WILLISTON, N.D. (KUMV) – The annual Miss North Dakota and Miss North Dakota Teen Competitions will be held in Williston this weekend.

Fifteen candidates for each event will compete at the Bakken Auditorium, seeking the titles of Miss North Dakota and Miss North Dakota Teen. The women can also receive thousands of dollars’ worth of scholarships for competing.

Preliminaries for the Miss competition take place Thursday, while Teen prelims will be held on Friday. The finals are on Saturday starting at 7:00 p.m.

Sydney Helgeson of Bismarck and Ellie Ahlfeldt of Fargo are the reigning Miss North Dakota and Miss North Dakota Teen, respectively.

Access to the livestream viewing or tickets can be purchased online via The Miss North Dakota Scholarship Organization website.

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MINOT, ND. (KMOT) – The state and defense are asking the courts to push back the July trial dates in the case of the 2007 killing of Minot college student Anita Knutson, due to a likely scheduling conflict with another murder trial.

In a filing Wednesday, the attorneys said there is “additional good cause” to continue the July 15 trial date for Nichole Rice.

The 36-year-old Rice faces a murder charge in Knutson’s June 2007 death.

In the filing, the attorneys indicate that Judge Stacy Louser on Wednesday moved up the trial dates for Shawnee Krall, from November to late July, following a “speedy trial” request from Krall’s attorney.

The 31-year-old Krall faces a murder charge in the Dec. 2020 killing of his roommate, 29-year-old Alice Quierolo.

Krall has been in custody since Dec. 2020. He was supposed to stand trial in January, but Louser ordered for the trial to be moved to Morton County after a “substantial” number of jurors indicated they were aware of the case through media coverage and social media.

The filing states Krall’s trial would begin on either July 22 or July 29, creating a scheduling conflict for Ward County Deputy State’s Attorney Tiffany Sorgen, who is prosecuting both the Krall and Rice cases.

Last week, the state and defense agreed that it would be difficult for Rice to receive a fair trial in Ward County, following the results of a jury questionnaire.

Rice is represented by Philip Becher, of the Sand Law Firm. Krall is currently represented by Stormy Vickers, and has had several changes in representation throughout the case.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Judge Richard Hagar, who is overseeing Rice’s trial, had not officially ruled on the change of venue, and trial dates for both Rice and Krall had not changed on the North Dakota District Court website docket.

Related Content:

Continuing Coverage of Anita Knutson Cold Case

Previous Coverage of Shawnee Krall case:

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A North Dakota school boards organization has returned over $140,000 to the state and ended its role in a teacher exchange program months after an indictment was unsealed against a former state lawmaker, who traveled to Europe on the state funds and later was accused of traveling to Prague with the intent of paying for sex with a minor.

The North Dakota School Boards Association’s director said the group had been discussing ending its involvement with the Germany-based Global Bridges program before former Republican state senator Ray Holmberg’s indictment, and though his case was not the driver, “everything that transpired perhaps just hastened that discussion.”

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“We just were working to align our association’s activities with our mission, and the timing was just what it was,” Executive Director Alexis Baxley told The Associated Press.

The state Ethics Commission announced the funds’ return on Tuesday. In January, the association’s board of directors voted to end its role as the fiscal agent for the program and to return the remaining $142,000 to the state Department of Public Instruction, according to a letter the department provided to the AP.

In a statement, the ethics panel said the association returned the money on its own without prompting by the department, the commission or anyone else. The Legislature approved money for the program from 2007 to 2017 in the department’s budget, which flowed as “pass-through grants” to the association, which was a “reimbursement and bookkeeping entity” for the funds, the ethics panel said.

The association reached an informal resolution as to a complaint against it about the program, the ethics panel said. Under that resolution, the association agreed to end any future involvement with the Global Bridges program. The complaint is closed. State law makes ethics complaints confidential.

It’s unclear whether Holmberg’s alleged misconduct occurred during a Global Bridges trip. Travel records from the association show he took trips in 2011, 2018 and 2019 to Prague, a city named in the indictment, and other cities in Europe. The date of June 24, 2011, is listed in the indictment and on a receipt for Holmberg for a departure to Prague and other cities.

Former Association Executive Director Jon Martinson said Holmberg “cast a huge shadow” over the state’s relationship through the association with Global Bridges.

“The trips would continue and the (association) wouldn’t have given back the money and none of this attention would have occurred had Ray Holmberg not done what he is alleged to have done in Prague,” said Martinson, who added he is still the Global Bridges program director. The association did not consult with him about deciding to return the money, he said.

Nine people, including seven lawmakers, went on North Dakota’s last Global Bridges trip, in July 2023 to Berlin and surrounding cities such as Potsdam, Martinson said. He touted the value of the program for bringing together teachers and legislators with top experts in education, business and politics.

Democratic state Sen. Tim Mathern, who served over 35 years with Holmberg, said he thinks the program’s situation “just got so complicated in terms of so many people looking into the matter.”

“It’s really not just Sen. Holmberg. There might be other issues that come up as people inquire even further, and they would just as soon, I would think, want to get out of that sort of scrutiny and difficulty,” said Mathern, who lauded the Ethics Commission for the process “at least to look at some of these things closer.”

Holmberg, 80, served in the North Dakota Senate from 1976 to 2022. In early 2022, he announced his intent not to seek reelection but weeks later he resigned after The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reported he had exchanged dozens of text messages with a man in jail for child sexual abuse images.

Holmberg was one of the most powerful members of the Legislature, chairing the Senate Appropriations Committee for many years. He also chaired the Legislative Management, which handles the Legislature’s business between biennial sessions. The latter role allowed him to approve his own travel.

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Records obtained by the AP show that Holmberg took dozens of trips throughout the U.S. and to other countries since 1999. Destinations included cities in more than 30 states as well as Canada, Puerto Rico and Norway.

Holmberg also is charged with receipt and attempted receipt of child sexual abuse material. His trial is scheduled for September in Fargo.