Minneapolis mansion to reopen as events center: The Van Dusen Mansion, an historic south Minneapolis formerly owned by convicted Ponzi schemer Trevor Cook, will reopen as an events center this week. The new owners, led by St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson, paid $1.55 million for the mansion, which was build in 1892 for George Washington Van Dusen and wife, Nancy. Van Dusen was a wealthy Minnesota grain dealer. Read full story

CitiFinancial closes nine Minnesota subprime lending offices: CitiFinancial Services Inc., Citigroup’s subprime lending businesses, closed more than a fourth of its Minnesota locations at the end of June, part of a cutback involving hundreds of branches across the country, according to a recently released state Commerce Department filing. Baltimore-based CitiFinancial closed nine of its 34 locations in the state, and transferred the accounts affected to its other offices in the state. Read full story

HealthPartners signs mobile-app development deal: HealthPartners on Monday announced it has entered into an agreement with Diversinet Corp. aimed at developing new mobile applications for its customers. The first applications, scheduled to roll out this fall, will help HealthPartners’ 1.3 million members communicate with their care managers via secure, two-way messaging on a range of smart phones and devices that Diversinet’s MobiSecure platform supports, including the Apple iPhone, Google Android, RIM BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm devices. Read full story

MnSCU to offer online registration for career training: Minnesota State Colleges and Universities will begin offering online registration for career-training courses at all 32 of its member institutions. MnSCU recently signed a licensing agreement with Golden Valley software developer Augusoft Inc. to provide the online registration system. Online registration for credit courses has been available at all member institutions for several years. Read full story