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Weekend Entertainment Best Bets
Lyn Lake Street Festival
Art-A-Whirl [Gallery Of Artists]
Grill Fest

Frozen Yogurt
FreeStyle Yogurt, 500 Lexington Pkwy. S., St. Paul, 651-699-1992
The Yogurt Lab, 3100 Excelsior Blvd., Mpls., 612-926-8212
Freeziac, 375 N. Mall of America, 952-303-6801; 16532 W. 78th St., Bloomington, 952-934-4748; 4105 Vinewood Ln. N., Plymouth, 763-383-0300
Tutti Frutti, 7781 Main St. N., Maple Grove, 763-416-0362
Menchie’s, 750 Cleveland Ave. S., St. Paul, 651-797-6428
Chilly Bill’s Frozen Yogurt, 314 15th Ave. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414, 612-843-4278

Good food. Good wine. Good time. It's the mantra for the annualA Taste of Lakeville , which is coming to theA Lakeville Area Arts Center A from 5-9 p.m. tomorrow,A May 17.

Kennedy previously served as vice president of academic affairs and student development, and dean for business and general education programs at Saint Paul College.

(credit: WCCO)

One (1) Grand Prize winner will receive four (4) passes to Diana: A Celebration exhibition at Mall of America, valid anytime from February 4th- June 10th, 2012.

One (1) secondary prize winner will receive a $50 gift card from Cold Stone Creamery. 

More about Diana: A Celebration at Mall of America:
February 4th – June 10th, 2012 | Mall of America | Level 4
An award-winning exhibition celebrating the life and work of Diana, Princess of Wales. Direct from England, experience nine galleries with over 150 objects including Diana’s royal wedding gown, 28 designer dresses, family heirlooms, personal mementos, priceless jewels and rare home movies.

To purchase tickets for Diana: A Celebration at Mall of America:
www.ticketmaster.com | 1-800-745-3000 | In person: Exhibition Box Office (no service fees)
Group Sales: Discounts available for groups of 15 or more. 
For group tickets, please contact:  952-883-8809 | groupsales@mallofamerica.com

More about ColdStone Creamery:
Reignite your love for Cake Batter Ice Cream with our signature Birthday Cake Remix Creation or Cake Batter Confetti Cake today! All made with Cold Stone’s famous Cake Batter Ice Cream. Cold Stone Creamery, the Ultimate Ice Cream Experience.

For more information about Cold Stone Creamery:
www.coldstonecreamery.com

Click here to enter

Click here for official rules

MINNEAPOLIS - Michael Scott Luedtke, 25, was indicted Wednesday in federal court for his role in the New Year's Eve armed robbery of a Quiznos sandwich shop in Roseville, according to the United States Attorney's Office.

Opitz Outlet has opened a store in Minnetonka. Regular customers at the venerable St.

The Vancouver, Wash., firm invested about $100,000 in the program, including a Fortus 250 3D printer production system from Stratasys Inc.

Wednesday was close to average with a high near 70. With the light wind, dry conditions and sunshine, some would say it was close to perfection.

The first thing you will notice over the next few days will be the wind. It will blow from the south 15-25 mph through Saturday. Warmer and more humid air will ride the wind and change things around here.

Expect a high near 90 on Friday with temps pushing into the upper-80s again on Saturday. Moisture will be limited with scattered showers possible early on Friday.

The best chance of rain arrives with the passage of the cold front on Saturday. It is still too far out to nail down the timing, but do know that it will cool down and dry out later on Sunday.

Sorry, it won’t be as nice as last weekend.

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – They are shocking allegations set in one of Minnesota’s top tourist attractions: a brutal sexual attack in the Boundary Waters while the system designed to protect her points fingers.

Julia visited the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness last summer with three friends for a five-day camping trip. She asked us not to use her last name as she still has fears for her safety.

Thirty minutes from that cool summer night will forever haunt the young woman.

“It was really hard, and it still is,” Julia said.

The time has left a family and a deputy desperate for a different outcome.

It was late afternoon on Julie’s group’s last night when they encountered a group of men on the water.

“We were just talking, and they were drinking,” Julia said. “They were offering us all shots.”

Julia said she took a couple, but her group ended up going their own way.

Hours later, after the women set up camp for themselves, some of the men were back.

Julia said they sat around the fire watching the men drinking and smoking pot.

One by one, her friends started to go to bed. Another left with one of the men, until it was just Julia alone with two of them.

“One of them put his arm around me and was like, ‘Hey you should have this shot. You haven’t had anything all night,’” Julia said.

She agreed and said within minutes she felt sick, like she was going to pass out.

That’s when she said the two men dragged her by her shoulders deep into the woods, more than a quarter-mile from her campsite.

“I’m like ‘Stop. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this,’” she said.

The next 30 minutes would leave Julia bruised and her spirit broken. She said both men took turns in a brutal sexual assault. Then, a third man came back and held her down while it continued.

Finally, a friend started coming down the trail, calling her name. Julia said the men were startled and they stopped.

“As they were finally getting off our little island, you could hear them all high-fiving and being like, ‘Yeah, three-way,” Julia said.

She told her friends about the attack the next day. Her friends had already suspected something bad happened in the woods that night. Julia reported a sexual assault 72 hours later at a hospital near her mom’s home.

Investigators said it’s behavior common for rape victims to wait. They want to feel safe before saying anything.

Cook County Sheriff Mark Falk said when you visit the BWCA, visitors know they are usually on their own.

“It’s very rugged, very remote,” he said. “There’s no roads, there’s no telephones, there’s no cell service. You have to be really self-reliant.”

The BWCA is made up of more than one million acres, and a third of them are within Cook County’s boundaries. There are no regular police patrols on the land beyond periodically checking access points, simply because the area is so large.

“What if there’s somebody just like her, canoeing with their friends, their church group, their women’s group, their family, and the same thing happens,” said Julia’s mother, Maggie. “And that’s the only thing that got her to report it.”

Deputy Julie Collman works on criminal sexual conduct cases in Cook County and was assigned to Julia’s case.

“So many things fell together that I never doubted what they were telling me was true,” Collman said.

When Cook County got the case, Collman didn’t have much to go on, beyond descriptions of six men.

After spending weeks scouring through permits, paddling out and photographing the site, and questioning Julia’s friends, Collman was convinced she had the guys in the group. They all lived in the Twin Cities.

Collman said due to overtime concerns in her small department, she asked an agent at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St. Paul to conduct the interviews.

“I understood it made more sense for the BCA to intervene at this point, and interview the suspects,” Collman said.

Records show Collman first notified the BCA of the case about a month after Julia went to police. The agency was asked to interview each man at the campsite that night.

Two weeks later, Collman asked about the BCA’s progress in an email. The agent told her he had a heavy case load.

A month after that, Collman was told two different agents were taking over and that no interviews had yet taken place.

Drew Evans is a Senior Special Agent at the BCA. While he wasn’t directly involved with the case, he spoke to WCCO after studying the files.

“We’re always trying to conduct everything as quickly as they’re able,” Evans said, “depending on schedules and the constraints of the case.”

One man told agents he had “no knowledge of any sexual activities taking place.”

Another said Julia willingly went back into the woods.

The third said he saw “consensual sexual activity, but didn’t take part.”

Another man lied to agents about who he was and then refused to talk.
Two more never returned the agents’ calls.

“Things they were saying weren’t adding up with what another one said,” Collman said. “Their stories weren’t adding up.”

“I think the agents conducted the interviews they were requested to do,” Evans said.

The Cook County Attorney got the case back at the end of November to consider charges. Tim Scannell said he didn’t read the full report until December, just before a suspect in an unrelated case put him in the hospital with three gunshot wounds.

“A number of files went out to other counties because of the shooting,” Scannell said. “And this was one of them.”

Hennepin County took over in January and considered charges for two more months.

Then in March, nine months after that camping trip, Julia was told her case would be dismissed, in a voicemail left on her phone.

“I’ve tried 100 percent in my capability to stop these guys from doing this again,” Julia said. “But I don’t really trust in the justice system anymore. If they’re going to not even take these prosecutors who are supposed to be on my side, and help me through this to get these guys to justice, and then say they don’t believe in sex crimes and that they believe in me, I don’t see why I should believe in them.”

Said Collman, “I worked really hard and was just surprised it was dismissed.”

In her decision to dismiss, Hennepin County prosecutor Amy Sweasy wrote “something went wrong in the woods between Julia and the suspects. It is not at all clear to me that Julia consented to the sexual acts that took place. On the other hand, I believe the evidence is insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the sexual encounters in this case were forced or coerced.”

“You can’t accuse people if you don’t believe you can prove your case out in a court of law,” Scannell said. “And that’s what I believe happened here.”

It was the final word Julia didn’t think was possible after so much time.

“The fact that my life has changed, and has flipped upside down, and people don’t believe that,” Julia said. “It’s just incredulous.”

Said Collman, “Every other crim sex case I do from now, I’m sure I’ll think about her.”

Julia has a blog to help other sexual assault victims, check it out by clicking here.

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Hundreds of thousands of people will spend part of their summer vacation on amusement park rides. North America has more than 600 roller coasters and people ride them more than two billion times every year.

Thinking about being on a roller coaster right now? You know the feeling.

“Like your hearts up here and you’re down here,” said one rider at Nickelodeon Universe inside Mall of America.

“You feel like your stomach’s floating in your chest,” said another.

So what’s happening, medically, when it feels like your stomach drops on a roller coaster?

“The honest answer is that no one knows with absolute certainty,” said Dr. Brad Sagura, a surgeon at University of Minnesota’s Amplatz Children’s Hospital.

“There’s a cast network of nerve connections within the body, handling messages between the spinal cord, the brain and other structures,” Sagura said.

When you hit the peak of a roller coaster and start dropping so quickly, things inside start to shift around.

“The liver and spleen are relatively secured by suspensory ligaments,” Sagura said. “But the intestines themselves are relatively mobile. While your body is secured by your seat belt, the organs are free to move about by some extent. That contributes to the free-fall floating sensation that either calls us back for more, or has us running to get sick from nausea.”

The movement isn’t only the movement of the organs, it is also the movement of what’s inside the organs.

“The intestines, the stomach, they hold liquid,” Sagura said. “The bladder; the same thing. “It’s relatively fixed, but the fluid within those structures probably plays a role in that sudden drop.”

Sagura said there’s no long-term danger from your organs slightly shifting around. They go back to where they started. But the movement is enough for your nerves to notice that something’s happening, he said.

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Some Minnesota dog owners asked lawmakers to change how body grip traps are used. Lawmakers responded, but not in the way some dog owners had hoped.

John Reynolds, whose dog was killed in a body grip trap, says the law that passed is worthless.

“It won’t stop dogs from dying,” he said.

Body grip traps are supposed to kill bobcats and raccoons. But in December, Reynolds’ springer spaniel, Penni, got caught in one and died. The same thing happened to Scott Slocum’s dog, Phillip.

“They passed nothing,” Slocum said. “They passed something that looked like something, but it was nothing.”

Loren Waalkens had to use CPR to save his beagle, Frisbee, after she got caught in a body grip trap.

“The clock is ticking. It’s a matter of time before one of my dogs dies in these traps,” Waalkens said.

None of the men are happy about the new law regulating body grips. Reynolds, who is a trapper, wanted to see the traps elevated 5 feet off the ground, where dogs can’t reach them. Lawmakers decided to make it three feet instead.

The law also allows body grips to be set on the ground, so long as they are in a box with a 7-inch cover over the front.

“The only thing that’s changed is they put a 7-inch awning on it,” Reynolds said. “Somehow we are supposed to believe that a dog won’t stick its head in that trap.”

But Rep. Tom Hackbarth, who helped author the bill, said the changes will help.

“I think you will find this is a good compromise,” he said. “I think you will find there won’t be any dogs caught in these.”

Hackbarth said the traps are humane, and elevating them five feet off the ground would have rendered them useless.

“That really eliminates that trap from use,” he said. “You aren’t going to catch anything in that trap.”

But Reynolds argues the trap that killed his dog last December is essentially the same one that will be used this fall. And all three men plan on coming back to the Capitol until they feel their dogs are no longer in danger.

“Nothing was solved. My dogs are no safer today than they were before,” Waalkens said.

Reynolds said he’s not going to stop speaking out until dogs stop dying.

Reynolds said body grip traps have killed about 30 dogs in Minnesota over the past two years. He has a petition with over 2,500 signatures and he plans on forming an organization to push for another law change.

Trappers against future changes say dogs can be trained not to go into body grips and that if dog owners manage their dogs on public land they won’t have a problem.

DETROIT (AP) — Starter Nick Blackburn was already done for the night, and with the score tied at 6 in the third inning, the Minnesota Twins needed to figure out a way through the rest of the game.

Reliever Jeff Gray took the mound: groundout, groundout, groundout.

Then Gray came back for the fourth: groundout, flyout, flyout.

Gray and the bullpen kept the Detroit bats under control, and the Twins went on to win 11-7 on Wednesday night. Jamey Carroll hit a two-run double in the sixth to give Minnesota the lead, and the sloppy Tigers couldn’t overcome their four errors.

After a wild beginning to the game, Gray retired the first six hitters he faced on only 14 pitches.

“Huge,” manager Ron Gardenhire said. “He was getting first-pitch swings, and those were huge, and then a lot of guys came in after that.”

Blackburn was pulled at the end of the second inning, having allowed six runs and six hits. He was bothered by a problem with his left thigh. The Twins also placed catcher Ryan Doumit on the 15-day disabled list after the game because of a strained right calf. They will recall outfielder Ben Revere from Triple-A Rochester for Thursday’s game at Detroit.

Miguel Cabrera hit an RBI double off Gray in the fifth to give the Tigers a 7-6 lead, but Carroll came up with men on first and second an inning later. His double off Duane Below (2-1) scored both runners.

Brian Dozier hit a three-run homer for Minnesota in the second, and Trevor Plouffe’s two-run shot in the ninth made it 11-7.

Minnesota’s Justin Morneau went 1 for 5 with a double in his first game back after being on the disabled list with a sore left wrist.

Alex Burnett (1-0) got the win. He was the second of five Minnesota relievers.

Detroit is 9-16 since a 9-3 start and is now dealing with injuries to closer Jose Valverde (strained lower back) and center fielder Austin Jackson (mild abdominal strain). Both are day to day. Jackson left Wednesday’s game after hitting a flyout in the fourth inning.

“You score seven runs, you have to win the game,” manager Jim Leyland said. “If you don’t, you have problems.”

In a sign of things to come, first baseman Prince Fielder dropped a routine throw with one out in the first. Joe Mauer followed with an RBI double, and shortstop Ramon Santiago’s throw home was wild for another error.

Josh Willingham’s double made it 2-0.

It was 2-1 in the second when second baseman Ryan Raburn’s two-out error kept a Minnesota rally alive. Dozier, the next batter, made it 5-1 with a homer to left.

Detroit came back immediately, scoring five runs in the bottom of the inning. Raburn drew a one-out walk, and the next five hitters — Brennan Boesch, Ramon Santiago, Jackson, Andy Dirks and Cabrera — all hit singles. Fielder’s second sacrifice fly of the game gave the Tigers a 6-5 lead.

Doumit’s RBI single in the third tied the game at 6, and Cabrera — the third baseman — made Detroit’s fourth error of the game later that inning. The Tigers became the first team since the New York Yankees in 2009 to have errors from all four infield spots in a game, according to STATS, LLC.

Gray came on in the third and immediately slowed Detroit’s offense.

“These guys are really aggressive. When they see a fastball, they’re swinging for sure,” Gray said. “Making sure that you keep them off balance, and putting your fastball where you want it, is a big deal with these guys.”

Detroit starter Rick Porcello allowed six runs — two earned — and six hits in four innings.

Down 9-7 in the seventh, the Tigers put men on second and third with one out. Alex Avila and Raburn struck out to end the threat.

NOTES: Minnesota OF Denard Span (right hamstring) was initially in the starting lineup but was scratched about an hour before the game. … The Twins beat the Tigers for the fifth time in their last 23 meetings. … Detroit optioned INF Danny Worth to Triple-A Toledo and are expected to recall RHP Brayan Villarreal. … Detroit’s Doug Fister (0-1) faces Minnesota’s P.J. Walters (0-1) on Thursday.

(© Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Family and friends of Fridley resident Dirk Paaverud say he hasn't been seen since Saturday and are asking for help locating him.

Family and friends of Fridley resident Dirk Paaverud say he hasn't been seen since Saturday and are asking for help locating him.

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — The 3,500 hospital workers who are part of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU)  reached a tentative contract agreement with eight metro-area hospitals, averting a strike that was authorized by the union earlier this week.

Details of the agreement will not be released until the members of SEIU have an opportunity to review and vote on them.

Negotiators representing both workers and the hospitals met all day long on Wednesday, and voting on the tentative agreement is scheduled for next week.

The affected hospitals include: Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina, Fairview Riverside Hospital in Minneapolis, Children’s Hospitals in Minneapolis and St. Paul, HealthEast Bethesda Hospital in St. Paul, HealthEast St. John’s Hospital in Maplewood, North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, and Park Nicollet/Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park.

He said he reached for a beverage before his rig plowed into two cars, killing their drivers and releasing millions of bees from another rig.

Larry Werner

I’ve always prided myself in doing things differently.

When I graduated from Michigan State University in 1969, thousands of people were moving from places like Kentucky to take jobs in Michigan’s auto plants. I left Michigan to take a job as a reporter in Kentucky.

In the newspaper business, the conventional career path would be to start with a weekly newspaper, get a job with a daily and then retire to a life of golf, fishing or hanging out in the neighborhood coffee shop. For me, it went this way: Spend 38 years working for daily newspapers, retire, and then spend four years working for weeklies.

Since January of 2007, following my retirement from the Star Tribune and eight long months of retirement, I’ve had the privilege of serving as editor and general manager of Thisweek Newspapers and the Dakota County Tribune. After the acquisition of the Minnesota Sun papers by ECM Publishers, we merged competing Dakota County papers into Sun Thisweek. Beginning next week, Sun Thisweek and the Tribune will be managed by Sun Group General Manager Jeff Coolman.

I will be moving to ECM’s Coon Rapids headquarters in a new position called director of news.

As I look forward with excitement to this new challenge of leading ECM’s editors and writers, I look back with some sadness on the people, places and events that have been part of my life since 1999. That was the year I moved with my wife and son from Edina to Lakeville. During my previous 15 years in Minnesota, I hadn’t spent much time south of the river, but shortly after Ann and I married in 1995, she began talking about heading south.

Ann is a Zweber – one of those names that cause heads to nod with familiarity when mentioned down here. There are lots of Zwebers in Dakota County. One of them, her father, LeRoy, was a dairy farmer and then director of buildings and grounds for the Lakeville schools. After LeRoy died in 1996, just as the family was turning the dairy farm into a golf course, we decided we should move closer to her widowed mother and the family business. Her brother, Mark, lost his wife to cancer in 1997, and Ann wanted to be more available to him as he raised his two young boys.

So we moved to a condo near downtown Lakeville, and one of the first things I noticed was the local newspaper office. Even though I was still working for the Star Tribune, I would romanticize about becoming editor of Thisweek and telling the interesting and important stories about this  land south of the Minnesota River. Magically, ECM advertised for a general manager to run its Dakota County papers shortly after I retired from the Star Tribune in June of 2007. In January of 2008, I started at Thisweek’s Burnsville office.

The Lakeville office had been closed by then in a cost-cutting move, and Mainstreet After Hours, a wine bar, now operates in that Lakeville space, adjacent to Mainstreet Coffee Cafe.

I’ve had a ball putting out newspapers for Lakeville and Farmington, Burnsville and Eagan, Apple Valley and Rosemount, and turning the 128-year-old Tribune into a Business Weekly. I love local news, and our Dakota County communities have provided us with a lot of opportunity to tell great stories about your neighbors, your city councils, your schools and town characters. We’ve written stories about growth and recession. And we’ve provided local businesses with a means for telling customers about their products and services.

Not every day has been a bowl of cherries. Facing a recession and intense competition from other newspapers and the Internet, we’ve had to spend way too much of our energy cutting expenses. In March, we moved from Burnsville to smaller, less expensive space in Apple Valley. And later the same month, we merged the Sun Current and Thisweek papers into a paper called Sun Thisweek. I’m proud to report Sun Thisweek is exceeding expectations as a news and advertising medium.

It seemed like a good time to retire again. I’ll be 65 in July. But my boss, ECM President Marge Winkelman, offered me an office at the ECM Center in Coon Rapids, where I’ll be involved with improving the reporting, writing and editing done by the company’s 84 journalists. I’ll be working closely with Keith Anderson, director of news for the Sun Group, who will lead our journalists in Dakota County.

Our much larger company now delivers newspapers to about 700,000 homes throughout Minnesota. I appreciate the opportunity to work with a growing news company to serve readers with stories that inform and entertain.

Having moved back north of the river to be near my four grandchildren and Ann’s work at the University of Minnesota, I spend less of my free time at the Lakeville Area Arts Center or at the arts centers in Burnsville and Rosemount. And since I’ll be working in Coon Rapids with ECM’s northern newspapers, you won’t see me as much at my favorite Dakota County lunch places – the Valley Diner in Apple Valley, Jo Jo’s Rise & Wine in Burnsville and, of course, Mainstreet Coffee Cafe in Lakeville.

I’ll be hanging out at coffee shops in other communities where ECM has papers – such towns as Anoka, Milaca and Princeton, the place our company was started by former Gov. Elmer Andersen 35 years ago.

It’s likely I’ll use this space for stories from those places up north. So you’ll hear from me on this page.

I’ll miss south of the river, which I’ve named “The Third City,” after Minneapolis and St. Paul. And I’ll miss our new offices in Apple Valley, where Managing Editors Tad Johnson and John Gessner will continue to dispatch writers to cover the news of this dynamic and growing county.

Larry Werner is editor and general manager of Sun Thisweek and the Dakota County Tribune. He can be reached at larry.werner@ecm-inc.com. Columns reflect the opinion of the author.

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Michael Scott Luedtke, 25, was indicted Wednesday in federal court for his role in the New Year’s Eve armed robbery of a Quiznos sandwich shop in Roseville, according to the United States Attorney’s Office.

Luedtke, a felon with three prior violent convictions in Hennepin County, was charged with one count of interference with commerce by robbery, one count of possession of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, one count of possession of an unregistered sawed-off shotgun, and one count of possession of a firearm by an armed career criminal.

The indictment alleges that on Dec. 31, 2011, Luedtke attempted to rob the Quiznos store by threatening an employee with a sawed-off shotgun.

If convicted, Luedtke faces a potential maximum penalty of life in prison.