June 30, 1997 - For the 55,000 Minnesota families on welfare, the clock starts ticking tomorow with the state's new five-year lifetime limit on assistance. Also starting tomorrow, new rules will ban newcomers from receiving welfare benefits for the first thirty days they're here. For a year after that, they'll only the amount they'd have received in their previous state. Peter Edelman was an outspoken critic of welfare reform, so much so that when President Clinton signed welfare reform into law last September, Edelman quit his job as an assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human services. Edelman was in the Twin Cities recently.
June 17, 1997 - Mark Rosentraub is an expert on the economics of professional sports. He's the author of "Major League Losers: The Real Cost of Sports and Who's Paying For It". Rosentraub says today's news about the NHL expansion team is great news for sports fans, but it may be tough to support a fourth professional sports team in this market.
June 6, 1997 - The annual Twin Cities Juneteenth film festival opens tonite with Charles Burnett's "Nightjohn". Burnett is the independent filmmaker behind "To Sleep With Anger" and "The Glass Shield", but for his newest feature he signed up with the giant Disney to make a TV movie, but one shot with the big screen in mind. "Nightjohn" is about a slave who escapes to the North, lives as a free man, but returns to the South, and slavery, because he wants to teach slaves how to read and write. "Nightjohn" meets a remarkable young black girl who learns to read with his inspiration, but Burnett says the knowledge doesn't provide the typical Hollywood happy ending for her, it just helps her perspective.
June 4, 1997 - House and Senate Republicans have wrapped up final details on legislation providing five-and-a-half billion dollars worth of disaster relief. But Republicans did keep provisions that have sparked veto threats from the Clinton administration. Democratic Congressman Collin Peterson, who represents the flooded areas of the Red River Valley, says today's progress will result in more delays: Minnesota 7th District Democratic Congressman Collin Peterson. Sun 28-MAY 19:13:13 MPR NewsPro Archive - Wed 04/11/2001
May 29, 1997 - John McLaughlin is the President of the Education Industry Group, and an Education professor on leave from St. Cloud State University. Sun 28-MAY 19:23:45 MPR NewsPro Archive - Wed 04/11/2001
May 29, 1997 - Public release of toxicology reports on five young people who drowned in the Mississippi in March will be delayed pending a court hearing. Parents of three of the five victims asked a judge to block the release because they say it violates state law. Minnesota Public Radio's Brent Wolfe reports from Winona.
May 19, 1997 - The Red River is back within its banks this afternoon in Grand Forks. The Red measured 27-point-98 feet -- just under the 28-foot flood stage. That's down from the 54-foot crest last month that caused an estimated billion dollars worth of damage. Even with the river back within its banks, many residents are still not back in their homes, and the Salvation Army is renewing its plea for volunteers.
May 14, 1997 - A new independent report says the Army spraying over the Twin Cities in the 1950s and 1960s probably didn't hurt anyone's health. The Army says it was testing how biological warfare substances might disperse in the air, so it sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide over several neighborhoods as well as the Chippewa National Forest. The substance is fluorescent, and can be traced easily. But cadmium's also carcinogenic, although that wasn't known at the time. When details of the spraying were revealed a couple of years ago, many people worried about the health impact, including Representative Martin Sabo, who successfully pushed for a million-dollar study. That study, by the independent National Research Council, is now complete.
May 12, 1997 - Police officials and now civilians across the country are looking for a man suspected of killing four men in a spree stretching from Minnesota to New Jersey. The last victim was a cemetery caretaker in New Jersey on Friday. Authorities there say suspect Andrew Cunanan (koo-NAN-in) could be anywhere by now. Cunanan (koo-NAN-in) has been on the run since April 29th, and there have been some rumblings about why the suspect hasn't been caught yet, and whether law enforcement or the media are to blame. Nick O'Hara is the superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Before that, he spent thirty years with the F-B-I, including seven years heading up its fugitive task force. We asked him whether the frustration in not catching Cunanan (koo-NAN-in) is justified: | D-CART ITEM: 1681
May 5, 1997 - Though the flooding in Grand Forks has been dubbed a once-in-500-years event, experts say the next flood could happen soon -- like next year. University of North Dakota geographer Paul Todhunter says it's more than likely next spring will also bring high waters, if not as bad as last year. Floods, he says, naturally come in clusters: University of North Dakota geographer Paul Todhunter Sun 28-MAY 19:41:15 MPR NewsPro Archive - Fri 04/13/2001