Greater Minnesota

A St. Cloud social worker is single-handedly helping to overcome barriers in her community by teaching others about her native Somali culture and language, one phrase at a time.

For many Minnesotans, winter presents a welcome break from yard work. But for some in Duluth, when the ground freezes, the work begins: on a backyard hockey rink.

Spirit Mountain is at a financial crossroads. Over the past few years, Duluth’s City Council has had to bail out the ski area twice in order to keep it afloat. Now a task force is coming up with recommendations for how to make the ski hill sustainable moving forward.

A lot of the raw material that’s used to make holiday decorations — from Christmas wreaths and garlands to potted evergreen arrangements — comes from Minnesota’s north woods, where there's a thriving cottage industry of harvesters and distributors. But as the market has grown, so has the opportunity for spruce thieves looking to make a quick buck. 

Central Minnesota’s largest health care provider announced Thursday it will designate its hospital in Sauk Centre to care exclusively for patients with COVID-19.

Twelve out of 17 members of an environmental justice group that advises the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency have resigned in protest of the agency’s decision last week to grant a key water quality permit to the controversial Line 3 oil pipeline replacement project. 

A fiery pileup crash involving nearly 30 vehicles along Interstate 94 in central Minnesota on Thursday morning sent nine people to local hospitals and closed a stretch of the freeway for hours.

Almost a quarter of the patients at St. Cloud Hospital have COVID-19, and the intensive care units at CentraCare hospitals are nearly full, with more than half of those cases related to the virus.

This year’s tumultuous election and the country’s growing division have led some people to worry that their relationships with friends and family members on opposite sides of partisan lines may never recover. One Minnesota family thinks the country could learn an important lesson from their backyard chicken flock.

The COVID-19 pandemic is having an impact on almost every aspect of this year’s election — including who’s staffing polling places. Across the state, younger people are filling in for older election workers who are staying home because of the coronavirus.