FBI agent kills armed suspect in MPLS

Happening today

☁️ Cloudy with periods of rain today. High temperatures near 50. Scattered drips continue into Saturday, when the high will be around 54 degrees. Sunday will be breezy with a high of around 50 degrees. More seasonable — and sunny — weather returns next week. 

🏛️ A Workers Memorial Day ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. at the Minnesota Workers Memorial on the St. Paul Capitol Mall. The event honors Minnesota workers who have lost their lives or suffered injuries  as a result of their work.

🏫 University of Minnesota students will hold a protest as administration intends to make massive cuts to ethnic studies and gender studies programs at the college. These include a 50% cut to American Indian Studies, 30% to Chicano and Latino Studies, 27.5% to African American Studies, 10% to the Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, and more.

🌳 Arbor Day is celebrated across the state today. The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum offers activities all day. Complete a Tree Bingo card to get to know trees at the Arb, listen to tree stories from the Andersen Horticultural Library, hear experts share about the living tree collections at the Arboretum, and take home a tree sapling to plant in your yard. In St. Paul, a new initiative called Cool St. Paul  is launching. Cool St. Paul aims to address the harmful lack of tree canopy and green spaces, particularly in St. Paul’s low-income and BIPOC communities.

Derailment sends 2 cars in Mississippi River near De Soto, Wisconsin

• A train derailment sent two containers carrying paint into the Mississippi River in Wisconsin.
• The two cars were carrying paint and were secured to the riverbank after the derailment. Other cars carrying lithium-ion batteries and oxygen containers were on shore, but never went into the water. BNSF Railway says the volumes involved don’t pose a risk to the river or the nearby communities.
• BNSF says the main track is blocked in both directions. An estimated time for reopening hasn’t been released. 

The derailment comes nearly three months after a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Officials released and burned toxic vinyl chloride from five tanker cars in order to prevent an explosion. Meanwhile, last month, hundreds of people were evacuated in Raymond, Minnesota, after a BNSF train hauling ethanol and corn syrup derailed and started on fire. 

This isn’t the first time a BNSF train has derailed in this area. In 2016, two locomotives and six cars derailed because of extensive flooding after 10 inches of rain. Nearly 1,200 gallons of diesel poured into the Mississippi from a ruptured tank in that derailment.