No injuries have been reported in the downtown St. Paul fire.

The Metropolitan Council and Hennepin County say they’re dropping their effort to run a light rail train along existing freight rail tracks from Minneapolis to Brooklyn Park.

Ornithologist and writer Jonathan Slaght spent several frigid winters camping in the forests of the Russian Far East. He was there to study the biggest owl in the world, which survived by eating fish snatched out of holes in the river ice.

With the national death toll from COVID-19 passing the grim 150,000 mark, an NPR/Ipsos poll finds broad support for a single, national strategy to address the pandemic and more aggressive measures to contain it.

The Census Bureau is ending all counting efforts for the 2020 census on Sept. 30, a month shorter than previously announced. That includes critical door-knocking efforts and collecting responses online, over the phone and by mail.

Negotiators on a huge coronavirus relief bill reported slight progress after talks resumed in the Capitol, with issues like food for the poor and aid to schools struggling to reopen safely assuming a higher profile in the talks.

“Come mid-August to late August, early September, Sturgis will have one hell of an imprint on this country," said Michael Osterholm, head of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Parents who want more than remote instruction have been scrambling to hire tutors and private teachers for small groups of children. The race to set up "learning pods" threatens to vastly deepen inequities in access to education.

Authorities in Hennepin County are investigating how officer body camera video of George Floyd’s final moments was leaked to a British tabloid after the newspaper published the footage on its website Monday.

Black women have long been the heart of the Democratic Party — but for decades that allegiance didn’t translate to their own political rise. Now Black women are mobilized and demanding an overdue return on their investment.