Latest North Dakota news, sports, business and entertainment:

MISSING STUDENT Exchange student from India who went missing from ND in custody Jamestown, N.D (AP) An exchange student from India who vanished from Edgeley for a week is safe, and his host mother says he realizes he made a mistake.

Sixteen-year-old Harman Singh is being kept under 24-hour observation in a dormlike room at the law enforcement center in Jamestown. Arrangements are being made to fly him home to India.

Collette Mathern, his host mother, says the teenager made a rash decision to prove he could make it on his own, then regretted it.

He called her from Fergus Falls, Minnesota, on Sunday, and was taken back to Jamestown.

Mathern says Singh told her he hitchhiked to Fergus Falls, and never headed to Canada as he had told her in an earlier phone call.

Singh walked away from the Edgeley school the night of May 16th, after a track meet. Authorities said he left goodbye notes at the school indicating his plans to leave.

HOME SALES-MIDWEST CITIES Midwest home sales post 10 pct annual decline Kansas CITY, Mo. (AP) Sales of existing homes in the Midwest fell 10 percent in April from a year ago as the uncertain economy kept all but first-time home buyers and steely investors on the sidelines.

And the National Association of Realtors says the median sales price of existing homes dropped almost 12 percent to $138,800 in the region that includes North Dakota and 11 other states.

The association says the numbers show the effects of a customer pool dominated by low-cost buyers and distressed property sales that continue to drag down prices.

Median sale prices sagged in 11 of the 12 markets with only Fargo busting the trend. There, the median price rose 1.4 percent to $140,500 while sales dropped about 26 percent.

The realtors say on a national, non-seasonally adjusted basis, existing home sales dropped 4.6 percent from April of last year, while the median sales price slid more than 15 percent to $170,200.

STIMULUS-INDIAN HOUSING Secretary says $250M going to tribal housing BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) Federal Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan says the government will offer more than 250 million dollars in housing grants to American Indians and native Alaskans as part of the federal stimulus package.

The grants can be used to buy land, build new housing and retrofit existing homes to make them more energy efficient.

Donovan says the money will help reduce crowding on reservations and improve substandard living conditions endured by many Native Americans.

PSC-SITING REQUESTS Public Service Commission getting more requests to approve sites Minot, N.D. (AP) Public Service Commissioner Kevin Cramer says the PSC is handling many more so-called "siting requests" today for wind farms, oil pipelines and transmission lines than it did earlier.

Cramer says the agency has about 12 billion dollars worth of wind projects to consider, as well as a half billion dollars worth of transmission lines and half a billion dollars in pipeline proposals.

He says it has about 52 siting cases altogether compared with just 16 such cases two years ago.

The commissioners were in Minot this week to hear testimony on Basin Electric Power Cooperative's proposal for 77 wind turbines south of Minot. They'll issue a decision later.

(Information from: KXMC-TV, http://www.kxnet.com) US JOURNALIST-IRAN Freed journalist thanks CLinton for support Washington (AP) Journalist Roxana Saberi, who spent four months in an Iranian prison, has met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and expressed thanks for support she received while incarcerated.

Saberi stood beside Clinton as she talked with reporters, with her parents nearby. She did not respond to questions.

Saberi said the support she got while in prison gave her strength and hope. She said, "I didn't feel so alone anymore." Clinton said she was relieved to have the matter resolved.

The 32-year-old Saberi grew up in Fargo. She arrived back in the United States last Friday after a week in Vienna recuperating. She was arrested in late January and convicted of spying for the United States in a closed-door trial that her Iranian-born father said lasted only 15 minutes.

She was freed May 11. U.S. officials said the charges against her were baseless.

MIDWEST FLOODING-HEARING Senate Appropriations subcommittee holds Fargo hearing on flood protection FARGO, N.D. (AP) A North Dakota senator says officials in his state and in Minnesota will have to agree on permanent flood protection plans if they want them to get off the ground.

Sen. Byron Dorgan held a Senate hearing in Fargo to talk about flooding in the Red River Valley. Residents on both sides of the river battled record flooding in March and April.

The Army Corps of Engineers has outlined a $1 billion diversion project and a $625 million levee system to control floodwaters.

Before the hearing, Dorgan downplayed earlier comments by Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, who estimated the chance of a diversion project on the Minnesota side at "about minus 5 percent." Dorgan said nobody knows what kind of plan will work, if any.

spelling bee-SRIVATSA North Dakota champion speller knocked out of national spelling bee Bismarck, N.D. (AP) North Dakota's top speller is not among today's semifinalists at the 82nd Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington.

West Fargo seventh-grader Shantanu Srivatsa (SHON'-tuh-noo sree-VAHT'-sah) correctly spelled "luxurious" and "batiste" in the first rounds yesterday, but it wasn't enough.

The results of the two oral rounds were combined with scores from an earlier written test to determine the semifinalists.

It was the West Fargo teen's second trip to the national bee.

Last year, he qualified as a regional champion in Ohio, where his family lived at the time. This year, he won the North Dakota Spelling Bee in March.

On the Net: Scripps National Spelling Bee: http://spellingbee.com/ Devils Lake Little change in National Weather Service flood outlook for Devils Lake DEVILS LAKE, N.D. (AP) The latest flood outlook for Devils Lake shows little change there is still a good chance the lake will hit 1,451 feet this summer.

The lake is at 1,450.4 feet. The National Weather Service outlook puts the odds of a rise to 1,451 feet at 60 percent, and the odds of a 1,450.9-foot level at 80 percent.

The lake has continued to rise after hitting a record on April 29, surpassing the previous 1,449.2-foot record set in May 2006.

Officials are looking at various possibilities for lowering the lake, including moving water out of the east end through the Tolna Coulee. State Engineer Dale Frink told city officials this week that any effort to move water out of the east end of the lake, where it's saltier, likely would be tested in court.

(Help from: Eric Arndt, KZZY-FM, http://lrradioworks.com) UAV CONFERENCE Dorgan proposes UAV unit at Grand Forks base GRAND FORKS, N.D. (AP) Senator Byron Dorgan says the Air Force should put a new unit at the Grand Forks Air Force Base to operate unmanned aircraft systems.

Dorgan says the Air Force keeps about 34 Predator drones in the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan using pilots, sensor operators and support personnel in the United States, at such places as the Air National Guard wing in Fargo.

He says the Grand Forks base is "highly qualified" to take on more duties and would be a good fit for an expanded unmanned aircraft system.

Dorgan says the Air Force has not yet decided where to base about 53 new units. He says they will include ground control stations and several hundred personnel.

Dorgan's comments came during the opening of a conference on UAVs in Grand Forks.

Information from: Doug Barrett, KNOX-AM, http://knoxradio.com BLUES CEO SEARCH Blue Cross Blue Shield looking for CEO FARGO, N.D. (AP) Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota says its board will interview finalists for president and chief executive officer by the end of June and it expects to name someone to the job by August.

A statement from the Blues says the insurer has hired The Pace Group, a Chicago-based executive search firm, to conduct a nationwide search. The Blues search committee co-chairman, Dennis Elbert, says the focus will be on candidates who have lived or worked in the Upper Midwest.

Tim Huckle, a Blues executive vice president, has been the interim president and CEO of the state's largest insurer since March. He succeeded Mike Unhjem., who was fired after criticism of a trip to the Grand Cayman Islands as a reward for employees and guests at a time when the company was seeking rate increases.

Montana RAIL SERVICE Southern Montana eying passenger rail line BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) Reviving a passenger rail route that used to run between Glendive and Missoula, Montana drew crowds of supporters to a town hall meeting in Bozeman.

Tuesday's meeting was organized by Sen. Jon Tester, who last year included Montana in a national study of passenger rail lines.

That study is looking at how to use 1.3 billion dollars in federal money to improve Amtrak service.

The state Transportation Department is also studying several possible routes in Montana, including reopening the North Coast Hiawatha passenger train, which shut down in 1979.

Volatile Gas Prices have recently renewed interest in passenger trains, and the federal stimulus package includes 8 billion dollars for building high-speed rails.

Information from: The Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.net/ Bozeman Daily Chronicle, http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/ (Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) APNP 05-28-09 0201CDT | save this article / add to your favorites list