Minnesota State University Reporter

Issue date: 1/31/08 Section: News Bits

Minnesota

• More than 1,000 Minnesotans jammed into a union hall to roar approval for Democrat John Edwards Tuesday evening. Hours later they were cut loose when he quit the presidential race.

Now they're picking between the last two Democrats standing, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. The Edwards bloc is potentially significant, with 10,000 supporters identified by his campaign ahead of Tuesday's precinct caucuses.

A key Edwards adviser is giving the edge to Obama. Ted Mondale, the former state senator who emceed Edwards' final campaign rally in St. Paul, said he expects "a good chunk" of Edwards' base to back the Illinois senator.


• Wind-whipped snow and plummeting temperatures across Minnesota on Tuesday closed schools early and shut down stretches of at least two major highways in southern Minnesota.

Most of the state was under wind chill warnings until noon Wednesday due to indexes that had fallen into the 30- and 40-degree ranges below zero across much of the state by Tuesday evening.

Not all that much snow fell, even in the hardest hit parts of southeastern Minnesota, but the fierce winds were enough to produce blizzard conditions in parts of southern Minnesota.

The State Patrol closed Interstate 35 from Owatonna to Albert Lea around 12:30 p.m. because of blizzard conditions. The patrol advised motorists to stay off the highway if possible because heavy snow made driving hazardous.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty ordered the National Guard to open its armory in Owatonna as a shelter for stranded travelers.


• Minnesota State's Good Thunder Reading Series will host its first spring-term program when Winona poet James Armstrong visits campus Feb. 7.

Armstrong will meet with area writers in the morning. He will conduct a discussion on the craft of writing at 3 p.m. in Ostrander Auditorium, Centennial Student Union, and will read from his published work at 7:30 p.m. in CSU Room 253. All events are free and open to students, faculty, staff and the public.

National

The Bush administration is sending strong signals that U.S. troop reductions in Iraq will slow or stop altogether this summer, a move that would jeopardize hopes of relieving strain on the Army and Marine Corps and revive debate over an open-ended U.S. commitment in Iraq.

The indications of a likely slowdown reflect concern by U.S. commanders that the improvement in security in Iraq since June - to a degree few had predicted when President Bush ordered five more Army brigades to Iraq a year ago - is tenuous and could be reversed if the extra troops come out too soon.

One of those extra brigades left in December and the other four are due to come out by July, leaving 15 brigades, or roughly 130,000 to 135,000 troops - the same number as before Bush sent the reinforcements.

Majority Democrats in Congress have pressed unsuccessfully to wind down the war quickly, in part out of concern that more firepower should be transferred to Afghanistan, where the security situation has deteriorated.

World

Every autumn and winter, hunters from this craggy Japanese fishing village corral thousands of dolphins into a tiny, isolated cove and kill them for meat and fertilizer.

And every year, foreign animal rights protesters converge on the town, clashing with fishermen and broadcasting grisly photographs of the slayings around the world - all without stopping the hunt.

Now, Japan's dolphin hunters face a new opponent: mercury contamination.

A series of scientific studies in recent years in Japan have documented high levels of the toxic heavy metal in dolphin meat, and a group of city councilmen in Taiji launched an unprecedented campaign against the hunt several months ago.


Information from MSU press releases and the Associated Press.

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