President Barack Obama spoke to more than 500 tribal leaders today during the fourth White House Tribal Nations summit in Washington, and hailed the head of a nonprofit organization on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as an example of positive change in Indian Country.

Obama called Nick Tilsen…executive director of Thunder Valley, a community-development corporation on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation…someone making great strides among Native Americans.

The president said that by using spiritual and cultural practices, Thunder Valley is helping to keep Native youth off drugs and alcohol while also building a clean energy program.

Mr Obama said that “day by day” and “community by community” Tilsen, Thunder Valley and others like it are making a positive difference in Indian Country.

An increasingly common online scam involves fake e-mails supposedly from a family member or friend who is traveling somewhere and needs to borrow money because they’ve run into trouble such as a traffic accident, illness, or arrest.

The scam hit the Panhandle Post-Double Q Country-KCOW-B-94.7 family today with an e-mail supposedly from one of our former colleagues…Misty Cheek Graham.

       In it, the scammer pretending to be Misty says she is in the Philippines for a program, lost her wallet and cell phone while sightseeing, and needs $1,800 because she can’t get her passport back from the hotel to leave until she pays her bill.

The e-mail is, of course, completely phony and Misty is just fine here in Nebraska. She says she first learned that someone had hacked into her e-mail account and Facebook page to get her contacts list when some of the targets of the scam got hold of her.

Graham was relieved that none of her friends or business contacts fell for the scam. She says some of them simply knew she wasn’t out of the country while for others some of the words, phrasing, and grammar in the e-mail raised red flags to them.

One of Graham’s biggest frustrations was that the hacker wiped out her contacts list and she couldn’t send out a mass e-mail to let everyone on it know what was going on.

She’s spent a good chunk of her day working IT individuals to put things back together. She says she’s going to follow their advice closely on how to prevent such problems in the future…such as having different passwords using letters and numerals on each account.

Law enforcement officials say you should never respond to such e-mails requesting money without some type of verification such as talking directly to the person asking for help if it’s someone you know or the use of pre-arranged code words confirming its legitimacy.

Here is the scam e-mail supposedly from Misty.

I really hope you get this fast. I could not inform anyone about our trip, because it was impromptu. we
        had to be in Manila, Philippines for a program. The program was successful, but our journey has turned
        sour. we misplaced our wallet and cell phone on our way back to the hotel we lodge in after we went
       for sight seeing. The wallet contained all the valuables we had. Now, our passport is in custody of the hotel      
       management pending when we make payment.

       I am sorry if i am inconveniencing you, but i have only very few people to run to now. i will be indeed very
       grateful if i can get a loan of $1,800 Usd from you. this will enable me sort our hotel bills and get my
       sorry self back home. I will really appreciate whatever you can afford in assisting me with. I promise to
       refund it in full as soon as I return. let me know if you can be of any assistance. Please, let me know
       soonest. Thanks so much..

 The president of the Chadron-based Nebraska Northwestern Railroad doesn’t think its operations would be affected if the Canadian Pacific Railroad sells the eastern half of the Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern Railroad…including its lines from Rapid City to Crawford and from Colony, Wyoming, to Rapid City.

Nebraska Northwestern purchased the Chadron rail yard and the track from Chadron to the DM&E’s Crawford line at Dakota Junction from the CP about 4 years ago and leases the line from Dakota Junction to Crawford…an arrangement president Jack Nielsen doesn’t believe would change with a sale.

Canadian Pacific spokesman Ed Greenberg says the railroad has made no decision on selling the 600 miles of the DM&E west of Tracy, Minnesota, and is simply trying to gauge interest from potential buyers.

Nielsen says it would take the right set of circumstances for the Nebraska Northwestern to get involved since the total package would be much larger than it could afford. Still, if a buyer wanted to sell off parts…such as the Dakota Junction to Crawford stretch…Nielsen and the railroad would be interested.

Canadian Pacific spent $1.5-billion dollars five years ago to buy the DM&E, its subsidiaries, their equipment, and 2,500 miles of track and announced Monday it would “suspend indefinitely” a proposed $6-billion dollar, 260-mile new line into Wyoming’s Powder River basin coal fields first unveiled more than 15 years ago.

The Chadron State Foundation celebrated the end of its annual fall fund campaign last night with a victory party that revealed $177,370 has come in or been pledge so far.

College development officer Leslie Bargen headed up this year’s drive. She says the total so far is just about what was expected by now, but emphasizes the final total will be much higher as donations and pledges will continue to come in through the end of the school year.

Bargen says this year’s theme…Because of You…emphasized that community support makes the college strong, and she believes the amount of money raised and the eagerness of those contacted to contribute shows just how deep that support is.

The active phase of the effort ended on Halloween, but Bargen says contributions will continue to come in many more months.

The Chadron State Foundation fall campaign uses a good-natured competitions between teams of local leaders and college faculty and staff.

The winning campus team this year was captained by CSC Director of Communications Justin Haag and included Con Marshall, Alex Helmbrecht, Dewayne Gimeson, Craig Conway and Keith Crofutt. Crofutt accumulated the most total points on the campus side of the competition.

The winning community team was headed up by Russ Bohnenkamp of Chadron Community Hospital…whose teammates were his boss – hospital administrator Harold Krueger, Kimberly Ouderkirk, Bobby Griese, Jordan Raben, and Tricia Thayer. Misty Reid was the top community individual point-getter.

Serving as the chairs of the community teams this year were Tina McLain of Chadron Community Recreation and Jason Carnahan, a loan officer at Security First Bank in Chadron.

The campus team leaders are faculty member Dr Donna Ritzen and Leslie Bargen’s husband, men’s basketball coach Brent Bargen. Chairs serve two year, and this was the second year for both McLain and Ritzen.

A Gering man that Attorney General Jon Bruning says had thousands of images of child pornography on his computer has been sentenced to 7 years in federal prison.

30 year old year old Thomas Schildt had pleaded guilty to federal charges of receiving and distributing child pornography. He will spend 10 years on supervised release after completing his prison term, and will be required to register as a sex offender.

Bruning says the case against Schildt was the largest child pornography case his office has ever investigated, and began when his Rural Cybercrime Unit discovered child pornography being shared online from an IP address assigned to Schildt’s home.

Authorities obtained and executed a search warrant on the home last November and seized a hard drive containing more than 15,000 sexually explicit images of young children, some as young as 3 years, engaged in various sexual acts and bondage.

Schildt was indicted on state charges…3 counts of possessing child pornography and 3 counts of distributing child pornography…but those were dismissed after the federal charges were filed. Schildt later admitted to downloading the files, according to court documents.

The Chadron City Council has decided not to take a formal position on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, whose proposed route crosses the eastern half of Nebraska from north to south.

Nebraska Northwest Development Corporation Executive Director Deb Cottier as the council Monday night to approve letters supporting the Keystone XL for its economic development impact, but after a brief discussion the council members declined to introduction a resolution or motion on the pipeline.

Mayor Karin Fischer says she and the other council members didn’t feel they knew about about the details of the Keystone XL project to take a position pro or con, and also didn’t feel Chadron residents had been given any time to make their feelings known on the project.

The request for letters of support to Governor Dave Heineman, the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, and President Obama came from the Heartland Expressway Association and Ports to Plains Association, which made similar requests of all the Panhandle communities. The Gering city council approved the letters last week.

The Keystone XL will run some 1,700-miles from the oil sands of Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, but requires a federal permit since it would cross an international border.

President Obama rejected the permit application from developer TransCanada back in January, citing in part questions about the route in Nebraska…which would have crossed the environmentally-sensitive Sandhills…but encouraged the company to reapply with a new route.

A special session of the Nebraska legislature just over a year ago resulted in a compromise that saw TransCanada agree to find a new route around the Sandhills and the state agree to do the environmental review on that route as part of the permit process on both the state and federal levels.

The state’s draft study found that the new route avoids the environmentally sensitive areas and that TransCanada’s overall proposal meets the other concerns and requirements laid out by the state.

The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality is holding a public hearing tonight in Albion to take input from both supporters and opponents before submitting the final version of the review to Governor Dave Heineman, who has the final say on approving the Nebraska portion of pipeline.