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nearly 2.8 million people. The divided-up land is also known as "fractionated" land.
• The federal government wants to reduce the numbers of land tracts and owners over the next decade. The plan is to buy tracts with the most individual owners, finding landowners willing to sell and targeting land that can be bought with little preparatory work and where controlling interest can be gained.
• Tribes had asked for liens to be waived.
• The $1.9 billion from the lawsuit settlement is a one-time expenditure that must be spent within 10 years. Any money not spent in 10 years will be returned to the U.S. Treasury.
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• BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- Japanese beetles have turned up in North Dakota for only the second time in more than half a century, but officials do not believe it has anything to do with extreme drought in states where the destructive pests are more prevalent.
• One expert thinks the bugs simply hitched a ride on trucks carrying nursery plants across the Minnesota border.
• Infestations of the beetles that feast on everything from rose bushes to corn crops are found mainly east of the Mississippi River. But they have turned up in traps in southeastern North Dakota this summer, and the state Agriculture Department is cautioning homeowners and farmers to be alert for the bugs.
• "They have a voracious appetite and can defoliate a plant very quickly," Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said.
• The half-inch long beetles are metallic green with bronze wing covers. They were first found in the U.S. in 1916 in New Jersey and have since spread into most states east of the Mississippi, causing hundreds of millions of dollars of losses each year, according to the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
• North Dakota has been trapping Japanese beetles since 1960. The only other time they have been found was in 2001, in Burleigh County.
• "This sort of caught us off guard," Goehring said of the findings this summer.
• Both Goehring and NDSU entomologist Jan Knodel say the finding could be nothing more than a fluke.
• "I don't think they're established yet (in North Dakota)," Knodel said. "I think they were introduced from Minneapolis, came on recent nursery shipments."
• Knodel said it is unlikely that beetles are flying long distances from drought-

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