Veteran TV and radio broadcaster Stan Turner believed that preparation was the key to any successful interview, TV broadcast or radio show.

In 1983, for example, Turner spent days preparing for an interview with President Ronald Reagan. He assembled a thick file on the president that included clippings, facts and questions to ask, said longtime friend Tom Oszman.

“Stan always wanted to do quality work,” said Oszman, who runs TC Media Now, a nonprofit dedicated to digitizing local TV broadcasts. “He would prepare for his show all morning, probably even before he came in with lots of papers. He knew about his guests. He knew about their history. He was very factually correct. He was very prepared. He didn’t just come in and turn the microphone on.”

Turner died Sunday at Our Lady of Peace Hospice in St. Paul of complications related to breast cancer. He was 81.

Turner had one of those voices that was instantly recognizable, Oszman said. “He loved telling stories. He loved telling stories about people in our community. I think that we have lost one of the great storytellers of our area.”

Turner told the Pioneer Press in 2018 that his love of journalism was sparked by reading “My Weekly Reader,” the educational classroom magazine, while he was growing up in St. Louis Park. “I just loved reading about things and then telling other kids what I had found out because I knew they weren’t reading it,” Turner said. “It sounds corny, but that’s how I got into it. I love telling stories.”

Stan Turner and his daughter Laura during their regular walk around the Maplewood Mall in December 2020, not long after he underwent open heart surgery. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)

Turner was born to be a journalist, said his daughter, Laura Turner Schubkegel, who lives in Woodbury. “My dad just had this uncanny, insatiable thirst for knowledge, facts and reporting. And that voice of his. He’s always had it. It was authoritative and believable. You knew you could believe this man. It was very credible. Trusting, that’s the word. Oh, and it was smooth. Just like butter.”

Turner majored in journalism at the University of Minnesota and, while still a student, got a job in the news department at KDWB Radio after splicing together an audition tape at his childhood home in St. Louis Park. He moved to KSTP Radio News in 1966, then was hired back at KDWB as news director a year later. He returned to Hubbard Broadcasting in 1968, taking a job as government reporter for KSTP-TV.

“That’s when he found his niche, covering government and the political scene,” Schubkegel said. “That’s where he really wanted to be. He just loved the truth. He loved the action. He liked the two sides in the chambers going at it, trying to pass bills. He found that fascinating, and he made a lot of friends at the Capitol. Politics just really resonated with him. People trusted him. He knew that was the most important thing.”

Turner, who taught an Introduction to Radio and Television Journalism class at the University of St. Thomas, always stressed the importance of impartiality and fair and balanced reporting, said KSTP chief political reporter Tom Hauser, one of Turner’s students. “He always said that the story is the story. The reporter is not the story,” Hauser said. “He would say, ‘People don’t care what you think. They care what the people you interview think.’ I’ve always kept that in mind, and that’s how I report the news.”

Turner also believed that “reporters and photographers are the backbone of any news operation,” Hauser said. “An anchor just kind of throws to what the reporters are out in the field doing. He always felt that nothing was more important than covering what the government is doing with your taxpayer dollars and with policies they are passing.”

An innovator

Turner served as KSTP’s associate news director, weekend anchor, news director and weekday co-anchor before he was hired, in 1989, to help launch a 24-hour satellite news channel for Hubbard Broadcasting called the All News Channel, where he served as primetime weekday anchor and writer. He lost his job when the channel went off the air in 2002.

Turner was “an innovator and a great broadcaster and a great newsman,” said Stan Hubbard, the chairman of Hubbard Broadcasting, which owns KSTP.

“It’s a terrible loss,” Hubbard said Monday. “Stan was a wonderful person. He was a hard-working, dedicated newsperson who was not afraid to go after the truth. He was always very prepared. He was terrific. Everything he did was good.”

In 2004, Turner became news director, reporter, and newscaster with the Minnesota News Network. He also began hosting a Saturday program on KLBB-AM Radio in downtown Stillwater. His “All Request and Dedication Show” soon took the noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday slot.

Turner’s time at KLBB was a gift to everyone in the east metro and beyond, said Don Effenberger, a longtime friend and former Pioneer Press editor.

“While there’s all this well-deserved attention to Stan’s newsgathering and all his news jobs, I wouldn’t want it to be forgotten what he did for the east metro community with his KLBB shows, both that Saturday show he did and of course, the ‘All Request’ one,” Effenberger said. “Stan found so much joy in music and sharing it with people, and I think that’s what made the show so popular.”

Turner told the Pioneer Press that his love of music came through “osmosis” when he was a baby. “I had eczema, a terrible skin rash, when I was born, and I almost died from it,” he said in 2018. “It was tough to get me to take naps or get to sleep because I hurt all the time, so my mother would roll the crib over by the radio, and that would help me go to sleep. I think that’s part of it. I just absolutely adore music.”

Among his favorite artists: Johnny Mathis, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. His favorite Presley song was “Loving You,” he told the Pioneer Press. “I like lyrics. I like melody,” he said. “I like words I can repeat.”

Here’s part of the playlist from one of his “Request and Dedication” shows on KLBB in 2018: country star Terri Gibbs, Chuck Berry, novelty songs, Motown, some Johnny Mathis, local chanteuse Sharone LeMieux and Guy Marks singing “Loving You Has Made Me Bananas.”

Each song had a story, one that was meticulously researched by Turner. His music library filled his KLBB office and included “Billboard’s Hottest 100 Hits,” “The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul” and “American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950.”

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“I love doing research. This is my bible right here,” Turner told the Pioneer Press at the time, pointing to “The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits.” “I find out information people wouldn’t otherwise get or have or know. I call them ‘Eureka moments.’

“To me, this is a logical extension of being a reporter, which I’ve been all of my life,” he said. “We are hunters and gatherers.”

Turner’s popular show ended in March 2018 when KLBB went off the air. “He was a loyalist,” Oszman said. “He did that show till KLBB closed; it was not canceled. He did the All News Channel until they went off the air. He stayed with companies until they were done, and he had a 35-year track record at Hubbard. He was at KLBB for about 14 years. He was a loyal guy, a loyal friend, and a loyal employee.”

A ‘St. Paul guy’

Stan Turner, left, is joined by Anthony Andler, the proprietor of Heimie’s Haberdashery, for a test run of his popular “All Request and Dedication Show,” in a new radio broadcast space in Andler’s business in the Hamm Building in downtown St. Paul on Sept. 27, 2019. (Jean Pieri / Pioneer Press)

Turner was a “St. Paul guy through and through,” said Rick Shefchik, former Pioneer Press reporter, columnist and media critic. “As a radio newsman, he became intimately knowledgeable about politicians, lawmaking and legislators at the Capitol,” Shefchik said. “When he  moved to TV in the late 1970s, he was one of the key faces in a fiercely competitive TV news market at a time when local anchors became celebrities.”

But Turner was “never taken with his own importance, being a news reporter to his soul,” Shefchik said.

Turner clearly reveled in his years hosting the “All Request and Dedication Show” on KLBB, said Shefchik, a frequent guest and the author of “Everybody’s Heard About the Bird: The True Story of 1960s Rock ‘n’ Roll in Minnesota.”

“When a famous musician died, Stan would meticulously assemble a tribute show, and took great satisfaction in researching the background of even the most obscure songs requested by his loyal listeners,” Shefchik said.

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Turner said: “In this day and age of hard, jagged corners and nasty rhetoric and everything, it’s nice to connect to this every day, isn’t it? I am lucky. I’ve always known that. From Day One. I never have taken this for granted.”

Turner met Ruth Juneau Huberty, a part-time weather reporter and office manager at KDWB, when he worked there in 1965; she was a divorced mother of two children, John and Katie, whom he later adopted. The couple got married in 1966; their daughter, Laura, was born the following year. The couple divorced in 1981.

Turner is survived by his children, Laura Schubkegel, Katherine Urich, and John Turner, and his longtime companion, Mary Brennan.

A celebration of Turner’s life will be held at a later date. Wulff Funeral Home in Woodbury is handling arrangements.

As the first full week of training camp begins, there’s no hint of an answer to the question that most Wild fans have about the coming season and the half-dozen or so seasons to come after that. If star forward Kirill Kaprizov is to sign a contract extension that will keep him in Minnesota after July of next year, neither his agent Paul Theofanous nor Wild general manager Bill Guerin are admitting to having anything cooking right now.

Theofanous reportedly made an unannounced trip to Minnesota last week and had a lengthy conversation with a member of the Wild’s hockey operations department during a training camp scrimmage at TRIA Rink. But if those talks yielded any progress, or any setbacks, neither side is talking about it.

He is healthy and has been a full participant in training camp, and Kaprizov is even back to his familiar habits of staying on the ice after practice for a few extra shots and skating drills, until the Zamboni driver politely asks him to vacate. He did not travel to Winnipeg for the Wild’s preseason opening 3-2 overtime win over the Jets on Sunday, nor will Kaprizov be part of the traveling party that heads to Dallas for a 7 p.m. Tuesday night preseason game versus the Stars.

The Stars will be coming to visit on Thursday night for the Wild’s first home game of the preseason and their first game since the name change at what’s now known as Grand Casino Arena.

In his meeting with reporters on day one of camp, Kaprizov reiterated that he likes playing in Minnesota, likes his team and likes the fans here, calling it his second home (after his native Russia). When asked about the state of his contract talks and why he would reportedly turn down an offer of the richest contract in NHL history, he deferred those topics to Theofanous, and made mention of the fact that Kaprizov remains under contract with the Wild until July 1, 2026.

“We have a lot of time, it’s just 2025,” Kaprizov said. “It’s one more year I have.”

Roster moves announced

On Monday, the Wild reduced their training camp roster to 52 players and signed a goalie for their minor league system.

They signed Chase Wutzke, a butterfly goalie with some size, to a three-year entry-level contract after selecting the 19-year-old in the fifth round of the 2024 NHL Draft. The Wild then assigned Wutzke to the Red Deer (Alberta) Rebels of Canadian major junior leagues, where he has played since 2022.

Major junior is also the destination for forwards Lirim Amidovski, Adam Benak and Carter Klippenstein. Benak, an undersized but skilled rookie, skated more than 16 minutes versus Winnipeg on Sunday.

The Wild released defensemen Rowan Topp and Jordan Tourigny, and sent three players – forward Matthew Sop and Ryan McGuire and goalie William Rousseau – to Iowa Wild training camp.

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By JIM GOMEZ

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Thousands of people were evacuated from northern Philippine villages and schools and offices were closed Monday in the archipelago and neighboring Taiwan as one of this year’s strongest typhoons threatened to cause flooding and landslides on its way to southeastern China.

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Super Typhoon Ragasa had sustained winds of 134 mph with gusts of up to 183 mph when it slammed into Panuitan island off Cagayan province on mid-afternoon Monday, Philippine forecasters said.

Tropical cyclones with sustained winds of 115 mph or higher are categorized in the Philippines as a super typhoon, a designation adopted years ago to underscore the urgency tied to such extreme weather disturbances.

Ragasa was heading west and forecast to remain in the South China Sea at least into Wednesday while passing south of Taiwan and Hong Kong before landfall on the Chinese mainland.

The Philippines’ weather agency warned of coastal inundation, saying “there is a high risk of life-threatening storm surge with peak heights exceeding nearly 10 feet within the next 24 hours over the low-lying or exposed coastal localities” of the northern provinces of Cagayan, Batanes, Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur.

Power was knocked out on Calayan island and in the entire northern mountain province of Apayao, west of Cagayan, disaster-response officials said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or further damage from Ragasa, which is locally called Nando.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. suspended government work and all classes Monday in the capital and 29 provinces in the main northern Luzon region.

More than 8,200 people were evacuated to safety in Cagayan while 1,220 fled to emergency shelters in Apayao, which is prone to flash floods and landslides. Domestic flights were suspended in northern provinces lashed by the typhoon while fishing boats and inter-island ferries were prohibited from leaving ports due to rough seas.

Ragasa, the 14th weather disturbance to batter the Philippines this year, comes while authorities and both chambers of Congress investigate a corruption scandal involving alleged kickbacks that resulted in substandard or non-existent flood control projects.

Taiwan’s southern Taitung and Pingtung counties ordered closures in some coastal and mountainous areas as well as on the outlying Orchid and Green islands. Ragasa also forced the cancellation of afternoon flights to outlying islands and suspended various ferry services, the Central News Agency reported.

In Fujian province, on China’s southeast coast, 50 ferry routes were suspended. Officials in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese tech hub, planned to relocate about 400,000 people, including residents living in low-lying and flood-prone areas. Shenzhen’s airport said it will halt flights, starting Tuesday night.

China’s National Meteorological Center forecast the typhoon would make landfall in the coastal area between Shenzhen city and Xuwen county in Guangdong province on Wednesday.

China’s ruling Communist Party chief in Guangdong, Huang Kunming, urged departments across the region to minimize harm and “fully enter emergency state and war-ready state.”

Ragasa is expected to sweep south of Hong Kong and Macao. While Hong Kong’s airport is expected to remain open, the city’s airport authority said flights would be significantly reduced after 6 p.m. Tuesday and most flight operations would be affected on Wednesday.

Hong Kong’s flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways said passenger flights scheduled to depart and arrive in the city after 6 p.m. Tuesday will be suspended, with more than 500 flight cancellations expected.

Other Hong Kong-based airlines announced their flights would be disrupted, including budget airline HK Express, which reported a cancellation of over 100 flights between Tuesday and Thursday.

All schools in Hong Kong and Macao will be closed for the next two days. More than the usual number of sandbags have been provided to flood-prone areas in Hong Kong, while Macao police urged people living in low-lying areas to prepare for possible evacuation.

Ragasa is expected to bring torrential rains and heavy winds to China’s mainland coastal areas, starting Tuesday. Multiple cities such as Jiangmen, Yangjiang, Zhongshan and Zhuhai in southern Guangdong province ordered the suspension of schools, offices, factories and means of transportation.

The typhoon could make landfall in Guangdong more than once, China’s weather agency said.

Authorities urged residents to stockpile emergency supplies, reinforce doors and windows, and evacuate underground areas.

Associated Press writers Simina Mistreanu in Taipei, Taiwan, and Kanis Leung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

By DEREK GATOPOULOS

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — With a pristine white exterior, the Greece tax authority’s new headquarters looks out of place on a clogged industrial artery outside Athens. A former shopping mall and ice rink, the building has been overhauled into an ultramodern digital center that has led the rescue of the nation’s ailing finance and tax sector.

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It is teeming with inspectors who chase down tax cheats with the help of drones, big data and live surveillance feeds from as far as Greece’s island ports and remote farming villages.

Analysts at the Independent Authority for Public Revenue monitor millions of transactions in real time and order stings on businesses flagged by algorithms for a high potential of illegal activity. The high tech was on full display during a recent visit as The Associated Press was granted rare access to the authority’s headquarters.

Greece’s tax system — once a byword for inefficiency — has been rewired by technology.

Now, the country that spent nearly a decade as Europe’s financial outcast, drowning in debt, has become one of its best budget performers, with bonds restored to investment grade by all major ratings agencies.

“We worked systematically over the years, with dedication,” Giorgos Pitsilis, governor of the revenue authority, told the AP. “We started from a situation of no data to a situation with big data.”

From crisis to credit upgrades

Greece was one of just six EU member states that recorded a budget surplus in 2024, after running deficits for decades. Momentum carried into this year, with government revenues shooting past targets through August.

Moody’s upgraded Greece’s bonds to investment grade in March, praising its large-scale push to digitize the tax system. Jason Graffam, senior vice president at ratings agency Morningstar DBRS, noted that Greece’s long-term borrowing costs now sit slightly above Spain’s — and below Italy’s and France’s.

“The Greece of today is indeed very different from a decade ago,” Graffam said. “There has clearly been durable change to the country’s economic model and its fiscal regime.”

During the crisis years, international creditors imposed punishing austerity measures in exchange for three massive bailout packages. Greece’s population felt the pain deeply — wages were slashed, companies shut down and the economy bled jobs.

Sustained pressure from lenders forced successive governments to modernize one of Europe’s weakest tax systems.

Out went paper files and fax machines. In came cashless, paperless systems powered by algorithms that scour card payments, tax filings, payroll data, customs declarations and bank records – and flag anomalies for inspectors to pursue.

‘Saturday Night Fever’

Repurposed smartphones carried by inspectors in the field stream video and audio back to headquarters. There are panic buttons to use when someone feels threatened.

Back at headquarters, screens map ongoing site inspections and drone surveillance feeds from multiple sites: from restaurants and ports to hidden grain silos and fruit delivery trucks — even live readings from ships’ fuel tanks.

Tax and customs officials described how the data translates into raids. They spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of their work and citing reasons of personal safety.

During a recent nightclub sweep dubbed “Saturday Night Fever,” they matched individual table orders against receipts to uncover undeclared sales, mostly of alcoholic drinks.

“We knew the tables were full, but the receipts didn’t match,” one official said, adding that after inspectors showed up, the nightclub’s reported revenues doubled within days.

Fraud can be detected by cross-referencing mobile phone activity with reported sales as recorded by cash registers and card-payment terminals that by law must be connected to the tax authority.

“If we detect signals from 20 phones inside a store, but see almost no receipts, that’s a cue to dispatch a team immediately,” another inspector explained.

High cost-of-living persists

The reforms have salvaged Greece’s reputation abroad. At home, the windfall has funded 1.6 billion euros in tax cuts recently announced by the center-right government.

Still, opposition parties argue that more efficient tax collection does not offset policies that worsen inequality: The national sales tax rate was hiked during the crisis to 24% — higher than most EU countries.

It hasn’t been reduced since, while other austerity-era cuts remain in place and poverty is stubbornly high.

The powerful Greek Communist Party described recent budget figures as a “blood-stained surplus” that is eating further into the spending power of wage earners.

But the revenue is a sorely needed boost for the government, which is facing public anger over a corruption scandal and the cost-of-living crisis.

Tax compliance may also — slowly and grudgingly – build trust in public institutions, revenue agency officials say.

“It’s a powerful argument … being tax responsible is beneficial,” said Pitsilis, who has been governor since the tax agency became an independent authority in 2017. “We earn more, and that gives space for tax reform.”

Change is visible on the streets too. At a stall north of Athens, Makis Panaretos sells watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers and oranges. About 70% of his sales are now electronic — all transactions are instantly referred to the tax authority.

“Customers use their cards, phones and watches to pay,” he said. “I don’t mind it, even though it slows things down when there’s a line.”

By November, all businesses will be required to accept IRIS, a Greek instant payment system similar to Venmo in the United States, eliminating bank and payment provider fees currently incurred by vendors like Panaretos.

Deeper AI integration

Greece’s progress is an example how a crisis can accelerate reforms, observers say.

“Greece has shown how digitalization and institutional independence can translate into real fiscal gains,” said Alexandros Kentikelenis, a political economy professor at Bocconi University in Milan.

Further integration of artificial intelligence into the tax authority’s systems through 2026 is likely to accelerate this process, according to tax officials.

“The push to modernize tax administration continues, which supports our expectation that tax revenue growth will remain robust over the medium term,” Moody’s wrote in its report accompanying its ratings upgrade in March.

Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis, a Harvard- and MIT-trained technocrat, says the shift is irreversible. A supporter of the digital euro, he has tied tax reform to broader plans to digitize the economy.

“Countries change when they change course,” he said at a news conference this month. “And that change means we won’t be left behind or ever return to the past.”