DECORAH, Iowa — The high school band director, Dustin Harland Bliven, was arrested on an allegation of 4-1/2 month relationship with a student. The criminal doesn’t go beyond alleging. “a pattern of physically touching a student in a sexual nature.” The charge is sexual exploitation by a school employee. It’s a felony subject to five years in prison. Bliven, age 48, taught not only at Decorah High School, enrollment 570. but also instructed band in the middle school.

Bliven. Has been placed on leave.

NEW YORK — Attorneys prosecuting Luigi Mangione for assassinating Minnesota insurance executive Brian Thompson have been given six weeks to lay out their case. In a hearing at which Mangione was present, Judge Gregory Carro ordered these deadlines:

> April 9: For Mangione’s attorneys to file pretrial requests for details from prosecutors on what they see as their case.

> May 14: For prosecutors to respond.

> June 26: For a hearing to review the documents to resolve legal issues.

The judge did not set a trial date. Mangione, age 26, has pleaded not guilty to specifics of existing charges. He is accused of gunning down Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel in December. The assassination has made him a poster child for growing public anger against abusive practices by the insurance industry to deny and delay claims. Thompson was chief executive of United Healthcare, the largest and most profitable heath carrier in the nation.

Image: Robert Miller

We can only hope. The southward-plunging solar vortex of recent days is receding this weekend. Expect highs in 40s perhaps by Sunday. Image: Steve Lunde

ROCHSTER, Minn. – One the Rochester brothers arrested in a federal immigration ambush last week reportedly has an immigration hearing scheduled.  George Psomas, owner of the Nupa restaurant, who employed the brothers,  urged sympathizers to attend the hearing to show support. Psomas said his source of information about the hearing didn’t tell him when or where. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement regional office in St. Paul, which orchestrated the Nupa arrests, failed to respond to news media requests for the date, time and place. Psomas admitted he had assumed the hearing would be open in the usual Ameican tradition of a transparent and accountable judicial system. ICE, however, has a penchant for secrecy about its operations and proceedings. Meanwhile, according to informed sources, the brothers zarrested  at Nupa have been held in the Freeborn County jail in Albert Lea. ICE has refused to allow Sheriff Sheriff Ryan Shea post their names or mug shots online, which is the usual praticce in American policing. In Rochester the Nupa restaurateur George  Psomas said his source about the hearing for one brother didn’t explain why the second brother wasn’t also having a hearing.

Earlier: ICE agents pounce on Africa refugee in Austin

Ear;oerICE jailing immigrant detainees in Albert Lea

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Mediterranean and Greek eatery. Arrests were in parking lot on February 12 .

See the thick red bar.  Midway up on he left. Shows in inches  where the ice depth was on February 12. It’s thicker than most recent years but nowhere near the horrendously cold and long winter of 2018 – the gold bar on the top. Images: Army Corps of Engineers

Our long wait: When cometh first 2025 barge

LAKE CITY, Minn. – The ice pack on Lake Pepin was as thick as 20 inches in the first Army Corps borings of the season – about average for mid-February. The Corps takes measurements weekly to help the navigation industry decide when to restart barge traffic. Usually the first barge is pushed through thinning ice in mid-March. Currently the upper reaches of the 22-mile lake is ice-free, which is normal because of currents, but elsewhere the ice is nine to 20 inches thick.

How thick the ice. Bill Chelmowski from the Army Corps powers an auger into Lake Pepin ice. He stops his airboat at 22 pre-determined spots weekly, one every mile, to see when

Lake Pepin profile

> Lake Pepin has the thickest ice on the Mississippi River because it sits in a basin behind the Chippewa River delta. The current is too slight to slow ice build-up.

> Not until the ice pack is down to 12 inches can the navigation industry run barges through the lake safely.

> Every year the first barge through Lake Pepin is cause for celebration in port towns  up and down the Mississippi. It marks the river’s opening of commerce all the way to St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Earlier: GPS checks on Lake Pepin ice due soon

Earlier: How thick Lake Pepin’s ice? Don’t know yet

CRANE LAKE, Minn.  – A southern Minnesota man was killed when his snowmobile veered off a trail into a tree. He was from Glenville south of Albert Lea. St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay withheld releasing the victim’s until family could be reached but confirmed his age as 72. The man was riding with friends and probably going too fast, deputies said. The crash was about 9:45 p.m. near the Canada border.

WINONA, Minn. – A Rushford driver, who police say was drunk, went off the steep and curvy road coming down from Garvin Heights into town. The car fell an estimated 100 feet down a slope and ended up on its side – wrecked beyond repair. Jesse David Barry, 48, had to be pulled out of the wreckage. His injuries were superficial cuts and bruises. His passenger, a 63-year-old man from Canton, was taken to the hospital with what appeared to be sustainable injuries. The wild drop may have been cushioned somewhat by snow and leafless brush. This was about 6:35 p.m. Police quoted a witness following Barry up the hill that Barry was crawling slowly, like 15 mph, and weaving, and then accelerated out of sight around a bend — and then came back, this time downhill, and crossed lanes, crashed through a guardrail, and drove off the shoulder and disappeared. Police quoted Barry’s passenger that the man had been drinking — two cocktails, he said. Barry refused to be tested for his blood-alcohol level. Officers, however, had no doubt about impairment:  He smelled drunk, couldn’t complete a sentence or walk straight, not to mention blood-shot and watery eyes and slurring a lot.

Bluff-side emergency. Garvin Heights Road was closed an hour to tow out wrecked  2013 Ford Focus some 100 feet down.

CANANDAIGUA, N.Y — Police arrested two morepersons– a sixth and a seventh — in the repeated torture and eventual death of a Minnesota man at a run-down Finger Lakes motel over several weeks. Arrested about 5:45 p.m. were:

LACROSSE, Wis. – The City Council voted unanimously to revoke the liquor license of Latino Bar in the downtown nightlife district. There had been too much underage drinking and other complaints, Councilmember Chris Woodard said.

Latino Dance and Night Club. 115 Fifth Avenue South.

Inspectors check for clues. The innards of a house on Mill Street are exposed without showing much scorching. Tons of water aimed by firefighters washed most char away. A tanker truck from Winona unloaded once, then reloaded a few blocks sway at Wenonah Road and Connie Drive. The next door First Baptist Church, whose congregation dates to 1852, was saved. Image: Steve Lunde

Earlier: Minnesota City house fire displaces occupants

TORONTO, Canada – Two Canadian passengers on Delta Flight 4819 have engaged an aviation law firm to identify liability for the crash at Pearson International Airport on Monday. No one died when the plane flipped while landing. Vincent Genova, a partner at Rochon Genova of Toronto, said both of his clients suffered injuries, one a head injury when seatbelts released. Genova said he was also working with an U.S. firm retained by American clients.

Earlier: “Black box” recovered from Delta wreckage

Basketball (men): St. Olaf 77, Saint Mary’s 74

Basketball (men): UW-LaCrosse 86, UW-River Falls 79

Basketball (men): Minn State Technical of Fergus Falls 81, Rochester Community 73

Basketball (women): Saint Mary’s 66, St. Olaf 49

Basketball (women): UW-LaCrosse 62, UW-River Falls 56

Wrestling: Holmen Vikings 49, New Richmond Tigers 19

WINONA, Minn. – A Winona man walked up to a bank teller, showed his ID, and presented a $968 check made out to himself as if it were legit. The teller, at Winona Financial downtown, recognized the fraud right away. The man skadoodled. Police thought they recognized the crook from bank surveillance video. Fast-forward a few hours: Officers stopped a car in the 550 block of Lafayette. Street Arrested was Eddie Lee Stinson, 33, of Winona. He was booked for filling out a stolen check to himself. Where’s the $968 check? The teller didn’t give it back.

Stinson. The issue: HIs check dishonored.

In the subfreezing night. Ground crews maneuver cranes to lift the inverted wreckage of Delta Flight 4319 off Runway 23 at Pearson International Airport. The hull was still encrusted with fire-suppressant foam.

Early diagnosis: Runway was plowed, no cross-winds

TORONTO, Canada – Crews removed the hull of the Delta plane from where it crashed and flipped on a runway on Monday. The hull was hoisted and trucked to a vacant hangar to be reconstructed. So too was any and all debris, including the broken-off wings and tail fin. A flight data recorder, known in aviation circles as the “black box,” was retrieved intact, said investigator Ken Webster of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. Webster said it was too early to come to conclusions about the crash. He noted, however, that the runway was dry with no cross-winds.

Earlier: Delta sends $30,000 to each crash victim

ROCHESTER, Minn. — The Rochester City Council voted 4-3 to declare Pill Hill a historic district. The neighborhood, on a knob just west of downtown, is where leading Mayo doctors have had swanky revivalist mansions since the early 1900s. The new declaration will help preserve Pill Hill’s historic architectural feel. The area  has been on the National Register of  Historic Places since 1990.

6,300 square feet. At 818 Eighth Street Northwest. Assssed at $1.7 million.