Four months after finalizing a merger with Bremer Bank, Old National Bank is laying off 244 employees at the Bremer service center in Lake Elmo.

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Most of the terminations will be completed by mid-November and include accountants, cyber-security specialists, legal counsel, payroll administrators and benefits managers.

“This action is due to integration of the Bremer business following its acquisition with Old National Bank,” reads an Aug. 22 explanatory letter from an attorney for Old National Bank to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

DEED issued a notice Monday indicating all of the terminations at the 8555 Eagle Point Blvd. facility will take place by the end of 2026. The workers are not represented by a union and do not have bumping rights.

The letter gives no indication of any impacts in downtown St. Paul, where Bremer Bank has maintained a longstanding headquarters. A call to a spokesperson for Old National was not immediately returned Monday.

Lake Elmo Mayor Charles Cadenhead said city officials received a letter informing them of the layoffs.

“We are very sorry to hear about the business center closing, and we hope all the people who are out of a job are able to find a job quickly,” he said. “We hope another business takes the opportunity to use that space in Lake Elmo.”

The Old National Bancorp, which is publicly traded and maintains dual headquarters in Chicago and Evansville, Ind., announced in May it had completed a $1.4 billion merger and acquisition of St. Paul-based Bremer Financial Corp., one of the largest farm lenders in the nation.

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The privately-held Bremer was the bank-holding company for Bremer Bank, which was founded in 1943 by German immigrant Otto Bremer, whose philanthropic trust owned the financial institution. With an 11% stake in the newly-merged institution, the Otto Bremer Trust remains a minority stakeholder in Old National Bank.

The merger has elevated Old National to be the third-largest bank in the Twin Cities — as measured by deposits — and among the top 25 banking companies headquartered in the nation. Bremer maintains some 70 branches in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin.

The merger followed multiple legal disputes between the Bremer trustees and the bank board over a potential hostile takeover through the sale of voting shares. The trustees’ efforts, the first step toward positioning the bank for sale, were paused during five years of legal fighting, which came to a close through a legal settlement reached about a year ago.

Jeanne Crain, chief executive officer of Bremer Bank, stepped down from the role May 16.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released on Monday a sexually suggestive letter to Jeffrey Epstein purportedly signed by President Donald Trump, which he has denied.

Trump has said he did not write the letter or create the drawing of a curvaceous woman that surrounds the letter. He filed a $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal for a report on the alleged letter.

This is a developing story; check back for updates.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge has begun reviewing a landmark class-action settlement agreement between the artificial intelligence company Anthropic and book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its chatbot.

The company has agreed to pay authors and publishers $1.5 billion, amounting to about $3,000 for each of an estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement.

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But U.S. District Judge William Alsup has raised some questions about the details of the agreement and asked representatives of author and publisher groups to appear in court Monday to discuss.

A trio of authors — thriller novelist Andrea Bartz and nonfiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson — sued last year and now represent a broader group of writers and publishers whose books Anthropic downloaded to train its chatbot Claude.

Johnson, author of “The Feather Thief” and other books, said he planned to attend the hearing on Monday and described the settlement as the “beginning of a fight on behalf of humans that don’t believe we have to sacrifice everything on the altar of AI.”

Alsup dealt the case a mixed ruling in June, finding that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books wasn’t illegal but that Anthropic wrongfully acquired millions of books through pirate websites. Had Anthropic and the authors not agreed to settle, the case would have gone to trial in December.

By PATRICK WHITTLE, Associated Press

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Researchers have confirmed the presence of an invasive species of tick in Maine for the first time, marking the farthest northeast in the United States the pest has been discovered.

The University of Maine and state conservation officials said Monday they confirmed the presence of the Asian longhorned tick in the state in July. The tick is native to east Asia, where it is capable of spreading tickborne infections such as spotted fever.

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The tick was first confirmed in the United States in New Jersey in 2017 and it has since spread to more than 20 states, clustering mostly around the eastern third of the country. Exactly how the tick arrived in the country isn’t certain, but public health officials have said possible routes of entry including on pets and livestock.

“This discovery underscores the critical importance of continued tick surveillance in Maine,” said Griffin Dill, director of the UMaine Extension Tick Lab. “While this appears to be an isolated case, we are closely monitoring the situation and coordinating with state and federal partners.”

The tick specimen was not yet an adult and it was collected in the southern part of the state, the lab said in a statement. Follow-up surveillance didn’t turn up any additional specimens in the surrounding area, the lab said.

Asian longhorned ticks feed on numerous animals, including cattle and humans. They pose a challenge for pest control authorities because female ticks of the species can reproduce without mating, which means a single individual can create an infestation, the lab said. The specimen found in Maine could not reproduce yet because it was a juvenile, the lab said.

Research is still going on to determine the tick species’ ability to spread pathogens in Maine and elsewhere in the U.S., the lab said. Ticks are a major public health concern in the Northeastern U.S., where another species, the blacklegged or deer tick, spreads Lyme disease.

In the meantime, the public can prevent tick bites by taking steps such as conducting rigorous checks for them, avoiding overgrown vegetation and wearing protective clothing, public health officials said.