North Dakota

Family continues search for missing student

All through the winter, a small group of relatives and a couple of bloodhounds have pushed through snowbanks and battled wind-chills of 20 below, looking for traces of college student Dru Sjodin.

The 22-year-old University of North Dakota student was last seen Nov. 22. She disappeared from the parking lot outside a Grand Forks mall after leaving her job at a Victoria’s Secret.

Police have said Sjodin was probably dead. Her blood was found in the car of convicted rapist Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., who is charged with kidnapping her, and a knife in the car’s trunk matched a sheath found near Sjodin’s car, left in the parking lot.

Sjodin’s relatives and friends have kept up the search for her body — recently using air compressors to force air through holes in an icy river, hoping it would help the dogs pick up a scent.

Rodriguez, 51, faces a preliminary hearing Friday in Grand Forks.

Alaska

87 teams to compete in 2004 Iditarod

A record 87 teams are expected to be on hand Saturday at the ceremonial start of the 1,100-mile Iditarod race in downtown Anchorage. The serious racing begins Sunday at the official restart in Willow and lasts for more than a week.

Alaska mushers, as well as contestants from Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming are in the 2004 race. Mushers from Canada, Italy, Germany and Norway also are competing.

This year’s purse is more than $700,000, with the winner getting $69,000 and a new Dodge pickup truck worth $41,410. The purse for the first race in 1973 was $50,000.

Oklahoma

Jury selection continues in Nichols’ bombing trial

Initial screening of prospective jurors in the murder trial of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols concluded Wednesday with the selection of 42 people who said they could be fair and impartial.

At least two more rounds of questioning awaits this group, including individual examinations today that will focus on whether they can impose the death penalty.

Judge Steven Taylor, prosecutors and defense attorneys are working to select 12 jurors and six alternates to determine Nichols’ guilt or innocence on 161 state counts of first-degree murder for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people.

Nichols is already serving a life prison sentence on federal convictions for the deaths of eight federal law enforcement officers in the April 19, 1995, bombing. The state charges are for the other 160 victims and one of the victims’ unborn fetus.