In the Star Tribune, Libor Jany says, “The Third Precinct may soon move to a temporary site just a few blocks from its burned-out former home on Minneapolis’ South Side. A City Council committee on Thursday signed off on a $1.2 million-a-year lease with Lothenbach Properties II and Imagine Express for a building to house Third Precinct officers, who for the past few months have been working out of the Minneapolis Convention Center, among other sites. The move needs approval from the full council and Mayor Jacob Frey.”
MPR’s Peter Cox writes: “As University of Minnesota students prepare for classes to begin in a couple of weeks, they know they are able to plan for only so much. … For students heading to campus, there seems to be a lot more unknown than known at the moment. Classes that would’ve been in person have shifted to remote learning — at least 70 percent of U classes were supposed to be online as of late July. Welcome week events are online. And a major feature of life on a Big Ten campus — college football — is not happening this fall.”
Also in the Star Tribune, Ryan Faircloth writes: “Seventeen students at St. Olaf College in Northfield have been suspended for the fall semester after attending an off-campus party where masks were not worn and at least one student present was already infected with COVID-19, the school announced Thursday. ‘This is the kind of reckless behavior that will put an end to our in-person semester, and it must stop,’ St. Olaf President David Anderson said. Fifty students need to quarantine due to a lack of social distancing.”
For ESPN Tim Bontemps reports, “The Minnesota Timberwolves won the 2020 NBA draft lottery Thursday night and the right to the first pick in the draft later this year. The Timberwolves, who ended the season with the third-worst record, will be followed by the Golden State Warriors, who ended the season with the worst record, and then the Charlotte Hornets and Chicago Bulls in the draft on Oct. 16. … Unlike last year, when Zion Williamson and Ja Morant were the clear first and second picks in the draft, this year’s crop of prospects is wide open, with no consensus about who should go where.”
The AP reports: “Wisconsin election officials decided Thursday to keep rapper Kanye West off the battleground state’s presidential ballot in November because his campaign turned his nomination papers in minutes after the deadline. West announced in July he’s running for president on a ticket he calls the ‘Birthday Party.’… Democrats allege that Republicans are pushing West’s candidacy in several swing states to siphon Black votes away from Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.”
In the Star Tribune, Evan Ramstad writes: “The trustees of Otto Bremer Trust, fighting the state attorney general to keep leading one of Minnesota’s largest charities, on Thursday called his effort to throw them out illegal and unprecedented. … ‘The attorney general’s attempt to summarily remove the trustees, on a secret record of his own making, violates any conceivable notion of fairness and justice,’ the trust said, in a filing signed by its outside attorney, Michael Ciresi of Minneapolis.”
For NBC News Doha Madani reports, “Coronavirus cases tied to this month’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota have appeared across state lines in Nebraska, public health officials said Thursday. At least seven new cases in the region have been tied to the rally, the Panhandle Public Health District confirmed to NBC News. The health department did not provide further details. The annual 10-day gathering began August 7 and ran until Sunday and drew more than 460,000 vehicles, according to South Dakota’s Department of Transportation.”
Heather Murphy of the New York Times says, “A plant extract trumpeted this week as a ‘cure’ for Covid-19 by the leader of a pillow company is untested and potentially dangerous, scientists say. Mike Lindell, the chief executive of My Pillow and a big donor to President Trump, told Axios that the president was enthusiastic about the drug, called oleandrin, when he heard about it at a White House meeting last month. … That cell study also raises questions about the drug’s safety, said Dr. Melissa Halliday Gittinger, a toxicologist at the Georgia Poison Center and a professor at Emory University School of Medicine. An oleander dose as small as 0.02 micrograms per milliliter can be fatal.”
Says Joe Nelson at BringMeTheNews, “There are now 29 bars or restaurants that have been connected to COVID-19 outbreaks since dine-in service was allowed to resume in Minnesota June 10. It’s an increase from the 19 establishments that were linked to outbreaks in late July.”
Reuters reporters P.J. Huffstutter and Mark Weinraub write, “A clearer picture of the damage to crops in the path of last week’s derecho storm emerged on Wednesday, as crop scouts on an annual tour scrambled across blown over corn stalks and wind-battered soybean fields in Illinois and Iowa. Iowa officials on Tuesday warned much of the crop in the path of the Aug. 10 storm would not be harvested. Some 14 million acres, or 57% of Iowa’s area planted, were impacted. Iowa corn is key for both commodity markets and global food supply chains. A big loss in the top growing state could eat into a record-large national corn forecast at a time when China is buying more of the grain. About 52% of all the corn produced in Iowa was growing on farmland affected by the derecho … .”
