Monday, April 13

The State Board of Education will vote tonight on the creation of the state's first residential charter school, to be located in Buhl in northeast Minnesota. If approved, the school will be run by KidsPeace, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit company. It will offer education and vocational training to troubled teenage boys. Some Iron Range legislators fought the project, but residents of Buhl are welcoming it with open arms. Minnesota Public Radio's Amy Radil reports.

This week two men in a single engine airplane will take off from Barrow Alaska, hoping to fly non-stop to Spitzbergen Norway. The flight will follow the same path as the first flight across the top of the world 70 years ago. The men hope to draw attention to the aviation contributions of the man who made that first flight..North Dakota native Carl Ben Eielson. Mainstreet Radio's Dan Gunderson reports.

Ojibway Indians are gillnetting and spearing this spring, under rights first granted in 1837. After a long court battle, the Mille Lacs and other tribes were given authority to regulate their own hunting and fishing in a large section of east-central Minnesota -- including Lake Mille Lacs, the state's most popular walleye lake. It's a historic spring for the tribes -- and a dark one for treaty opponents, who still hope the Supreme Court will take up their cause. Leif Enger retraces the eight-year dispute.

Comfrey schools will reopen today, two weeks and a day after a tornado swept through the southwest Minnesota community. The tornado heavily damaged the Comfrey elementary school and high school, so students will travel to Sanborn to resume classes. Mainstreet Radio's Mark Steil reports the startup of school is important for both towns.

Minnesota's gubernatorial candidates are finding that public financing of sports teams is one of the top political issues on the minds of voters. A cross-section of concerned citizens are participating in the SERIES of public forums sponsored by Minnesota Public Radio, the Star Tribune and KTCA-TV. They recently gathered in St. Paul, Duluth and Rochester for a teleconference on the issue of public financing of sports. Judging from their comments, MOST Minnesotans oppose such government funding. Minnesota Public Radio's Karen-Louise Boothe reports.

It's the coroprate earnings season again. Starting this week, companies will report their results from the first quarter of 1998 -- and Wall Street will be watching closely. Here's what Minnesota Public Radio's Chris Farrell thinks we can expect.

A south Minneapolis business group is planning to mount 33 video cameras around the intersection of Lake Street and Bloomington Avenue to deter crime. On Friday, Minneapolis approved spending 10-thousand dollars on the project - which will cost 75-thousand dollars overall. Cheryl Boldon is president of the Bloomington Cedar Lake Commercial Club. She also runs a local drugstore. She says local businesses will videotape activities around several square blocks. The cameras will also have a direct line to the police.

Itchy eyes, sneezing, stuffy nose, coughing and wheezing...if you suffer from allergies it's probably obvious to you that spring is running ahead of schedule. Thanks to the mild weather, tree pollen and mold counts are higher than normal for this time of year. That's according to Dr. Rolf Sigford, head of the department of allergy and asthma for Health Partners. He says even though the allergy season has started early, it's hard to say just how bad things will get.

On Future Tense: Jaron Lanier is the father of virtual reality, and a respected futurist. He consults for Fortune 500 companies about how to proceed in the digital age. Lanier says computers are best used when they help people connect with each other. He says things are pretty good right now.

Tuesday, April 14

Hundreds of volunteers are picking up tornado debris from southern Minnesota farm fields this week as a new phase of the cleanup from the March 29th tornadoes begins. Its estimated more than 400 farms were damaged by the storms. Mainstreet Radio's Mark Steil went along as volunteers cleaned fields near New Ulm yesterday.

A decade ago in Wisconsin, angry racial confrontations became everyday news when Indians began spearfishing under restored treaty rights. The same rights have been upheld in Minnesota. This spring members of the Mille Lacs and seven other Ojibwa bands are spearing and gillnetting walleye on waters in east-central Minnesota, including Lake Mille Lacs. Some worry the same kinds of confrontations could happen here. But as Leif Enger reports, the long battle over treaty rights has already strained relations between Indians and whites.

There's increasing concern about the future of St. Peter's mainstreet businesses as the city continues to clean up from last month's tornado. Preliminary estimates put damage to downtown businesses at millions of dollars. As Minnesota Public Radio's Lynette Nyman reports, some shops will have to relocate, while others will work to repair the damage and reopen.

A federal judge yesterday upheld the National Park service's decision to block construction of a new bridge over the St. Croix River. The Minnesota Department of Transportation had planned to build a four-lane freeway-style bridge at Oak Park Heights to replace the old two-lane lift bridge in downtown Stillwater. But U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery supported the park service's view that the bridge would harm the river's special qualities. We talk to Dave Schaaf, mayor of Oak Park Heights, who opposed the project, and Curt Johnson, chair of the Metropolitan Council, which approved it.

Last night the Minneapolis City Council got the latest information on a proposal to turn three downtown blocks into an Entertainment complex. Brookfield Management and DDRM Entertainment discussed their plans with the Council. One of the important issues that still needs to be decided is what to do with the historic Shubert Theatre which now sits on Block E. Rebecca Yanisch, Executive Director of the Minneapolis Community Development Agency, says it will be possible to move the theater to another location.

As usual these days, much of the sports news has nothing to do with games or athletics. Last week the Minnesota Legislature passed a funding package for the St. Paul hockey arena that the Minnesota Wild will play in. MPR Sports Commentator Jay Weiner has been following that story. He says the state's deal with the Wild could set a new standard for public subsidies of pro-sports.

On Future Tense: A few weeks ago, tornados wiped out the Minnesota city of St. Peter. Area radio stations went down, the newspaper there is a weekly so it was of little immediate help and telephone service was often unavailable. But the area internet connections stayed up and an enterprising Web developer filled the information gap by setting up a web page which rapidly became THE best source of information for people in the areaand outside it looking for relatives. It's the latest example of the Internet as the first home for information. Now, lots of commercial web sites have pages when there's an area disaster but none has the hometown feeland none eschews the glitter in favor of the information as a homebrewed site. Lonnie Knight of Minneapolis set up the site with help from a local client.

Wednesday, April 15

The tough regulations and enforcement on fishing at Mille Lacs, as ojibwe exercise their treaty rights, are being closely watched by the Red Lake band of Chippewa. Red Lake was once a walleye fishery as good or better than Mille Lacs. But overharvest by native commercial fishers nearly destroyed the population..only a remnant of the world famous Red Lake walleye remains. The result has been economic ruin and sometimes rancorous debate about who is to blame for the management debacle. Mainstreet Radios Dan Gunderson reports.

On Future Tense: Even with thousands of job losses, we hear a lot about the high tech worker shortage; that there isn't a qualified workforce to support the growing information technology industry. Not everyone believes it. Norman Matloff at the University of California-Davis is one of them. He says software companies only hire about 2-percent of the people who apply and that the cry of a labor shortage is a way to get cheaper labor.

The Presidential election is still two and a half years away, but potential contenders are already turning up in key primary states. Candidates were stumping in Iowa even before the 1996 elections. Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone hasn't definitely said he's running for President. But Mark Moran in Des Moines reports Wellstone looks like a candidate.

Elizabeth Stawicki reports that the first of the 39,000 pages of recently released tobacco documents were introduced in Minnesota's tobacco trial yesterday.

Minnesota has more to offer the culinary world than just State Fair pronto pups. One of the best examples of a restaurant using local food to create mouthwatering meals is found far north, on the edge of the Boundary waters. The Gunflint Lodge has been serving meals since 1925. When Ron Berg started as chef on 1991, he introduced a rotating menu based on what he had on hand and what he wanted to make. His best recipes are now gathered in a new cookbook called The Gunflint Lodge cookbook. He told MPR's Bob Potter how he ended up as a chef in Boundary Waters.

Since Minneapolis began its CODEFOR policing strategy in February violent crime in the city is down 16 percent, property offenses are down 18 percent and crimes against persons are down 12 percent. CODEFOR involves daily police reports on crime hotspots and extensive questioning of suspects in order to produce leads that could result in more arrests. A similar program in New York City has been credited with double-digit decreases in crime rates. Mayor Sharon Sayles-Belton says one key is focusing on so-called nuisance crimes.

Thursday, April 16

The first FEMA trailer was delivered Wednesday to a rural homestead in southern minnesota. Around one hundred trailers are expected to become homes for tornado victims while they rebuild. Many of the trailers were temporary housing for people displaced by the Red River Floods. Minnesota Public Radio's Lynette Nyman reports.

Attorneys in Minnesota's tobacco trial introduced documents that suggest a group of industry lawyers set out to hide and destroy internal research about additives in cigarettes. Some health officials have said additives may also pose a danger to smokers of low-tar cigarettes. Minnesota Public Radio's Elizabeth Stawicki reports.

The headlines are all about bank mergers. BankAmerica and NationsBank are tieing the knot in a $60 billion merger. First Chicago and Banc One are combining in a deal worth $30 billion in stock. All this on the heels of the largest deal in history--the merger of Citicorp and Travelers. Chris Farrell reports on what's behind the race to merge in banking.

When the Minnesota State Band formed in 1898, nearly every state had a similar wind ensemble. Today, as the band prepares to celebrate its centenary with a concert at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, it's the only one left. But as Minnesota Public Radio's Todd Moe reports, its members continue both the band's music, its long history and its traditions.

On Future Tense: The Internet technology is growing faster than any technology in the history of man. So people like Terry Rogers may well be the Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas Edison of today. His work as head of Project Abilene is going to change your lifeand soon and change it faster than any technology in history. Rogers heads UCAID, the consortium working to develop a better Internet "backbone" to give researchers the ability to run nearly unbelievable applications.

Students have ended their eight day hunger strike at the University of Minnesota. The students were protesting what they say is a lack of support for the Chinese language and literature program at the university. Student Ben Ridgeway says they ended their hunger strike so they could carry on the cause in good health. Less than half of the original 25 strikers were still fasting when the protest was called off. The hunger strike was staged outside the office of University of Minnesota President Mark Yudof. President Yudof joins us now by phone.

At Maccalester College, they've re-invented the wheel... and this time it's square. Mathematics Professor Stan Wagon has designed and constructed a bicycle with square wheels. Wagon says he first saw a computer model in 1991 that proved, using calculus, that a bike with four-sided wheels could be used on a specially shaped road. Yesterday, he gave MPR's Bob Potter a peek at the vehicle and its wavy track.

When Ojibway Indians in eastern Minnesota won restoration of an 1837 treaty, tribal leaders called it a victory for native traditions -- including spearfishing and gillnetting. This spring the Mille Lacs Band and seven other Ojibway tribes are taking fish under their own laws. But some say the laws are too strict. What was once a comfortable custom is now monitored, scrutinized, and recorded. Mainstreet Radio's Leif Enger spoke with Mille Lacs band member Vince Merrill about gillnetting and whether tradition can survive as written law.

Friday, April 17

Tobacco attorneys lost two major appeals in the State's lawsuit yesterday. Ramsey County's chief judge denied the industry's request to remove Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick from the case; and the State Supreme Court upheld penalities against one of the companies for failing to produce two witnesses. Minnesota Public Radio's Elizabeth Stawicki reports.

Leaders of several white supremacy groups are gathering at an undisclosed location in the Twin Cities this weekend for a two day meeting. The event is being sponsored by the Twin Cities based National Socialist Movement. A coalition of religious and human rights groups is denouncing the gathering. Minnesota Public Radio's Mark Zdechlik reports.

This week, our Mainstreet Radio team presents a series of reports about members of various Indian bands exercising their treaty rights by spearfishing in Minnesota. At the center of this dispute is a concept called tribal sovereignty. Tribal sovereignty gives Indian bands the right to govern themselves -- to a degree. They can set their own rules about natural resources, such as fish -- in some places. Some bands can also print license plates and run casinos. But Native American tribes can't coin money, or make treaties with other countries. Scholars call their status semi-sovereign or quasi sovereign. Mainstreet Radio's Catherine Winter looked at where this complex set of rules comes from, and how it affects Indian people today.

Governor Arne Carlson is calling lawmakers back to the Capitol on Monday morning for a special legislative session to help out the Marvin Windows & Doors company. Most legislators want to help Marvin... but that does NOT necessarily mean the session will go smoothly. Minnesota Public Radio's Martin Kaste reports.

Sioux Falls is the only place in South Dakota with a clinic providing abortions. The clinic no longer has a permanent on-sited physician and abortion opponents say the situation is putting both patients and staff at other clinics at risk... a claim the clinic denies. Minnesota Public Radio's Cara Hetland reports.

As people in southern Minnesota begin the task of physically rebuilding their communities after last month's tornadoes, many are relecting on the personal impact of what happened. Over the next few months Minnesota Public Radio will follow the recovery from some very personal points of view. Today we meet Nancy Jordet who talked to Minnesota Public Radio's Lynette Nyman.

On Future Tense: Here's the problem with the Internet. It's a two lane road and six cars can't drive down it side by side. consider the highway something called "bandwidth," consider the cars "data." Right now, the demands researchers have is for a wider highway and that's what Project Abilene is all about...building a computer "backbone" that will allow things to happen through your computer than will change society. Terry Rogers runs the Project.

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