On that killing at an Arden Hills gas station yesterday, WCCO-TV is saying, “The Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office has released the identity and photo of the suspect sought in connection to the fatal shooting at an Arden Hills gas station. The suspect is identified as 44-year-old Lyle Marvin Hoffman, who is also known as Ty Hoffman. … Friends told WCCO that Hoffman is [Kelly] Phillips’ ex-boyfriend and the two once co-owned a bar together.”
On the victim, Paul Walsh of the Strib says, “Phillips was vice president and chief counsel, worldwide businesses for Boston Scientific, a corporate official said Tuesday. He had been employed for 14 years with Boston Scientific, a leading medical device company, and was based out of the company’s Arden Hills offices. The crime scene was about 2 miles from where Phillips worked. … As a business owner and Minneapolis resident, Phillips was active in the push for marriage equality in Minnesota and other issues in his community, said City Council Member Jacob Frey.”
Minnesota may have banned the chemical triclosan, but it’s still out there, in a big way. Tiffany Kary at Bloomberg reports, “Minnesota voted in May to ban it in many products. At the same time, millions of Americans are putting it in their mouths every day, by way of a top-selling toothpaste that uses the antibacterial chemical to head off gum disease — Colgate-Palmolive Co.’s Total. Total is safe, Colgate says, citing the rigorous Food and Drug Administration process that led to the toothpaste’s 1997 approval as an over-the-counter drug. A closer look at that application process, however, reveals that some of the scientific findings Colgate put forward to establish triclosan’s safety in toothpaste weren’t black and white — and weren’t, until this year, available to the public.”
Speaking of “trust us” … Don Davis of the Forum News Service reports on the latest awareness-boosting campaign regarding the volatility of all the Bakken field oil cars rumbling through the state. “A report from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration singled out Bakken crude as being more volatile and riskier to transport than other U.S. crudes. However, a recent North Dakota Petroleum Council-commissioned study yielded similar data as the PHMSA study but found Bakken crude to be consistent with other types of light, sweet crude. [Dave Christianson of the Minnesota Department of Transportation] contends that Bakken crude is more dangerous than other oil: ‘This stuff if so volatile, you don’t fight the fire, you evacuate.’ “
Speaking of trains … Mike Hughlett of the Strib says, “Regulators said Monday that the Canadian Pacific Railway, one of two key railroads that serve Minnesota farmers, isn’t making enough progress in shipping a huge backlog of grain. Millions of bushels of corn and soybeans from 2013’s harvest are still in storage due to an overburdened rail system in the Upper Midwest. The big goal now is to ship last year’s crop before this year’s harvest — expected to be large — comes in.”
Note to self … trash at the curb is not private property. Dave Chanen of the Strib says, “Think that bag of garbage you set out for pickup is private property? The Minnesota Court of Appeals begs to differ. On Monday, the court ruled that a police officer’s warrantless search of a man’s garbage in Brownsville, Minn., which turned up trace amounts of drugs, was constitutional. Once the trash was placed out for collection, Andrew Serres couldn’t reasonably expect that the contents would remain private, the court said.”
Another head-shaker from Mr. Entenza: Catharine Richert at MPR writes, “Minneapolis House DFL candidate Mohamud Noor says a flier being sent by DFL State Auditor candidate Matt Entenza is misleading voters. … Noor says he hasn’t endorsed Entenza, but that the flier might lead voters to think that he has. In fact, Noor says he supports Entenza’s primary day rival, State Auditor Rebecca Otto.”
Brett Neely at MPR notes that Al Franken isn’t shy about pointing to his contribution to Obamacare. “ … Franken is the rare Democrat who does sometimes highlight the role he played in crafting the health care law, especially a provision he authored requiring insurers to spend 80 percent of the premiums they collect on medical care and only 20 percent on administrative costs, including executive salaries. The rule, known as the medical loss ratio, has its critics, although the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation says it’s delivered for consumers.”
Another unusual bit of sentencing … Richard Chin of the PiPress reports, “An Edina man, accused of stalking former neighbors, a police officer, strangers who shared his last name and a woman he was convicted of raping, was placed on probation Tuesday for 20 years and ordered to remove websites he had created in his victims’ names. Ramsey County District Judge George Stephenson also gave Thomas Wayne Evenstad, 49, a stayed prison sentence amounting to eight years and four months, and imposed a long list of conditions including GPS monitoring, no drug or alcohol use, no unmonitored Internet use, no contact with 17 individuals and no creation of defamatory content about any person or content of any kind about his victims.”
