May 21, 1999 - A Midday broadcast of Walking Out of History: The True Story of Shackleton's Endurance Expedition, an American RadioWorks documentary about Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance Antarctica expedition. MPR’s John Rabe presents various interviews, readings, sounds, and commentary.
May 21, 1999 - Clean-up time has begun at the state capitol. Legislative leaders and the Governor's staff are beginning to sift through the thousands of pages of legislation passed in the final few hours of the session on Monday -- with an eye to weed some of it out before it has a chance to become law.
May 21, 1999 - The wrangling over the largest tax cut in state history ended last Monday night, but the fight over who gets to take credit for it has just begun. The state Republican party bought a full-page ad in the Star Tribune yesterday thanking House Republicans for the tax cut -- and suggested Governor Ventura and the Democrats opposed it.
May 21, 1999 - On Sunday evening, NBC will broadcast "The Jesse Ventura Story" a made for TV movie commissioned shortly after Ventura was elected Governor of Minnesota. Critics have panned the movie, calling it shallow and inaccurate. Still it presents a generally favorable --- if simplistic --- view of Ventura and his anti establishment message.
May 21, 1999 - There is more bad press for the University of Minnesota men's athletic department. A report in today's Star Tribune says between 1993 and 1997, UofM athletics officials repeatedly intervened in assault and criminal sexual conduct investigations against athletes, and kept the cases from being submitted to prosecuters. University President Mark Yudof says if the allegations are true, the University won't tollerate it.
May 21, 1999 - The upper midwest has been hit by the worst nature can dish out the past few years with floods, tornadoes and blizzards. But apparently it has the leaders to handle those disasters. For the second year in a row President Clinton will present the Phoenix leadership award to a midwest mayor. Last year it went to Grand Forks North Dakota's Pat Owens for her work following the city's devastating 1997 flood and fire. Next week the Phoenix award will be given to a small town southern Minnesota mayor who's leadership helped energize a community left for dead by a tornado.
May 21, 1999 - The massive emergency spending bill to pay for the war in Kosovo passed the Senate today, 64 to 36, after being approved by the House earlier this week. Tucked away in the nearly 15 billion dollar bill is long awaited money to help for farmers facing low commodity prices following several seasons of bad weather. But some long-time ag supporters voted against the bill -- and farmers say it's still not enough.
May 24, 1999 - In Martell, Wisconsin, residents are organizing to stop a new dairy farm planned near one of the best trout streams in the midwest--- the Rush River, about an hour's drive east of the Twin Cities. Opponents say a manure spill from the farm's storage lagoons could wipe out the trout in the Rush River for years to come. Defenders of the project say such fears are based on emotion, not science, and that large scale dairy operations are the way of the future in Wisconsin.
May 24, 1999 - One day after the "made-for-tv" movie "The Jesse Ventura Story" air from coast to coast on NBC, the reviews have been uniformly bad. And Governor Ventura added his own thumbs down today at the annual meeting of the Minnesota Film Board saying he only watched the first few minutes.
May 24, 1999 - Governor Jesse Ventura has moved from wrapping up a legislative session to selling his new autobiography. Ventura kicked off a promotional tour this weekend with a book-signing at the Mall of America. The event drew hundreds of fans, but the book and the tour have attracted some criticism as well.