It's all hands on deck, grease the presses and fire up the choppers as everyone in town jumps all over the Daniel-Hauser-and-Mom-on-the-run story. Since most of the news is coming from press conferences, there isn't much in the way of differentiation. The Strib's Warren Wolfe and Curt Brown have the basics as of dawn today, namely that the Hausers were sighted in southern California and appear to be headed to Mexico. This thing is tailor made for TV -- "A mother and child on the lam! Thank you, Lord!" -- but KSTP-TV's Chris O'Connell pluses the usual script with a good aggregation of what's out there on this Nemnenhah crowd the Hausers have joined up with, including their leader, who has done time for fraud.

When is a 13.4 per cent decline in profit something to get giddy about? When its not a 41 per cent decline in profit. Target's quarterly earnings report is covered by the Strib's Jackie Crosby, who squeezes optimism from our big local turnip's not-as-bad-as-it-was-last-time slide. She has quotes like this from a local analyst: "All retailers needed this first quarter [was] to establish some sense of the trend or normalcy in behavior. That's the mantra now: adjusting to the new normal. It was pretty hard to adjust to the new normal coming out of the holiday season because nobody knew what that would be."

Gita Sitaramaih covers the story for the PiPress and notes a Target exec saying that a new store format with more dairy, dry and frozen foods as well as high-frequency perishables will be tested in 100 stores this year.

Crosby earned an early weekend by kicking in another Target story, this one breaking down the proxy battle with hedge fundie William Ackman, the company's third largest shareholder. Ackman, who Crosby notes has lost 90 per cent of the value on $2 billion he sunk in Target barely two years ago, got counterbalancing reviews from two advisory firms but, in sum, seems positioned to expand his influence over Target's future. Fans of deep corporate gobbledygook will enjoy this comment from the firm favoring Ackman: "In our opinion, given the atypical strategies of the company with respect to credit cards and real estate, the board would benefit from new blood with the specific skill sets and incentives to ensure that the company is able to quickly capitalize on future opportunities." I think that means you get roll over minutes, the collision damage waiver and extra fries.

MPR's Martin Moylan files a report on a Target plan to test price-matching wth evil competitor Wal-Mart in a couple Twin Cities locations. Moylan notes that this "price match" stuff is more marketing than anything else, since so few customers ever make a point of demanding the other guy's price. His story does echo, though, investor Ackman's complaint about Wal-Mart eating Target's lunch on grocery sales.

Asking Pioneer Press newsroom employees to give back $2.4 million in salary and benefits -- including eliminating merit pay -- may be a little like snatching back the dime you flipped the bum in the alley, but the Strib's Dan Browning writes that that is exactly what owner MediaNews is demanding. "With newsroom employees costing an average of about $80,000 with benefits, it could mean 20 to 30 jobs. That's 14 to 22 percent of the already depleted newsroom," writes Browning. Our guy David Brauer has more, calling the PiPress's existing staff "skeletal."

Before you're completely exhausted by everything Tony Kushner, MPR's Chris Roberts kicks out a piece on the wholesale changes still going on with his new play, "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures," scheduled for its world premiere Friday at the Guthrie. Roberts finds Kushner sounding a lot like Bob Dylan. ""These are plays that I'll work on for the rest of my life. Every time there's a production I'll want to do something with them. Because there's something in them that doesn't arrive at a final shape -- which doesn't mean that I think that they don't work. I just think that there's always room for changing them around, they're sort of open in that way." The out-of-town reviews on this one will be delicious.

Much ... much ... lower on the "brow" scale, action movie fans waiting to see the latest (the fourth) "Terminator" movie, "Terminator Salvation," might want to readjust their expectations. The Strib's Colin Covert wastes no time calling it "a powerfully dumb movie," adding, for good measure, "there's a sheen of flop sweat over the whole enterprise." (I guess that about covers that.) City Pages' Nick Pinkerton pretty much agrees, saying, "Salvation, terminally gray, all macho bark, doesn't do contrasts. This means monotony ... ." Meanwhile, though, the PiPress's Chris Hewitt seems to kind of like the thing, writing, "Director McG does a fine job with the action, and his cast is well-chosen if not always well-directed." I guess that's tepid praise.