News Day

Carp alert! The latest on the Asian carp fight comes from the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal, reporting a letter from MN, MI, OH, and PA attorneys general to the Army Corps of Engineers, demanding stronger action to keep the giant Asian carp out of the Great Lakes.  The feds start poisoning the Little Calumet River near Chicago today, but the AGs want them to also close two navigation locks. For more background, go to Carp Watch. [Photo from Great Lakes Echo] 

Nurses in the metro area will vote May 19 on whether to authorize a strike when their contract expires on May 31. After months of negotiations, the nurses and healthcare executives from Twin Cities hospitals seem to have reached an impasse. Now they are taking their cases to the public.

The Star Tribune published two versions of the broken-down negotiations. The two commentaries present diametrically different stories of the broken-down negotiations between 12,000 nurses and the six major metro-area hospital corporations. The nurses talk about quality of care and patient safety. The hospitals talk about the need to cut costs and say that nurses earn a lot of money.

[Photo by Barry Madore, outside RiverCentre in Saint Paul, 5/19/2010]

Your caller ID shows the name of your bank, and you answer the phone. An official-sounding voice explains that the bank is concerned that "a suspicious person" has attempted to cash a $1,200 check on your account, and asks if you have issued the check. Thoroughly alarmed, you say that you haven't.