January 30, 1998 - For more on the first week of the tobacco trial, MPR called David Logan, a law professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He's specializes in torts and liability, and has been following the tobacco trial. He says the progress the state has made has been slow but steady.
January 27, 1998 - Political commentator David Gergen is in St. Paul tonight to speak to business leaders about the President's State of the Union and the crisis in the White House. Gergen is the editor of U.S. News and World Report, and served as an advisor to President Clinton and before him, Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan.
January 23, 1998 - Hockey fans greeted the announcement of the Wild name with a little MORE enthusiasm. Here's what some folks in downtown St. Paul thought of the new team name.
January 22, 1998 - There were no patients at the Women's Health Center in Duluth today. Executive Director Tina Welsh said the heightened pressure of the anniversary of Roe V. Wade would have necessitated spending even more money on security to protect the patients and staff. Instead, a donor showed up and gave the clinic four-thousand dollars...a hundred dollars for each protestor who picketed out front. Welsh's clinic is the only abortion provider in greater Minnesota. It serves women from northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. For seventeen years, Welsh has fought to keep her clinic open. She's lost her lease twice, has to fly physicians up from the Twin Cities, and says she spends a hundred-and-ten thousand dollars a year on security. Welsh says twenty five years after Roe v. Wade, ensuring abortion is available, is a daily battle.
January 20, 1998 - The stock market reacted favorably today to news that the St. Paul Companies plans to buy the Baltimore-based insurance company USF&G. The three and a-half billion-dollar deal would make St. Paul Companies the eighth biggest property-casualty insurer in the nation. St. Paul Companies chairman Doug Leatherdale says the deal will result in the elimination of up to two-thousand jobs, most at USF&G's headquarters in Baltimore.
January 16, 1998 - Music, English, Drama and Religion scholars will gather at Stanford University to deconstruct the work of one of Minnesota's most famous sons, Bob Dylan. The conference is billed as "The First U.S. Bob Dylan Conference" and will focus on Dylan's art and cultural legacy. MPR’s Lorna Benson interviews Tino Markworth, organizer of conference.
January 15, 1998 - The son of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is in the Twin Cities today to mark his late father's birthday, and to spread a message of diversity. Martin Luther King THE THIRD is the second oldest of the four children of the late Dr. King and Coretta Scott King, and he continues to carry out his father's work in civil rights by leading "Americans United for Affirmative Action" based in Atlanta. I asked him what he thinks of the way America celebrates the holiday named in honor of his father.
January 13, 1998 - Jamie Nelson of Togo, Minnesota, won her fourth John Beargrease Sled Dog Race today. The defending champion crossed the finish line in Grand Portage at 10:25 this morning. This year's race was just a bit more than half the usual distance. Lack of snow forced organizers to move the race from Duluth to Grand Portage, and shorten the route. Nelson says mushers and dogs still fought hard to cross the two-hundred and sixty two miles to the finish line.
January 9, 1998 - Minnesota's lawsuit against the tobacco companies goes to trial in a little more than a week, but right now, all eyes are on Texas, where that state is now negotiating a settlement with the tobacco industry. Texas' case had been set to go to trial Monday, but it it may instead follow in the footsteps of Mississippi and Florida which settled their suits last year. Doug Cogan directs the Tobacco Information Service for the Investors Responsibility Research Center based in Washington D.C. He tracks the tobacco cases to provide impartial information to investors on the subject. Cogan says the tobacco companies are pushing for settlements to convince congress to pass the national settlement.
December 17, 1997 - Minneapolis City officials now say there's hope of saving the historic Shubert Theater in downtown Minneapolis . The classic-revival style Shubert sits vacant on Block E across from the Target Center. City officials are leaning toward approving a retail/cineplex and parking complex on block E that can't accomodate the Shubert. But today, Council President Cherryhomes and Rebecca Yanish, executive director of the Minneapolis Community Development Agency announced a possible solution to the development versus historic preservation fight.