Bob CollinsPeteris Sahurovs, 28, of Latvia has finally appeared in a Minnesota court years after being indicted for a scheme that put ‘scareware’ on people’s computers Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
By Bob Collins
Bob Collins retired from Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after 12 years of writing NewsCut and pointing out to complainants that posts weren’t news stories. A son of Massachusetts, he was a news editor 1992-1998, created the MPR News regional website in 1999, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day lamented that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.
In 2005, the Army recalled Martin Breaker, a reservist, and when he informed BSU that he intended to return in 2008, the state university said his previous positions had been eliminated. It offered him a temporary position at less pay. Read more →
Former University of North Dakota hockey player Carter Rowney won a Stanley Cup last night with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Read more →
Eighteen years ago, Phil Kiltie, a retired teacher in Alexandria, got a nice letter from Scott Lempka, who was once in Kiltie’s fourth-grade class, had grown up and become a teacher himself in Ohio.
Kiltie kept the letter. Teachers, we’re guessing, especially fourth-grade teachers, don’t get a lot of letters from their all-grown-up students. Read more →
School’s out! It’s a time to get inside and play! Read more →
I suppose this image in the Star Tribune’s Metro section today was supposed to show us the sheer force of the wind during yesterday’s storms.
Instead, it makes me wonder what you people were thinking? Read more →
Et tu, Delta?
The airline has become the latest underwriter of New York’s Shakespeare in the Park to pull its sponsorship over a production of Julius Caesar.
Read more →
A case of clear-cutting trees along the Mississippi River in Crow Wing County shows that times are still pretty good for ‘Mac’ Hammond, the megachurch owner and preacher of the prosperity gospel. Read more →
It’s been hard for people to dismiss or turn away from Nick Briner’s story, which his mother began telling just before he got out of prison last year and she was weighing what to do. People pull for her. People pull for her son. And that’s just how it should be. Read more →
Never underestimate the power of kids to understand the world better than adults sometimes do. Read more →
He had no family to attend the graduation and his friend Keyira Nunn, 17, a junior at the school, was shot and killed in a shooting late last Friday afternoon. She died at the scene.
So yesterday afternoon, a day after arresting a suspect in the killing, the two investigators for the the St. Paul Police Department attended the commencement, accompanied St. Paul Police Senior Cmdr. Tina McNamara, who heads the homicide unit. Read more →
Steve Ross, born in Poland, was in Dachau when it was liberated by American troops. He was 14 and near death when an Army lieutenant jumped from his tank, gave him a hug and some of his food.
It was a brief encounter that propelled Ross to become a social worker in Boston, helping troubled youth. Read more →
Of four people who survived offensive actions by issuing an apology, three survived. All were men. The woman was a different story. Coincidence? Read more →
We’re not proud of the fact that we take a certain satisfaction that in the battle between the Stillwater Lift Bridge and pretty nice boat on the St. Croix River, the bridge won. Read more →
Because you didn’t ask for it, MPR News’ John Wanamaker and I are going to do a Facebook Live discussion today at noon. If you have questions you’d like to ask, don’t post them here. Post them there. We’ll probably do this every Friday to figure out the most undercovered, undermentioned, most interesting stories of Read more →