Great Plains (IA KS ND NE MO SD)

"It's a busy Monday night at Whispers strip bar in the oil boomtown of Williston, North Dakota. A man in overalls drains his glass before showering money on a pole dancer."

"A contractor’s complaint has prompted closer scrutiny of possible asbestos exposure involving workers at a downtown Des Moines renovation project, but an inspector doesn’t even visit hundreds of sites across Iowa each year where workers could face risks from the cancer-causing material."

"Millions of pigs are crammed into overcrowded barns all across the state, being fattened for slaughter while breeding superbugs—all to feed China's growing appetite for Spam."

"What does oil independence look like? Those living and working in North Dakota's booming Bakken oil field are seeing first-hand both pros and cons. Photographer Gary Braasch returned from the region with a slice of that life."  The photoessay appeared February 5 in The Daily Climate.
 

"HOUSTON — Faced with growing criticism and lawsuits, an oil industry task force representing hundreds of companies in North Dakota pledged on Wednesday to make an all-out effort to capture almost all the natural gas that is being flared in the Bakken shale oil field by the end of the decade."

"One of the biggest earthquakes in U.S. history didn't occur in California. Or Alaska. It happened in the country's midsection some 200 years ago in an area where today seven states straddle the Mississippi River Valley."

"An explosion and fire flattened part of an animal feed plant in Omaha, Nebraska, on Monday, killing at least two people and injuring at least 10 others, authorities said."

"CASSELTON, N.D. – Officials urged people in Casselton and the surrounding area to evacuate their homes as they dealt with the fallout from a massive fire when two trains collided Monday."

The discovery of chronic wasting disease in captive deer in Missouri has put the keeping of deer under fire.

"SIDNEY, Mont. -- One cold morning last year, a math teacher jogging through her hometown in eastern Montana was abducted, strangled and buried in a shallow grave. Charged in her death were two drifters from Colorado, drawn to the region by the allure of easy money in the oil fields."