Tickets are on sale for the revived Festival of Nations, which is now known as the International Festival of Minnesota.

The event — which features global cuisine, music, dance, artisan crafts, storytelling and cultural demonstrations from 67 nations and ethnic communities — will take place April 10 and 11 at RiverCentre in downtown St. Paul. Tickets are $21 for ages 15 and older, $10 for ages 8-14 and free for children seven and younger. They’re available at ifestmn.org.

Founded in 1932 as a street fair, Festival of Nations became a tradition, both for the students bused in on field trips and for the general public. The pandemic forced its cancellation in 2020. It didn’t return in the following years and organizers announced it was permanently shuttered in 2023.

Last summer, Twin Cities Jazz Festival founder Steve Heckler announced the return of the annual tradition. He previously served as director from 2005 to 2012.

“We’ve had an incredible response,” Heckler said in a news release. “More than 5,000 students from across Minnesota and four additional states are already registered to attend, making this both a powerful educational experience and a vibrant community celebration.”

Metro Transit will provide free bus and light rail rides on April 10 and 11 for festival attendees. Download the pass at ifestmn.org.

— Ross Raihala

St. Paul

Police investigating Macalester complaint

St. Paul police are investigating a Macalester College student’s report that a professor urinated on her belongings.

The student’s backpack was unattended for several minutes in a classroom building in December and, when she returned, she found urine on it, said Alyssa Arcand, a St. Paul police spokeswoman.

An officer wrote a report this week, classifying it as fourth-degree intentional damage to property, after receiving information last month.

The investigation is ongoing and police have not made an arrest, Arcand said.

A Pioneer Press message sent to the man’s Macalester College email address Wednesday received an auto reply saying he “is no longer at Macalester.”

College spokesman Babs Santos said they don’t comment on personnel matters.

— Pioneer Press

St. Paul

Minnesota Opera announces season

A world premiere based on a graphic novel and two first-time productions make up the newly announced Minnesota Opera 2026-2027 season.

“We view programming a season as an act of stewardship,” said president and general director Ryan Taylor in a news release. “We’re responsible for both honoring the repertoire that has shaped this art form for centuries while also investing in and lifting up the voices that will define its future.”

Full-season packages are now available via mnopera.org. Performances take place at the Ordway Center for Performing Arts in downtown St. Paul.

The season includes:

• “The Many Deaths of Laila Starr” (Oct. 31-Nov. 8): Based on the graphic novel by Ram V. and Filipe Andrade, this world premiere was commissioned and developed through Minnesota Opera’s New Works Initiative. “When the goddess of Death is cast down to Earth to live as a mortal named Laila Starr, the boundaries between the divine and the human begin to blur,” according to the opera.

• “Ariodante” (March 13-21, 2027): George Frideric Handel’s opera, which premiered in London in 1735, tells the story of a prince who is falsely accused of infidelity and the emotional and political fallout that ensues.

• “Falstaff” (May 8-16, 2027): Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boito based this comedy that premiered in Milan in 1893 on William Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” with some scenes from both installments of “Henry IV.” It will feature the largest cast of the season.

— Ross Raihala

Washington County

township election results announced

Two of the six Washington County townships — May and West Lakeland — held elections on Tuesday.

In May Township, Town Board Supervisor Don Rolf Jr. won re-election with 323 votes; his challenger, Monti Moreno, received 116 votes. Rolf, 61, was first elected to the board in 2023 after serving for more than 20 years on the township’s planning commission, where he had most recently served as vice chairman.

May Town Board Supervisor Julie Andrich, who was appointed to the board in September to complete the term vacated when former supervisor Steve Magner resigned, ran unopposed; she received 350 votes.

During the township’s annual meeting, residents approved a 2027 levy of $1,228,244, a 5.65 % increase. Residents also voted to keep the gopher bounty at $1.50 per pair of front paws; township officials said no money was paid out for the gopher bounty in 2025.

In West Lakeland Township, Supervisor John Buelow decided not to run for reelection. Two people, John Evans and Monica Augustine, ran for the seat.

Evans, who served on the building committee for the new township hall from 2022 through 2024, received 348 votes; Augustine received 28 votes.

Residents in West Lakeland also approved a 2027 levy of $2,863,990, a 9.95% increase over 2026.

— Mary Divine

Minnesota

BCA discloses online data exposure

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension notified the public Wednesday that some records for 595 people were accessible on the state’s public criminal history website when they should not have been.

The records were available “for a varying amount of time,” and it took about one month to complete the analysis and testing to fix the issue, which happened Feb. 25.

The majority of the records affected were criminal charges that had resulted in a conviction but were later dismissed or vacated, according to Jill Oliveira, a BCA spokeswoman.

“Criminal history records held by the BCA are kept in the Minnesota Criminal History System,” the BCA said in a statement. “A computer process copies public records from CHS to the public criminal history website. In some instances, CHS was not recognizing the most recent activity on a record, which may have included court actions that would render a record not public. This caused some records to be accessible on the public website in error.”

Companies that requested a bulk download of Minnesota criminal history data received the records in response to data requests, and the BCA has begun sending them updated records, Oliveira said.

The BCA does not have contact information for people with criminal history records, which is why the agency sent the notice to media around the state and posted information on the BCA’s website, according to Oliveira.

“The BCA takes the security of data in all our systems very seriously and regrets that this occurred,” said the statement.

The BCA will prepare a report, and people who want to receive a copy can email BCA.DataResponse@state.mn.us to request it by email or mail.

— Mara H. Gottfried

iowa

State bars local gender protections

A new Iowa law bans local nondiscrimination protections on the basis of gender identity after the state became the first in the U.S. to rollback its civil rights code last year.

The preemption law took effect Tuesday, as soon as Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed it. It prevents cities and counties from having civil rights protections that go beyond the categories identified in state code.

Many cities across the state have gender identity protections on their books, including liberal populous centers, Des Moines and Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa. Last month, Ames, which is home to Iowa State University, enacted an ordinance enacting gender identity protections.

Republicans who control the House and Senate said the preemption law provides clarity on which classes are protected. Democrats objected.

At least two other states, Arkansas and Tennessee, have laws that prohibit local nondiscrimination ordinances that are broader than state law, according to researchers at Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank.

Sexual orientation and gender identity were not originally included in Iowa’s Civil Rights Act of 1965.

They were added by the then-Democratic-controlled Legislature in 2007 with the support of about a dozen Republicans.

— Associated Press