Social Issues

Rally organizers want tougher gun laws
Organizers of a gun-violence awareness rally today in north Minneapolis say they want to see tougher gun laws at the state and federal levels.
Room packed for 'Olmstead' disability hearing
More than 100 people packed a room in St. Paul on Tuesday to weigh in on a draft of the state's "Olmstead Plan," which is aimed revamping the way the state provides services for people with disabilities.
With new momentum for same-sex marriage from the Supreme Court, gays and lesbians are hoping for progress in another sphere: the workplace. In more than half the country, it's still legal to fire people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The bill was introduced in the Legislature on June 4, passed nine days later and signed into law Friday by Gov. Scott Walker. It took effect Monday.
Fixing up seniors' homes to help them age in place
Many older Americans wind up in a nursing home not because they're sick but because they can't get through their days safely at home. Now a major research project will bring handymen, occupational therapists and nurses into the homes of 800 low-income seniors in Baltimore to test if some inexpensive fix-ups and strategies for daily living can keep them independent longer, and save millions in taxpayer dollars spent on nursing home care.
YMCA tackles racial disparities in swimming, drowning rates
African-American kids between the ages of 5 and 14 years old are three times more likely to drown than their white peers. The YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities, which runs 22 pools, has been trying to change that.
Aspen Ideas Festival: Chef Marcus Samuelsson on food and community
Award-winning chef Marcus Samuelsson tells an Aspen Ideas Festival audience about his Ethiopian/Swedish American immigrant experience, and the importance of food, family and community.
How military deployment, missing parents affect families
Thousands of Minnesota's military families know what it's like: birthdays missed, family trips delayed and childhoods changed because dad or mom is deployed overseas.
As more victims of clergy sex abuse came forward, then-Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan oversaw a plan to pay some abusers to leave the priesthood after writing to Vatican officials with increasing frustration and concern, warning them about the potential for scandal if they did not defrock problem priests, according to documents released Monday.
'A time of seamless black' as suicide problem grows worse
Author Ernest Hemingway killed himself in Ketchum, Idaho on this day in 1961, at age 61. Fifty-two years later, do we understand more about suicide than we did then?