Good Wednesday morning. Here's your Digest. 1. Beltrami County rejects refugee resettlement. The Beltrami County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday night to prohibit refugees from resettling in the area — making it the first county in the state, and possibly among the first the nation, to expressly prohibit resettlement. Only 2 of the county’s 5 commissioners voted to allow refugees. Spurred by a presidential executive order, county boards across the state met Tuesday to consider whether they should allow refugees to be resettled within their borders this year. Some rural counties in southwestern Minnesota gave their consent unanimously, while places like St. Louis County, which includes Duluth, and Stearns County, which includes St. Cloud, tabled the issue without taking a definitive vote. MPR News
2. Getting to the truth. Truth doesn’t often go viral. Instead, it’s exaggerated, false or malicious content that tends to wind up in our digital news feeds. The 2016 presidential election was marked by outside attempts to deceive or inflame voters through sophisticated disinformation tactics. False information raced across social media as some people unwittingly helped spread it. With the 2020 election here, experts are warning we should be on guard for similar deceptions. Collectively, Americans spend more than 80 billion minutes per week consuming news on TV, radios and their smartphones, according to research published by Don Fallis, a professor of philosophy and computer science at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. He’s been studying false information for years and has published extensively on the topic. It’s no surprise that politicians often have a tendency to stray from the truth. But Fallis said disinformation is different. It’s something explicitly used to mislead. "There's a couple of important ways in which this differs from, say, telling a lie. The information needs to be misleading, but it doesn't have to be false,” he said. “So, there's all sorts of ways in which people can mislead other people, even though they're they're very careful to make sure they're only saying the truth, saying things that are true." MPR News
3. Iranian Americans keeping a wary eye on events in Middle East. The story has been told to Shahin Khazrajafari countless times. In the late 1980s, he was just a toddler playing at a park when his father saw the missiles coming. “He picked me up, and he didn't know whether he should run towards the building, towards our home, or if he should go elsewhere, because he didn't know where those missiles were going to hit,” said Khazrajafari, now 32, of Minneapolis. “It really brings that experience to life as you think about what that generation went through." Although Khazrajafari was born in Tehran well after the 1979 Revolution and doesn’t remember the Iraq-Iran war, he is one of many Iranian Americans in Minnesota who are sinking into a familiar anxiety. The community has for many years been grappling with political and economic instability back home. The U.S. killing last week of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, however, has many worried about another war as Iran threatens to retaliate and the United States threatens to fight back. Khazrajafari and other Iranian-Americans living in Minnesota say they worry about how tension could affect not only their native land and families, but their lives in the United States. MPR News
4. Klobuchar expresses concerns over Iran. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar told a convention of politically active college students from several states that she predicted escalating tensions with Iran when the Trump administration abandoned the nuclear weapons deal. Klobuchar also said Congress needs to be involved as rhetoric heightens. “We shouldn’t be entering any kind of conflict anywhere, much less in the Mideast, without him going to Congress to ask for an authorization of military force. He does not have that right to make that decision,” she said. MPR News
5. Bloomberg heads to southern Minnesota. Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg will make his first campaign stop in Minnesota on Wednesday. The former New York mayor plans to visit a soybean farm in the southern Minnesota town of Wells to talk to voters about “rural economic issues,” according to his campaign. The stop is part of a Midwest campaign swing meant to highlight his agenda on the economy and jobs. Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman and media executive, has poured millions into his bid for the White House since joining the race in late November. Spending on TV ads here in Minnesota has already hit an estimated $1.8 million. Star Tribune | 
