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In a statement, FEMA spokesman Clark Stevens said, "The coloring book, which was put online in 2003, was removed last week and FEMA is currently reviewing all web content designed and posted by the previous administration." Stevens declined to take any questions, including about any complaints the agency may have received.

< snip > Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA. Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day's schedule included a "school assembly" in the gym after lunch. Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform "their ritual washing."...

If the accusations against Chad M. Storey are true, give the North Oaks man a big fat E for effort, along with some jail time. Storey, 34, is accused of concocting an elaborate system of hoses and switches that allowed him to siphon gasoline from another vehicle into his own, all from the comfort of the driver’s seat of his shiny red Dodge Ram 1500 4x4.

BISMARCK, N.D. - Members of the Spirit Lake Nation likely will vote on whether to support the University of North Dakota's "Fighting Sioux" nickname, the tribe's leader says. Chairwoman Myra Pearson said Saturday that the tribe has grown tired of the issue. "It's been something that's not as important as our health care or housing or everything we're faced with out here, but it's been popping up all the time, and I think we need to put it to rest here pretty quick," she said. Under a settlement with the NCAA reached last October, UND has three years to win...

About 24 hours after a baby is born in Minnesota, a hospital nurse pricks a heel and squeezes five drops of blood. Three blood spots go straight to a state Department of Health lab in St. Paul. Two spots are sent by courier to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Within days, the family will know if the child has one of more than 50 rare hereditary conditions that can now be detected and treated. For little Ella Madison, it may have made the difference between life and death. Ella has cystic fibrosis, where mucus clogs the lungs and pancreas. Such...

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — The state Board of Higher Education settled a lawsuit with the NCAA over the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux nickname, giving the school three years to get tribal approval to keep it. The board voted unanimously Friday to approve the settlement after a closed-door briefing from Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem. If the school does not get approval from the Spirit Lake Sioux and Standing Rock Sioux tribes by Nov. 30, 2010, it will have to change to a new name and logo. "The settlement confirms that the Sioux people and no one else should decide...

This fall, the internationally known seminary -- a century-old training ground for Southern Baptists -- began reinforcing those traditional gender roles with college classes in homemaking. The academic program, open only to women, includes lectures on laundering stubborn stains and a lab in baking cookies. Soon there will be classes teaching how to set tables and sustain lively dinner-time conversation. It all sounds wonderful to sophomore Emily Felts, 19, who signed up as soon as she arrived on campus this fall. Several relatives have told Felts that she is selling herself short. They want her to become a lawyer, and...

Its like a Friday...but one day earlier...

TOKYO (Reuters) - An embarrassed Japanese government has cut the subsidy, but a Tokyo TV company said on Friday it would carry on making a striptease news show with sign language for hearing-impaired viewers. The government made grants totaling 400,000 yen ($3,500) to help cover production of the weekly five-minute program on satellite TV, which features a newsreader who removes her clothes between news items that she delivers in sign language. The funding dried up when the government, under fire for supporting "Naked Sign Language News," changed funding guidelines for programming aimed at the disabled to exclude pornography, local media...

A Minnesota soldier deployed in Iraq has accused his wife of selling the couple's Maplewood home without his consent, withdrawing about $25,000 from his IRAs by forging his signature, and moving to Fargo, North Dakota. Dana Marie Kieser, 37, the wife of John Paul Kieser, has been charged in Ramsey County District Court with two counts of felony check forgery. She is not in custody and has been ordered to appear in court in St. Paul June 4. John Kieser, deployed with the U.S. Army in Iraq, contacted Maplewood Police last Dec. 27 and alleged that his wife falsely claimed...

At least 16 Ramsey County deputies and correctional officers are being investigated for allegedly keeping a jailed deaf man incommunicado by denying him an interpreter or communication device, Sheriff Bob Fletcher said Friday. The 16 are still on duty, but Fletcher said he is looking into how they dealt with Douglas Bahl, an internationally known deaf advocate who was arrested Nov. 17 in St. Paul for running a red light. "We are taking this very seriously," said Fletcher. "Mr. Bahl seems very credible. If one or more of our employees have failed to act in the appropriate way, we will...

When I salute something, everyone notices. Dudes, youre stuck at work. HAHA...that sucks for you.Sully777 asked me to create this thread for him while he's away...that alone is a sure sign of silliness. There are some sick, twisted, lame and even perverted kids shows and cartoons out there. For example this one:Lazy Town What sick twisted mofo paired 2 older dudes with a preteen girl?? ...and of course, we all knew this dude was perverted before self love night at the movies. Pee Wee's Playhouse Add some of your own favorites memories...or pics...or hot babes. Whatever it takes to make...

One of the Muslim scholars removed from a US Airways flight on Monday today called for imams around the country to boycott the airline after employees refused to sell him new tickets for his flight home. On Monday, Omar Shahin and five other imams had gone to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to fly home to Phoenix after attending a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation. Shahin is president of the group. But after passengers raised concerns about the imams — three of whom said their normal evening prayers in the airport terminal before boarding the Phoenix-bound plane...

I grew up in Brooklyn, in Red Brooklyn, in the arms of the Henry Wallace campaign and the Committee for the Negro in the Arts. At camp, I learned baseball and folk songs and equality, and instead of color war, we played war of nations, and somehow the Soviet team always won. My mother was a Communist who testified for the defense during the second Smith Act trials. My father served as a front for blacklisted writers. With his pals, my uncle chained himself to the Lincoln Memorial in 1946 to protest the continued incarceration of the remaining Scottsboro Boys....

Q I have an acquaintance who is studying in the United States on a student visa. In a social contact following the last national election, he made it clear he had voted. Since he is not a U.S. citizen, I was somewhat taken aback by this, so I questioned him. He said he simply went to the polls, presented a driver's license and was registered to vote. He rationalized that if it was so illegal for him to vote, then the poll judges should not have so readily accepted his eligibility, and he added that he felt he had a...

Sara Jane Olson, a former Symbionese Liberation Army member serving a 13-year sentence for the attempted bombings of Los Angeles police cars, says she survives time behind bars by writing letters, working on the prison yard and hiding her past from other inmates. She was discovered living in St. Paul, Minn., in 1999. In letters and interviews with the Los Angeles Times, Olson said living in what she called "enforced idleness'' at the Central California Women's Facility has altered her in many ways. "I'm older — oh, who am I kidding, I'm old — and I've become really paranoid,'' said...

At a hilltop cemetery named for a church that no longer stands, Ragnhild Teppen of Trysil, Norway, walks among the old oaks and scans the worn but familiar names on stone markers: Sogaarden, Aasen, Grondahl, Lordalen. "I am reading the stones, and my eyes get bigger and bigger," Teppen said. "Half the population of Trysil went to America." More than 200 descendants of those immigrants, scattered now across North America, will gather Sunday at the old cemetery here for a reunion and church service on blankets spread under the trees. Joining them: nearly 40 Norwegians from Trysil, descendants of those...

Metrosexuals may have had their 15 minutes of fame. The cultural pendulum is swinging back to manly men. Aaron Swan is a guy's guy. He's a personal trainer. He drinks beer with his buds at Whiskey's on the weekends. He's a big Red Sox fan. Jack Bauer, who tortures terrorists on the television drama "24," is one of his heroes. Why? "He doesn't really follow the rules. He doesn't have time for the petty stuff," says Swan, 23. "Jack Bauer does whatever he has to do to get the job done." The man's man may have seemed MIA in recent...

Emory Dively is seeking to be the Republican Endorsed Candidate for the House of Representatives for District 64B. He is the Pastor of Twin Cities Deaf Assemblies of God and serves on numerous organizations throughout the country. Emory has a unique background. He was born Deaf in Flint, Michigan and attended the state school for the deaf. Following the state school for the Deaf, Emory went to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (a part of R.I.T.) in New York where he earned his Bachelor's Degree in Social Working. He went on to graduate with a Master's Degree from...

Memo to Minnesota: Some of our wealthiest residents think state government needs more money and say they're willing to pay the bill. More than 200 wealthy Minnesotans signed a full-page ad that appears in the Star Tribune today asking the state to raise $2 billion for various initiatives by increasing the state's tax burden for high-salary earners. "We need to invest more in our future," said Joel Kramer, former publisher of the Star Tribune and founder of think tank Growth and Justice that organized the "Invest for Real Prosperity" fiscal strategy. The new money should be used to improve educational...