Kickoff to Summer at the Fair, the popular preview of the Great Minnesota Get-Together, is returning for the fourth year.

Born during the pandemic, the popular event is now a tradition.

This year, it will run from Thursday, May 23 through Sunday, May 26 of Memorial Day weekend, the Minnesota State Fair announced on Tuesday. Advance discount tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. on Friday, April 5.

Tickets, valid for specific days, are $13 each when purchased in advance online (fees and taxes are included in that price); tickets can also be purchased for $16 at the gate via a QR code.

That’s a 50-cent increase from the 2023 Kickoff prices.

Children ages four and under get in free and do not require a ticket.

The four-day event, held rain or shine, includes food, brews, music, shopping, free parking and family fun at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. Attendance is limited each day so guests can have space to stroll and savor the experience.

New to Kickoff this year will be the 2023 State Fair fan favorite, the Amish doughnuts from Peachey’s Baking Company.

The Amish doughnuts of Peachy’s Baking Company will be available at the 2024 Kickoff to Summer at the Fair. (Courtesy of the Minnesota State Fair)

Other new offerings will include inflatable axe throwing by the Northern Star Council – Boy Scouts of America; the Arcade with dozens of coin-operated arcade games; Twin Cities’ food vendor Trickster Tacos; merchandise vendors including Always Northern Permanent Jewelry and Roots and Shoots & Leaves, a mobile houseplant shop based out of St. Paul.

There will also be ASL interpretation during select Trivia Mafia and Stroll Through History guided tours on Saturday, May 25.

Returning to the Kickoff will be nearly 40 popular State Fair food and beverage vendors, including Sweet Martha’s chocolate chip cookies, State Fair specialty beers (including Mini Donut Beer); the Giant Slide and Mini Golf-On-A-Stick by Can Can Wonderland.

Visit mnstatefair.org/kickoff-to-summer/ for more event details and to purchase tickets.

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By LEA SKENE (Associated Press)

BALTIMORE (AP) — A tugboat pushing a fuel barge was the first vessel to use an alternate channel to bypass the wreckage of Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, which had blocked traffic along the vital port’s main shipping channel.

The barge supplying jet fuel to the Department of Defense left late Monday and was destined for Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base, though officials have said the temporary channel is open primarily to vessels that are helping with the cleanup effort. Some barges and tugs that have been stuck in the Port of Baltimore since the collapse are also scheduled to pass through the channel.

Officials said they’re working on a second channel on the southwest side of the main channel that will allow for deeper draft vessels, but they didn’t say when that might open.

Gov. Wes Moore is set Tuesday to visit one of two centers that the Small Business Administration opened in the area to help companies get loans to assist them with losses caused by the disruption of the bridge collapse.

In Annapolis, a hearing is scheduled Tuesday for a bill authorizing the use of state reserves to provide financial assistance to port employees who are out of work because of the bridge collapse. Lawmakers are working to pass the bill quickly in the last week of their legislative session, which ends Monday.

Crews are undertaking the complicated work of removing steel and concrete at the site of the bridge’s deadly collapse after a container ship lost power and crashed into a supporting column. On Sunday, dive teams surveyed parts of the bridge and checked the ship, and workers in lifts used torches to cut above-water parts of the twisted steel superstructure.

Authorities believe six workers plunged to their deaths in the collapse, including two whose bodies were recovered last week. Two other workers survived.

Moore, a Democrat, said at a Monday afternoon news conference that his top priority is recovering the four remaining bodies, followed by reopening shipping channels. He said that he understands the urgency but that the risks are significant. Crews have described the mangled steel girders of the fallen bridge as “chaotic wreckage,” he said.

“What we’re finding is it is more complicated than we hoped for initially,” said U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath.

Meanwhile, the ship remains stationary, and its 21 crew members remain on board for now, officials said.

President Joe Biden is expected to visit the collapse site Friday to meet with state and local officials and get at federal response efforts.

The bridge fell as the cargo ship Dali lost power March 26 shortly after leaving Baltimore on its way to Sri Lanka. The ship issued a mayday alert, which allowed just enough time for police to stop traffic, but not enough to save a roadwork crew filling potholes on the bridge.

The Dali is managed by Synergy Marine Group and owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd., both of Singapore. Danish shipping giant Maersk chartered the Dali.

Synergy and Grace Ocean filed a court petition Monday seeking to limit their legal liability, a routine but important procedure for cases litigated under U.S. maritime law. A federal court in Maryland will ultimately decide who is responsible and how much they owe.

The filing seeks to cap the companies’ liability at roughly $43.6 million. It estimates that the vessel itself is valued at up to $90 million and was owed over $1.1 million in income from freight. The estimate also deducts two major expenses: at least $28 million in repair costs and at least $19.5 million in salvage costs.

Officials are trying to determine how to rebuild the major bridge, which was completed in 1977. It carried Interstate 695 around southeast Baltimore and became a symbol of the city’s working-class roots and maritime culture.

Congress is expected to consider aid packages to help people who lose jobs or businesses because of the prolonged closure of the Port of Baltimore. The port handles more cars and farm equipment than any other U.S. facility.

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press journalists Brian Witte in Annapolis; Tassanee Vegpongsa in Baltimore; Sarah Brumfield in Washington; Michael Kunzelman in College Park, Maryland; and Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho.

BY: EMMANUEL ROY

Forty years of failed leadership, corruption, and sheer incompetence have turned Haiti into a failed state controlled by criminal gangs financed by Haitian businessmen.

While Haiti burns, West Africa is experiencing the emergence of young, vibrant, and progressive leadership. A new axis of resistance is spanning the Sahel region of Africa, from west to east, from Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger to Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, and now Senegal; these young leaders, which include Ibrahim Traore, 36, of Burkina Faso, Aby Ahmed, 46, of Ethiopia, Andry Rajoelina, 48, of Madagascar, as well as Julius Malema, 44, of South Africa are part of the new, young Pan-African generation focused on sovereignty, and the fight against corruption, exploitation and incompetence. This young generation is not only reclaiming its independence from its former colonial masters but also divorcing itself from the politics of the past.

As Haiti struggles to create a transitional government to reclaim control of the country from criminal gangs, it can learn some essential lessons from Burkina Faso and Senegal – a complete breakaway from traditional politicians to a new emerging generation of progressive leaders.
Four weeks ago, criminal gangs took over the local international airport in Port-au-Prince and the local prison, freeing over four thousand prisoners, and threatened a civil war if the sitting prime minister Ariel Henry were to return. Henry was on a trip to Kenya to sign an agreement with Kenyan President William Ruto to allow a thousand Kenyan police officers to come to Haiti.

CARICOM, a regional Caribbean organization under the dicta of the international community, has been working with local political parties (Lavalas, PHTK, Pitit Dessalines, RED, and others) to develop a negotiated power-sharing agreement. Two weeks later, they devised a Presidential Council comprising seven voting members and two observers. This Presidential Council of former politicians from the same political parties that led Haiti to where it is today was dead on arrival.

From the Haitian Diaspora on all seven continents to Haiti, the people overwhelmingly rejected the Presidential Council in favor of one President from the nation’s Highest Court. Article 149 of the 1987 Haitian Constitution stipulates that the most senior judge on the bench shall become President in the absence of a president. The Presidential Council is, therefore, illegal both in form and substance and should not be installed.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry is at an undisclosed location in Puerto Rico and has yet to sign power over to the Presidential Council. Meanwhile, three groups of lawyers in Haiti hired by the Haitian Diaspora have filed lawsuits in Port-au-Prince against the Presidential Council, Caricom, and Prime Minister Henry, seeking to enjoin him and the government from transferring power to the Presidential Council.
The Biden administration seems to favor the Presidential Council. Still, the Haitian Diaspora has provided the White House with Plan B, which includes appointing a judge from Haiti’s Highest Court to lead the transitional government, a choice applauded by the people of Haiti.

The Haitian Diaspora is flexing its political muscle for the first time in history. First, the Diaspora organized the Louisiana Unity Summit in January 2022 at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which brought over 11 Haitian groups together to negotiate a settlement. After three days of negotiations, the delegates of these groups selected Fritz Jean, a former Governor of the Haiti Central Bank, as Prime Minister to lead the transitional government. As Montana’s lobbyists were pushing the seven-member Presidential Council, the Haitian Diaspora was quietly working, pushing the White House to consider a judge from Haiti’s Supreme Court.

The Presidential Council would never work, and the international community and CARICOM knew that. The Montana Accord initiated the proposal to usurp power. Given the overwhelming opposition to the Presidential Council, the Haitian Diaspora’s Plan B can save the day and move Haiti in the right direction.