Star Tribune
Worthington woman dies in crash on Interstate 90
A Worthington, Minn., woman was killed Friday when her vehicle was rear-ended on Interstate 90 outside Worthington.
According to the State Patrol, 75-year-old Christie Lee Eichner was killed shortly after 1 p.m. when a pickup truck hit her SUV while she was stopped in a lane on I-90. The accident at 1:12 p.m. Friday.
The pickup driver was a 45-year-old woman from Redfield. S.D., who had her two teens in the vehicle. None of them were injured in the crash.
Eichner was taken to Worthington Hospital, where she died of her injuries. Authorities said she was not wearing her seatbelt during the crash. Alcohol was not believed to be a factor in the crash.
One man was killed and another injured in a shooting at a homeless encampment in south Minneapolis, Police Chief Brian O’Hara said on Wednesday morning.
Police got a ShotSpotter alert of shots fired at 4:40 a.m., O’Hara said a few hours later at a media briefing near the site, which is along 26th Street E. between South 17th and 18th Aves.
The man who was shot in the head died at the scene. He was in his 20s, O’Hara said. The other shooting victim was in his 30s. He was taken to HCMC with what the chief called serious but non-life-threatening injuries. No names have been released.
O’Hara said police have a suspect but that person was not yet in custody as of Wednesday morning. The chief said the shootings once again call attention to the dangers of homeless encampments, for both people living at the sites and nearby residents.
“There is way too much crime and violence associated with the homeless encampments,” O’Hara said.
Star Tribune
Books ‘Undivided’ and ‘Circle of Hope’ show how two churches tried to grapple with racial issues
Han was just as committed. Her reporting on Crossroads, a Protestant megachurch, produced 1,471 hours of audio and video recordings. Her book spotlights another major trend: While small churches struggle, most of the country’s 1,000-plus Protestant megachurches (defined as having 2,000 members) are growing, according to recent surveys.
Han crafts detailed depictions of Crossroads members, among them a Black pastor whose sermon about race angered some white members, and a white woman, raised in an unabashedly racist home, who gradually becomes an integral member of Undivided, Crossroads’ initiative devoted to hard discussions about race. “Philando Castile was my George Floyd,” she says, recounting how she became an outspoken anti-racist after Castile was shot to death by police in Falcon Heights in 2016.
Undivided (Farrar Straus & Giroux)
Evangelical Protestantism, Han notes, has historically “conceptualized racism as a problem of individual sin and prejudice and ignored the way it was tied to questions of power.” The fraught conversations captured in this book depict the “blowback,” as one member put it, that can follow when churchgoers confront institutional racism.
Both authors understand that, as Griswold writes, “churches are messy places where people seek many things, among them a common understanding of something larger than they are.” These excellent books demonstrate how hard that can be to achieve.
Kevin Canfield is a regular contributor to the Minnesota Star Tribune’s books coverage.
Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport won top honors for passenger satisfaction among the nation’s largest airports, according to a survey released Wednesday by the global consulting firm J.D. Power.
MSP regained supremacy in the “mega” category with more than 33 million annual passengers, handily beating Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, which came in second, according to the J.D. Power 2024 North American Airport Satisfaction Survey. The Motor City won last year, after MSP took the title in 2023 for the first time.
Last year, MSP served nearly 35 million passengers.
“Huge air travel demand has not slowed down in North America despite the steadily rising costs of flights, ground travel, hotel rooms and pretty much anything you can buy in an airport,” said Michael Taylor, J.D. Power’s managing director of travel, hospitality and retail, in a news release.
J.D. Power surveyed close to 27,000 passengers nationwide between August 2023 and July. Passengers were asked about their airport experience, including the ease of travel, the quality of terminal facilities and food, beverage and retail offerings, and airport staff.
Based on a 1,000-point scale, MSP racked up 671 points, with Detroit scoring 643 points — the segment’s average was 595 points. Newark Liberty International Airport came in last.
John Wayne Airport won top honors in the large category and Indianapolis International Airport ranked the highest in the medium category. The losers in those categories were Philadelphia International Airport and Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, respectively.
More broadly, 60% of the survey’s respondents said they enjoy spending time at their airport, despite record passenger volumes and widespread flight cancellations and delays. However, satisfaction levels at airports plummet if terminals are crowded.
