All Things Considered is a comprehensive source for afternoon news and information provided by various MPR hosts in St. Paul and NPR hosts in Washington over the decades. The program contains interviews, reports, speeches and breaking coverage.
February 10, 2004 - There are only a few places in the country considered hotbeds for emerging biotechnology industries and Minnesota isn't one of them. Governor Pawlenty hopes to change that with an initiative to strengthen a biotech corridor in the Twin Cities and Rochester. But some say biotech businesses could also spur economic development in rural Minnesota. Mainstreet Radio's Tom Robertson reports that leaders in Bemidji are exploring ways to develop a mini biotech cluster of their own.
February 24, 2004 - Photographer Jim Brandenburg reflects on his friend, Paul Gruchow, who died on February 22nd, 2004 in Duluth. Gruchow was 56 years old. Brandenburg worked with Gruchow at the Worthington newspaper and later collaborated with him on several books. He says he was inspired by his friend and co-worker.
March 1, 2004 - 15 years after state officials signed gaming compacts with Minnesota's Indian tribes, 18 casinos have been built. They generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, far more than anyone imagined they would. The state of Minnesota gets only a small sliver of that money and it's used to regulate the casinos.
March 5, 2004 - St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly returned from Thailand where he visited Hmong refugees awaiting relocation to St. Paul and other U.S. cities. The State Department recently declared about 15,000 Hmong refugees eligible to apply for relocation to the U.S., with between 4,000-10,000 Hmong refugees arriving in Minnesota as early as June 2004. Fred de Sam Lazaro, correspondent for PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer based at Twin Cities Public Television, traveled with Kelly to Thailand and prepared this report.
March 8, 2004 - Mainstreet Radio's Mark Steil reports on need for fundraisers for people who don't have insurance. Sometimes even those with insurance need help. It seems the higher medical costs rise the more fundraisers there are for people who can't pay all their bills. Dinners, raffles and auctions are a few of the ways people donate money.
March 25, 2004 - MPR’s Laura McCallum reports that the Minnesota State House passed a measure by 88-44 that would put a constitutional amendment question on the ballot in November 2004. It goes next to a Senate committee for vote, where it may be defeated.
March 26, 2004 - MPR’s Tom Scheck reports on a committee vote in the DFL Senate defeating proposed amendment that would ban gay marriage. That measure would allow the voters to decide if the Minnesota Constitution should ban same sex marriage and any legal equivalent. The committee did approve a proposed constitutional amendment that would prevent the courts from forcing the Legislature to define gay marriage, as the Massachusetts Supreme Court has done.
April 5, 2004 - General Manager Terry Ryan gives an appraisal of The Minnesota Twins as they open 2004 Major League Baseball season with a home game against the Cleveland Indians. During the off-season, the Twins lost key players through free agency and traded others to cut payroll. Ryan says he doesn't think the roster changes will stop the Twins from winning a third straight division title.
April 6, 2004 - Marilyn Carlson Nelson, CEO of Carlson Companies and the co-chair of 44th annual Minnesota Prayer Breakfast, is interviewed about topics connected to event and business environment. Nelson says the growth of spirituality in the workplace is an outgrowth of several converging factors.
April 15, 2004 - MPR’s David Molpus profiles Snapshot Silhouette, a product of the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis. The play provides Twin Cities students a glimpse of what life is like for some of the region's newest immigrants. It is built around two 12-year-old girls, one Somali and one African American who, as circumstances have it, find themselves living together in the same Minnesota home.