News

​Standing Rock vs. Energy Transfer Partners part 2

November 13th, 2019

Protestors on Veterans Memorial Bridge in Fargo 2017 - photograph by C.S. Hagen

LINTON — The battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline is not finished, part two began Wednesday morning during a public hearing conducted by the North Dakota Public Service Commission.

Energy Transfer Partners — the parent company of the Dakota Access Pipeline — wants to expand the pipeline’s capacity, nearly doubling the flow of crude oil south. The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, the principal opponent against the expansion, said such a change would put the environment, drinking…

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​Abortions on decline even as Roe v. Wade is threatened

November 12th, 2019

Kathryn Kolbert before speaking at a Planned Parenthood event in Fargo - photograph by C.S. Hagen

FARGO — In some places across the state the words Planned Parenthood are spoken as curse words, but the facts say differently: abortions are down, young women are finding information and assistance, and the poor can afford to plan their families.

“It’s always like a curse word until they need the help,” Kathryn “Kitty” Kolbert said before speaking at the 15th annual Progress on the Prairie Planned Parenthood event Tuesday night. “And that’s been my experience over the…

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I’m going to say goodbye now, Mom: An essay on Alzheimer’s

November 7th, 2019

Cover by Raul Gomez

By Lonna Whiting
lonnawhiting@gmail.com

I’m eating lunch at my desk transcribing an interview from a doctor about the benefits of colonoscopies before age 50.

It’s going to be used in a blog piece I’m ghostwriting for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association as part of Colon Cancer Awareness Month.The doctor’s voice comes through my earbuds, watery, nervous and scripted. They all sound the same like they’re reciting passages from Gray’s Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical…

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​‘Planned Parenthood Direct’ App expands reproductive healthcare access

November 6th, 2019

In early October, Planned Parenthood North Central States (PPNCS) announced that Planned Parenthood Direct, a free smartphone app, was available for patients in North Dakota. The app, which can be downloaded on Google Play and in the App Store, allows patients across the state to connect with Planned Parenthood’s sexual and reproductive health care providers in order to receive confidential care and home delivery of contraceptives.

The Planned Parenthood Direct app is available for…

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Walz to Moorhead: Community is ‘critical’

November 6th, 2019

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (left) and Moorhead Mayor Jonathan Judd - photograph by Bryce Haugen

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz comes to Moorhead quite frequently. He campaigned hard last year in this city of 45,000 on the western edge of the state. In January, he brought his multi-city inaugural party - One Minnesota - to Junkyard Brewing. In the months since he’s flown in several times to talk policy with local leaders and attend ceremonies.

Walz returned to town on October 29 as a part of his two-month bonding tour. The goal of the tour is to help the governor and his staff…

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​‘When you’ve been targeted for death it changes your life’

November 2nd, 2019

A young girl looks on a protest posters containing pictures of the Turkish president - photograph by C.S. Hagen

MOORHEAD — Varseen Khalil stumbled out of bed when the phone rang early one morning last week. Three a.m. calls rarely carry good news. A local friend was on the phone. He had received word from Syria that her uncle, a volunteer fighter in Kurdistan Syria, was shot by Turkish soldiers.

With limited access to information she knows he survived; he was patched up by medics because area hospitals are too dangerous. Even after being severely injured, her uncle refused to return home to Iraq…

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​The truck that almost changed civil asset forfeiture laws

October 30th, 2019

Design by Raul Gomez

MANDAN — A lone activist delivering a yurt to Dakota Access Pipeline’s protest camps came close to challenging civil asset forfeiture laws, but the state, at the last minute, declined to defend the law in court.

Aaron Dorn, a former National Guard soldier from upstate New York, never intended to stand on the front lines or get arrested in 2016 while Standing Rock and thousands of others protested Energy Transfer Partners oil interests. He simply wanted to deliver a yurt and supplies,…

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Us, round-eyed millet eaters

October 23rd, 2019

Chinese deity Wei Tuo practicing a middle finger mudra - photograph by C.S. Hagen

TIANJIN, CHINA (PRC) – Blood thirsty, sex crazed demons lurked to the frozen north and beyond the western mountains in what was known to the ancient Chinese as the Great Wilderness.

Toward the setting sun, fiery-haired ogres known as Longlegs prowled. Their eyes were round as teacups and shot green, envious rays when their appetites were aroused. Normally, these Slavic barbarians ate millet.

The northern nomads had surnames such as Hairy Folk, Reap Rage and Drought-ghoul. Their children…

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‘The world is watching me die, but nobody will come for me’

October 16th, 2019

Design by Raul Gomez, photographs provided by family

MOORHEAD - As a young boy growing up in Kurdish-controlled Iraq, Jahwar Salih played soccer and tennis, dreamed of a college education. Those dreams were smashed after he turned 16; he picked up an AK-47 and joined the Peshmerga to fight Saddam Hussein’s attempted genocide of the Kurds.

Even as a child the threat of extinction was never far away. Chemical gas attacks and superior war machines kept his people on the run. Hundreds of thousands died. Today, after beating the terrorist…

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More scared of cops than pimps

October 16th, 2019

LeeAnn Lemke, a self-professed sex worker, talks about how she's more afraid of police than pimps - photograph by C.S. Hagen

FARGO – LeeAnn Lemke’s decision to become a sex worker came down to $2,100, she said. Survival drove her into the “world’s oldest trade.” She doesn’t walk Fargo’s streets looking for “Johns. Her clients – at one time up to a dozen local men a day – find her online, through relationships, and through pimps, because a “working girl” on her own won’t last long in what was once known in Asia as the “broken moon society.”

Although nobody forced her to turn to sex…

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