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A flight attendant angry about his work route set a fire in an airplane bathroom, forcing an emergency landing, authorities said. The Compass Airlines flight carrying 72 passengers and four crew members landed safely in Fargo on May 7 after smoke filled the back. No injuries were reported. The plane was flying from Minneapolis to Regina, Saskatchewan, authorities said. Eder Rojas, 19, appeared in court Thursday, following his arrest a day earlier in Minneapolis, and ordered held without bail, prosecutors said. The charge of setting fire aboard a civil aircraft carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Bids on the Star Tribune's five-block plot of land in downtown Minneapolis are due today, according to an offering memo obtained by the Pioneer Press. The marketing of the 12.4 acres — billed as the largest private land holding in the central business district — marks a rare opportunity for developers. It also comes at a time when the Star Tribune and its owners, Avista Capital Holdings, are dealing with declining revenue and profit, and the extra cash could come in handy. Last year, the Minnesota Vikings offered to pay $45 million for four of the five blocks in the...

A special interest program assembled by the Human Rights Campaign to promote homosexuality has been launched in the 91-school Minneapolis district, even as opponents are urging school officials to keep sexuality out of the social culture. "The government should promote and encourage strong families," said Austin R. Nimocks, a senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. "When school officials have to choose between protecting children in those families or furthering the homosexual agenda, the choice is obvious: protecting our children comes first." The issue is the "Welcoming Schools" program assembled by the HRC, which advocates for and promotes homosexuality. District...

CAIR comes to the rescue of Minneapolis tax-funded Muslim school By Michelle Malkin • April 15, 2008 As I have reported over the years, there are many good reasons to be wary when CAIR and other Muslim grievance groups start banging the drum about being victimized by Islamophobia. Now, the usual suspects seem engaged in the usual tactics to distract from the controversy over the Minneapolis tax-funded Muslim school exposed by Star-Tribune columnist extraordinaire Katherine Kersten. Just as the state has launched an investigation of the school, here comes CAIR: The Minnesota chapter of a national Islamic civil liberties group...

Old photos of the Interstate 35W bridge show two steel connecting plates were visibly bent as early as 2003 — four years before the span collapsed into the Mississippi River, killing 13 people. Minnesota Department of Transportation officials declined to say when the state first knew about the bending in the pieces of steel, called gusset plates. Two photos, part of a report issued earlier this month by the National Transportation Safety Board, reveal slight bends in gusset plates that hold beams together at two separate connecting points. The plates are in areas believed to be among the first points...

St. Stephen's in the Minneapolis archdiocese is the 'other' strange parish, the more famous one being St. Joan's. Apart from their lefty politics, liturgical stylings had been rather, umm, improvisatory for a long time. Now, the archbishop (who now has a 'tough' co-adjutor) has stepped in, bringing several 'progressive' parishes in line liturgically. Thanks to the half dozen of you who emailed me about it :) Nick Coleman writes about it in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. For 40 years, St. Stephen's Catholic Church in Minneapolis has been a font of Christian compassion, service to the suffering and help to the...

Mitt Romney is down, but he might not be out. Romney suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination after a disappointing showing on Super Tuesday, and has endorsed John McCain for the GOP nod. But Romney’s son Josh says it’s “possible” his father might rejoin the race as a candidate for vice president or for president if McCain’s campaign stalls. Romney hasn’t commented publicly about a recent New York Times article that implied McCain had an improper relationship with a female lobbyist. McCain and the lobbyist have firmly denied the allegation, but subsequent reports have contradicted some of McCain’s...

A woman who identified herself as Alianiss Nunez Morales was driving a van that failed to stop at a stop sign, hitting a school bus, police say. A woman who identified herself as Alianiss Nunez Morales was driving a van that failed to stop at a stop sign, hitting a school bus, police say. MINNEAPOLIS — A woman who authorities say is in the country illegally and using an alias was charged Friday with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide and two lesser charges in a school bus crash that killed four children. A woman who identified herself as Alianiss...

Six-year-old Zamzam Mohamed was waiting for her school bus with her sister early Wednesday in the vestibule of their Minneapolis apartment building when she saw a man she had never seen before fumbling with a handgun. Next came a boom and then screams, followed by searing pain in her lower leg. The handgun had slipped from the man's waistband and discharged, grazing Zamzam's leg as several children looked on. "He went through his pants; it was like he was trying to shoot it or something," said Zamzam's sister, Hafsa Mohamed, 11. "Then it went off and she started crying and...

The Star Tribune this morning announced the layoff of 58 employees, about 3 percent of the newspaper’s workforce, and an indefinite wage freeze for all its nonunion employees, about 600 in total. Publisher Chris Harte cited continuing revenue declines, the efficiencies of new technology and outsourcing in a morning memo to employees. Three-fourths of the eliminated jobs are in the circulation department, which got the news at 9 a.m. meetings. The exiting employees will receive the same severance given to about 140 employees who took voluntary buyouts last May, which is two weeks’ pay for every year’s employment and six...

For sale: a pair of office buildings. Served as home to skeptical cranks, loudmouth jokers and coffee-stained carpet. The Star Tribune's real estate is on the market once again, publisher Chris Harte told his staff in a memo sent Friday. The company hired a real estate broker but no deal is imminent, or even guaranteed, he wrote. A $45 million deal that would have sold off the newspaper's three parking lots and its lesser used Freeman office building to the Minnesota Vikings collapsed five months ago amid tightening credit markets. Harte said the deal this time may include everything, including...

Steven Stark lays out a scenario whereby all the other candidates, none of whom have wholehearted Republican support, cancel each other out, paving the way for Fred Thompson to receive the nomination at the convention. "When conventions deadlock, history teaches us that yesterday's disappointments become tomorrow's stars. If McCain can't stampede to the nomination and Super Tuesday doesn't produce another clear front-runner, we may not have heard the last of Fred..." I find the idea highly unlikely, though appealing...but stranger things have happened. Whoever would have thought the 2000 election wouldn't be decided for 36 days?

WASHINGTON -- The Republican presidential race is so unsettled that some party officials are openly talking of a scenario that seemed almost unthinkable until now: the first contested GOP convention in 60 years. Even if Republicans choose a nominee before they convene in Minneapolis-St. Paul on Sept. 1, there's a good possibility he will emerge weeks or even months after the Democratic nominee is chosen, giving Democrats an advantage in fundraising, organizing and campaigning. Congressional Republicans particularly wanted an early nominee to draw voters' attention from President Bush, whose low approval ratings could hurt the entire party in the fall....

Like a top-heavy tower of books, Seattle tumbled from its ranking as "America's Most Literate City" this year. The new winner: Minneapolis, ending Seattle's two-year reign on top. The Emerald City only slipped to second place, but some of the local literati took it hard. "I don't believe it," said Tracy Taylor, general manager for Elliott Bay Book Co. in Pioneer Square, which was bursting with post-Christmas customers Thursday. "And we're not even having a sale," Taylor noted. But the statistics don't lie — even though they also don't capture all the nuances of what makes one city more literate...

It was Harte — the point man for Avista Capital Partners' 2006 Strib purchase — who hired away St. Paul Pioneer Press publisher Par Ridder in March. By September, the coup had turned into a full-fledged disgrace; a judge bounced Ridder from the job for taking confidential information from St. Paul. Harte — who is not an Avista partner but has told Stribites he has a substantial investment in the paper — was thrust into the publisher's chair. ...However, Harte has made some high-profile changes. Just weeks after Ridder's exit, he ousted longtime editorial page editor Susan Albright, who for...

A metrowide trend to return to the good old days of civic Christmas celebrations downtown is delighting kids but tiptoeing near the boundaries for church and state. "Santa saw me!" 7-year-old Joseph Grant told his mom after the jolly old elf made his way down the chilly main street of Savage to take his seat in a store and hoist children onto his lap. Kids circled a giant Christmas tree as their parents shivered around a pair of fires, producing s'mores. Motorists pulling off the nearby highway paused, confused by the blocked-off street where teams of horses raced up and...

His column harshly criticized for "spiritual violence" and "persecution" toward homosexuals November 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a recent column in the local diocesan newspaper, Minneapolis/St. Paul Coadjuter Archbishop John C. Nienstedt concisely explained the Church's teaching regarding both a homosexual's obligation to chastity and the Church's obligation to support and encourage such a chaste lifestyle. The column has caused a backlash of harsh criticism from the 'homosexual community' in what has until recently been known as a notoriously liberal Catholic diocese. Archbishop Nienstedt's column in the diocesan paper 'The Catholic Spirit' was authored as a sequel to a previous column,...

In a challenge to the Bush administration, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., introduced legislation Wednesday that would ban photo identification as a requirement for voting in federal elections. By Kevin Diaz, Star Tribune Last update: November 01, 2007 – 9:37 AM WASHINGTON - In a challenge to the Bush administration, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., introduced legislation Wednesday that would ban photo identification as a requirement for voting in federal elections. Ellison's bill reflects the Minnesota practice, which does not require photo ID for the purpose of voter verification. Ellison has a companion bill that mirrors the state's law allowing eligible voters...

Now we know who's in charge of Minneapolis streets. It's a loosely organized group of serial lawbreakers called Critical Mass. Last Friday, 600 or so took over city thoroughfares, breaking traffic laws with impunity while police stayed in the background. Every month, Critical Mass cyclists ride through rush hour traffic in cities across the country. Some insist the ride is just a "celebration." Others acknowledge a political agenda: they want to enlighten the rest of us -- greedy capitalists that we are -- about the joys of bike riding so we can join them in saving the planet. The Mass...

Berlin - Transparency International, an anti-corruption organisation in Berlin, says Somalia and Myanmar are the most corrupt countries in the world. Denmark, Finland and New Zealand top the annual Transparency International list as the least corrupt countries. The Netherlands has moved from ninth to seventh place in the list of 180 countries. Transparency International stresses that even the least corrupt countries have still got more work to do. The organisation is positive about developments in South Africa, Namibia and Swaziland, which have shown that corruption can be combatted and that they are striving for political reform. The Transparency International list...

Christian Psychologist Sues Minneapolis After Being Fired for Membership in Pro-Family Group MINNEAPOLIS, September 18, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit last Tuesday in federal court on behalf of an Illinois clinical psychologist who lost his contract with the city of Minneapolis because of his membership with a politically conservative, pro-family organization. "Pro-family, Christian conservatives cannot be treated as second-class citizens," said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Brian Raum.  "Government officials do not have the right to end someone's contract on the basis of religion or political viewpoint.  The city of Minneapolis is engaging in...

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. - When tourists ask for the bathroom in the Minneapolis airport lately, it’s usually not because they have to go. It’s because they want to see the stall made famous by U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s arrest in a sex sting.

The animal rights advocates came with a video of a stampeding circus elephant shot dead in the street. The circus animal supporters, many wearing Shriners' fezzes, argued that nobody wants to see a circus without lions, tigers and elephants. On Wednesday, City Hall became the Big Top for a divisive, standing-room-only hearing on whether Minneapolis will ban circus shows featuring wild animals. After two hours of tense debate that featured nationally recognized animal experts, the council's public safety and regulatory services committee moved the issue forward without a recommendation. The full council will vote on the matter next Friday. If...

John Piper pastors Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, whose main campus is about 1 mile from the I35 bridge over the Mississippi River that collapsed August 1. His reflections on that tragedy has been distributed far and wide and helped provide a biblical perspective on such events. Piper also responded forcefully and helpfully to the awful, God-dishonoring, soul-destroying and comfort-robbing words of Rabbi Harold Kushner on that tragedy. Both articles are worth reading and passing along to anyone and everyone who wonders "why bad things happen to good people." They are models in pastoral theology and ministry. Roger Olsen used...

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men’s public restroom, according to an arrest report obtained by Roll Call Monday afternoon. Craig’s arrest occurred just after noon on June 11 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. On Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct in the Hennepin County District Court. He paid more than $500 in fines and fees, and a 10-day jail sentence was stayed. He also was given one year of probation with the court that began on Aug. 8. A...

Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse: Failure Analysis The I-35 West bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, consisted of three trussed spans and several beam and post spans typical of 1960's era freeway construction. Analysis to date here at Free Republic has centered on looking for the triggering cause in the bridge collapse, and the sequence of failure, as determined by available pre- and post-collapse imagery and video. Efforts so far have been hampered by uncertainty regarding the condition and disposition of the eastern truss panels originally located above and near pier 6. I hope to rectify this uncertainty and...

MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 8 — Investigators have found what may be a design flaw in the bridge that collapsed here a week ago, in the steel parts that connect girders, raising safety concerns for other bridges around the country, federal officials said on Wednesday. The Federal Highway Administration swiftly responded by urging all states to take extra care with how much weight they place on bridges of any design when sending construction crews to work on them. Crews were doing work on the deck of the Interstate 35W bridge here when it gave way, hurling rush-hour traffic into the Mississippi River...

CONCORD, N.H. - Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton is arguing that unsafe bridges, crowded seaports and clogged highways endanger the economy as well as putting the public at risk. Last week's fatal bridge collapse in Minneapolis underscores the critical need for infrastructure improvements nationwide, Clinton said in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday afternoon in New Hampshire. She proposed spending $10 billion over 10 years to repair and upgrade roads, bridges, waterways and seaports. "Something is very, very wrong when, at the dawn of the 21st century, in the richest country on earth, people are actually nervous about driving over...

A Quarter-Billion Dollars Goes to Repair a 1/3-Mile, 64-Foot-High Bridge Before adjourning for its August recess early Sunday, Congress quickly passed a bill spending $250 million to repair the 1,907-foot I-35 bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, an expenditure of about $130,000 per foot. This is more than three times the cost-per-foot of Alaska's infamous "Bridge to Nowhere." Under the bill, the federal government will bear the full cost of I-35 repairs. The quarter-billion-dollar spending measure raced through Congress in about two days. According to the Department of Transportation, the collapsed I-35 bridge was 1,907 feet long (just over one-third of a...

By now it's been so widely adopted by the media that it's easy to be numb to it, but Chicago Tribune's E.A. Torriero breathed new life into the Bush-caused-it meme in the I-35W bridge collapse story by adding a new twist. The bridge collapse, suggested Torriero, is insult added to injury for mostly Muslim Somali immigrants already angered by American foreign policy. In a story filed the evening of August 7, Torriero portrayed the collapse as insult added to injury for Somali immigrants, weaving in suggestions that America under President Bush is becoming akin to a third world country, unable...

Excerpt - 360 degree aerial panorama over the collapsed I-35W bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, MN. This was shot the morning after the collapse when there was a TFR (temporary flight restriction) over the bridge, and I had to fly significantly higher than I normally shoot, so you won't be able to see much detail in the bridge. I may be able to do more at a decent altitude when the TFR is lifted. Click and drag to move around, up, or down. SHIFT zooms in, CTRL zooms out. (QuickTime or Java required)

What does the bridge collapse in Minneapolis have in common with the Hurricane Katrina fiasco in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast? The answer is the neglect of infrastructure. If you saw Spike Lee's splendid documentary, "When The Levees Broke," you got to see the levees developed in Holland. This is a country sitting below sea level and it's managed to build a state-of-the-art dike system that has enabled it to avoid the type of flooding seen in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. On the other hand, the United States has a dike and levee system that is...

Nearly a fifth of America's roads are now considered in poor shape and about one-in-four bridges is rated "structurally deficient." The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that the cost to fix these problems is a staggering $460 billion. The tab grows far larger when you add in the hundreds of billions to build the new transportation infrastructure that's needed to handle the country's growth. Part of the problem is that big increases in state and local spending for politically popular programs, especially Medicaid and education, as well costly public employee pensions and benefits, have crowded out infrastructure -- even as...

I've been looking at some of the video showing the collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis and it looks like the collapse could have resulted from a major mistake by the company working on the bridge's surface. The bridge carries eight lanes of traffic, four each direction. To maintain an even load on the bridge supports during construction the contractor should have either worked on the two inside lanes of both sides of the bridge or the two outside lanes. Instead the contractor worked on the inside two lanes of one side and the outside...

The collapse of the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis is a tragedy of gargantuan proportions but it was followed by bravery, stories of heroism and miracles also on a grand scale.

MINNEAPOLIS - A rush-hour crawl that gave vehicles little momentum to slide into the river and a bridge design that minimized falling debris appear to have kept the death toll relatively low in the collapse of a bridge into the Mississippi River. After divers spent a second day searching the waters, the number of dead stood at five, and authorities cast doubt on an earlier estimate that as many as 30 people were missing. They even said it could be as few as eight. Barring bad weather, divers planned to resume their search Saturday for cars and bodies in the...

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - Politicians trying to account for one of the worst bridge collapses in U.S. history cast blame ranging from engineering faults to the Iraq war on Friday, while divers tried to reach the bodies of more victims in the Mississippi River's treacherous waters. As investigators probed Wednesday's collapse that killed at least five people, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said outside experts would review the decisions of state engineers to shore up problems with the heavily-traveled 40-year-old bridge in central Minneapolis. Engineers had decided to periodically inspect the steel superstructure beneath the Interstate 35W bridge and bolt on reinforcing...

Click here for live camera. The camera updates every 5 seconds or so. The link doesn't bring you straight to the camera though. When the map comes up, find 35W and where it intersects with 394 and head north from there. The second and third dots above that intersection are the northbound and southbound cameras that cover the bridge. I imagine MNDoT has pictures of the bridge collapsing.

$1.1 Billion Twins Stadium Tax... The Minnesota Twins sued to get out of their lease so they can pressure your lawmakers to buy them a stadium. The new lease presumably would be as worthless as the one they just nullified. Meanwhile, the disenfranchised citizens -- who will not be allowed to vote on it -- are stuck paying the tab. WHAT WILL THE STADIUM COST? The stadium will cost taxpayers $1.1 billion dollars... ...WHERE DO THE POLITICAL PARTIES STAND? The official position of the Republican party of Minnesota as expressed in their party platform states that they are opposed to...

When I heard the news late Wednesday afternoon about the Minnesota Interstate 35W bridge collapse, after the initial shock and sadness for the victims, one of my first thoughts was that the Left would try to score points and blame the tragedy on President Bush and the Republicans. Sure enough, within four minutes of the news breaking nationally at 7:32 pm ET on the Fox News Channel, the initial discussion thread about it at Daily Kos was already collecting comments (blaming Bush and Republicans) like the following ones which are representative of hundreds of messages that soon appeared there...

MINNEAPOLIS (Aug. 2) - An interstate bridge jammed with rush-hour traffic suddenly broke into huge sections and collapsed into the Mississippi River Wednesday, pitching dozens of cars 60 feet into the water and killing at least four people. The eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge, a major Minneapolis artery, was in the midst of being repaired and two lanes in each direction were closed when the bridge buckled. About 20 families gathered at an information center, looking for information on loved ones they couldn't locate. "There were two lanes of traffic, bumper to bumper, at the point of the collapse. Those cars...

A federal judge in New York has ordered a Lebanese national transferred to Minneapolis to face two counts of making false statements to federal investigators. The U.S. attorney's office in Minneapolis says Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi is charged with lying about his role in sending radio and communications equipment to Pakistan and elsewhere. He's also accused of lying about his role in helping another person illegally obtain a Massachusetts driver's license. That person was later convicted in Jordan in a bombing plot. The charges revealed Friday deal only with accusations of lying — not with the underlying crimes Elzahabi allegedly lied...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Lebanese man who says he attended an al-Qaida training camp was charged Friday with lying to federal authorities about shipments of communications equipment seized by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi, 41, was charged in a U.S. District Court in Minnesota, one of several places he's lived in the United States. A federal judge in New York, where Elzahabi has been held since his arrest in May, held a hearing for Elzahabi and ordered him transferred to Minneapolis to face two counts of making false statements to federal investigators. A criminal complaint by FBI...

The U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has rated almost 200,000 bridges, or one of every three bridges in the U.S., as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Furthermore, more than one-fourth of all bridges are over 50 years old, the average design-life of a bridge. The Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) of the U.S. National Research Council recently estimated that the cost of damage to America's bridges currently stands at about $20 billion and is increasing at the rate of $500 million per year. SHRP concluded that the structural deterioration found in these bridges is primarily the result of corrosion.

Just turned on the news. 35W bridge collapsed in the Mississippi River. Cars, trucks, semis..... Fires burning, tanker trucks, at least one school bus, more than ten cars...... Just now breaking.......

A suspected terrorist, arrested in Minneapolis and held in prison for nearly 3 and a half years without a trial, is asking to be released. Mohammed Warsame is charged with federal crimes of violence and supplying support to Al Qaida. Supporters in the Muslim community packed the federal courthouse in Minneapolis Tuesday to express their concern for Mohammed Warsame. "The length of this detention, without his day in court, is causing a serious problem," said Somali Justice Center Director Omar Jamal. Warsame's attorney said it's the longest time in U.S. history someone has been incarcerated pretrial. "He's been incredibly resilient,"...

Anyone driving through Minneapolis should keep their eyes on the speedometer and watch those red lights. Police are cracking down on traffic violations to help fill a gap in the city's budget. The city says the police department is nearly $6 million over budget. And money from traffic tickets is down more than a million dollars as well. So to help get back in the black, the number of traffic tickets handed out in Minneapolis in recent weeks has gone up more than 13 percent. City leaders say raising money isn't the only motive. But news of increased police traffic...

A search warrant filed in Hennepin County connects a shooting investigation to a possible terror plot. According to court documents, four Somali teenage males were riding in a cab on June 24 the same night a man was shot in the chest around 9:00 p.m. Video surveillance at the Glendale Housing Projects captured the cab fleeing near the scene of the shooting. Police were able to identify the taxicab and located the vehicle at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport four days later. Inside the cab, police found a handwritten note describing acts of terrorism and bombings. Police questioned an 18-year-old relative...

Move over Republicans -- the Green Party may beat you to bringing a national political convention to the Twin Cities next year. Minneapolis Green activists announced Thursday that they're wooing their party for Minneapolis in July 2008. They'll make the case at this weekend's national Green gathering in Reading, Pa., that Minneapolis' progressive politics -- and some party electoral successes -- make the city a good fit. A decision is expected by Aug. 15. Chicago and Detroit are also vying for the Green convention, which is expected to bring about 1,500 people to the host city, organizers of the Minneapolis...

A knife was found onboard a SkyWest-Midwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Milwaukee Thursday. The Transportation Security Administrations (TSA) confirms that an Exacto-style knife was found onboard the plane Thursday morning. When the knife was found, the plane was returned to the gate at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport where passengers were taken off the plane and re-screened while the airplane was searched. No other contraband was found and all passengers were allowed to re-board. Midwest Airlines Flight YX2502 arrived in Milwaukee at 11:43 a.m, -- about one hour behind schedule.