Minnesota news in brief at 8:58 p.m. CDT

WASHINGTON - The House began debate Wednesday on legislation by Rep. Jim Oberstar aimed at improving the safety of the nation's bridges -- nearly a year after the deadly Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis.

Oberstar, D-Minn., said the legislation would help "make those bridges safer, prevent future loss and future collapse, as happened in Minnesota."

A vote on the bill is expected Thursday.

Oberstar, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, initially sought a 5-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase to fund $25 billion worth of bridge repairs over three years. But he had to abandon that plan after failing to win political support for it.

Among other things, the bill would authorize an additional $1 billion next year to rebuild structurally deficient bridges on the national highway system, and states would have to come up with plans to fix such bridges. The bridge that fell in Minneapolis last Aug. 1 had been labeled structurally deficient.

------ A hot (pepper) lead in hunt for salmonella source

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It was a hot lead for detectives on a cold case. People suddenly were getting salmonella at a Minnesota restaurant more than 1,000 miles from the center of the nation's outbreak.

Not my tomatoes, protested the manager. He'd switched his supply to government-cleared fresh tomatoes and even canned ones. But a lot of his menu items had a raw jalapeno garnish sprinkled on top, and that turned out to be a critical clue in the two-month salmonella mystery.

On July 3, Minnesota e-mailed the feds. After tracing credit card receipts -- to find what the restaurant's healthy customers didn't eat -- there was good evidence that the jalapenos were sickening people. And, officials had a diagram tracing the pepper shipments all the way back to three farms in Mexico.

One of those farms shipped peppers through the same large warehouse in McAllen, Texas, where Food and Drug Administration inspectors weeks later would find a single contaminated Mexican-grown pepper being packed by a neighboring vendor.

How could Minnesota pinpoint hot peppers just days after discovering a cluster of sick residents, when federal investigators had spent weeks fruitlessly chasing tomatoes?

------ Northwest Airlines posts $377 million 2Q loss

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Northwest Airlines, which already plans to reduce flying from now through the end of the year, could shrink more and keep raising fares if fuel prices don't come down, Chief Executive Doug Steenland said on Wednesday.

Northwest is planning to cut capacity by as much as 4 percent during the last three months of this year.

"Ultimately we need to get in the black," Steenland said on a conference call discussing the company's second-quarter $377 million loss. "And if this doesn't do it, we're prepared to take more" seats out of the schedule.

Northwest and other carriers have been planning to fly fewer seats in the fall and are charging more for the remaining seats in an effort to cope with higher fuel prices -- up 69.3 percent at Northwest from a year ago, not counting taxes and fuel hedges.

Investors are concerned that a slow economy will limit the ability of airlines to raise fares and charge new fees to offset fuel costs. Northwest's revenue for each seat flown one mile (an industry standard) rose 6.1 percent during the quarter and Steenland said they're seeing evidence that strength will continue into the fall.

------ 2 Mpls. beaches closed while water tested

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- The two public beaches at Lake Nokomis in south Minneapolis are closed after vandals overturned a portable outdoor toilet.

Matter from inside the toilet made its way into the storm sewer. Dawn Sommers, a spokeswoman for Minneapolis Parks and Recreation, says the storm sewer is connected to the lake.

Sommers says the beaches were closed as a precaution.

Water samples were gathered Monday and are being tested for high bacteria levels.

The park system opens to reopen the beaches by Thursday.

Related topic galleries: Air Transportation Industry, Heavy Engineering, The Fall, Quarterly or Semiannual Financial Statements, House, Air Transportation, Health Organizations

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