Students and staff in dozens of Minnesota schools walked out of their classes at 10 a.m. Wednesday to honor the victims of last month's school shooting in Florida and to call for tougher gun-control laws. The protest, part of a coordinated national demonstration, was expected to span 17 minutes, one minute for each of the students and staff members shot and killed Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
MNsure CEO Allison O'Toole announced her resignation at the health care exchange's board meeting Wednesday afternoon. O'Toole joined MNsure in 2014 as the director of external affairs. She took over the leadership position the following year.
Mark Dayton is nine months from leaving office. His departure will mark the end of a political career that spans four decades and three elective offices — auditor, U.S. senator and governor. There is no single way to grade a governor's tenure, but one is to compare what Dayton said he'd do to what he did. | Listen to Gov. Dayton's final state of the state address on MPR at 7 p.m.
A bill in the Minnesota House would strike a longstanding exemption in criminal statute for "the intentional touching of the clothing covering the immediate area of the buttocks." The language dates to 1987, when an amendment by state Sen. Allan Spear, DFL-Minneapolis, addressed what the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper called "fanny patting" back in the day.
Seven Minnesotans are up for some of the biggest awards in cuisine and food media. The James Beard Foundation, which aims to promote food culture and honor chefs, announced the nominees Wednesday during a ceremony at Parc by Stephan Starr in Philadelphia.
Britain announced Wednesday it will expel almost two dozen Russian diplomats, sever high-level bilateral contacts with Moscow and take both open and covert action against Kremlin meddling after the poisoning of a former spy, plunging U.K.-Russian relations into their deepest freeze since the Cold War.
