Mark Scheifele officially became a NHLer in the summer of 2011, when he was the first draft pick of the new Winnipeg Jets, after they relocated from Atlanta. The draft that year was held at the rink now known as Grand Casino Arena, and to this day Scheifele clearly enjoys his return visits to Minnesota.

On Thursday Scheifele had a goal and three assist as the recently resurgent Jets won their fourth in a row, blowing out the suddenly struggling Minnesota Wild 6-2.

Danila Yurov scored for Minnesota in the second period, as the Wild went without a regulation win on their three-game homestand, and are now 1-3-2 in their last half-dozen. Rookie goalie Jesper Wallstedt started – but did not finish – the game, stopping 14 of the 20 shots he faced in the first two periods before giving way to Filip Gustavsson who played the third.

Winnipeg was the NHL’s best team in the regular season a year ago, then had an ugly first half this season and looked like they might go first-to-worst. But after a come-from-ahead overtime loss to the Wild late last month sent them into an ugly 0-5-1 stretch, the Jets have seemingly gotten their groove back. The win on Thursday was Winnipeg’s seventh straight in St. Paul.

Out-shooting Winnipeg 10-0 after 12 minutes had elapsed, the Wild were stymied by Jets star goalie Connor Hellebuyck. They then opened the door for Winnipeg to re-engage, taking penalties 31 seconds apart and giving the Jets an extended two-man advantage. They made it count when Jonathan Toews popped in a rebound, giving the visitors the first period lead. It was the 900th career goal for Toews, and his 19th versus Minnesota – the previous 18 coming as a member of the Chicago Blackhawks.

They then sent the crowd to the first intermission break in some shock, as Winnipeg victimized the Wild’s fourth line, scoring twice in the final 10 seconds of the first period to lead 3-0. After Minnesota got the first 10 shots of the period without scoring, the Jets recorded 10 of the next 11 shots, and scored on three of them.

Minnesota finally answered early in the middle frame via rookie Danila Yurov’s one-timer following a cross-ice pass from Jake Middleton. The Wild then killed a Jets  power play, only to see the momentum disappear in an instant, when a turnover at the blue line and a long-range slap shot put Winnipeg ahead by three again. When a power play goal by the visitors later in the second, and a late goal that fooled Wallstedt to make it 6-1, boos rained down, directed at the officials, or the Wild, or both.

Marcus Johansson scored Minnesota’s second goal in garbage time, his first of the New Year and 13th of the season.

Gustavsson had eight saves in the third, while Hellebuyck finished with 32 in the game for Winnipeg. The Central Division rivals finished the four-game season series with each team winning twice in the other’s building.

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The St. Thomas men’s basketball team improved to 15-4 on the season and a perfect 4-0 in Summit Conference play with a 91-80 win in front of 2,390 fans in the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center at North Dakota Thursday night.

Both teams battled to a near-draw at halftime, with the Tommies holding on for a slim, one-point lead of 37-36 at the break.

However, St. Thomas kicked it into gear in the second half, outscoring the Fighting Hawks 54-44 after intermission to head out of Grand Forks an 11-point victor.

Tommies guards Nick Janowski and Nolan Minessale led all scorers with 32 and 27 points, respectively, and were the only St. Thomas players to score in double digits. Carter Bjerke and Austin Herro each chipped in nine points.

Conversely, North Dakota had four players in double digits, though Hawks guards Greyson Uelmen and Anthony Smith III both topped out at 19 points apiece.

Janowski and forward Isaiah Johnson-Arigu led the Tommies in rebounding, with five boards apiece. Janowski also scorched the net with seven three-pointers on nine attempts while shooting 11 of 16 from the field and 3 of 5 from the free-throw line. Minessale was 8 for 13 from the field and 7 for 12 at the line.

With the win, St. Thomas remained just one-half game behind North Dakota State (15-5 overall, 5-0 Summit) in circuit play. Most other Summit teams had Thursday off other than South Dakota and Kansas City, with the Coyotes topping the Kangaroos 99-83 in Vermillion, SD.

Neither St. Thomas nor NDSU has a blemish against Summit competition, but that will all change on Saturday. The Bison are scheduled to play host to the Tommies at the Scheels Center in Fargo. Tip-off between the conference front-runners is slated for 1 p.m.

NDSU features guard Damari Wheeler-Thomas, who leads the Bison with a 14.4 points-per-game average. Guard Trevian Carson is the team’s top rebounder, averaging 6.7 boards per contest.

Like St. Thomas, NDSU has not lost since entering conference play. The last loss for the Bison came on Dec. 22 against Texas-El Paso in the consolation round of the Sun Bowl Invitational in the Miners’ home arena.

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By TED ANTHONY and FU TING

BEIJING (AP) — In China, the names of things are often either ornately poetic or jarringly direct. A new, wildly popular app among young Chinese people is definitively the latter.

It’s called, simply, “Are You Dead?”

In a vast country whose young people are increasingly on the move, the new, one-button app — which has taken the country by digital storm this month — is essentially exactly what it says it is. People who live alone in far-off cities and may be at risk — or just perceived as such by friends or relatives — can push an outsized green circle on their phone screens and send proof of life over the network to a friend or loved one. The cost: 8 yuan (about $1.10).

It’s simple and straightforward — essentially a 21st-century Chinese digital version of those American pendants with an alert button on them for senior citizens that gave birth to the famed TV commercial: “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”

Developed by three young people in their 20s, “Are You Dead?” became the most downloaded paid app on the Apple App Store in China last week, according to local media reports. It is also becoming a top download in places as diverse as Singapore and the Netherlands, Britain and India and the United States — in line with the developers’ attitude that loneliness and safety aren’t just Chinese issues.

“Every country has young people who move to big cities to chase their dreams,” Ian Lü, 29, one of the app’s developers, said Thursday.

Lü, who worked and lived alone in the southern city of Shenzhen for five years, experienced such loneliness himself. He said the need for a frictionless check-in is especially strong among introverts. “It’s unrealistic,” he said, “to message people every day just to tell them you’re still alive.”

A woman looks at her smartphone outside a restaurant in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A reflection of life in modern China

Against the backdrop of modern and increasingly frenetic Chinese life, the market for the app is understandable.

Traditionally, Chinese families have tended to live together or at least in close proximity across generations — something embedded deep in the nation’s culture until recent years. That has changed in the last few decades with urbanization and rapid economic growth that have sent many Chinese to join what is effectively a diaspora within their own nation — and taken hundreds of millions far from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Today, the country has more than 100 million households with only one person, according to an annual report from the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2024.

A woman looks at her smartphone in a cafe in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Consider Chen Xingyu, 32, who has lived on her own for years in Kunming, the capital of southern China’s Yunnan province. “It is new and funny. The name ’Are You Dead?’ is very interesting,” Chen said.

Chen, a “lying flat” practitioner who has rejected the grueling, fast-paced career of many in her age group, would try the app but worries about data security. “Assuming many who want to try are women users, if information of such detail about users gets leaked, that’d be terrible,” she said.

Yuan Sangsang, a Shanghai designer, has been living on her own for a decade and describes herself as a “single cow and horse.” She’s not hoping the app will save her life — only help her relatives in the event that she does, in fact, expire alone.

“I just don’t want to die with no dignity, like the body gets rotten and smelly before it is found,” said Yuan, 38. “That would be unfair for the ones who have to deal with it.”

Is the app tapping into a particular angst?

While such an app might at first seem best suited to elderly people — regardless of their smartphone literacy — all reports indicate that “Are You Dead?” is being snapped up by younger people as the wry equivalent of a social media check-in.

The app Are You Dead? is seen on a smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

“Some netizens say that the ‘Are you dead?’ greeting feels like a carefree joke between close friends — both heartfelt and gives a sense of unguarded ease,” the business website Yicai, the Chinese Business Network, said in a commentary. “”It likely explains why so many young people unanimously like this app.”

The commentary, by writer He Tao, went further in analyzing the cultural landscape. He wrote that the app’s immediate success “serves as a darkly humorous social metaphor, reminding us to pay attention to the living conditions and inner world of contemporary young people. Those who downloaded it clearly need more than just a functional security measure; they crave a signal of being seen and understood.”

That name, though.

Death is a taboo subject in Chinese culture, and the word itself is shunned to the point where many buildings in China have no fourth floor because the word for “four” and the word for “death” sound the same — “si.” Lü acknowledged that the app’s name sparked public pressure.

A man looks down near his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

“Death is an issue every one of us has to face,” he said. “Only when you truly understand death do you start thinking about how long you can exist in this world, and how you want to realize the value of your life.”

A few days ago, though, the developers said on their official account on China’s Weibo social platform that they’d pivot to a new name. Their choice: the more cryptic “Demumu,” which they said they hoped could “serve more solo dwellers globally.”

Then, a twist: Late Wednesday, the app team posted on its Weibo account that workshopping the name Demumu didn’t turn out “as well as expected.” The app team is offering a reward for whoever offers a new name that will be picked this weekend. Lü said more than 10,000 people have weighed in.

The reward for the new moniker: $96 — or, in China, 666 yuan.

Fu Ting reported from Washington. AP researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed.

By CLAIRE RUSH

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A group of mostly Democratic U.S. senators sent a letter Thursday to the U.S. Postal Service, voicing concern that mail processing changes could affect postmark dates for mail-in ballots during an election year that will determine control of Congress.

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Updated agency policy says postmarks might not indicate the first day the Postal Service received the mail but rather the day it was handled in one of its processing centers. Those centers are increasingly likely to be further away from certain communities because of recent USPS consolidations, which could further delay postmarks, the 16 senators wrote.

“Postmark delays are especially problematic in states that vote entirely or largely by mail,” they wrote to Postmaster General David Steiner, noting that many states use postmark dates to determine whether a mail ballot can be counted. “These changes will only increase the likelihood of voter disenfranchisement.”

The consequences could be particularly acute in rural areas where mail has to travel farther to reach regional processing centers, they added.

“In theory, a rural voter could submit their ballot in time according to their state law, but due to the changes you are implementing, their legally-cast ballot would not be counted as it sits in a local post office,” they wrote. “As we enter a year with many local and federal elections, the risk of disrupting this vital democratic process demands your attention and action.”

The Postal Service has received the letter and will respond directly to those who sent it, spokesperson Martha Johnson said.

The agency addresses the issue on its website.

“While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed,” its website says. “This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.”

Johnson said the language in the final rule “does not change any existing postal operations or postmarking practices.” She added that the agency looked forward to “clarifying the senators’ misunderstanding.”

“Our public filing was made to enhance public understanding of exactly what a postmark represents, its relationship to the date of mailing and when a postmark is applied in the process,” she said.

People dropping off mail at a post office can request that a postmark be applied manually, ensuring the postmark date matches the mailing date, the Postal Service’s website says. Manual postmarks are free of charge.

The agency said the “lack of alignment” between the mailing date and postmark date will become more common as it implements its initiative to overhaul processing and transportation networks with an emphasis on regional hubs. The aim of the initiative is to cut costs for the agency, which has grappled with losses in the billions of dollars in recent years.

Under the plan, the Postal Service got rid of twice-daily mail dispatches from local post offices to regional processing centers. That means mail received after the only transfer truck leaves sits overnight until the next daily transfer, the senators wrote.

Election officials in states that rely heavily on voting by mail expressed concern with the change.

“Not being able to have faith that the Postal Service will mark ballots on the day they are submitted and mail them in a timely manner undermines vote-by-mail voting, in turn undermining California and other elections,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a statement.

She said her office will “amplify messaging to voters” who use mailed ballots that they must return their ballots early if they plan to use the post office.

Election officials in Washington state, where voting is done almost entirely by mail, are recommending that those who return their ballot within a week of Election Day do so at a drop box or voting center.

“Given the operational and logistical priorities recently set by the USPS, there is no guarantee that ballots returned via mail will be postmarked by the USPS the same day they are mailed,” the secretary of state’s office said in a statement.

The senators urged Steiner to restore “timely postmarks” and fully stand up an election mail task force. The lawmakers who signed the letter represented California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maine, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland. All are Democrats but one, an independent who typically aligns with the Democratic Party.