September 10, 1997 - St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman and his DFL-endorsed challenger, State Senator Sandy Pappas, are moving into the next phase of the mayor's race today. Pappas and Coleman easily defeated five other candidates in yesterday's primary. Minnesota Public Radio's William Wilcoxen reports.
September 10, 1997 - Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton will face Barbara Carlson, a former city council member, in the city's mayoral election in November. In city council primary outcomes, incumbents advanced easily. Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson has more.
September 10, 1997 - FOR M.E. WEDS 9-10-97 Today we begin a three part series on bank fees. Consumer groups have blasted banks for excessive fees in an era of record profits. One of the most lucrative service charges is the bounced check fee. In the first report of our series, Minnesota Public Radio's Bill Catlin reports that banks have figured out the bounced check fee can turn rubber into gold. Tune in at 5:30 tonight for more about bounced check fees, including a banking practice that can make customers bounce more checks
September 10, 1997 - FOR ATC WEDS 9-10-97 Today we begin a three part series on bank fees. Consumer groups have blasted banks for excessive fees in an era of record profits. Much of the recent criticism has focused on Automated Teller Machine fees. But the amount banks collect in bounced check fees dwarfs their income from the new ATM surcharge. In the first of our series, Minnesota Public Radio's Bill Catlin reports that banks have figured out the bounced check fee can turn rubber into gold. | D-CART ITEM: PLAYLIST #7329 | TIME: PART ONE (7327) 7:42 | OUTCUE: "... is enormous." | TIME: PART TWO: (7328) 6:57 | OUTCUE: SOC note: story includes a promo for next day's story just prior to SOC.
September 10, 1997 - In an editorial today, the New England Journal of Medicine urges mandatory reporting of HIV infections to state health departments so more people will get early treatment. More than half of all states now require that the names of infected people be reported to confidential registries. But New York and California, the two with the most cases by far, do not. Minnesota was second in the nation to require mandatory reporting. It did so in early 1986, and Doctor Keith Henry, an AIDS specialist at Saint Paul Ramsey Medical Center, says we've been reaping the benefits.
September 10, 1997 - Browning Ferris Industries, the nation's second largest waste hauler, plans to open methane- to-energy plants at more than half the 110 landfills it operates across the country. Methane is one of the products of garbage decomposition, and up until recent years it has gone unused. BFI held an open house to celebrate the first year and a half of operation of a methane to electricity plant at the Pine Bend Landfill in Inver Grove Heights. The event also celebrated improved relations between BFI and its neighbors. Minnesota Public Radio's Mary Losure reports.
September 12, 1997 - Consumer groups argue bank fees are gouging customers at a time of record profits in the industry. In Minnesota and nationally, banks have increased service charges and added new ones. The fees add up to a lot of money. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Minnesota commercial banks collected more than $800, 000 a day in service charges last year, a total of $293 million. Complaints about fees have reached the Minnesota Legislature, where proposals to reign in bank fees are pending. Minnesota Public Radio's Bill Catlin has the third in our series of reports on bank fees.
September 12, 1997 - Consumer groups argue bank fees are gouging customers at a time of record profits in the industry. In Minnesota and nationally, banks have increased service charges and added new ones. The fees add up to a lot of money. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Minnesota commercial banks collected more than 800 thousand dollars a day in service charges last year, a total of 293 million dollars. Complaints about fees have reached the Minnesota legislature, where proposals to reign in bank fees are pending. Here is an exerpt from the third of Bill Catlin's reports on bank fees.
September 12, 1997 - Slavenka Drakulic, the Croatian journalist and commentator, is out with "Taste of a Man", a bizarre love story. Drakulic is well-known for her New York Times opinion pieces, and her post-Iron Curtain books "How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed" and "Cafe Europa: Life After Communism". "Taste of a Man" is not necessarily about the war in the Balkans. It involves a woman who has a torrid three-month affair, and when her lover is about to go back to his family, she kills him. And eats him. Then scours her apartment. She's heard all kinds of interpretations of "Taste of a Man"; the religious, the psychological, and the political. They may all be valid, but Drakulic herself thinks the cannibalistic Thereza may be a parallel with the amoral killer in Camus' "The Stranger".
September 12, 1997 - When we report on a labor shortage in outstate Minnesota, we're usually not talking about Rabbis. But for eighteen months, Temple Israel in Duluth had no rabbi. After Rabbi Sue Levy resigned for medical reasons, the synagogue depended on rabbinical aides to help with funerals and bar and bat mitzvahs, and flew in a rabbinical student from Philadelphia twice a month to help with services. Now, that student, Amy Berstein , has completed her degree, and has accepted a full-time permanent job in Duluth. That means she's one of two rabbis in outstate Minnesota. Berstein's formal installation ceremony will be held this evening: