By CURT BROWN, Minneapolis Star Tribune

STOYSTOWN, Pa. - Ralph Blanset, 83, sits on his tractor near his hillside garden of 120 tomato plants. His son-in-law, Calvin Maluchnick, swings by to pick him up for dinner. First, they reminisce.

DEARBORN, Mich. - Ehsan Al-Nassiri hopped out of his plumber's van, toolbox in hand, responding to yet another call to unclog a drain.

Unlike most such calls, the woman at the door refused to usher him in. Instead, she demanded to know his nationality.

He explained he was born in Iraq but grew up right here in Dearborn.

MINNEAPOLIS - Nearly three years and 13 surgeries after the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed, Paula Coulter couldn't help but grimace this week in her front-row seat of a Hennepin County courtroom.

The battlefields are 8,000 miles away in Africa and the Middle East. But from their bunkers of dew chambers and greenhouses in St. Paul, a strike force of University of Minnesota plant experts is devising strategies to win a high-stakes war that could prevent famine, starvation and political unrest.

ONAMIA, Minn. -- Fed up with a recent spate of chronic lawlessness, tribal lawyers for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe are turning to a tool both new and ancient to rid their community of troublemakers.Four band members were recently banished from the reservation -- excluded for five years based on myriad assaults and weapons violations.