Address speed, safety on St. Clair

St. Clair Avenue has become a speedway to and from 35E. People use it more and more to bypass the backed-up traffic at Snelling and Selby.  Syndicate is often used as a shortcut to Grand Avenue from 35E.  Speeds are excessive. Recently an SUV plowed into the retaining wall at St. Clair and Syndicate going 40 miles an hour.

At the same time, many people cross St. Clair on foot, which is terribly dangerous.  Kids often cross St. Clair at Syndicate to get to and from Randolph Heights School.  Pedestrians and children on bicycles have been hit. The worst intersections are Syndicate, Albert and Saratoga.

Is the City going to wait for a tragedy before it acts?  Is this the way our city leaders want this neighborhood to be?

Here are some solutions:

1. Put in flashing pedestrian lights like the ones on Snelling at Macalester College. These are very effective at getting drivers’ attention.

2. Enforce parking restrictions near intersections to increase visibility for cars trying to turn onto St. Clair.

3. Put 4-way stop signs at Syndicate, Albert and Saratoga.

It is time for the city of St. Paul to take action to protect our pedestrians.

Meg Arnosti, St. Paul

Just too costly

After being grounded for most of the summer because of a new knee, I finally got back on my bike. First ride was on Summit Avenue from Dale Street to the river and back on a weekday, 8:30-9:45. (I saw only one other cyclist.) Given the financial stresses on the City budget, I just don’t see spending millions of dollars on the proposed bike lane “improvements.” The first priority must be new pavement curb-to-curb; the existing surface is riddled with cracks and holes that make cycling dangerous. I could support restriping to move the bike lane curbside with the parking lane separating cyclists from motorists. The current proposal is just too costly.

Ellen T. Brown, St. Paul

Contradicting its own rules?

St. Paul’s plan for rebuilding Summit Avenue contradicts its rules for street reconstruction. The City of St. Paul repeatedly states “Summit Avenue hasn’t been reconstructed since Taft was President (1909 -1913)” as justification for ramming through the unwanted Summit Avenue Regional Trail. Let’s look at the facts.

The City’s standard for the “life of a street” before it needs evaluation for reconstruction is 65 years.

The City’s recently published workplan for Summit Avenue is to “rebuild” from the Mississippi River Boulevard to Fairview Avenue in 2028 (Segment 1) and “rebuild” from Fairview Avenue  to Hamline Avenue (Segment 2) in 2029.

83% of Segment 1 — from the Mississippi River Boulevard to Fairview Avenue — is not due for a rebuild until 2044 or 2054. That leaves only 17% of Segment 1 that is arguably due for evaluation for reconstruction.

Snelling Avenue to Lexington Parkway recently received a complete mill and overlay, and is in the best condition of any segment on Summit Avenue.

Analysis of the city’s 2022 CAD drawings of Summit Avenue shows that the stretch from Lexington Avenue to the Cathedral is where approximately 44 percent of the street meets the criterion of “more than 65 years from the last reconstruction.” Yet this segment is not even on the city’s workplan.

Since the city’s driving mantra is Summit’s need for reconstruction, why is the city moving first with a section that has the least need for reconstruction Furthermore, why should tax dollars pay for tearing up 100% of a segment that needs only a 17% adjustment? Why is the City tearing up the segment of Summit that’s in the best condition of any? And, why is the section where 44% is eligible not even on the work plan?

The city asks us to believe they are dutifully adhering to sound principles in road construction while publishing a plan that contradicts those principles.

Marilyn L. Bach, St. Paul

Fill the ranks, St. Paul and Minneapolis

Both the Minneapolis and St. Paul Police Departments are inadequately staffed at 80% of the number authorized. The goal should be staffing to the point at which the officer assigned to a “beat” knows who the “bad actors” are, to include drug dealers, gang members, sexual predators and, yes,  those seriously mentally disturbed. It is hard to imagine that in the case of the Minneapolis Annunciation Church mass shooting, there were not red flags from family, friends, neighbors, employers, etc. that would have been picked by an officer who knows the neighborhood, prompting a request to a judge to view his social media accounts, search his home, prohibit him from buying weapons, and authorize mandatory mental health treatment.

Why are police departments not staffed to this level?  A lack of commitment from elected officials, judges and prosecutors. We need to do better. We can do better, to prevent these tragedies from happening.

Richard M. Ryan, Woodbury

Illegal parking at the Farmers Market

What are citizens to do when ignored by city leaders?

Illegal parking at the Farmers Market is not being prevented or consistently enforced by the city. Parking in explicit no parking zones, violating/misusing 15-minute load zones and blocking alleys/garages happens every Saturday and Sunday morning.

Parking within 5 feet of an alley violates city ordinance. When a vehicle is parked too close to an alley, we literally can’t see traffic until we pull into the lane of traffic. It’s dangerous.

Traffic Geometrics was asked to provide signage to prevent this violation. They refused. Their contention is an alley that has over 100 residential parking spots and is a half a block from the Farmers Market should be treated the same by the city as a service alley in a remote part of the city.  It has forced residents to have to pay for city signs to be installed on a public street to try to provide some safety.

The city council president and the police have been provided dozens of pictures and videos of these violations dating to last year, including a video of 14 vehicles parked on Fourth Street between Wacouta and Broadway, blocking the lane of traffic for two blocks.

I’ve emailed the mayor’s office asking questions about the city’s response. It was unanswered. I followed up. It was unanswered.

Questions and calls to the police and council president largely go unanswered. The best we can hope for is sporadic enforcement from the Parking Enforcement Unit. Illegally parked vehicles have been reported to the police and hours later the vehicle remains and no ticket has been issued.

I understand illegal parking isn’t the biggest problem this city faces. But, the leaders responsible for its enforcement and engagement to fix this issue have known about the problem for over a year. City ordinance is routinely allowed to be violated to the detriment of residents. If leaders feel comfortable ignoring this, what else will they selectively ignore?

Ryan Radunzel, St. Paul

Minnesota doesn’t need one of these

The Pioneer Press reported an MPR story on Aug. 21 about ICE detention centers in other states which have been dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, Deportation Depot, Cornhusker Clink. People have joked about these centers. But the inhumane conditions suffered and the human tragedies playing out within those walls deserve respect. The immigrants who are detained have lives and families which are being pulled apart.

Core Civic, the owner of Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, MN, is “aggressively pursuing” a contract with ICE. Minnesota doesn’t need to have one of these detention centers.

Richard W. Podvin, Roseville

A ‘far-right agenda’? Highly misleading

An article in the Aug. 24 paper — “Far-right agenda is mainstream in Trump’s second term” — is highly misleading and in some cases totally inaccurate. One blatant example is the repeating “good people on both sides” quotes from Trump. The article suggests he was referring to neo-Nazi activists and leftist protestors. That lie has been debunked many times. He was referring to activists on both sides regarding Confederate monuments. In addition, the article suggests that the Trump administration is racist without a shred of evidence. The article suggests Trump has hired several people with racist or antisemitic remarks and does not support it with facts. The whole article suggests that all the current administration is doing is far-right agenda, but the article almost totally focuses on immigration. Some 70% of the public are against illegal immigration, so the article seems to suggest that 70% of the people are far-right, obviously not true. In total, the article makes no definition of what is far right and what is mainstream. I do not believe that eliminating taxes on overtime, tips and social security is far-right. Eliminating fraud and waste is not far-right either. I could go on and on, but typical of NY Times writers, it paints a picture that is very misleading at best or a total lie at worst. It would seem that the paper would do a service to their customers if they would actually print balanced reporting.

Ron Wobbeking, Hastings

The heresy of rational discussion

Michael Bloomberg added quite the twist to the political divide so many like him stand behind, constantly chastising us for unbelieving in whatever it is we are supposed to believe in (“RFK Jr. is sabotaging President Trump’s health legacy,” Aug. 24). In this case it’s mRNA vaccines. He suggested we should now blame RFK Jr. for sabotaging Donald Trump’s presidential legacy. When exactly did the medical and pharmaceutical communities become so sacrosanct that we are forbidden to question them?

In the age of Trump we get but more Trump, the increasing masses who think any rational discussion is an act of heresy. It’s completely irrational and yet another weekly essay proves it rules American politics from both sides.

Julia Bell, St. Paul

A recipe for injustice

The Aug. 24 article titled, “Trump’s promise of revenge: He’s making good” contains the boldface subtitle, “Trump as ‘chief law enforcement officer.’ ” I appreciate those single quotation marks around those last four words because actual law enforcement officers are bound by rules. The official manual for federal prosecutors, which is available online at www.justice.gov, contains the following section:

9-27.260 – Initiating and Declining Charges – Impermissible Considerations

In determining whether to commence or recommend prosecution or take any other action against a person, the attorney for the government may not be influenced by: …

2.  The attorney’s own personal feelings concerning the person … or

3.   The possible effect of the decision on the attorney’s own professional or personal circumstances …

In addition, federal prosecutors and agents may never make a decision regarding an investigation or prosecution, or select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges, for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.

Despite Mr. Trump’s claim to be the “chief law enforcement officer” of the United States, I do not believe he is equipped by training or temperament for that job.  Rather he should leave prosecutorial decisions to the Attorney General of the United States or that person’s subordinates, who should follow the above rules.

In the article a spokesperson for the president is quoted as saying, “Joe Biden weaponized his administration to target political opponents — most famously, President Trump.  (He) is restoring law and order.” Tit for tat is not law and order, it is not justice, it is a recipe for injustice and chaos.

Richard Murray, St. Paul

Why aren’t these people immediately guilty?

Even though President Trump never said he was going after his political enemies, this will not stop the Pioneer Press from delivering another false narrative in Sunday’s newspaper.

Let’s go over two of the enemies listed as selective memory seems to be the media’s MO.

Letitia James while running for State AG of New York vowed as one her campaign promises to “Get Trump”. This is the classic campaign promise that should not come from a state AG’s mouth. Her bogus land inflation price to a bank scheme that suffered no financial loss to that financial institution wasn’t even a legiimate charge. Her standards would require every property seller to be charged with what she accused Trump of. Yet the media salivated as they believed this would be the one that would bring down the current president. And Ms. James finds herself in an alleged mortgage fraud case.

And then there’s Adam Schiff. Throughout the Russia hoax fiasco, Schiff went on MSNBC and CNN and said he had the smoking gun that would bring down the president. He never revealed what that was and now finds himself in an alleged mortgage fraud case.

Why isn’t the press finding these people immediately guilty like they did with Trump? It’s because they have a lot to lose with their political bedmates that they have backed for decades. The honesty of the press has long since passed away.

Thomas McMahon, White Bear Lake

What’s the plan?

Let’s see, we currently have National Guard troops supposedly wiping out crime in Washington D.C. Trump has said he wants to use armed troops and various masked government agents in other cities as well, particularly those in blue states. OK, it seems kind of weird, expensive and of little value. But, we get used to it.

Then comes election time in November of 2026. Trump has tried mightily to end the use of mail-in ballots. If people can mail their ballots they can’t be hassled or intimidated at the polls. But, the Constitution has tripped Trump up on the mail-in ballots. So, he’ll have to improvise.

Hey, those armed troops could just empty the mailboxes and throw out the ballots since the president says the ballots are “corrupt.” Yeah, now we see why he put troops in the blue cities in 2025.

I guess I really shouldn’t blame Trump. He’s not smart enough to plan that out. Luckily  he has Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation. They’re very good at this.

K.C. Simmer, Woodbury

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How do we stop this?

The Columbine school shooting of 1999 left 14 dead. Comments: Never Again. Guns don’t kill, people do. Thoughts and prayers. No words for this! Unimaginable. We’ll get through this together.

Never again? Since then more than a quarter of a century has passed and there have been at least 50 school shootings. Something is terribly wrong here and yet our politicians continue to pay homage to the National Rifle Association because they fear losing their jobs while our students continue to lose their lives. Never again? With Wednesday’s shooting and killing it’s time to ask if there is something wrong with us as a nation, something that needs to be fixed. This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. We say never again. We send thoughts and prayers. We can’t find words for it, which we shouldn’t. We the people need to act because obviously our political leaders haven’t and won’t.

It’s time to stop with all the platitudes and really try to figure out what is going on. How do we stop this? Why in America? What do we need to change? Instead of everyone picking sides and spouting political nonsense, let’s put our heads together and put an end to this insanity. We are the greatest nation on Earth. We can send people to walk on the moon so we should be able to solve this. It’s past time for saying we can get through this together. It’s high time to say together let’s end this.

Dennis Fendt, Oakdale

Do we have a chance to see a winning game?

I am a senior citizen who has been a Twins baseball fan since 1961. I attend a few games each year and watch almost all the other games on TV.  In my opinion, about a month ago the owners of the Twins made a terrible decision.  Instead of trading three or four players, they traded 10 players.  Did the owners really need the money? Did they even think about their customers who have been supporting them by going to games every year?

My grandson Skylar, who is 21, has been going to games with me since he was 7. At his first game he got to run around the bases after the game. He scored his first pretend run. Now he also watches some of the games on TV with me. In addition, my granddaughter Rayne goes to a couple of games with us. We have a family of nine going to the Twins and New York game on Sept. 16.  Do we have a chance to see a winning game?

DeAnne Cherry, Woodbury

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Artificial intelligence chatbot makers OpenAI and Meta say they are adjusting how their chatbots respond to teenagers and other users asking questions about suicide or showing signs of mental and emotional distress.

OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, said Tuesday it is preparing to roll out new controls enabling parents to link their accounts to their teen’s account.

Parents can choose which features to disable and “receive notifications when the system detects their teen is in a moment of acute distress,” according to a company blog post that says the changes will go into effect this fall.

Regardless of a user’s age, the company says its chatbots will redirect the most distressing conversations to more capable AI models that can provide a better response.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

The announcement comes a week after the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT coached the California boy in planning and taking his own life earlier this year.

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, also said it is now blocking its chatbots from talking with teens about self-harm, suicide, disordered eating and inappropriate romantic conversations, and instead directs them to expert resources. Meta already offers parental controls on teen accounts.

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A study published last week in the medical journal Psychiatric Services found inconsistencies in how three popular artificial intelligence chatbots responded to queries about suicide.

The study by researchers at the RAND Corporation found a need for “further refinement” in ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. The researchers did not study Meta’s chatbots.

The study’s lead author, Ryan McBain, said Tuesday that “it’s encouraging to see OpenAI and Meta introducing features like parental controls and routing sensitive conversations to more capable models, but these are incremental steps.”

“Without independent safety benchmarks, clinical testing, and enforceable standards, we’re still relying on companies to self-regulate in a space where the risks for teenagers are uniquely high,” said McBain, a senior policy researcher at RAND.

By SAM McNEIL, Associated Press

LUXEMBOURG (AP) — NATO is working to thwart Russian jamming of civilian flights, said the alliance’s chief on Tuesday, two days after a jet carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen lost its ability to use GPS navigation midair in Bulgarian airspace.

The plane landed safely on Sunday, but Bulgarian authorities said they suspected Russia was behind the interference.

“It is taken very seriously,” said NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte during a news conference in Luxembourg with the duchy’s prime minister and defense minister. “I can assure you that we are working day and night to counter this, to prevent it, and to make sure that they will not do it again.” He did not elaborate.

From left, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Luc Frieden and Luxembourg’s Defense Minister Yuriko Backes address a media conference in Luxembourg, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil)

Neither Russia nor von der Leyen has commented publicly on the incident. The EU and NATO are separate entities with different sets of member countries, but Europe’s security is a vital issue for both.

Rutte said the jamming was part of a complex campaign by Russia of “hybrid threats” like cutting of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, a plot to assassinate a German industrialist, and a cyberattack on the National Heath Service in the United Kingdom.

“I have always hated the words hybrid because it sounds so cuddly, but hybrid is exactly this jamming of commercial airplanes, with potentially disastrous effects,” he said.

The Associated Press has plotted almost 80 incidents on a map tracking a campaign of disruption across Europe blamed on Russia, which the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service has described as “staggeringly reckless.” Since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents, ranging from vandalism to arson and attempted assassination.

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The interference from Russia includes jamming and spoofing. Jamming means a strong radio signal overwhelms communications, whereas spoofing misleads a receiver into thinking it is in a different location or in a past or future time period.

“The threat from the Russians is increasing every day. Let’s not be naive about it: this might also involve one day Luxembourg, it might come to the Netherlands,” Rutte said. “With the latest Russian missile technology for example, the difference now between Lithuania on the front line and Luxembourg, The Hague or Madrid is five to 10 minutes. That’s the time it takes this missile to reach these parts of Europe.”

The whole continent was under “direct threat from the Russians,” he warned. “We are all on the eastern flank now, whether you live in London or Tallinn.”

Bulgaria will not investigate the jamming of von der Leyen’s plane because “such things happen every day,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said Tuesday.

He said it was one of the side effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine and had occurred across Europe.

Associated Press writer Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria contributed to this report.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban said the death toll from a major earthquake in eastern Afghanistan passed 1,400 on Tuesday, with more than 3,000 people injured, as the United Nations warned of an exponential rise in casualties.

The figures provided by Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid were just for the province of Kunar.

Sunday night’s powerful 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck several provinces, causing extensive damage. It flattened villages and trapped people under the rubble of homes constructed mostly of mud bricks and wood that were unable to withstand the shock.

Rough terrain is hampering rescue and relief efforts, forcing Taliban authorities to air-drop dozens of commandos to evacuate the injured from places where helicopters cannot land.

Aid agency Save the Children said one of its teams walked for over 12 miles (19 kilometers) to reach villages cut off by rock falls, carrying medical equipment on their backs with the help of community members.

An aftershock of 5.2 close to the epicenter of Sunday’s quake rattled the area on Tuesday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. There were no immediate reports of damage.

Indrika Ratwatte, the U.N.’s resident coordinator for Afghanistan, said rescuers are scrambling in a “race against time” to reach the mountainous and remote area hit. In a media briefing in Geneva Tuesday, he warned of a surge in casualty numbers.

“We cannot afford to forget the people of Afghanistan who are facing multiple crises, multiple shocks, and the resilience of the communities has been saturated,” Ratwatte said, while urging the international community to step forward.

“These are life and death decisions while we race against time to reach people,” he said.

It is the third major earthquake since the Taliban seized power in 2021, and the latest crisis to beset Afghanistan, which is reeling from deep cuts to aid funding, a weak economy, and millions of people forcibly returned from Iran and Pakistan.

Ratwatte said that when the walls of wooden and mud homes collapse, the roof falls on the occupants, causing injury or death. While the area was low-density, the earthquake struck when everybody was asleep.

“If you were to model it based on what has happened before, clearly there’s no question that the casualty rate is going to be rather exponential,” he said.

Aid is trickling in to help victims

The Taliban government, which is only recognized by Russia, has appealed for assistance from the international community and the humanitarian sector. However, help for Afghanistan is in short supply due to competing global crises and reduced aid budgets in donor countries.

The U.K. has pledged £1 million ($1.3 million) to be split between humanitarian agencies rather than going to the Taliban government, which it does not recognize.

The European Union is sending 130 tons of emergency supplies and providing 1 million euros ($1.16 million). Other countries, including the United Arab Emirates, India and China have pledged disaster relief support.

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But earthquake victims are bearing the brunt of opposition to the Taliban government, especially their restrictive policies on Afghan girls and women, including a ban on them working for NGOs. Donor countries had already scaled back their funding and, earlier this year, the U.S. gutted aid to Afghanistan, partly due to concerns that money was going to the Taliban administration.

Kate Carey, the deputy head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Afghanistan, said more than 420 health facilities had closed or were suspended due to the “massive reduction” in funding, with 80 of them in the eastern region, the heart of Sunday’s quake.

“The consequence is that the remaining facilities are overwhelmed, have insufficient supplies and personnel, and are not as close to the affected populations as the more local facilities at a time when providing emergency trauma care is needed in the first 24 to 72 hours of the earthquake response,” said Carey.

Taliban authorities have set up a camp in Kunar to organize supplies and emergency aid. There are also two centers to coordinate the transportation of the injured, the burial of the dead, and the rescue of survivors.

Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.