Minneapolis news in the Star Tribune:

State test score results gave some good news to Minneapolis Public Schools: the first narrowing of the stubborn achievement gap in six years. Still, the district stjill has the state's highest disparity between the measured performance of white students and black, Latino, Asian and American Indian students. The charter in north Minneapolis called Harvest Preparatory School continues to defy the odds with 82 percent proficiency in reading and 77 percent in math, despite a 90 percent poverty level.

Racial disparities, this time the yawning gap between white and black employment in Minneapolis and Minnesota as a whole, are the subject of a Minnesota State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights forum today at the University of St. Thomas Law School in downtown Minneapolis. Reporter Randy Furst reported on the unemployment gap in the Twin Cities, the nation's worst, in March.

The plan to put a planetarium on top of the downtown Minneapolis library appears to have fizzled, now that the University of Minnesota's Bell Museum of Natural History has absorbed the nonprofit Minnesota Planetarium Society. Private fundraising never got off the ground, while the Legislature canceled $22 million in bonds earlier this year. Now the Bell Museum has to figure out how to get its own planned renovation through St. Paul.

The Minneapolis Fire Department is likely to give up its part-time job boarding up homes, after the money-making experiment turned into a money loser.

In public safety news, Wednesday's fire that destroyed a duplex at 3317 Bryant Av. S. in Uptown killed one person - whose identity has not yet been released. The fatal hit-and-run that killed chef Anousone Phanthavong on an exit ramp of Interstate 94 at Riverside Avenue has been ruled an accident, but that doesn't rule out criminal charges. The prosecution continues building its case against Mahdi Ali in last year's Seward Market triple killings. An effort by the lawyer for former Minneapolis park police chief and accused sex offender William Jacobs failed to get a new judge assigned to the case.

Finally, by the shores of Lake Calhoun, dogs and their owners are doing yoga together. Now isn't that what Minneapolis is all about?

In other media:

Contract with Coke means University of Minnesota is unlikely to follow the lead of private colleges by giving up bottled water (Minnesota Daily)

Nonprofit groups are hiring "navigators" - a new cadre of social workers - to help north Minneapolis residents recover from the May 22 tornado. (Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder)

Bikes boom in Minneapolis, but still remain a political target (Twin Cities Daily Planet)