Minnesota Public Radio Stories

• Family finds strength after New Year's skiing accident
  For the Fink family, each New Year's Day marks another anniversary of an event that profoundly changed the family's life. Eleven years ago, Susan Fink fell on a ski trail and was paralyzed from the neck down.4:14 p.m.
• Art Hounds
  Each week Minnesota Public Radio News asks three people from the Minnesota arts scene to be "Art Hounds." Their job is to step outside their own work and hunt down something exciting that's going on in local arts.4:44 p.m.
• The stigmas of depression
  All Things Considered medical analyst talks about the stigmas around depression, an often intensely personal disease.4:49 p.m.
• Minn. Orch's jazz director still calls New Orleans home
  Minneapolis revelers looking to add some New Orleans spice to an otherwise chilly New Years Eve will likely head to the Dakota jazz club tonight, where trumpeter Irvin Mayfield is performing with his quintet, part of a national New Year's Eve concert broadcast.4:54 p.m.
• Pawlenty to appeal ruling
  Gov. Tim Pawlenty says he will appeal a judge's ruling that he overstepped his authority by unilaterally cutting the budget last spring.5:20 p.m.
• MnDOT releases $9 billion rail plan
  The Minnesota Department of Transportation has just released its first ever comprehensive state rail plan, plotting out as much as $9 billion in new investments in freight and passenger infrastructure through 2030.5:24 p.m.
• Family finds strength after New Year's skiing accident
  For the Fink family, each New Year's Day marks another anniversary of an event that profoundly changed the family's life. Eleven years ago, Susan Fink fell on a ski trail and was paralyzed from the neck down.6:14 p.m.
• Minn. Orch's jazz director still calls New Orleans home
  Minneapolis revelers looking to add some New Orleans spice to an otherwise chilly New Years Eve will likely head to the Dakota jazz club tonight, where trumpeter Irvin Mayfield is performing with his quintet, part of a national New Year's Eve concert broadcast.6:25 p.m.

National Public Radio Stories

• Past Decade A Roller Coaster Ride On Wall Street
  War, recession and a speculative bubble burst made the decade tumultuous for investors.
• Tale Of Two Cities Illustrates Battle For Israel's Soul
  As the world focuses on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, a divide is growing within Israel. Religious and secular Jews are increasingly at odds, and nowhere is the split more obvious than in Israel's two main cities, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
• Ahead Of New Year, Russian Shoppers Hit Malls
  For a growing number of Russians, shopping is an identical experience to that of millions of Americans. People in big cities like Moscow flock to vast indoor malls where Western chain outlets like Adidas, The Body Shop and IKEA sit alongside domestic stores.
• Bob Mondello: The Year's Top 10 (And Friends)
  Hollywood exits 2009 on a high note, with both expensive blue aliens and artful war dramas having left a vivid impression on audiences and critics alike. And the year's $10.5 billion take at the box office is no sneeze-at number, either. Critic Bob Mondello looks back at the year in pictures.
• Ex-Guantanamo Inmates Among Detroit Plot Planners
  Four members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the group that claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day airliner attack, were previously detainees at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Although most Guantanamo detainees have returned to their old lives, several have rejoined the battlefield.
• Saudi Detainee-Rehab Program Mostly Successful
  Saudi Arabia's rehabilitation program for former detainees at Guantanamo Bay includes religious dialogue and relies heavily on families of the former detainees. Christopher Boucek, an associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says that to date, the program has had a success rate of about 80 percent.
• 'An Education' Writer Praises Film Of Memoir
  British columnist Lynn Barber's memoir, An Education, is about her affair, while she was still in high school, with an older con man. She spent weekdays prepping for Oxford and weekends flying off to European cities with her lover. Barber, who was happy with the movie adaptation of the memoir, says by the time she saw the film it no longer felt like her story.
• Charlie Sheen Arrest Draws Little Public Scrutiny
  It has all the makings of the next big celebrity scandal, but the arrest of television actor Charlie Sheen on Christmas Day for domestic violence may not be met with the usual media hubbub. The reasons, says commentator Andrew Wallenstein: First, we've come to expect this from him; second, Sheen not only is a dirtbag, he plays one on TV.
• The Year In Apologies
  Whatever 2009 will be remembered for, the year reigned supreme when it came to apologies. Among the apologetic: singer Kanye West, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson, Sen. John Ensign and golfer Tiger Woods. Other notorious apologies include ones from South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, tennis champ Serena Williams and talk show host David Letterman.
• The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse
  In the past decade, recorded music has gotten louder — and has deteriorated from a sound-quality standpoint. A recording engineer discusses "the loudness wars," and a psychology professor explains why the ubiquity of MP3s has changed what we hear.

The Dinner Party Download™

A fast, funny digest of the week's most interesting news, cuisine, cocktails and culture.

Services

• Hourly Newscast
• HD Radio
• iPhone App / Mobile
• E-mail newsletters
• RSS feeds
• Podcasts
• Submit your photos
• Videos
• Weather
• Most e-mailed stories