St. Paul: June 27 meeting planned on future U.S. 61 improvements

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The Minnesota Department of Transportation is studying potential improvements to Minnesota 61 in St. Paul from Interstate 94 to Lower Afton Road. Prior to a scheduled resurfacing project in 2027, MnDOT is reviewing traffic volumes, crash data and turn patterns with the goal of determining what safety, mobility and accessibility improvements are needed.

MnDOT started the study in June 2023.

The study will be discussed during a community meeting, to be held in person from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on June 27 at the Battle Creek Recreation Center, 75 Winthrop St. South.

An online survey is available until July 14. For more information, visit tinyurl.com/US61Stp24.

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St. Paul: Snelling Ave to close in both directions next week between Montreal Ave. and Ford Parkway

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Snelling Avenue will close for road work in both directions between Montreal Avenue and Ford Parkway next week.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation will close the half-mile stretch of Snelling, also known as Minnesota 51, for road reconstruction beginning at 4 a.m. Monday through 10 p.m. the following Friday, June 21. Traffic will be detoured onto Montreal Avenue, Fairview Avenue and Ford Parkway. Trucks will be detoured onto Montreal, St. Paul Avenue and Cleveland Avenue. Homes on the west side of Snelling will still have street access.

Following the full closure, Snelling will be reduced to one lane in both directions in the same location for work on the east side of the avenue. The single-lane restrictions will begin June 24 and last through mid-July. Trucks will be detoured.

Additional traffic restrictions will begin in mid-July.

Crews are redesigning a half-mile section of the four-lane Snelling Avenue to two lanes between Ford Parkway and Montreal Avenue, including a center median with left-turn lanes at the median breaks. A new 10-foot-wide multi-use trail will be installed along the east side of the avenue.

The traffic signal at Snelling and Montreal will be replaced. Work is expected to wrap up by late August.

For more information, visit tinyurl.com/Snelling2024.

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White House preps ‘dreamers’ celebration while President Biden eyes new benefits for immigrants

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By SEUNG MIN KIM and STEPHEN GROVES (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will host a White House event next week celebrating an Obama-era directive that offered deportation protections for young undocumented immigrants, as his own administration prepares potential new benefits for others without legal status but with long-standing ties in the United States.

White House officials are closing in on a plan that would tap Biden’s executive powers to shield spouses of U.S. citizens without legal status from deportation, offer them work permits and ease their path toward permanent residency and eventually American citizenship, according to five people with knowledge of the deliberations.

The people said those actions could be unveiled as early as next week, although a White House official stressed Thursday that no final decisions have been made on what Biden will announce, if anything. As of earlier this week, Biden had not been presented with the proposal for his final approval, adding to the uncertainty for the timing of any announcement. The president is currently in Italy participating in the Group of Seven summit of the world’s wealthiest democracies.

But Biden telegraphed last week as he rolled out his directive to crack down on asylum claims at the border — a move that has infuriated immigrant-rights groups and many Democratic lawmakers — that he would be announcing other actions more to the advocates’ liking.

“Today, I have spoken about what we need to do to secure the border,” Biden said at the June 4 event at the White House. “In the weeks ahead — and I mean the weeks ahead — I will speak to how we can make our immigration system more fair and more just.”

To protect the spouses of Americans, the administration is expected to use a process called “parole-in-place.” It not only offers deportation protections and work permits to qualifying immigrants but also removes a legal obstacle that prevents them from getting on a path to a green card, and eventually, U.S. citizenship.

That power has already been used for other groups of immigrants, such as members of the U.S. military or their family members who lack legal status.

For Biden’s actions, White House officials were narrowing in on a plan that would offer parole in place for spouses of Americans who have been here for at least five or 10 years, according to the people briefed on the deliberations. The people were granted anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.

The immigrant advocacy group FWD.us estimates that there are roughly 1.1 million immigrants without legal status married to Americans. However, depending on how the Biden administration writes the proposal, the actual universe of people who could qualify for the president’s plan is likely far smaller.

Advocates were also lobbying the White House to include benefits for immigrants lacking legal status who provide caregiving roles for American family members, according to two of the people familiar with the discussions, although that provision was seen as far less likely to be enacted for now. Allowing such caregivers to apply for a so-called “cancellation of removal” would affect immigrants like family members of Americans who have specific needs or disabilities.

Amid these deliberations, the White House has invited lawmakers to an event Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, according to a person familiar with the event. The initiative was created June 15, 2012, by then-President Barack Obama to protect young immigrants who lacked legal status, often known as “dreamers.”

FDA took months to react to complaint about Abbott infant formula factory, audit finds

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By DEVI SHASTRI (AP Health Writer)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration took more than 15 months to act on a whistleblower complaint it received about conditions at an Abbott Nutrition factory that was at the center of a nationwide shortage of infant formula, a new audit shows.

The Department of Labor received the email and three days later forwarded it to an FDA address specifically for such complaints. But one of several staff members charged with managing the FDA inbox at the time “inadvertently archived” the email in February 2021, and it wasn’t found until a reporter requested it in June 2022.

The episode is one of several that led the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General to conclude in a report Thursday that the FDA’s policies and procedures to address the issues at the Abbott plant were inadequate.

The FDA took some actions and did follow-up inspections but “more could have been done leading up to the Abbott powdered infant formula recall,” the auditors wrote. The FDA needs better policies for reporting the status of complaints to senior leaders and to make sure that inspections are done quickly, the report concluded.

“The key is, moving forward, FDA should be doing better, and the American public should expect better,” Assistant Inspector General Carla Lewis said in an interview.

Several infants were hospitalized, and two died, of a rare bacterial infection after being fed the powered formula made at Abbott’s Michigan plant, the nation’s largest. The FDA shuttered the site for several months starting in February 2022, and the company recalled several lots of popular formulas including Similac, Alimentum and EleCare.

FDA inspectors eventually uncovered a host of violations at the plant, including bacterial contamination, a leaky roof and lax safety protocols, but the agency never found a direct link between the infections and the formula.

The new report also found it took 102 days for the FDA to inspect the factory after receiving a different whistleblower complaint in October 2021. In that time, the agency received two complaints — one of an illness and another of a death — among infants who ate formula from the plant, but formula samples were negative for cronobacter, the bacteria in question.

The FDA said in a statement that it agreed with the inspector general’s conclusions. In its own 2022 report, the agency acknowledged that its response was slowed by delays in processing a whistleblower complaint and factory test samples.

“It should be noted that the OIG’s evaluation represents a snapshot in time, and the FDA continues to make progress,” an FDA spokesperson said.

The FDA established a “critical foods investigator cadre, which will solely focus on the inspection and oversight of the infant formula (and other critical foods) industry,” the spokesperson said. It also started improving how it tracks hard-copy mail items, which can include complaints, the FDA said.

Dr. Steven Abrams, a pediatrics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said he agreed with the report’s recommendations, which include that Congress should give the FDA the power to require manufacturers report any test showing infant formula contamination, even if the product doesn’t leave the factory.

“Like anything else, there were mistakes made. But the government is working very hard, including the FDA. It’s fixing the gaps that existed,” Abrams said. “People have to be comfortable with the safety of powdered infant formula.”

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AP Health Writer JoNel Aleccia contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.