Pine Knot News - A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news

Minnesota lawmakers have cut a deal on how much money from the big projected budget surplus will go to cut taxes, give a boost to schools and be used to enhance public safety. The agreement came Monday with one week to go in the 2022 session. Many...  Website

For the first time since Covid-19 arrived, new infections in Minnesota are topping 10,000 a day. And those are just the folks who are getting lab tests. That number does not count the number of people using at-home Covid-19 tests. “All five of the...  Website

With measurable snowfall coming to northern Minnesota the past week, cross country skiers are hitting the trails. And it’s a good bet that a majority of those skiers coat the bases of their skis in wax that contains per- and poly-fluoroalkyl...  Website

U.S. regulators on Friday opened up Covid-19 booster shots to all adults, expanding the government’s campaign to shore up protection and get ahead of rising coronavirus cases that may worsen with the holidays. While all three vaccines used in the...  Website

Catharine Richert/MPR News Starting this week, Minnesota kids age 5-11 now have access to Covid-19 vaccines, as the state started rolling out doses of the Pfizer shots tailor-made for younger children. “Getting our children vaccinated will help...  Website

Gov. Tim Walz toured a Covid-19 testing site in Duluth last Thursday morning — one of more than a dozen community testing sites around the state. He said officials were getting ready to announce an additional expansion of testing capacity around th... Full story

Minnesota’s spreading Covid-19 outbreak has been pummeling greater Minnesota for weeks, and hospitals are feeling the impact. For the first time in the pandemic, there are more Covid patients hospitalized in greater Minnesota than in the Twin Citie...  Website

Minnesota’s current Covid-19 surge won’t relent. The newest data show the disease still firmly entrenched in the state. While a jump in testing can explain much of the latest increase in case counts, the numbers also show the current wave... Full story

Dan Gunderson MPR News The St. Louis County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on cervid farms. Those are farms that raise primarily deer and elk in captivity. There are 257 cervid farms in Minnesota and... Full story

Hospital systems serving swaths of northeastern and northwestern Minnesota are struggling with the newest surge of Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations amid a shortage of health care staff and rising numbers of non-Covid patients. “We were running a...  Website

Brian Bakst MPR News Demand is high in Minnesota for $100 vaccine incentives, prompting the state to set aside even more money for the program. As of early Tuesday, more than 30,000 people had already applied for the bonus for getting an initial...  Website

What health and safety guidelines should schools be following? Minnesota schools are no longer under a mandate to require masking in their buildings. That’s because Gov. Tim Walz’s authority to issue this mandate expired now that Minnesota is no...  Website

Covid-19 cases are on the rise again in Minnesota and across the country, but with most restrictions lifted and Gov. Tim Walz’s emergency powers gone, the response to this latest spike is in the hands of local leaders and businesses. The number of...  Website

While Minnesota’s current upswing in Covid-19 is relatively mild compared to earlier surges, state officials are warning that the pandemic is not over yet and that those who are not vaccinated are especially vulnerable to a rapidly growing variant...  Website

Minnesota's air quality has been exceptional for all the wrong reasons this week. On Thursday, an air quality monitor in Brainerd recorded the highest particulate reading ever recorded in the state, since the monitors were installed about 20 years...  Website

A state court on Monday sent a key air emissions permit for the planned PolyMet copper-nickel mine back to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for further consideration and additional findings. The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled that the MPCA...  Website

Minnesota has a new $52 billion, two-year state budget, but it didn’t come easy. The Legislature needed almost all the time between the end of the regular session on May 17 and the end of the fiscal year at midnight Wednesday to finish the budget....  Website

The Minnesota Court of Appeals handed a major victory to Enbridge Energy this week, affirming state utility regulators’ approval of the Canadian company’s Line 3 oil pipeline replacement project. A three-judge panel ruled 2 to 1 that there is...

Oxygen levels are falling in freshwater lakes in Minnesota and across the globe — a trend likely driven by climate change and human development, a new study suggests. The findings could be a sign that trouble is ahead for Minnesota lakes that provi...  Website

Active cases and hospitalizations are ebbing in Minnesota, but the vaccination pace remains at a relative crawl even as state public health leaders plead with unvaccinated adults to get their shots. More than 60 percent of state residents 16 and olde... Full story

Kirsti Marohn MPR News The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says contamination from PFAS — so-called “forever chemicals” — has been detected in groundwater at nearly 60 closed landfills, at amounts higher than the state’s acceptable...