Minnesota Public Radio Stories

• Midwest carbon market talks get underway
  Five Minnesotans are sitting down with citizens from other states and a Canadian province to design a Midwest regional carbon market.5:20 p.m.
• Sheriff's employees appear in court on fraud charges
  Two Ramsey County Sheriff's office employees who are accused of stealing money during an FBI sting pleaded not guilty Thursday in federal court. The men's lawyers say the whole incident is a big misunderstanding.5:24 p.m.
• Guitarist researches lost songs of Minnesota's Irish lumberjacks
  As recently as 100 years ago, Minnesota's north woods were alive with the sounds of axe, saw -- and song. But most of those songs were lost to the ages, except for a handful collected by a University of Minnesota professor in the 1920s.6:20 p.m.

National Public Radio Stories

• Maine Sculptor Forges Art from Nails
  Sculptor John Bisbee has made almost all of his art with an object most people use to hang art with — nails. Recently, after decades of oxidizing, welding, bending and cutting, he realized that he was overlooking the most obvious thing he could do with nails: hammer them.
• It Isn't Rocket Science: How Best to Board a Plane
  An astrophysicist finds that the most efficient way to board a plane is to board passengers whose seat assignments are two rows apart. The key, Jason Steffen says, is creating space in the aisle for fliers to put their bags into overhead bins.
• Cheb i Sabbah's 'Devotion' to Organic Electronica
  The Algerian club DJ is best known for melding traditional ethnic sounds with electronica. But on his new album, his mix of highbrow Indian spirituality and dance-floor ambition stands apart from the growing morass of globalized techno wizardry.
• What's Behind the Dollar's Downslide?
  The U.S. dollar plunged against other major currencies Thursday, dipping below 100 yen for the first time in 12 years. There were other signs of weakness — retail sales were down in February. Despite all this, the stock market closed higher.
• How Dollar's Falling Value Hits U.S. Companies
  Tom Groos, chairman of Viking Group Inc., which makes fire suppression equipment such as sprinklers and fire extinguishers, says the dollar's falling value hasn't hurt his company. But overseas business travel does cause sticker shock now, he says.
• A Look Back at the Dollar's Plunge in 1995
  The last time the U.S. dollar sank to 100 yen was 1995. Melissa Block examines what else was going on at that time.
• Struggling Sears May Tap Rivals in Revival Strategy
  It was once the largest retailer in the U.S., but Sears, Roebuck and Co. has been struggling for years as competitors such as Home Depot and Lowe's lured customers away. Now, in an effort to boost its bottom line, Sears may actually turn to its rivals for help.
• Deadline Looms for Calif. Districts to Layoff Teachers
  School districts across California are reeling because of millions of dollars of proposed education cuts in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget. March 15 is the deadline to give teachers layoff notices, and thousands of them will go out across the state. A particularly hard-hit school district offers a look at the reality of the cuts. Tamara Keith reports from member station KQED.
• Weizenbaum, Creator of ELIZA Program, Dies
  Her name was ELIZA. And to many who interacted with her, she was a great listener. In fact, ELIZA was a computer program — one of the most baffling and controversial experiments in artificial intelligence. The creator of ELIZA, Joseph Weizenbaum, died March 5. He was 85 years old. Weizenbaum was a professor at MIT when he created ELIZA in 1964 and '65. He named her after Eliza Doolittle. His purpose was to study exactly how humans interact with machines.
• Prospects Uncertain as Reformists Unite in Iran
  Iran's reformists lost control of parliament four years ago. Now, they hope to capitalize on dissatisfaction with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's economic policies to regain a significant minority of seats. But they face considerable obstacles.

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