BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) \u2014 An advisory group of North Dakota lawmakers, state officials and business leaders is recommending lower projections for tax collections when crafting the next state spending plan.<\/p>\n
State Budget Director Pam Sharp told the panel Friday that tax collections already are more than $50 million lower than what was expected so far this year. The deficit was based on a previous revenue forecast done in November.<\/p>\n
A dramatic drop in North Dakota tax collections due to depressed oil and farm commodity prices has had North Dakota scrambling to make up for potential shortfalls to the state treasury.<\/p>\n
The recommendations by the group will be used to craft a new forecast expected next week by budget analysts. The Legislature has idled major spending bills until the new economic assumptions are released.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) \u2014 A United Nations official who visited North Dakota in the wake of months of protests over the Dakota Access pipeline believes the concerns and rights of Native Americans haven’t been adequately addressed.<\/p>\n
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz is the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples. She believes authorities used unnecessary force against protesters, that the Standing Rock Sioux tribe wasn’t properly consulted, and that the issue of trash left by protesters has been overblown.<\/p>\n
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum says the state has respected legal protests. He says it focused on maintaining peace and protecting the environment. He says his administration is restoring relations with the Standing Rock Sioux.<\/p>\n
Tauli-Corpuz will make a report in September to the U.N. Human Rights Council. It will have no force of law.<\/p>\n
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BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) \u2014 U.S. and tribal officials are opposing an effort by the developer of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access oil pipeline to keep some information shielded from the public while a court battle over the project continues.<\/p>\n
Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners last month asked a judge to shield details such as spill response plans and pipeline features that could be targeted by anti-pipeline activists.<\/p>\n
ETP is a defendant along with the Army Corps of Engineers in a lawsuit filed by the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux. The tribes say the pipeline threatens water, sacred sites and their religion.<\/p>\n
The tribes maintain the information at issue is of public interest and undermines ETP’s legal case.<\/p>\n
The Corps says only a limited amount of the information warrants protection.<\/p>\n
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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) \u2014 A health care system headquartered in the Dakotas is partnering with a children’s hospital in Florida to sequence the genes of nearly 1,000 Latino and Hispanic people to better understand the health needs of those populations.<\/p>\n
Philanthropist Denny Sanford and Sanford Health have given $7 million to the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital initiative in Miami. The hospital is named for Jack Nicklaus. The golfing great says he recently approached his friend, Denny Sanford, and asked for help with the genomic medicine project.<\/p>\n
The sequencing project will make it easier to determine whether a person is predisposed to a certain disease, or how they might respond to a particular medicine. The initiative will help build a database of common genomes and identify genetic patterns among Hispanic and Latino populations.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In sports…<\/p>\n
Class B Girls\u2019 Basketball State Tournament, Grand Forks<\/p>\n
Park River Fordville Lankin 43\u00a0 Edgeley Kulm Montpelier 29<\/p>\n
EKM\u00a0 play for 7th place Saturday,\u00a0 the Aggies play for 5th place.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nBISMARCK, N.D. (AP) \u2014 The Bismarck area is preparing to host a Special Olympics event that’s expected to draw more than 700 participants this summer.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0 2017 Special Olympics North America Softball Championship is anticipated to bring about 1,000 visitors to the community in August.<\/p>\n
The event was announced during the Bismarck-Mandan Convention and Visitors Bureau’s annual meeting.<\/p>\n
Craig Pippert with Special Olympics North America says 32 teams from the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean are expected to compete.<\/p>\n
Kathleen Meagher is president of Special Olympics North Dakota. She says the event will help make “Bismarck-Mandan a more inclusive community than it already is.”<\/p>\n
Convention bureau CEO Sheri Grossman says meetings and events brought $31.2 million of spending to the community in 2016.<\/p>\n
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In world and national news…<\/p>\n
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WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is signaling that the Fed will likely resume raising interest rates later this month to reflect a strengthening job market and inflation edging toward the central bank’s 2 percent target rate. Yellen also says in a speech in Chicago that the Fed expects steady economic improvement to justify additional rate increases. While not specifying how many rate hikes could occur this year, Yellen notes that Fed officials in December had estimated that there would be three this year.<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A Pentagon spokesman says the U.S. has conducted more than 30 airstrikes this week in Yemen aimed at an al-Qaida affiliate seen as intent on attacking the United States. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters today that U.S. warplanes over the past two days have targeted members of the group known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as the group’s infrastructure, fighting positions and heavy weapons.<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The United States says basic freedoms of expression and free association are on the decline around the world, making it harder for opposition groups and human rights activists to organize. That’s the conclusion of the State Department’s annual human rights report released Friday. The report says there are growing crackdowns on the media and internet freedom and suppression of political opposition groups. It says “civil society” groups that represent different sectors of a population have less room to operate. Human rights groups and some lawmakers are criticizing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for declining to speak publicly about the report or to promote it.<\/p>\n
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) \u2014 The U.S. Justice Department says it’s halting a review and reform process of the Memphis Police Department. In October, Justice Department officials launched the comprehensive review of Memphis police after citizens criticized the department’s use of deadly force and its treatment of the black community. Friday, the department said it won’t proceed with the collaborative reform process, and that it has made other technical assistance and training resources available to Memphis police. The review began after an announcement in September that federal officials found insufficient evidence to file civil rights charges in the July 2015 shooting of a black man by a white officer.<\/p>\n
ST. LOUIS (AP) \u2014 A Missouri police official says the man accused of threatening eight Jewish institutions and the Anti-Defamation League will also be questioned about the desecration of a Jewish cemetery. Authorities say 31-year-old Juan Thompson made the threats in an effort to harass and vilify his former girlfriend. They say some of the threats against the institutions were made in the woman’s name.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CSi Weather… .TONIGHT…Partly cloudy. A 20 percent chance of light snow in the evening in the Valley City area. Lows in the lower 20s. Southeast winds 10 to 15 mph. .SATURDAY…Mostly sunny. Highs in the lower 40s. Southeast winds 10 to 15 mph. .SATURDAY NIGHT…Decreasing clouds. Lows in the upper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":82559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wb-show"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117261"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117342,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117261\/revisions\/117342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/82559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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CSi Weather…<\/p>\n