October 7, 1999 - It's a delicious thought: somewhere, tucked away in a closet, or a store room near you, is something hugely valuable. A vase, an old coin, or even a picture, which could propel you to the front pages, or bankroll you through retirement, if only you can find it. The central character in the new comic novel "Headlong' makes such a discovery: a long lost masterpiece by the Flemish artist Breughel. He realizes the painting will make him a national hero if he can get it into a big museum, and probably quite rich too. The only problem: he finds it in his neighbours house. The resulting moral and artistic dilemmas spin increasingly out of control.
October 5, 1999 - Minnesotas black bear population continues to confound biologists. Once thought stable at about ten-thousand, the most recent survey estimated a total of almost three times that in the state.
October 4, 1999 - In Jonathon Lethem's new novel "Motherless Brooklyn" detective Lionel Essrog has to overcome several obstacles to solve the murder of his boss, not least the fact he has Tourettes Syndrome.
September 29, 1999 - There's an urban forest just minutes from downtown St Paul -- where a group of teens have been working to restore the native ecosystem. In addition to its natural beauty, the area ---called Swede Hollow--- has historical importance as home to a succession of immigrants. The teens worked with enviornmental artist Chris Baumler.
September 27, 1999 - Novelist Roddy Doyle is famed for his evocative portraits of contemporary Irish life, his novel "The Committments" about a Dublin soul band was made into a hit film, and he won the Booker Prize for "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha". In his new book "A Star Called Henry" he looks to Irish history, and the Easter Uprising of 1916 which lead to the formation of the Republic of Ireland.
September 23, 1999 - Shakespeare wrote all of his works without the use of a dictionary. Such a thing simply didn't exist in Elizabethan England. The dictionary as we know it is a relatively new invention, and the grandest of them all, the Oxford English Dictionary was only completed 72 years ago. Author Simon Winchester researched the creation of the OED for his book "The Professor and the Madman". He told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr when the project started in the 1850's with the audacious aim of listing every single word in the English language.
September 15, 1999 - 1937 was a year of turmoil across the world, as the seeds of World War II began germinating. Yet the rampant nationalism which pushed Hitler, Franco and Mussolini atop the political forefront in Europe, was in evidence in other parts of the world. In the Caribbean, on the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the Dominican leader General Trujillo ordered the massacre of Haitian immigrants. Thousands of Haitians fled across the border back to Haiti, but many died under the hail of bullets, stones and machete blows. Novelist Edwidge Danticat, who was born in Haiti, says she has been haunted by the story of the massacre. She set her latest book "The Farming of Bones" in the midst of the turmoil in part because so few people, including many Haitians, know about what happened.
September 9, 1999 - One of the more spectacular moves in soccer is the "header" where a player soars in the air to smack the ball into the net with well-placed nod of the head. In recent months there has been rising concern among soccer parents caused by reports heading may damage young brains. A study reported in this weeks Journal of the American Medical association found possible risk of chronic traumatic brain injury for amateur soccer players. The report concludes that due to the worldwide popularity of soccer the observbations could have important public health implications. Now a pair of Twin Cities soccer dads have come up with what they hope is an answer... a protective headband. But as Minnesota Public Radio's Mary Stucky reports there's disagreement over whether this kind of protection is really needed.
August 30, 1999 - American Indians were the most undercounted ethnic group in the 1990 census. US Census officials say they missed more than 12 percent of Indians who live on reservations, compared with about one percent of the white population. With the 2000 census imminent, census officials travelled to Minnesota as part of the effort to make sure that doesn't happen again.
August 3, 1999 - The Senate today tentatively approved a Republican sponsored emergency farm aid package as an amendment to a $61 billion dollar agriculture appropriations bill. The GOP amendment would add nearly 7 billion dollars of emergency aid. A final vote on that is expected tomorrow. The Democrats' 11 billion dollar version was essentially killed. But any emergency agriculture assistance won't likely be available until September at the earliest -- when a review of national farm policy could take place on Capitol Hill.