We’re a little low on wolves

Your daily Minnesota news roundup starts … NOW. After two years of construction, the Kellogg-3rd St. bridge in St. Paul will open to vehicle traffic in mid-November following a ribbon-cutting this past Saturday opening the bridge to pedestrian traffic. The project cost almost $100 million and connects Lowertown to the city’s east side via an over 2,000 foot span.  Consolidation of health systems and other economic factors are causing rural communities in Minnesota to lose access to obstetrics care, but a new one-year family medicine obstetrics fellowship for family medicine physicians at the U of M in partnership with CentraCare aims to fill that gap by preparing general practitioners to provide advanced prenatal, maternity and newborn care.  The farmer-lender mediation program was voted into law in the 1980s, and it requires banks and lenders to enter into mediation with financially-strapped farmers before advancing to the stage of foreclosure or repossession. This year, the Minnesota Farmers Union says more farmers have filed for mediation this year than the last three years combined. Higher costs, lost markets and a trade war with Canada are all contributing factors.  Related: What’s driving the financial crisis on Minnesota farms? In Los Angeles and New York, less than half the population between the ages of 35 and 44 own the places they live, but in Minneapolis, it’s 73% for that same demographic. That’s according to a new survey from the New York Times and the Census Bureau. Minneapolis came in fifth behind those who live in Ogden and Provo in Utah, Grand Rapids in Michigan and Des Moines in Iowa — if you can call that living. Basically, Minneapolis is the first cool city on the list. Wolf populations in northern Minnesota are at their lowest level in over a decade — down 44% since 2023. Researchers at the Voyageurs Wolf Project are not sweating it for now, though. They say it’s largely due to a decrease in the deer population following particularly tough winters from 2021 to 2023. So it’s possible that El Niño will be good for los lobos. For the unhoused, faith in government systems can be hard to come by, but shelters like Catholic Charities Twin Cities are working to make sure their residents understand how and where to vote, even if they have no government ID or permanent address.  “A lot of our people going through homelessness believe that the systems are against them. They truly believe that,” said Kourtney Thomas, who has previously experienced homelessness and now serves as a volunteer member of the Catholic Charities Twin Cities Lived Experience Advisory Board and has been helping with voter outreach. “A lot of stuff is going on in America and it’s important that we get people in our shelters to vote,” she said. And finally in your Minnesota news roundup: Caves are scary. So are abandoned industrial areas. Abandoned industrial caves filled with the ruins of a haunted house? The worst. The Tunnel of Terror in the Crosby Farms caves was a Halloween event put on by the St. Paul Jaycees from 1982 until 2004 when it was shut down over safety concerns — like most of the ‘80s and ‘90s. The caves today are largely flooded and sealed off with concrete, but nearby residents say you can sometimes hear the cries of Gen Xers looking up what their Beanie Babies are worth. Related