By JOSEPHINE MARCOTTY, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Minnesota will be the nation's first test site for a federal program designed to stem the flow of agricultural pollution strangling some of the country's great bodies of water, including the Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River.

How do you feed 9 billion people without destroying the planet?

Transform the global food system in the next 40 years by using crops to feed people instead of fattening livestock and producing fuel; eliminate food waste; and overhaul the use of fertilizers like nitrogen that are polluting waters around the world.

Once a tiny jewel in the Minneapolis chain of parks, Spring Lake has all but disappeared from the public eye. Squeezed between Interstate 394 and a parkway, the little lake is surrounded by a wall of grapevine and buckthorn and, thanks to decades of urban pollution, coated with chartreuse algae.

Minnesota and Wisconsin are contributing an increasing share of the Mississippi River pollution that is killing a wide swath of the Gulf of Mexico.

Michele Tibodeau has a new front yard, courtesy of her watershed district in Maplewood, Minn., a Twin Cities suburb.

Recently, she gave a tour and listed some of the new native plants she'll see for the first time when they bloom this summer. At this point, they were all just exotic names on her smart phone.

Ten years ago a little girl from Colorado made medical history when her parents and her doctor at the University of Minnesota used genetic screening to create a baby that could save her life.

People who use tanning beds frequently have up to three times the risk of developing the deadliest form of skin cancer -- no matter how old they are when they start -- according to a study published Thursday by researchers at the University of Minnesota.

Doug State entered hospice care two years ago knowing exactly how he wanted to die: at home in Cambridge, Minn., with his wife, Carol, and his dog, Teddy.

As most every parent knows, hooking up for casual sex is bad for young people because it causes emotional or psychological damage.

Right?

Well, actually, no. At least not for young adults between the ages of 18 and 24, according to a new study by University of Minnesota researchers.

Even they found the results startling.

He was a healthy teenager from another country, visiting friends and relatives in Minnesota, when he got sick.

Then really sick.