One of the nation’s strictest abortion laws will take effect in Iowa on Monday. Abortion care providers in Minnesota expect an increase in patients as another border state limits abortion access.

The Iowa law prohibits most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, when fetal cardiac activity can be detected but before many know they are pregnant. The only exceptions to the ban are in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the patient.

Previously, Iowa had permitted abortions until 22 weeks of pregnancy.

When most immigrants arrived 120 years ago they rode a train from Duluth that crossed a wasteland of clear-cut hills, muskeg swamp, and logging slash. A millennial forest of white pines had just been felled and hauled away, leaving a complex system of undergrowth to scorch and rot in the blistering sun. Invasive whitetail deer foraged in the ruins, lucky heirs to the displaced elk, moose, bears and wolves.

Half those immigrants came from southern Europe, places like Italy and the Slavic regions of the Austrian Empire. Upon arrival, they experienced the coldest winters of their lives.

Settling in towns like Eveleth, Virginia, Chisholm and Hibbing, these immigrants went into the open pits and underground mines, probing their vocabularies for better words to describe desolation. At first, they were too broke to go home. Some did well and returned to the old country. Some did well and stayed. Many more stayed broke or died prematurely.

Archaeologists seeking to learn more about how Neanderthals prepared and cooked their food conducted a series of hands-on experiments with small fowl using flint flakes for butchering. They found that the flint flakes were surprisingly effective for butchering the birds, according to their new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. They also concluded that roasting the birds damages the bones to such an extent that it's unlikely they would be preserved in the archaeological record.

Still booming after three decades, the DIY Minneapolis record shop has organized a months-long series of anniversary concerts.

Michigan is famous for its fruit festivals. Visitors can sample cherries at the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City or blueberries at the National Blueberry Festival in South Haven.

The Apple Festival in Charlevoix and the Romeo Peach Festival feature fruit later in the season.

As a diverse crop-producing state and the top producer of asparagus in the country, Michigan has an agricultural scenery that is a picturesque blend of crop fields and fruit trees.

However, beneath this facade lies a harsh reality of precarious work and exploitative labor practices for Michigan’s farmworkers, who are often invisible to people who enjoy the fruits of their labors, according to the Michigan Farmworker Project’s ongoing research.

Protest organizers say 11 people were arrested Monday outside UnitedHealthcare's headquarters in Minnetonka during an event spotlighting what critics say is a pattern of improper coverage denials by the nation's largest health insurer.

Protestors blocking a road were arrested by the Minnetonka Police Department, according to a news release from People's Action Institute, a consumer group that protested at UnitedHealth Group's Optum headquarters in Eden Prairie in April.

A helium reservoir in northern Minnesota is likely to be "expansive both laterally and at depth," a new survey shows.

Seismic data from a 0.7-mile-long (1.1 kilometers) sweep just outside of Babbitt suggest the recently discovered reservoir is larger than initial estimates indicated, which has resource exploration company Pulsar Helium and its potential clients jumping for joy.

Recent tests also revealed helium concentrations underground are even higher than the "mind-boggling" results obtained in March, firmly establishing the project in Minnesota as a major player in the global helium market.

A unique development process is underway at St. Anthony Falls in downtown Minneapolis, where the federal government is transferring 5 acres of land to local control.

Owámniyomni Okhódayapi, a nonprofit formerly known as Friends of the Falls, has selected a design team guided by Dakota knowledge keepers to conduct a consensus-based ecological restoration. The land was both the birthplace of Minneapolis and sacred to the Indigenous people who lived there before.

"We're working towards 100% land restoration, bringing flowing water back, bringing back species of life where they once were," said Shelley Buck, president of Owámniyomni Okhódayapi and a former Prairie Island tribal leader. "People are really excited about this and willing to change how they do business normally to make sure that this site truly does give back to all of us."

The cat tour started small.

John Edwards thought it would be hilarious — and somewhat ridiculous — to lead a walk through his Minneapolis neighborhood admiring the many felines that live there.

“It’s the kind of densely populated neighborhood where if you’re walking around, you’re going to see a lot of cats,” said Edwards, who lives in Lowry Hill East — often called “the Wedge” because of its wedgelike shape — where there are roughly 9,300 residents.

About a dozen people showed up for the impromptu cat tour, led by Edwards, seven years ago. Over a two-mile walk, the group stopped to see some 20 cats peeking through their windows.

Edwards — who runs a hyperlocal media publication called Wedge Live — never anticipated his cat tour concept would catch on. But people loved it and wanted more, so Edwards began organizing an annual cat tour.

It grew every year.

For well over a century, we had the opportunity to study Neanderthals—their bones, the items they left behind, their distribution across Eurasia. So, when we finally obtained the sequence of their genome and discovered that we share a genetic legacy with them, it was easy to place the discoveries into context. In contrast, we had no idea Denisovans existed when sequencing DNA from a small finger bone revealed that yet another relative of modern humans had roamed Asia in the recent past.

Since then, we've learned little more. The frequency of their DNA in modern human populations suggest that they were likely concentrated in East Asia. But we've only discovered fragments of bone and a few teeth since then, so we can't even make very informed guesses as to what they might have looked like. On Wednesday, an international group of researchers described finds from a cave on the Tibetan Plateau that had been occupied by Denisovans, which tell us a bit more about these relatives: what they ate. And that appears to be anything they could get their hands on.

Several laws passed in the 2024 legislative session took effect Monday, establishing new policies and funding sources for education, economic development and the environment.

The law, which took effect last year, says people with felony convictions regain the right to vote after they have completed any prison term.

Quinn ruled the law was unconstitutional in a pair of orders in which he sentenced two offenders to probation, but warned them they were not eligible to vote or to register to vote — even though the law says they were. It was an unusual step because nobody involved in those cases ever asked him to rule on the constitutionality of the law.