It's a little risky getting the word out on the White Privilege Conference planned for Minnesota, organizers say, because discussions about the advantages of being white in America can be so provocative.

Given all the talk lately about making English our official language, you might think people not born here don't want to learn English. New immigrants in Minnesota tell you otherwise.

Seeing a need for culturally sensitive Muslim funeral and burial customs, the Minnesota Islamic Cemetery Association was formed. Muslim burial rites, in contrast to the traditional American funeral, are very simple.

Responding to increasing need, a program that recruits churches, schools and synagogues to provide temporary overnight shelter for east metro families has added a third site.

Micah Treuer grew up near the Leech Lake Indian reservation. He'll soon finish medical school and he plans to work on the reservation, in part because of the death of his aunt.

Minnesota's projected share: $168 million in "edujob" funds and $263 million in additional Medicaid dollars. The one-time education funding, however, won't address mounting structural budget problems, officials say.

The state program's goal: to keep more patients healthier, thus reducing costly emergency room visits and hospitalizations. That's become a necessity with shrinking available funds for their care.

Minnesota students' science test scores are improving. But let's not celebrate too much: Barely half the students were able to meet state science standards.

There's a dollars and cents argument for graduating more students from America's high schools and for closing the graduation gap between white and non-white students, both here in the Twin Cities area and across the nation.

A southeast Minnesota consortium, spearheaded by the Mayo Clinic, is one of 15 programs taking part in an ambitious initiative to use digital patient records to drive better care and reduce costs.

Without Social Security, life for the elderly in this community and others would be drastically different. So why haven't more people stepped forward to tell their stories of how it's helped them?

The Youth Farm & Market Project, with its nine garden sites around Minneapolis and St. Paul, teaches young people how garden. Kids also earn money, improve their community and interact with others from different backgrounds.

A local labor union and a Minneapolis vocational school are undertaking an unusual collaboration to put more minorities and women in construction jobs.

You have to look back more than 30 years — probably to the Great Depression of the 1930s — to see jobs crawl back as slowly in the Twin Cities as they have since the recession hit in 2007.

Related: Nursing tops long-term job growth projections in Minnesota and nationwide

I love stories about immigrant families who come to this country and succeed. There’s something about these stories I can’t resist — hearing them is like watching a Frank Capra movie.

As well-educated boomers retire, the young people rising to replace them include large numbers of recent immigrants and minorities — who currently drop out of high school at alarming rates.

The recent exchange over bong water between Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Jon Stewart was hilarious, but there's an interesting — and unresolved — legal question at its core.

A more likely future for most students appears to be a blending of on-site and online learning.