Category: CNN Regional

By Jamiese Price

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    CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina (WTVD) — Taiwanese students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are calling for more transparency from university leaders after what they describe as a racially motivated harassment incident on campus in late August.

Shao-Jung Lu said he is still struggling to process what happened.

“Our campus shouldn’t be like this,” Lu said.

He added, “This is really tough to process for me.”

According to students, the incident happened Aug. 29 after a welcome party hosted by the UNC Taiwanese Student Association. Following the event, a group of students took a tour of campus.

Yu-Chao Huang, who was on the tour, said a group of students approached them and acted in a way he believed was intended to mock them.

“There were five or six white males who appeared to be undergraduate students,” Huang said. “As they walked by us, they tried to mimic monkey-like sounds. They put their hands on the ground and walked toward us. They were trying to mimic monkey behavior.”

Student Hsiao-Ting Su said the experience left her shaken.

“It makes me think that they can do this in the center of campus. There were 15 or 16 Taiwanese students in our group, and they still did this. What if someone encountered this while alone? I think they would be afraid to walk on campus,” Su said.

Students said they reported the incident to the University Compliance Office and UNC Police. They said they were informed that video footage of the incident exists.

Lu said students are waiting for updates on the investigation.

“Police have the footage, so we’re in limbo, wondering whether they’re still working on it,” Lu said.

Yu-Hsiu Lien questioned how the university plans to use the evidence.

“The question is how the university is going to use this evidence because university police identified clear footage within the first week after the incident,” Lien said. “But now, more than two weeks later, we still haven’t heard any updates.”

Another student said international students can struggle to know where to turn for help after such incidents.

“It’s not an everyday incident on a U.S. campus, but when something like this happens, it’s hard for us to know what resources are available to us,” the student said.

The incident is one of two racially charged incidents reported on campus this semester. Students said the other involved Black students who were harassed at Greenlaw Hall.

U.S. Rep. Valerie Foushee has called on UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts to address the incidents. In a letter, Foushee asked, “How is your administration working to make sure students, particularly students of color, feel safe on campus?”

Lu said students appreciated Foushee’s response.

“We very much appreciate Congresswoman Foushee,” Lu said. “She reiterated her support and reaffirmed to the Taiwanese Student Association that these incidents are not tolerable in our community.”

Students said they want university leaders to communicate more clearly about how reports of harassment are handled.

“We wish there were a more transparent protocol for dealing with hate-related harassment incidents on campus,” Lien said.

In a statement, a university spokesperson said, “Protecting the safety and well-being of our campus community remains a critical priority.”

The spokesperson also said the university has received Foushee’s letter and appreciates her engagement.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Adam Duxter

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    BURNSVILLE, Minnesota (WCCO) — A brave group in Burnsville, Minnesota, battled through Saturday’s brisk rain for a good cause.

While most Minnesotans were sleepy snuggling, Sarah Zyvoloski and M.E. Heald had a sloppy start to the day, soldiering on and sprinting up and down Buck Hill at Heroes on the Hill.

“[Heald] talked me into doing it,” Zyvoloski said. “She did give me an out to volunteer if I wanted to, and I was like, ‘we can participate.'”

“I think the goal today is 13 [miles], for me at least,” Heald said.

The two, and dozens of others, committed to run the 1-mile loop up and down the hill to raise money to promote mental health resources for first responders and veterans.

“Mental illness, first responder, military, all of us struggle with a lot of things in our world,” Heald said. “And doing something together and donating and raising funds for mental health awareness and suicide prevention is near and dear to my heart already, as I know it was to Sarah, so I knew I could kind of push that a little bit.”

And every step is a step forward.

“It’s the heroes. It’s the everyday heroes that we have. The first responders and the veterans that we actually fundraise for,” said Julie Pagano, Heroes on the Hill co-founder. “They go out and they push themselves and they give themselves for us everyday, we want to give back to them. And this is our way of saying ‘hey, we want to celebrate you so come on out, test yourself and we’ll be with you all day long.'”

This is the event’s third year. Organizers say this year, they’ve been able to support veterans and first responders of all kinds.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Frankie McLister

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    ST. LOUIS PARK, Minnesota (WCCO) — An online petition in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, has nearly 800 signatures after neighbors say a city project is threatening to remove historical trees on their street.

Hugging Highway 100’s west side lies tight-knit neighborhoods Creekside and Brookside, two of the city’s oldest.

“It used to be an old oak savannah,” said resident Shannon Farrell. “There’s kissing canopy in some places, so trees across both sides of the street will actually meet.”

Pink ribbon and warning signs now cling to trunks on the Brookside Avenue block. Neighbors are putting pink ribbons on trees to alert the neighborhood about the city’s 2028 Pavement Management Project. The project entails reconstruction, underground utility work and a new bike lane on Brookside, which is what they’re most worried about.

“We’re not against a bike lane. We just want a bike lane in a safe spot, and it’s not Brookside,” said resident Karen Waters.

The bike lane would be a part of a larger project with Three Rivers Park District. The petition urges the Minneapolis suburb leaders to protect the historic oak trees the original plan would destroy.

“We don’t own these trees. We’re only their caretakers” said resident Nora Wildgen.

In an update on Friday, the city told residents the Brookside Avenue portion of the greater plan will now be pushed to a later date, an outcome neighbors said isn’t efficient enough. An open house was held about the matter on Sept. 2.

The city says the pushback will give more time for Three Rivers Park District to have their own public engagement process.

“We were blindsided,” Wildgen said. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“People who are living in this city really care,” Farrell said.

The city says a few of the trees were deemed in poor health. A city spokesperson gave this statement to WCCO: “The city shares the community’s appreciation of the city’s tree canopy and natural resources and strives to balance those values with its responsibility to replace aging infrastructure such as watermain, sewer and pavement. We look forward to continuing to work with the community as project planning continues for 2028.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Ellie Nakamoto-White

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    MILWAUKEE (WDJT) — In a world where words can be typed, sent, and forgotten with the tap of a screen, one Milwaukee man is taking a slower and more intentional approach to putting them on paper.

John Contreras, better known as Johnny Types Ink, calls himself a community typewriter poet.

Over the last few years, he’s amassed a collection of 18 different typewriters and uses them to turn conversations with strangers into personalized poems.

“People message me all the time about them like, hey, I got a typewriter that I found in my grandpa’s attic, do you want this? And I’m like, maybe,” Contreras told CBS 58’s Ellie Nakamoto-White laughingly.

You can find Contreras at different events in Milwaukee, usually sitting behind a bright and colorful set up complete with fidget toys and knick-knacks.

But the process doesn’t start with a blank sheet of paper. Rather, it starts with a conversation.

“It feels like there’s this therapeutic process of just kind of expelling their own emotions and their own thoughts, their stories, their words, and I kind of capture it,” Contreras said. “It’s something that feels like a reminder of why having a conversation with another person is important.”

There isn’t a set topic either.

Instead, Contreras wants to learn about the person sitting across from him — and especially, what brings them joy.

“It’s a message that often times, we are holding within ourselves,” Contreras said. “It’s almost like a caricature of words. Emotion to the physical world to what’s really being expressed but in the most concrete way possible.”

From there, the person gets to choose which color of paper they want the poem typed on and then Contreras gets to work.

“So, there’s this intentionality where it’s not just a gentle pressing, like you have to commit to the letter,” Contreras said. “It’s a slowing down of the process of writing and when you look back and see the bigger message, the bigger poem or the bigger piece of prose, it just seems like wow, I made that.”

A few minutes later, the finished personalized piece is ready to take home.

“It’s wonderful wanting to see people reconnect and want to connect,” Contreras said. “For a mother, for a wedding, for an anniversary, for a birthday, for themselves, for new life partners, a new cycle in their life. And I just listen, I capture it.”

The subject may change, but his goal remains the same: creating something that makes people feel seen and heard.

“Seeing their reaction of like, this makes sense, this is me, this is exactly what I was feeling, I have tissues too because sometimes tears happen,” Contreras said.

And it’s those moments that Contreras said matter the most.

Plus, it’s fitting Contreras is sharing his talents in the city where the typewriter was first invented and patented back in the 1800s.

“A reconnection which is slowing down with the writing process that I feel like I lost at some point with technology,” Contreras said.

Now, more than a century after the machine helped transform the way people put words on paper, Contreras is using them to encourage others to reconnect with the words they already have inside them.

“This is how I like to connect with people and this is how I can transform what they tell me into a poem that’ll resonate with their heart,” Contreras said. “Knowing I’m able to contribute to that and add my own unique flavor to it, I just think it’s meant to be.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Tara Campbell

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    SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A mountain lion has been captured several hours after being spotted roaming San Francisco’s Outer Sunset neighborhood Friday morning, officials confirm.

The animal was seen near Ulloa Street and 44th Avenue, which is not far from the ocean, around 7:30 a.m. and wildlife and animal control crews were dispatched.

The mountain lion was tranquilized by San Francisco Animal Care and Control after some tense moments during a standoff with the animal for several hours.

It was a dramatic scene as crews went to tranquilize the animal, it darted away. Residents and media were all pushed back as the animal briefly stopped at a corner and disappeared into an area of bushes, where another standoff began. About half an hour later, officials had tranquilized the mountain lion.

The whole situation had neighbors on edge as they were being told to stay in their homes.

“It was kind of crazy, we heard the police come out, they had all the bullhorns telling everybody, ‘ You need to disperse, get back in your homes,'” resident Shane Jordan said. “Within a few minutes we learned that it was a mountain lion running around the neighborhood and so obviously there was a lot of concern.”

This is the second mountain lion sighting in San Francisco in two weeks. There were several reports of one perched in a tree in the Panhandle on Saturday, September 5. It’s unclear if it’s the same animal.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Beth Carlson

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    OAK GROVE, Mo. (KMBC) — Two yarn shops in Oak Grove, once divided by a green line and owned by two life partners, have reopened as one store, bringing together their legacy and community.

The story began over a decade ago, when Robert Bandlow and Angelika Burles first spoke to KMBC 9. Best friends and life partners, they owned two separate yarn shops in one warehouse, splitting their two spaces down the middle with green tape.

Several years later, Robert’s daughter Lori is carrying on her father’s legacy, collaborating with Angelika to merge the storefronts and open in a new building.

“Angelika was kind of running both stores by herself. So, I came in to help out,” Lori said.

Robert passed away after a battle with pancreatic cancer in March. He had carried on his mother’s storefront, dedicating over 40 years to the store, the Knitcraft Yarn Shop.

Saturday, Lori and Angelika opened their new storefront in Oak Grove, combing both businesses.

“Bringing that community back together, seeing old faces and lots of new faces,” Lori said. “We spent the last five years pretty much rebuilding the community through the yarn store and trying to make it a welcoming space for them to come back into.”

Though there will be no tape on the ground, Lori said it’s a way to stitch together the families.

“We’ve just kind of been riding that roller coaster right now, and just it’s sad to not have him here with us, but we know he’s watching from above,” Lori said.

And for Angelika, she said the new storefront is the most natural progression after years of operating separate registers. She said the most important thing is the joy the hobby brings to those who enter.

“There’s never a frown in a yarn store. There really isn’t,” Angelika said.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Abigail Kurten

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    STORY CITY, Iowa (KCCI) — A historic cabin built in 1859 northeast of Story City has been restored to its original condition, highlighting the lives of Irish and Norwegian immigrants and the community’s dedication to preserving its history.

“We love our history here, right? We love to tell a story and Story City, and we can really just share that background information,” said Kate Feil, Director of Story City Museums.

The cabin, which now sits next to a historic one-room schoolhouse, originally housed a family of Irish immigrants and later Norwegian immigrants before coming into the possession of Katie Hermanson in 2022.

“It is amazing. As a historian, it’s like the best day ever you have. It’s not very often you have the science to also support your records and then the stories that are narratives that have been around in the community,” Hermanson said.

The restoration was made possible through local donations, and many of the tools displayed in the cabin were contributed by families in the area.

“It’s always fun to look back, but then also look forward, you know, like we can. What can we learn from this? Where can we go and just kind of keep that history in town?”

The newly restored cabin stands as a preservation of the places and people that shaped Story City, celebrating the community’s pride in its heritage.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.