April 20, 1999 - The 90's have been tough for independent bookstores. They've lost customers to big chains such as Barnes & Noble and Borders. The newest threat is Amazon.com and other Internet superstores, but as Minnesota Public Radio's Jon Gordon reports, independent booksellers are starting to fight back.
April 20, 1999 - Northwest Airlines is reporting it lost money during the first three months of the year. But the first quarter results weren't as bad as Wall Street analysts had expected.
April 20, 1999 - More than one-thousand low income, Twin Cities children will attend non-public elementary schools next fall through a privately-funded scholarship program. The KidsFirst scholarship fund will pay up to 12-hundred dollars toward tution for eligible students who currently attend metro area public schools. Organizers say they're helping parents make educational choices for their children. But some critics say the project undermines public education.
April 21, 1999 - Last night, the board voted to undo a compromise that would have left the decision up to individual schools, but the board added a provision requiring parental consent.
April 21, 1999 - Students and teachers in Minnesota are among those struggling to understand Tuesday's shooting ramage in a Littleton, Colorado high school. The violent attack was a topic of conversation today in many classrooms. In the the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield, school officials and students were talking about the latest school tragedy and reflecting on their own preparations for a similar incident.
April 26, 1999 - Minnesota Brewing Company bottlers and brewers are on day three of a strike against the company over changes in work rules. The money losing brewery says it must cut costs.
April 27, 1999 - Janet Yellen, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, addresses the Minnesota Meeting. Yellen's speech was titled, "The Baby Boom Retires: How the Coming 'Age Wave' Will Transform America and the World--And What We Can Do About it Now." Minnesota Meeting is a non-profit corporation which hosts a wide range of public speakers. It is managed by the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
April 27, 1999 - Minnesota's new welfare system has been in place for a year and a half now. The program has helped welfare recipients wade through obstacles to finding jobs, medical care, transportation and child care, but for many families, it still falls short. The Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches is trying to fill that gap. The council has already recruited more than 2000 volunteers to serve as mentors to families on welfare. Many of the volunteers have been involved in a 30-week pilot program that ran this past year. The council will officially launch the program at a town meeting tonight and try to recruit three-thousand more mentors. Reverend Gary Ry-er-son, the president of the council says the volunteers provide a unique form of support to families moving off welfare.
April 28, 1999 - Teachers, parents and students throughout Minnesota are waiting today for results of this year's 8th grade basic standards tests. The tests measure minimum skills in reading and math and are a requirement for high school graduation. Minnesota Public Radio's Tim Pugmire reports Minnesota school districts have spent a lot of time and money the past year to raise scores..
April 29, 1999 - Tales of torture and abuse are the stuff of nightmares: this weekend a such a story is being retold, but this has, if not a happy, at least a hopeful, ending. The Macalester College theater department is presenting the world premiere of "Return to Kanburi" a remarkable story of how Eric Lomax, a British soldier tortured in by the Japanese during World War 2, found one of the men responsible decades later, and forgave him.