant size -- had major concentrations in housing finance business in California, he said.

In July, another big savings and loan, IndyMac Bank based in Pasadena, Calif., failed and was seized by regulators with about $32 billion in assets.
The FDIC estimated that the resolution of Downey will cost the federal deposit insurance fund about $1.4 billion, while that of PFF will cost an estimated $700 million.

Regular deposit accounts are now insured up to $250,000 as part of the financial rescue law enacted in early October.

The 22 bank failures so far this year compare with three for all of 2007 and are far more than in the previous five years combined. It's expected that many more banks won't survive the next year of economic tumult. The pressures of tumbling home prices, rising mortgage foreclosures and tighter credit have been battering many banks, large and small, nationwide.

This year's failures also include Seattle-based thrift Washington Mutual Inc. in late September, the biggest bank collapse in U.S. history. It had $307 billion in assets.

The FDIC estimates that through 2013 there will be about $40 billion in losses to the deposit insurance fund, including an $8.9 billion loss from the failure of IndyMac Bank. The FDIC is raising insurance premiums paid by banks and thrifts to replenish its fund, which now stands at around $45.2 billion, below the minimum target level set by Congress and the lowest level since 2003.

On Friday, the FDIC formally approved a program to guarantee as much as $1.4 trillion in U.S. banks' debt for more than three years as part of the government's financial rescue plan. Under the program, meant to thaw the freeze in bank-to-bank lending, the FDIC will provide temporary insurance for loans between banks -- except for those for 30 days or less -- guaranteeing the new debt in the event of payment default by the borrowing bank.

The FDIC also will guarantee deposits in non-interest-bearing "transaction" accounts by removing the current $250,000 insurance limit on them through the end of next year. That could add as much as $500 billion to FDIC-backed deposits.

Well over half of the roughly 8,500 federally insured banks and savings and loans are expected to tap the FDIC's temporary guarantees.

Of the 8,500 federally insured banks and thrifts, the FDIC had 117 on its internal list of troubled institutions as of June 30, a five-year high. The agency doesn't disclose the banks' names.

]]>http://wcco.com/local/us.bank.takeover.2.871049.htmlSat, 22 Nov 2008 04:12:13 GMThttp://wcco.com/local/denny.hecker.dealerships.2.871034.html
Four-hundred employees in the Twin Cities are going to be out of a job.

The Hecker Automotive group is saying the sour economy and the crisis in the auto industry is forcing its hand. The dealerships that will be shut down tomorrow are the Blaine Bargain lot, Forest Lake Chrysler Jeep Dodge Mitsubishi, Monticello Dodge Ford and Mercury, Rosedale Hyundai, Shakopee Chrysler Jeep Dodge, and Stillwater Ford Lincoln Mercury. 

For vehicles being repaired at these dealers, a spokesperson for the Hecker automotive groups says they will either finish the repair or service there or move the car to another dealership to finish the repairs.

In a statement Friday night, Denny Hecker Automotive Group President Barbara Jerich said, "The decision to realign our dealership came as we found ourselves in the midst of a 'perfect storm' of economic bad news: a financial crisis on Wall street, chaos in the housing market, consumer confidence at all time low, and the sight of the Big Three on their knees in Washington asking for a bailout loan."

Hecker says he is restructuring his company to focus on the dealerships with the most potential.

Hecker automotive will continue to run seven car dealerships, six in Minnesota and one in Los Angeles.

They are Brainerd Toyota, Inver Grove Heights Toyota, Los Angeles Hyundai, Pine City Car and Truck City, Southview Chevrolet, St. Cloud Hyundai, and Stillwater Cadillac Pontiac GMC.

Hecker announced the sale of three other local dealerships in the Twin Cities. They are Inver Grove Heights Hyundai, Inver Grove Heights Volkswagon and Peninsula Dodge.

]]>http://wcco.com/local/denny.hecker.dealerships.2.871034.htmlSat, 22 Nov 2008 04:53:20 GMThttp://wcco.com/local/fatal.crash.harwood.2.871018.html
Authorities say 28-year-old Levi Sivertson of Felton, Minn., was driving a pickup that went over the center line and collided with another pickup on a Cass County road Thursday night near Harwood.

The patrol said the driver of the other pickup, 54-year-old Roy Arneson of West Fargo, had pulled onto the shoulder to try to avoid a crash. The patrol said Arneson was injured.

]]>http://wcco.com/local/fatal.crash.harwood.2.871018.htmlSat, 22 Nov 2008 03:11:32 GMThttp://wcco.com/local/paul.reed.schmidt.2.871004.html
Paul Reed Schmidt of Atwater had been accused of groping a 22-year-old Atwater woman at the city's police station. She was doing a ride-along with Schmidt when he was on duty Oct. 16, 2007.

A nine-woman, three-man Kandiyohi County jury acquitted Schmidt on Friday evening after about 2 1/2 hours of deliberation.

The 35-year-old Schmidt cried and hugged his wife and his father after the verdict was read. He declined to comment. His attorney, Julius Nolen, says the jury made the right decision.

Michael Lieberg, the Stearns County assistant county attorney who prosecuted the case for Kandiyohi County, says he respects the jury's decision, even though he disagrees with it.

]]>http://wcco.com/local/paul.reed.schmidt.2.871004.htmlSat, 22 Nov 2008 02:57:40 GMThttp://wcco.com/local/great.lakes.ballast.2.870649.html
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati rejected a challenge to the statute filed by nine shipping companies and associations. They claimed the measure interferes with interstate commerce and is pre-empted by federal law.

Michigan requires saltwater ships to obtain a Department of Environmental Quality permit before calling at the state's ports. It certifies they either will not discharge ballast water or have onboard technology to kill live organisms in the water before it is dumped.

Legislators enacted the law in 2005, frustrated with what they considered an inadequate federal response to the exotic species that have caused billions of dollars in damage to the Great Lakes economy.

"We're pleased that the court has upheld Michigan's contention that there is more that can be done to keep the invasives out," said Robert McCann, spokesman for the DEQ. "This is a big win for the Great Lakes."

Messages seeking comment were left with shipping industry representatives.

At least 185 invasives have been detected in the lakes, most of which are believed to have arrived in ship ballast. They disrupt the ecosystem's natural balance by competing with native species for food and habitat.

"The millions of people who depend on the Great Lakes deserve a solution to this serious problem to protect our drinking water, economy and way of life," said Marc Smith, state policy director for the National Wildlife Federation's Great Lakes office in Ann Arbor.

Ships fill their ballast tanks to improve stability in rough seas when traveling with little or no cargo. They dump the water -- and whatever life forms it carries -- after arriving in port to take on freight.

U.S. and Canadian regulations have long required oceangoing vessels to dump ballast water at sea and fill their tanks with salt water before entering the Great Lakes. More recently, they have ordered ships to rinse tanks at sea even if they're carrying no ballast, in order to kill freshwater creatures lurking in residues.

Environmentalists say those measures are helpful but inadequate. They contend sterilizing water before release is the only way to ensure no live invader will escape.

Michigan is the only Great Lakes state with its own ballast law. The DEQ has issued more than 100 permits to ships that promised not to discharge ballast in the state's waters.

In 2007, U.S. District Judge John Feikens in Detroit rejected the shipping industry's lawsuit seeking to nullify the law.

Upholding Feikiens' ruling Friday, a unanimous three-judge appeals court panel said some of the plaintiffs had no standing to sue while the others' arguments were invalid.

"Michigan, for undisputedly legitimate reasons, has enacted legislation of a type expressly contemplated by Congress," the panel said. "We have no basis to disrupt the result of those democratic processes."

In a separate development, a Wisconsin official said Friday the state would conduct a hearing on a proposed system for regulating ballast water discharges at its ports, which has been challenged by the National Wildlife Federation.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue a Clean Water Act permit next month that simply would order ships to meet existing requirements for cleaning out ballast tanks. But the Great Lakes states are considering setting tougher standards under the act.

Most are leaning toward adopting International Maritime Organization standards that limit the number of live organisms in discharged water. Wisconsin in October formally proposed doing so.

Although tougher than what EPA wants, Wisconsin's policy still would allow invasives to enter the lakes, the wildlife federation's Smith said. He urged the Great Lakes states to follow the lead of New York, which is developing a standard 1,000 times more stringent than the international one.

Wisconsin will hold a hearing on the issue early next year but considers the IMO standard the strongest that can be achieved with existing technology, said Todd Ambs, water division administrator for the Department of Natural Resources.

"We'd like to have stronger standards but this is about what we can get in place right now," Ambs said. Shippers have complained the Wisconsin standards are too tough, he added.

]]>http://wcco.com/local/great.lakes.ballast.2.870649.htmlSat, 22 Nov 2008 02:48:26 GMThttp://wcco.com/local/recount.ballots.hold.2.870536.html
Officials for both Norm Coleman and Al Franken said Friday they'll review the hundreds of challenges they've made so far in their Senate race recount -- and withdraw some -- before the state Canvassing Board meets next month to consider them.

Minnesota's Senate battle is one of two that are unresolved, with Georgia's headed for a Dec. 2 conclusion.

The mounting pile of challenged ballots is becoming a significant factor in the overtime Senate race. It has nibbled into the vote totals of Coleman and Franken compared with the precinct-by-precinct counts on Nov. 4.

Coleman led Franken by 215 votes before the recount. Through Friday, the margin was 115, a comparison made possible because counties are reporting recount numbers that compare directly with their precincts' Nov. 4 results. However, those numbers are expected to shift daily until the counties complete their work. And the final outcome will likely rest on the 1,525 ballot challenges filed by the two campaigns, due to be taken up by a special canvassing board Dec. 16.

At dueling news conferences Friday, both campaigns accused the other of overzealous challenges. They held up examples of ballots that have an obvious mark for their candidate and no other disqualifying attributes.

Marc Elias, the lead Franken lawyer, ran through a stack of 10 photocopied ballots from Fillmore County, where Coleman volunteers lodged 27 challenges. Some that included Franken votes on the same ballot as a presidential vote for Republican John McCain were challenged on the basis of "voter intent."

"It must be heartbreaking for the people down there that there are people who voted for John McCain who didn't also want to vote for Norm Coleman," Elias said.

Hours later, Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan addressed reporters in a room where the walls were plastered with more than 50 copied challenged ballots from Meeker County that they called frivolous. Most had Coleman's oval clearly filled in but were flagged anyway.

Sheehan accused Franken's volunteers of making excessive challenges to whittle away the 215-vote lead Coleman held going into the recount. Challenged ballots don't figure into each candidate's vote total as results are reported daily by the secretary of state. In the first two days, Coleman's lead dropped.

"They need to show from the public perspective that they are gaining momentum and it is not reality," Sheehan said. "It's simply that they're challenging more ballots."

Through Friday, figures reported by the secretary of state showed Franken volunteers had challenged 778 ballots; Coleman volunteers had challenged 747.

Sheehan and Elias said there have been no formal discussions between the campaigns about steps that could be taken to reduce the pile of disputed ballots that will go to the five-member Canvassing Board for final rulings. But both said they anticipated weak challenges would be pulled by then.

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said he expects 1,500 to 1,600 challenges by the end of the manual recount. But he wouldn't estimate how many the campaigns might withdraw.

Ritchie also said he expects the recount to be about three-quarters done by the end of Saturday.

]]>http://wcco.com/local/recount.ballots.hold.2.870536.htmlSat, 22 Nov 2008 02:45:31 GMThttp://wcco.com/local/sex.offender.laws.2.870995.html
Dru Sjodin, a UND senior from Pequot Lakes, Minn., was taken from the parking lot of a Grand Forks shopping mall on Saturday, Nov. 22, 2003, after talking with her boyfriend on her cell phone. Her body was discovered in a ravine near Crookston, Minn., five months later. Authorities said she had been beaten, raped and stabbed.

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., a convicted rapist from Crookston, was sentenced to death for kidnapping and killing the 22-year-old Sjodin. He is in a federal prison in Indiana awaiting execution while his lawyers prepare to argue an appeal.

The prosecutor who sent Rodriguez to death row, U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, believes the case captured national attention because Sjodin was abducted while walking to her car after shopping. It could have happened to anybody, Wrigley said.

"There was this raw feeling that there was no way to protect against this," Wrigley said.

State and federal lawmakers have since tried to bolster that protection. A dozen new laws against sex offenders have been enacted in North Dakota since Sjodin was killed. Minnesota has taken similar steps. The names of victims have been attached to federal legislation, including the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, Katie's Law, and Dru's Law.

North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said the case has created an intolerance toward sex offenses that was long overdue. But more is needed, he said.

"You're never satisfied. You can always do things better," Stenehjem said. "There are serious offenses and this has resounded with the public and the legislature and the judiciary."

Minnesota made major changes in the way it handles sexual predators in the wake of the Sjodin case, partly because it was Minnesota that let Rodriguez go free in the first place.

State officials had classified Rodriguez as a Level 3 sex offender, the kind most likely to re-offend, but they opted not to try to commit civilly, which would have let the state hold him indefinitely. Because he served his entire 23-year sentence, he was under no restrictions when he left prison six months before Sjodin's abduction.

Minnesota now keeps more sex offenders locked up longer, and supervises them more closely once they do get out of prison. It has sharply increased the number of sex offenders it commits to its security hospitals Moose Lake and St. Peter after their prison sentences run out, and it has adopted tougher sentencing for new offenses, particularly for repeat offenders.

Recent North Dakota sex offender legislation calls for enhanced sentences, less red tape for civil commitment proceedings, tougher penalties for luring and possession of child pornography and expanded registration requirements, including DNA and fingerprints.

The state also completed a user-friendly sex offender Web site that includes detailed information, photographs of offenders, and the ability to sign up for e-mail notices when offenders move into a certain city. The site has had "millions of hits," Stenehjem said.

"I was working on our sex offender Web site before this case, but it really helped for getting the Legislature on board," Stenehjem said.

Wrigley said that while the case shed light on Level 3 sex offenders, some of them still are allowed to walk the streets.

"Alfonso Rodriguez is not the first and he's not going to be the last," Wrigley said. "We need to ask ourselves, 'How do we allow that to happen?' To me, it's the irony of the whole thing. Why does a Level 3 sex offender get out of prison?"

Sjodin's family has been active in promoting sex offender legislation. Her mother, Linda Walker, spent three years working on Dru's Law, which created a national sex offender registry. She is a member of the Surviving Parents Coalition, which seeks to stop predatory crimes.

"I just spent some time with Dru's family and went to her grave for the very first time," Wrigley said this week. "The family appreciates so much the public's warm embrace over the years."

Wrigley is likely to be replaced as U.S. attorney when president-elect Barack Obama takes office, but he said he still hopes to argue against Rodriguez's appeal before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A hearing date has not been set.

"Five years does nothing to diminish the horror of what he did," Wrigley said. "Now that we've gotten the verdict in this case, it's our job to defend the trial and defend the judge, and we're actively in the middle of that process."

]]>http://wcco.com/local/sex.offender.laws.2.870995.htmlSat, 22 Nov 2008 02:42:50 GMT