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ULUTH, Minn. – Research by a University of Minnesota Duluth professor that separates Earth’s natural climate variability from outside factors points in particular to greenhouse gas-induced climate change as the likely cause of the warming planet. The study found that natural climate variability probably has helped keep things cooler in recent years than they otherwise would have been due to the outside factors. The research, published Sunday in Science Magazine, was headed by the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Byron Steinman, an assistant professor of geological sciences with the Large Lakes Observatory and the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

DULUTH — In a competition to create a cleaner-running, quieter snowmobile, the team from the University of Minnesota Duluth reduced friction and turned heads to dominate the competition when it came to style and functionality at the 2014 Society of Automotive Engineers Clean Snowmobile Challenge. The club walked away with the BASF Corporation Award for Innovation for the first time, as it competed against 13 to 16 schools from around the United States and Canada last month.

DULUTH, Minn. -- A frigid winter is pushing Lake Superior toward a complete ice-over for the first time since 1996, though there's still a ways to go before you can skate from Duluth to the Soo Locks. Lake Superior had at least some ice across an estimated 91 percent of its surface as of Thursday, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. That compares with the 40-year average annual Lake Superior ice coverage for February of just 30 percent. George Leshkevich has been tracking Great Lakes ice for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory...

Southbound Interstate 35 in Duluth was closed Monday, and will remain closed for at least a week or more after bridge inspectors found a deteriorated piling on the roadway. The damaged piling is on one of 38 supports, or piers, for the low bridge that runs from Mesaba Avenue west to near 21st Avenue West. The piling that supports the pier “was so corroded we could see through it,” Duane Hill, chief district engineer for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, told the News Tribune.

A nationwide ammunition shortage has police departments across the country counting their bullets. It's no different in Proctor, where the Chief says he was told he'd have to wait months, even a year to get more ammo. . . . . With the Proctor Police Department in need of ammunition, the Chief sent out a call asking for help.

Former president Bill Clinton is slated to visit the University of Minnesota Duluth campus Tuesday afternoon, making his first return visit to Duluth since Nov. 4, 1994. During his prior stop in Duluth, President Clinton went for a morning jog on Skyline Parkway with then-mayor Gary Doty and stumped at UMD for Ann Wynia in her unsuccessful congressional bid. She ultimately lost that race to Sen. Rod Grams. This time around, Clinton will lend his support to the campaigns of fellow Democrats including former Congressman Rick Nolan, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and President Barack Obama. A recent Star Tribune poll showed...

Along Duluth roadside, road-striping crew delivers a final insult At least one Howard Gnesen Road traveler said she wishes someone on the road crew had taken the time to clear the way before the striping truck came through this week. At least one Howard Gnesen Road traveler said she wishes someone on the road crew had taken the time to clear the way before the striping truck came through this week. Patty Donaldson of Gnesen Township said she’d seen the dead raccoon in the roadway near South Road, north of Arrowhead Road, since early this week. She said she’s been...

A public university plans to host an event in which a self-described man displays sexually explicit images of his transition from a female to male physique. The University of Minnesota – Duluth (UMD), now infamous for funding controversial programs, plans to pay transsexual activist Loren Cameron an honorarium of $4,000 for his presentation “Transgender Images,” emails from the school’s administration sent exclusively to Campus Reform reveal.

Hours after releasing a statement saying he will seek re-election, a Minnesota state lawmaker who police say had a rest-stop liaison with a 17-year-old boy, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS he has reconsidered his position and will not be running again. He also says he will not be at the upcoming special session to discuss flood relief for the area he represents. He says he does not want to be a distraction. In his original statement released Wednesday afternoon, 56-year-old Rep. Kerry Gauthier said, the scandal "has been an obvious tragic embarrassment to me. I am sorry for the hurt this...

A Minnesota Democrat who had a rest-stop sexual encounter with a 17-year-old boy says he's still running for re-election. Democratic Rep. Kerry Gauthier told Northland's NewsCenter in Duluth on Wednesday he will let people in his district decide his political future, "rather than the political power base in St. Paul." [Gauthier also said] that he's "a better person than this incident portrayed me."

Officials from Duluth Metals Ltd. say the site of a proposed mine near Ely has more metal deposits than it expected, the Associated Press reports. Duluth Metals CEO and Chairman Christopher Dundas called the area a "monster deposit" and said metals there could be worth more than $100 billion. Duluth, a Toronto company that has its U.S. headquarters in St. Paul, plans to invest $2 billion in the mine and create hundreds of jobs through its subsidiary Twin Metals Minnesota LLC. However, mining likely won't kick off for several years.

Duluth made history last week when it became the first city in the state to pass a resolution in support of a constitutional amendment that would essentially overturn a U.S. Supreme Court decision, namely Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission. The court ruled in 2010 that corporations are entitled to the same constitutional rights as individual U.S. citizens. A majority of justices also concluded that political spending was a form of free speech and that corporations should be able to spend an unlimited sum of money to influence voters, without disclosing financial details of their activities. Although Duluth is...

The issue of gay marriage will come before the Duluth City Council tonight when Councilors Jeff Anderson and Sharla Gardner introduce a resolution opposing an amendment to the state Constitution that would allow Minnesota to legally recognize only opposite-sex unions. Councilor Todd Fedora criticized the resolution at a Thursday night agenda session, saying: “It has nothing to do with the city of Duluth.” The matter of whether to disallow same-sex marriage will be put to a statewide public referendum Nov. 6, 2012, and Fedora contends the city has no business telling people how to vote. He sarcastically asked whether resolutions...

First Amendment rights don't apply at a bayfront Christmas attraction, the city of Duluth argued in an objection filed Friday in federal court. "Bentleyville is not a public forum, and the nonprofit is not a state actor," Duluth City Attorney Gunnar Johnson said, reading from the city's objection. "The plaintiffs do not have First Amendment rights in Bentleyville." Federal Magistrate Judge Leo Brisbois recommended this week in favor of a temporary restraining order that would permit Steve Jankowski of Duluth and Peter Scott of Hibbing to resume preaching at Bentleyville, at Bayfront Festival Park. Last year, city police told them...

Christopher Neil Bjerkness faces sentencing Nov. 29 in a felony burglary case after a plea agreement was reached Wednesday in St. Louis County District Court. Known as the "Ball Slasher," the 33-year-old Bjerkness originally pleaded not guilty to breaking into the Chester Creek Academy fitness center in May. Bjerkness has several previous convictions for breaking into facilities to slash exercise balls - an action described as a sexual fetish.

A Duluth man continued to say someone else shot him, but nevertheless pleaded for a shorter sentence Thursday by telling the court: "If I shot myself, your honor, I don't need any prison; I need a damn shrink." Judge David Johnson was unmoved and sentenced Alcide Cloutier, 35, to a longer-than-guideline prison sentence of 7-1/2 years. Last month, a St. Louis County jury rejected Cloutier's claim that he was a good Samaritan who was shot by a black man - whom he later described as a white man - while trying to help a woman in Duluth's Lakeside neighborhood in...

Seventy years ago today, on Saturday, May 24, 1941, if you were walking the halls at St. Mary’s Hospital in Duluth you might have run into members of the Zimmerman family. They would have been there for the birth of Abe and Beatty Zimmerman’s first child, a son whose arrival was noted in the News-Tribune five days later:

He just lost the endorsement of the largest newspaper in his area, The Duluth News-Tribune, for the first time in 30 years. Citing the lack of financial restraint by the incumbent, The Duluth News Tribune emphasized Oberstar’s rubber-stamp of Obama’s policies on cap and trade, health care reform, continuation of the war in Afghanistan, and the resulting increase of unemployment.

Is a proposed passenger train line from Minneapolis to Duluth on course for a $700 million derailment? Or is it merely headed toward a $300,000 detour that could delay plans a year? Faced with competition from nine other routes seeking federal funding as well as a possible rerouting of the line's Twin Cities starting point -- to St. Paul, instead of Minneapolis -- proponents of the Northern Lights Express (NLX) have shifted gears.

With just over two weeks until Election Day, several Minnesota newspapers are endorsing the Independence Party's Tom Horner for governor. The Star Tribune's editorial board says Horner has the best chance to overcome partisan gridlock in St. Paul. The Forum of Fargo, the Duluth News Tribune and the Bemidji Pioneer also endorsed Horner Sunday. Polls have shown Horner well-behind both Democrat Mark Dayton and Republican Tom Emmer.