April 13, 1998 - Ojibwa 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 is 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. The 161-year-old treaty is a short, simple document -- you could read it twice before this story's over. In plain language, the Ojibwa yield t
April 13, 1998 - Saint Paul for Monday--prior to the midday call-in at 11am AND note anncr; tag!!!!!!! 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 Saint 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: ANNOUNCER TAG: TUNE IN TO MIDDAY THIS MORNING AT 11, FOR MORE ON PUBLIC FINANCING OF SPORTS AND THE GOVE
April 13, 1998 - The state Board of Education will vote tonight 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. News of the proposed KidsPeace school first surfaced in some stormy sessions of the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board. Some board members opposed another juvenile facility in northeast Minnesota because they feared it
April 13, 1998 - Comfrey schools will reopen today (Monday, April 13th), 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: Comfrey students won't need to bring any supplies when they make the 20 mile bus trip to Sanborn. Standing in a third grade classroom, elementary school music teacher Laurie Fredin points out donated items neatly laid out on each desk:
April 13, 1998 - It will be another week before students at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter return to classes on their tornado-ravaged campus. Officials had hoped to reopen the college today, but delays in debris cleanup and restoring power pushed that back a week. The small Lutheran college faces a long and expensive rebuilding process. But the money's pouring in and administrators are confident they'll emerge from the debris even better than before. Minnesota Public Radio's Tim Pugmire reports... (Sound of bobcat) In a parking lot at Gustavus Adolphus College, workers take a break from hauling debris to unload a semi-trailer full of donated trees. The tornado stripped the campus almost bare of its large mature trees. Campus Gardener Bil
April 13, 1998 - "I read a book one day and my whole life was changed." So begins the new novel by acclaimed Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk called "The New Life." Critics in the same sentence compare Pamuk's writing to that of Nabakov, Borges, Proust, and Garcia-Marquez. "The New Life" is about a Turkish engineering student whose existence is magically transformed and uprooted by love, political conspiracy, travel and danger simply by the act of reading a book. It's relatively rare that American readers encounter a Turkish novel, much less a Turkish novelist in person, but that's precisely what will happen tonight at the Hungry Mind in St. Paul when Pamuk makes a scheduled stop on his book tour promoting "The New Life." Pamuk says although he's probably the first Turkish author to do an American book tour, he doesn't consider himself an ambassador.
April 14, 1998 - MPR Senior Business and Economics Editor Chris Farrell, and State Senator Doug Johnson, who has chaired the Senate Tax Committee since 1980, discuss taxes and the political and financial trade-offs between "fairness" and "simplicity", as well as various proposals to change the tax system. Farrell and Johnson also answer listener questions.
April 14, 1998 - 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.
April 14, 1998 - The first of the much-anticipated tobacco company documents began trickling into Minnesota's tobacco trial today. Attorneys for the state and Blue Cross Blue Shield introduced several of the 39-thousand formerly-secret documents they obtained last week. Tobacco lawyers fought their release all the way to the U-S Supreme Court. Minnesota Public Radio's Laura McCallum reports... Over the objections of tobacco lawyers, lead plaintiff attorney Michael Ciresi introduced about a half-dozen formerly-privileged documents as part of his cross-examination of Brown and Williamson toxicologist Scott Appleton. One was Appleton's handwritten notes from a 1991 meeting at the Kansas City law firm of Shook, Hardy and Bacon. Appleton had just been hired by B
April 14, 1998 - If your food stamps have been cut, your health may be at risk. Those are the findings of researchers at Hennepin County Medical Center and the University of Minnesota. Their research, published in tomorrow's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, concludes patients whose food stamps have been cut have a higher incidence of hunger, and poorer health. Dr. Nicole Lurie is a professor of medicine and public health at the University. She discovered the problem after seeing a patient who had stopped taking her insulin because she was no't eating the food needed for the medication to work properly: Dr. Nicole Lurie, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota.