The Brookings Area Chamber of Commerce Government Affairs Committee will be holding three legislative forums with local legislators. The forums are being conducted to allow area residents an opportunity to become better informed about the legislative session.

Forums will be held on Feb. 12 and Mar. 5. All forums will be in the City Council Chambers at Brookings City Hall, 311 3rd Avenue, from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. The first hour of the forums will be broadcast live on the City of Brookings television channel (channel 9 on Mediacom). The forums will be replayed on Mediacom channel 9 on Sunday at 2:00 p.m., Monday at 6:00 p.m. and Wednesday at 9:00 p.m.

Area residents are encouraged to participate by attending the forum in person or viewing it electronically.

Questions may also be submitted via telephone during the forum by calling 697-8646.

Please contact the Brookings Area Chamber of Commerce at 692-6125 with any questions about the forum.

From a geographer’s point of view, the U.S. military’s current involvement in the border country of Pakistan and Afghanistan is not really new, it’s simply the latest round of geopolitics for a region that has always been a chessboard for great powers.

That’s the message associate professor Robert Watrel in South Dakota State University’s Department of Geography hopes to convey Monday, Oct. 4, during a presentation on the Geopolitics of Central Asia. Watrel speaks at 7 p.m. in Dairy-Microbiology 100 on the SDSU campus. A panel discussion and question-and-answer session follow.

“This area of the world is quite isolated. But a lot of what we think are isolated conflicts actually are related to geopolitics,” Watrel said.