Bob CollinsA lot of schools were delayed or closed today because of the weather. The poor weather didn’t reach Wadena, Minn., where it was 2 degrees at sunrise. It didn’t matter. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
New University of Minnesota football coach P.J. Fleck could make $18 million over five years, the largest contract ever given out to a U of M coach. And some members of the Board of Regents think the board should have something to say about spending that kind of money.
Read more →
As we’ve noted many times in this space over the years, flying cars are a fairly impractical solution to a problem. Most every flying car project that’s underway continues to take investors’ money and delay the rollout. Read more →
What do you do if you live in northern Minnesota, the winter is long, you have a chainsaw and an old outboard motor?
You make motorized ice circles, like Mark Verm did in Nashwauk.
Read more →
Might a clip-on tie be a clue to the identity of D.B. Cooper?
The Cooper name is attached to the mysterious man who hijacked a Northwest Orient flight in 1971 and then parachuted out of the jet, leaving the clip-on tie on his seat — 18E. Read more →
Last week’s revelation about a private intelligence report allegedly claiming Russia has gathered compromising data about president-elect Donald Trump is challenging news organizations to figure out when they should report unsubstantiated information. Read more →
If you’re planning on walking around Duluth’s waterfront, pack your ice skates. Read more →
A moment of silence, please, for the loss of a little bit of “community” in the communities of Madison Lake, Eagle Lake, St. Clair and Pemberton. The local newspaper has shut down after 112 years. Read more →
Several fans of NewsCut’s The Art of the Obituary category have called our attention to Friday’s passing of Dr. Kay Heggestad of Madison, Wis.,who merited two obituaries in Sunday’s Wisconsin State Journal.
She wrote one of them. Her family wrote the other, to fill in the extraordinary details she left out. Read more →
Cody Nelson
An intermission skit at Thursday’s Wild hockey game showed a mascot beating its rival with a baseball bat. Read more →
At Donald Trump’s first press conference since July, a reporter asked the president-elect if he’ll release his tax returns to prove the claim that he has no deals in Russia. After his standard denial to release the documents citing an ongoing audit, the reporter asked a follow-up question. Trump responded with a sarcastic quip before suggesting Read more →
It may well be that presidents age at the same clip as the rest of us and we’re just too infatuated with what we see in the mirror. But usually around this time every eight years, the toll of the presidency seems obvious.
We put them in office as relatively young and vibrant people, and they leave looking older, grayer and more worn. Or so it seems. Read more →
Remember last spring and summer when you were heading for the cubicle farm in a stuffy office and you thought to yourself, ‘Man, those folks who have outside jobs have got it made!’? They might be thinking the same thing about your job today. Read more →
Clare Hollingworth has died at 105, and there’s a fair chance you have no idea who she is. But it’s a pretty neat thing to have in your obit that you’re the one who told the world that World War II had started. Read more →
In the madness of another mass shooting, it would be a big blow for simple decency if we could find a kid’s bear. Read more →