The Human Rights Campaign assessed companies' GLBT-friendliness

​The Human Rights Campaign Foundation has released a study measuring hundreds of companies' friendliness to gay employees.

If their survey is any indication, Minnesota companies tend to do well by their GLBT employees. Thirteen Minnesota companies received perfect scores in the Corporate Equality Index.

The survey measured whether companies provide equal benefits for same-sex partners and spouses as well as transgender employees and dependents. Companies were also expected to show public and internal commitment to the GLBT community.

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This north Minneapolis house was one of the properties featured in a 2006 fraud scam.

​Minnesota is either the second-best or second-worst place to hatch your mortgage fraud scam.
The Mortgage Fraud Index came out yesterday morning and ranked Minnesota second-highest in the country for incidence of mortgage fraud.

But a closer look at the data suggests we're not overrun by hucksters. In fact, the state's high rating might be the result of its willingness to prosecute con artists. The index ranks states based not by the total number of frauds, but on the number of criminal charges and civil complaints filed against fraudsters.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman tells City Pages his office devotes considerable resources to fighting mortgage fraud.

"One of the reasons our numbers are high is because it's a priority of mine to go after these cases big-time," he says. As of June, Hennepin County attorneys have filed 52 cases against 66 defendants in the past year.

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Telling the truth cost $50,000

​Nate and Nick Smith, the 11-year-old twins from Owatonna who tag-teamed a miraculous hockey shot three weeks ago, won't get the $50,000 prize promised for the shot.

Last month at a charity hockey event, Nick Smith's name got drawn to try for a near-impossible shot: From 90 feet back, send the puck through a 3.5-inch cutout. Nick was out of the building at the time, so the boys' father, Pat, sent Nick's twin brother Nate down to the ice. Unbelievably, Nate sent the puck right into its target.

Pat Smith quickly told the event organizer that it was Nate -- not Nick -- who'd made the shot, and the event organizers and insurance company have been tussling since over whether to give the Smiths the prize money.

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This downtown ambassador will take your bike and "have you arrested for cursing."

​The guys who walk around downtown Minneapolis in yellow jackets aren't police officers.

They're private employees working for a non-profit, Minneapolis Downtown Improvement District, and their job is to help make downtown "cleaner, safer, greener and better in order to achieve a more vital and vibrant downtown." They're called "ambassadors," and according to DID are supposed to be the "friendly faces" of the city.

But you wouldn't know it from watching a video of two DID "ambassadors" harassing an anti-war protestor who was chalking the sidewalk in front of the FBI building on Friday night. The ambassador came up and snatched her bike, claiming it had been "abandoned," threatened her for "defacing public property," and said he could have her arrested for cursing.

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Nate Smith after making the impossible shot

​Eleven-year-old twins Nate and Nick Smith of Owatonna got some major excitement at a celebrity hockey match in Faribault on Saturday when Nick's name got called to try for a center-ice shot.

Nick wasn't in the arena, though. So Nate, his identical twin, took to the ice. Nate Smith nailed the puck into a three-and-a-half-inch cutout in the goal--from a starting point 89 feet away. The shot was worth $50,000. The twins' father confessed the swap-out, and the family is still waiting to hear if it will get the money.

"We haven't heard yet. But we've a lot of exciting stuff happen this morning," says Pat Smith, the boys' father. "We're getting flown out to New York. We're going to be on Inside Edition and CBS Morning Show."

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Jucy Lucy, hearty eating.

​Bad news for anyone who crowed about the Twin Cities' spring ranking as the American College of Sports Medicine's fittest city in America.

Minnesota has ballooned in the last 16 years, going from a 14.6% obese population in 1995 to 25.3% today, according to a report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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We'll do anything for exercise. We'll even run in Snowmageddon.

​The Twin Cities may not be home to the most exercise junkies in the country. That title goes to Seattle. Nor do we habour the greatest number of layabouts. Lexington takes the cake there.

But according to Men's Health magazine, Minneapolis and St. Paul rank No. 10 among America's fittest cities.

We probably could have placed even higher, but our polite Minnesota Nice ways prevented us from upstaging everyone and drawing too much attention to ourselves. Also, we eat too many cheese curds and spend half the year cloaked in sub-zero darkness.

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Newsweek says Edina High School is the best in the state. Last year, the honor went to Minneapolis Southwest.

​Nine Minnesota high schools have been named to Newsweek's list of the best high schools in the country this year, but none of them are in Minneapolis or St. Paul.

We bring that up only because last year, Newsweek named Southwest High in Minneapolis the best school in the state. But evidently the criteria changed to the benefit of the schools in the 'burbs and elsewhere, "in hopes of highlighting solutions."

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Minneapolis is so much cleaner than most places. St. Paul is too.

​What's Salt Lake City got that we don't in the Twin Cities? Less trash, evidently.

Travel and Leisure magazine's readers named us the second cleanest city in the country, right behind the city that gave us Donny and Marie. And let's face it, you can't get much cleaner than an Osmond. (Prince? Don't even go there.)

So thanks, T&L readers. That's some tough competition.

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Jason, with animal companion.

​We have a question for Waconia resident David Velick, who's just been named PETA's 2011 Sexiest Vegetarian Next Door: Are those your wife's arms wrapped so lovingly around your neck in the PETA promo photo?

Because if they're not, you may be headed for your animal companion's house. Which would be too bad, seeing as how you've just won a seven-night vacation in Maui for yourself and a friend.

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