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Edison High School commemorates Medal of Honor recipient at Veterans Day ceremony

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At the entrance of Edison High School in northeast Minneapolis, a plaque hangs on the wall with the names of alumni who died serving in World War II.

While perusing the 116 names one day, social studies teacher David Salzer and alum Al Zdon noticed one in particular: Richard Kraus.

“I started going through them, and all of a sudden — ‘Medal of Honor,'” said Zdon, a Vietnam veteran. “There were only 10 medals of honor awarded to Minnesotans in World War II, that’s how rare that is.”

Salzer and Zdon decided earlier this year to propose a separate plaque in honor of Kraus. On Friday, it was revealed at Edison’s first-ever Veterans Day ceremony, where students and staff gathered to observe the federal holiday and learn the stories of local veterans. Alumni, both veterans and active duty military, gathered afterward to answer students’ questions.

Before students viewed the plaque honoring Kraus on display in the alumni room — where it will stay until it is hung on the wall later this year — the school put together a presentation so students could learn more about him.

Kraus was killed at age 18 after throwing himself on a grenade to save his fellow Marines during action against Japanese forces in Peleliu, Palau Islands, on Oct. 5, 1944. He was on a volunteer mission to evacuate a wounded colleague when it happened. The presentation included a video of Kraus’ only living sister reading a note he had sent the family from the island in the Pacific shortly before his death.

“Mom, if anything happens to me, don’t blame it on the war,” Kraus wrote.

In addition to Kraus’ story, some of Salzer’s students took an interest in another name on the list of 116 alumni veterans: Rose F. Puchalla, the only woman on the list, deserved individual commemoration too, they said.

Edison Senior Mianna Sledge said students wrote a bill to create a plaque for Puchalla, who along with other women died in a plane crash in Africa in 1945. The bill, which is currently passing through student leadership, would give Puchalla a similar plaque to the one honoring Kraus.

As the only woman on the list at a time when women did not commonly serve in military roles, Puchalla deserves recognition, Sledge said. She and her classmates said they’re confident that their next step of securing funding for the plaque will be a success, and they hope to see Puchalla’s photograph and story on display alongside Kraus’.

“We don’t get a lot of representation, being a public school,” said Octavios Torres, a student who helped Sledge draft the bill. “To show that someone from our community volunteered to help our country, that shows a lot of courageousness.”



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Former Duluth East hockey coach Mike Randolph violated employee conduct policies

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Not all of the interviews were negative; a fair amount of players and parents reported positive experiences with Randolph, some saying they never witnessed him belittling players.

“To me, he was fabulous,” one parent said, noting their child “blossomed” under Randolph.

Terch wrote he was not able to substantiate an allegation that Randolph received payments from the East End Hockey Boosters, although he did find “unusual financial management practices” by the booster club, including a misrepresentation to parents about the use of at least some of what they paid, a commingling of funds between events and “unorthodox” accounting practices. Several parents said they felt they had overpaid many times without explanation. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension began investigating the former East hockey booster club in 2023 for alleged embezzlement. The status of that case is unknown.

In response to the report’s release, Duluth Public Schools Superintendent John Magas said in a statement that he can’t discuss personnel matters, but the district takes all reports from students and families “very seriously.”

“Our primary goal is to ensure that students have the best possible experiences, both in the classroom and in extracurricular activities,” he said. “We are committed to thoroughly investigating any concerns brought to our attention and taking appropriate action” to maintain safe and positive learning environments.

St. Thomas Academy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.



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How Trump tariffs would shock U.S., world economies

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Gas prices would increase by as much as 75 cents per gallon in the Midwest, where most refined products come from Canada, according to Patrick De Haan, an analyst at GasBuddy. Overall, the Peterson Institute for International Economics said Trump’s tariffs would cost the typical household $2,600 per year; the Yale Budget Lab said in an estimate released Wednesday that the annual cost could be as high as $7,600 for a typical household. As a share of their income, the poorest Americans would pay 6 percent more with 20 percent tariffs, compared with 1.4 percent more for the richest 1 percent, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank.

“We’re not talking about caviar — these are things that people have to buy. They’re essentials,” said Neil Saunders, a managing director at the analytics company GlobalData.

Economists say it would take several painful years for alternative domestic producers to emerge for many goods. For instance, almost all shoes and 90 percent of tomatoes sold in the country are imported, according to the Peterson Institute. And the United States does not even have the climate necessary to produce many food items – such as coffee, bananas, avocados, to say nothing of Chilean sea bass – at the necessary scale to meet domestic demand, said Joseph Politano, an economic analyst who has written on the subject on his Substack.

Trump’s tariffs would also reverberate through Wall Street and global markets, inviting turmoil that would affect investors and companies worldwide. Those effects would probably be felt quickly.

During Trump’s first term, stocks fell on nine of 11 days in 2018 and 2019 that the United States or China announced new tariffs, according to a study this year by economists with the Federal Reserve and Columbia University. Comprehensive tariffs would cause a swift one-time jump in prices before reducing economic growth about six months later, according to economist David Page, head of macro research for AXA Investment Managers in London.

Many analysts are hopeful that a stock market panic would dissuade or prevent Trump from carrying out his plans. The investment bank UBS projected that a 10 percent universal tariff could lead to a 10 percent contraction in the stock market. U.S. multinationals are heavily dependent on foreign subsidiaries, and retailers, auto manufacturers and other industrial sectors would be hit the hardest, according to UBS. Chris McNally, an analyst at Evercore, said Trump’s 10 percent tariff plan could cause a more than 20 percent decline in General Motors’ earnings, with slightly smaller declines for Ford and Stellantis.



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On the Wisconsin-Iowa border, the Mississippi River is eroding sacred Indigenous mounds

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Bear and other members of her tribe are serving as consultants on the project, as is William Quackenbush, the tribal historic preservation officer for the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin, and his tribe. They also lead teams of volunteers to help care for the mounds, which includes removing invasive European plants and replacing them with native plants that reduce soil erosion.

Some are skeptical of this manmade solution to a manmade problem. There are some tribal partners who’ve expressed that the river should be allowed to keep flowing as it wants to, Oberreuter said. Snow also acknowledged that people have been hesitant about making such a change to the natural bank.

But, she pointed out, “The bank is (already) no longer what it was.”

When the berm is complete, Snow said, there’ll be a trail atop it that visitors can walk. That may help protect the mounds better than the current way to see them, which is to walk among them, she said.

The Sny Magill Unit has been part of Effigy Mounds National Monument since 1962, Snow said, but it’s not advertised like the rest of the park. That’s in part because there are no staff stationed there to properly guide people through the mounds. But if people visit respectfully, she believes it’s one of the best places to take in the mounds because it’s on a flat, walkable surface, unlike the rest of the park, which is on a blufftop.



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