Minnesota News Briefs: Jablonski beginning to move body parts

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MINNEAPOLIS -- While rehabilitating at the Courage Center Tuesday, paralyzed high school hockey player Jack Jablonski was able to move some of his body parts.

According to Jablonski's CaringBridge Website, he was able to move his left leg and ankle slightly. He also wiggled his middle finger. There was also another first for Jablonski: He took his first steps in five months. He was strapped into a harness so that he could work on the treadmill. The Benilde-St. Margaret's sophomore was injured during a hockey game last December.

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The White House has released more information about President Obama's scheduled Minnesota stop on Friday. The president will visit Honeywell's Automation and Control Solutions headquarters in the Twin Cities suburb of Golden Valley. He'll urge Congress to pass legislation creating a Veterans Job Corps to help Afghanstan and Iraq vets get jobs as police officers and fightfighters as well as other jobs serving their communities. The president will also headline some Democratic fundraisers during his visit.

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The Minnesota State Patrol is on the scene of a serious crash on Interstate-94 near the Cretin Avenue exit in St. Paul involving a school bus and passenger vehicle. Lieutenant Eric Roeske says the accident happened in the westbound lanes just before 9:30am. He says there were no students on the bus at the time. Roeske says there is at least one serious injury, possibly fatal.

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A Minnesota man was killed in a hang-gliding crash in Michigan Tuesday afternoon. 53-year-old Timothy Gossfeld of Chanhassen was taking part in the Region-6 Glider competition at Ionia County airport when his glider crashed into trees on the east side of the airport property. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The manager of the contest says pilots will decide later today whether to continue the competition. Organizers say two other pilots have already left the event.

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Water levels on the Mississippi are rising due to recent rain, prompting the Army Corps of Engineers to close the Minneapolis locks to all traffic. Spokeswoman Shannon Bauer says there's a lot of debris coming down from flooded areas to the north. She expects commercial traffic to resume along upper and lower St. Anthony Falls around June 8th. Bauer adds some reservoirs in northern Minnesota like Pokegama, Gull Lake and potentially Sandy Lake have been rising pretty fast, and cabin owners on those lakes might want to get their docks out of the water. Gull Lake, for example, rose nearly a foot over normal summer levels after the area received almost eight inches of rain in the last week-and-a-half.

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There's still no sign of a Fergus Falls man missing for more than a week. Thirty-three-year-old Scott Burris was last seen May 21st and his van was found abandoned near the town of Elizabeth. Air and ground searches have been unsuccessful. His father, Roger Burris, says he doesn't have a clue where his son may be and asks anyone with information to call the sheriff's department. Burris says his son was recently working in the North Dakota oil fields but doesn't think he would have gone back without telling him. The Otter Tail County Sheriff's Office reports a small amount of blood found in Burris' van was sent to the BCA lab for testing.

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A rural Sauk Centre man died in a farm accident Tuesday afternoon. 75-year-old Albert Meyer was pinned between the frame and box of a rock wagon in Melrose Township. Emergency responders say he died at the scene.

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A Red Lake man accused of brutally attacking a man with an axe handle has pleaded guilty to assault. Forty-seven-year-old Joseph Howard Junior admitted that he assaulted a Grand Rapids man on January 13th at a Redby residence. The victim face's was severely beaten and lacerated and his left eye was so badly damaged it had to be surgically removed. Officers later found a bloody axe handle behind the clothes dryer in Howard's home. He faces up to ten years in federal prison at his sentence hearing.

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Fire crews have the Verso Paper Mill fire 95-percent contained, but still can't get to the seat of the fire because of structural problems with the building. Sartell Fire Captain Jerry Raymond says they hope to make significant progress today after calling in a structural engineer. Raymond says they plan to enter the building again, but may have to call in a company to shore up trusses and support beams. He says if that doesn't work, heavy equipment may be needed to tear away the wreckage and get to the fire's origin. He says it could take two to five days to get the blaze extinguished. Raymond says it's expected to be one of the largest dollar losses in central Minnesota history.

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A couple of well-known Minnesota businesses face tests in the coming weeks and months. With federal regulators conducting "stress tests" on large- and medium-sized banks, some analysts say Wayzata-based TCF could be at risk, due to losses in the first quarter of this year. On the retail side, Wal-Mart has reportedly taken out ads in markets where Richfield-based Best Buy closed 50 of its stores. The newspaper ads in the Twin Cities and Rochester asks potential shoppers if their Best Buy just closed, reminding them of Wal-Mart's prices and stores.

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Governor Dayton was at a groundbreaking ceremony at The Gerdau Steel Mill in St. Paul this morning. The mill will replace the continuous caster at its plant near Pigs Eye Lake. Officials say the investment to boost capacity is valued at $50-million dollars, resulting in an extension of a contract with its union workers through 2015.

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Authorities in Beltrami County says a burning cross that a woman found in a yard near Bemidji contained racist writings. The woman says she was in her home early Friday when she looked outside and found the burning cross propped up against a tree. The woman ran outside to douse the fire and then ran back inside to call police. The woman believes her family members were targeted because of their race. She is white, but her two adult children are mixed-race with a black father.

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Instead of waiting for extreme weather to hit, commodity traders are already pumping up the price of one food item in Minnesota grocery stores. The price of orange juice is climbing as investors are concerned about Tropical Storm Beryl and the hurricane season that starts on Friday. Commodities traders sent juice prices climbing more than two-percent to their highest levels in two weeks. Juice futures have been falling sharply all year and are down more than 30 percent since January. But now, investors anticipate an active hurricane season, which could hurt crop production.

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Stearns County officials are due to release more information today after a man died in a farm accident Tuesday afternoon. The 75-year old was pinned between the frame and box of a rock wagon in Melrose Township Emergency responders say he died at the scene.

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A young driver suffered minor injuries after his car collided with a school bus on Tuesday. It happened in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park as the elementary school bus was bringing children home. No one else was hurt. Reports say the car's driver was a teen who pulled out in front of the bus, causing the crash.

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A 34-year-old Hammond man is the fifth person to die in an ATV accident this year in Minnesota Wabasha County investigators say Philip Riley and two others were on the machine Friday when it rolled into the Zumbro River. Riley was trapped under the ATV while the two others escaped with minor injuries. The DNR's Mike Hammer says most ATV's are designed to carry one person only and more than that makes them even more unstable than they are to begin with. Hammer says the machines can weigh up one-thousand pounds and a rollover is almost certain to cause serious injury, if not death.

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An Anoka County man is in critical condition with a massive chest wound from fireworks that misfired on Saturday. Investigators say the unidentified 31-year-old victim was preparinng to launch fireworks from a homemade mortar tube when a projectile blasted out of the tube's back side and penetrated the man's chest. He was rushed to the hospital where surgeons called in the police bomb squad to defuse the live round. Anoka County authorities say the firework apparently tore open the man's heart.

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Winona residents concerned about the impact of the frac sand industry on the area are held a demonstration and rally this afternoon. Protestors marched from the Highway-43 bridge to Winona City Hall and demonstrators will carry 100 pounds of frac sand in a symbolic protest. Group members plan to call on city leaders to overturn a recent decision that allowed expanded frac sand handling and shipping at the Winona port. They claim that decision will allow the port to sidestep the Winona City Council's one-year moratorium on expanded frac sand operations in the city.

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Keeping the proposed voter photo-ID constitutional amendment off the ballot this fall is the goal of a lawsuit was announced this morning by the American Civil Liberties Union, League of Women Voters, Jewish Community Action and Common Cause. The groups contend the wording of the ballot question misleads voters about what would actually change if the amendment passes -- specifically, new provisional ballots, plus new requirements they warn could disenfranchise some Minnesotans. Carleton College political science Professor Steven Schier says for opponents' lawsuit to be successful the court would have to rule that those issues are so important they have to be in the ballot language -- which he says would make it an unusually long ballot question. Schier says most of the time in other states the courts have *not* sided with opponents of voter photo-ID.

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Here are the winning numbers from the Minnesota State Lottery for Tuesday, May 29th, 2012. The Daily Three: 5-3-6. Northstar Cash: 17-18-28-29-30.

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