New owners for Duluth's Viking ship — and possibly soon, a new home
| | | June 23, 2021 We'll see increasing clouds in the forecast tonight with a chance of thunderstorms. Lows in the mid-50s to lower 60s north, to lower 70s south. There's a continued chance for more showers and thunderstorms Friday and through this coming weekend, with high temperatures remaining in the 70s and 80s. Find the latest on Updraft. Major pieces of the next state budget are starting to fall into place at the Capitol, as lawmakers work to hammer out an agreement by the middle of next week to avoid a government shutdown. Republican and Democratic leaders have reached a massive accord to fund schools in the state.
The bipartisan agreement will put about one billion dollars more into schools over the next four years. Republican Roger Chamberlain of Lino Lakes, who chairs the senate education committee, says the per-student funding formula will rise 2.5 percent for the coming year and 2 percent the year after.
Democratic leaders say they hope the boost will help avert teacher layoffs that some districts were planning because of the pandemic.
Lawmakers have also agreed to a $250 million bonus program for Minnesotans who worked on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat from Brooklyn Park, says a panel of nine people will decide by Labor Day how to divvy up the funding. She says seven of the nine panel members would have to agree on who should get money.
Known, active COVID-19 cases in the state have dropped below 900. On May 1, Minnesota had more than 15,000 active cases. Hospitalizations are also way down.
The only downside in the data is that the vaccination rate continues to sputter. It will now likely be mid-August before the state reaches its goal of getting at least one shot into 70 percent of residents 16 and older.
Subscribe to our Minnesota Today podcast to get up-to-date Minnesota news twice daily. — Dan Kraker | MPR News | |
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| New owners for Duluth's Viking ship — and possibly soon, a new home | | The Duluth City Council voted unanimously Monday to donate the replica Viking vessel to the local nonprofit group Save our Ship, which was founded in 1985 to restore the ship and build a permanent display structure to protect it from the weather and allow for public viewing. | |
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| Honey bees are still dying at high rates | | An annual survey of beekeepers shows honey bees continue to die at high rates. Between April 2020 and this April, losses across the country averaged 45.5 percent according to preliminary data from the Bee Informed Partnership, a collaboration of researchers that has conducted the annual bee loss survey for 15 years. | |
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| Photos: Scenes from across America as COVID-19 restrictions begin to lift | | Over the last several weeks, photographers from NPR member stations fanned out across the nation to help document what this new phase of the pandemic is looking like. They captured moments of caution and joy, exuberance and relief, as COVID-19 restrictions began to lift. Here is a glimpse of what they saw. | |
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