John

After two moose mysteriously wandered into Theodore Roosevelt National Park near Medora in September, one was found dead and test results on the cause are inconclusive, a park official said Tuesday. Mike Oehler, TRNP wildlife biologist, said official test results on 20 samples sent...

One day in 1970, I was sitting in a classroom in radio school at the Naval Training Center in San Diego. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed a vague shape flashing past the window. A young sailor had jumped from the roof into the courtyard three stories below, making his separate...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The brother of a man who died early Thursday trapped 700-feet inside a Utah cave said his family is remarkably strong but struggles to make sense of what happened. John Jones, 26, of Stansbury Park, died nearly 28 hours after he became stuck upside-down in...

Down here in Texas, the state Legislature meets every two years and passes a set of new laws, some good, some bad, some peculiar. Texas House Bill 2504 fits in the last category, but it's worth consideration for the light that it reflects on our attitudes toward higher education...

National park to offer you-pick-it hike The last wilderness hike of the season in the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park is Sunday, Sept. 6. Hikers should meet wilderness ranger John Heiser at the picnic area near the amphitheater in the Juniper Campground in the park's...

Call me a socialist -- and certainly someone will -- but in light of President Barack Obama's diminishing insistence on a public option in the health care reform package that is developing in Congress, it's worth noting that, despite the noisy support for the status quo arising from...

The handwriting on the wall of the local post office is not hard to read: The United States Postal Service, established at about the same time as our country, 1775, is probably on its way out. I'll miss it. But the numbers are grim: Even though a recent study by the Government Accounting...

Here's Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., speaking recently in opposition to government involvement in health care reform: "We've never seen the government operate a plan of any kind effectively..." This sentiment is a regular refrain on talk radio and at conservative rallies, but even granting...

As my students confront that most daunting of writing tasks -- thinking of something to say -- I discourage their easy reliance on recurrent but worn-out writing-class topics like abortion, gun control and TV violence. Instead I urge them to observe the world around them to see what...

When North Dakota Game and Fish Department officials went out to conduct the annual spring pheasant crowing counts they expected to see a decrease from last year following a severe winter. And while that expectation was on the money with a 25 percent decrease, the state's pheasant...

The events in Iran after the election on June 12 challenge our understanding of that complex country, but here are a few ideas to consider. First, I don't know what the precisely proper presidential response to the current turmoil in Iran should have been. And neither do you. However,...

Aspiring apprentice hunters who tried to apply for a deer tag earlier this month when applications were due may have been a bit confused when they found out they couldn't. That's because a new law, which allows those 16 years old or older who haven't completed the hunter education...

Growing up in the Twin Cities, Paul Quinn used to take a handful of oatmeal from the kitchen, take it down to an area fishing hole and go fishing. It's not your typical bait, but the local radio personality and avid fisherman, Quinn said it's the perfect thing to lure a fish that...

Adjacent stories in the newspaper, taken together, often add up to more than the sum of the parts. For example, last week an Associated Press story by H. Josef Hebert reported on the decreasing likelihood of consensus in the House and Senate on a renewable energy standard for the...