MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Two Minneapolis rallies to demonstrate against the grand jury’s decision in Ferguson, Missouri, drew several hundred people on Tuesday, with a scary moment when a car struck one protester and then burst through a pack of other protesters when they quickly surrounded it.
Police said a woman suffered minor injuries and was taken to a hospital by ambulance. Footage from a KSTP-TV news helicopter appeared to show at least one person being driven over as the car left the scene near the city’s 3rd Precinct police station.
The driver called police soon after to report the incident, and police spokesman Scott Seroka said no one was arrested.
The rally near the 3rd Precinct and an earlier gathering at the University of Minnesota both drew hundreds of people carrying signs and chanting slogans in an effort to show solidarity with Michael Brown, the black teenager shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson in August. Ferguson erupted in violence Monday night after a grand jury declined to indict the officer.
On the steps of the university’s Coffman Union, demonstrators sat down for 4 ½ minutes of silence to mark the 4 ½ hours that Brown’s body reportedly lay in the street after he was shot. Some carried signs that read, “Black lives matter” and “No justice, no peace” and speakers called for an end to racial discrimination.
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - One of two Minnesota men accused of planning to join the Islamic State group was stopped at an airport by FBI agents before traveling to the Middle East, but the other man slipped by authorities, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday.
Abdullahi Yusuf, 18, was stopped at the Minneapolis airport in late May after a passport specialist noticed he seemed nervous and didn’t have a specific itinerary, though he wasn’t arrested until Tuesday. Authorities are still looking for 20-year-old Abdi Nur, who left for Istanbul, Turkey, the next day and didn’t return in June as scheduled, according to the court documents.
Yusuf was arrested on his way to school at Inver Hills Community College. His attorney argued for his release during a Tuesday hearing in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, noting he had been going to school and work despite knowing for months that he was under investigation. But a magistrate judge ordered him held until a detention hearing Wednesday.
Yusuf, who lives in Inver Grove Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, and Nur, of Minneapolis, are charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Nur also is charged with providing material support to a foreign terror group.
U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said both young men conspired to join the Islamic State “to engage in a campaign of terror in support of a violent ideology.”
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis said Tuesday it is suing some 20 insurance companies to try to force them to cover its liabilities for clergy sex abuse claims.
The complaint, filed Monday in federal court, says the carriers provided liability coverage to the archdiocese going back to the late 1940s through 1986, but have not agreed yet to contribute toward a broad settlement that it’s now trying to reach in over two dozen lawsuits and numerous other claims filed by people who say they were sexually abused by priests.
The suit asks the court to order the carriers to cover the claims and the archdiocese’s legal fees.
“So far, we have not been able to reach a global resolution with all the insurance companies,” Archbishop John Nienstedt said in a statement. “To that end, I approved the filing of a federal lawsuit in hopes the move will encourage the insurance companies to join with us in working together to help us achieve an equitable settlement for victims/survivors of clergy sexual abuse.”
Lauren Lonergan, an attorney for the archdiocese, said she would not go as far as saying the insurance companies are refusing to pay. But she said there are “a lot of complicated coverage issues” on which they haven’t agreed.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Minnesota hunters have registered 111,000 deer through the third and last weekend of the firearms deer season, a drop of 31,000 from the same period a year ago.
But the lower harvest is by design. Regulations were put in place to make more deer - especially does - off-limits to increase Minnesota’s deer herd.
The state Department of Natural Resources says so far this year during special hunts and the archery, early antlerless and firearms season, hunters have killed 127,000 deer, down from the 2013 to-date harvest total of 144,000.
Additional deer will be harvested during the late southeastern season, which runs through Nov. 30, and the muzzleloader season, which begins Nov. 29 and continues through Dec. 14. The archery season runs through Dec. 31.
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