TommieMedia

St. Thomas students’ YouTube video parodies have been attracting lots of attention recently. Senior Amanda Schultz and two of her friends crafted a Minnesotan response to Katy Perry’s hit single, “California Gurls,” and their parody currently has more than 404,000 views and has been featured on many local news outlets and radio stations.

DENVER — Gary Faulkner is back home in Colorado after his personal quest to track down al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden ended with his arrest in a northern Pakistan woods.

The Greeley, Colo., man was detained June 13 when authorities found him armed with a pistol, a sword and night-vision equipment.

Curious about what St. Thomas students are doing this summer? Read on for a sampling of students’ summer plans.

MINNEAPOLIS — The new message to commuters in Minneapolis: hit a bicycle pedal instead of a gas pedal.

Minneapolis is joining Denver in a new wave of cities in car-crazy America trying to cut down on obesity, traffic jams and air pollution with bike-sharing programs.

Dozens of headless skeletons excavated from a northern English building site appear to be the remains of Roman gladiators, one of whom had bites from a lion, tiger, bear or other large animal, archaeologists said Monday.

Experts said new forensic evidence suggests the bones belong to the professional fighters, who were often killed while entertaining spectators.

GRANT, Minn. — Lauren Schifsky is the goat girl of Grant. She got her first goat, a pet, when she was 6. By age 11, she was raising, breeding and selling goats on her family’s 10-acre hobby farm.

Now 18, Schifsky owns so many goats — Nigerian Dwarf goats — that she doesn’t know the exact number. “I have about 60, I think,” she said. “I’ve lost track.”

GUATEMALA CITY — A cavernous and almost perfectly round sinkhole swallowed an entire intersection in Guatemala City during a tropical storm, spooking people in the neighborhood but exciting geologists.

SHOREVIEW, Minn. — A Minnesota woman is renewing her efforts to return a Purple Heart medal to the family of a late Wisconsin veteran.

Jean Ferdinande of Shoreview says she found the medal while cleaning out her garage about seven years ago.

Bill Mouw lived in northern Iowa, where the dirt was black and fertile, and the weather always had a helping hand on the plow. But his father thought Bill was wasting his time when he bought a farm near Baudette, one of the coldest frontiers in the Lower 48. Bill didn’t listen to his father. In 1966, he and his wife, Bette, bought a farm outside this small town on the Minnesota-Ontario border, then a second. They grew wheat, oats, flax and clover, and embraced the tight-knit community. There might have been another reason for the Mouws’ migration: Bill loves to fish.

How does it feel to be a Bob Dylan soundalike? Twenty performers gave it a shot Monday at the 400 Bar in Minneapolis to celebrate Dylan’s 69th birthday — including 14-year-old Max Etling, who won the informal contest last year.

On May 6 at 10:35 a.m., Public Safety reported a suspicious incident in 2010 Summit Avenue. Several UST students reported several pieces of personal property were missing or removed from their residence without authorization.