Mayor Proposes $2.2 Million to U Bike Trail
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak recently proposed more than $8.5 million to add bike trails in the city and $100,000 annually to ensure the bike trails managed by the city are maintained.
“Without this accelerated program, we would not have had the resources to adequately maintain these paths - an unacceptable situation in the no. 2 bike city in America,� Rybak said to the ...

Republican presidential nominee John McCain is joined by his running mate, Sarah Palin, Thursday after his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

RON EDMONDS, AP PHOTOS

Henry Kissinger spoke Thursday morning at the University’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs as part of a panel discussion.
The panel kicked off the last of a four day series of forums on American politics and policy. The topic, “Democracy and America’s Role in the World�, was addressed by six foreign policy leaders, including Kissinger, a former Secretary of State.
Moderator Brian Atwood, dean of ...

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin waves to the crowd as she prepares to address the Republican National Convention on Wednesday in St. Paul.

CHARLIE NEIBERGALL, AP PHOTO

Ron Paul speaks to more than 10,000 supporters on Tuesday at the Campaign for Liberty held in the Target Center. Paul covered topics ranging from foreign policy to the Federal Reserve.

A protester is hosed down with pepper spray after failing to adhere to police requests to back away on Kellogg Ave in St. Paul on Monday afternoon.

The outside biking lanes of the Washington Avenue Bridge will be closed by Hennepin County officials, due to recommendations of engineering consultants, University officials announced Wednesday.

Pedestrians and bicyclists are limited to the enclosed middle area of the bridge, according to an e-mail sent by Vice President Kathleen O'Brien.

"To keep everyone safe, bicyclists should dismount and walk their bikes across the bridge," O'Brien said ...

Anna Braiovsky and her son Addison Baker pose with their dog Batman, a 10-year-old Shepard mix who had a tumor removed by University veterinarians last week. The procedure was an experimental treatment that combined vaccine and gene therapy to try to isolate and kill the tumor.

Your host can be found here for the rest of the week. Watch the front page of Startribune.com for daily video, and twitter for updates throughout the day.

Off to the Fair – the finest example of its kind in America, frankly. Lowing beasts, farm machinery, grassroots political schmoozing, processed & congealed meats impaled on a dowel, folk art, high art, mop hucksters, BBQ slopped in plastic baskets, gap-toothed carnies  barking flat ...

The Fair starts tomorrow. Everyone knows what you mean by The Fair; so deeply ingrained is the event’s supremacy that we instinctively qualify any lesser event. I’m going to the fair at the park. Or we’ll see you at the neighborhood fair. If you asked someone in June if they were going to The Fair, they’d give you a quizzical look – well, yes, ...

The headline speaks reams about the disconnect between reality and government schedules: "Despite the heat, it's time for pools, beaches to start closing." Why is it time? Because it's time. Stop asking stupid questions. 

In the canonical list of things about which you can be rightly steamed, this falls ...

This is just silly, really – Fergus Falls, aka the city that’s 3/4ths of the way to Fargo on I-94, has declined a filmmaker’s request to shoot a “psychological thriller� at an old state treatment center. The city wants to use the building for a college, and if it appears in a psychological thriller, people ...

The lumbering approach of the Fair means we’re less than a fortnight away from September, and that means everything changes. Also, nothing changes; it’s still warm, still green, still summer, if you believe the technical definition. But the very ...

Nocturnal explosions are confusing people in Longfellow. You can understand why. If we know the reason for a loud sound, we roll over and go back to bed. If a train crashed head-on into another train every night at 3 AM, you’d learn to sleep through it. When it’s a mystery, though, it ...

Shoot and dagnabit, depthless dismay – we missed the annual Bad Poem Day. Then again, we might have been legally smited; turns out that the day is – oh yes – copyrighted. I’d spell out the rest with more rhymes and cheap meter, ...

Forgot to mention: new video up at StarTribune.com. Go see my twin brother try to play golf. It’s pathetic.

In local news:

Loni Anderson will get the third star on the Minnesota Walk Of Famous People Who Left Here As Soon as Professionally Convenient; there will be a ceremony a the St. ...

I pity the strip mall at Nicollet and 66th; I don’t think it’s had a good-looking day in its life. Its original incarnation in the 60s was probably as good as it got – minimal and simple. Since then, every ...