The Union Gospel Mission Twin Cities will host a 24-hour live conversation on homelessness, addiction and mental health later this week.
The event, called Conversations on a Bench, is happening at ministries nationwide and will end on World Homeless Day, observed annually on Oct. 10.
Pam Stegora Axberg, the organization’s CEO, will participate in 40 conversations from 2 p.m. Thursday to 2 p.m. Friday on a bench outside the organization’s men’s campus in St. Paul.
Participants will include Ramsey County Attorney John Choi, Ramsey County Commissioner Rena Moran and Melvin Carter, the mayor of St. Paul. Officials from the Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health, the Minnesota Wild and Nourish MN, a food bank in St. Paul, also are scheduled to participate.
The conversations will focus on solutions to homelessness, addressing related issues such as addiction and mental health, while highlighting the roles of public, private and nonprofit organizations in driving change.
More than 9,000 people were homeless on a single night in January 2024, according to the Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness. The Point-in-Time count is an annual nationwide count of people experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness on a single night in January.
On the eve of the regular season, one constant of a John Hynes‘ training camp remains true in the coach’s second season at the helm: It’s hard.
To a man, Wild players note on-ice sessions are serious, focused and strenuous. The same goes for the off-ice work. It is not for those unwilling or unable to put in a full 60-minute effort every time their skates touch the ice.
It didn’t last, as injuries piled up. By April, the Wild needed a last-minute rally in their final game to make the playoffs. Still, Minnesota showed what it could do at full strength.
On Monday, with his his full 23-man roster on the ice at TRIA Rink for the first time, Hynes reflected on the final roster cuts made to prep for the regular season opener.
“There was some tough decisions of who we would send down and who we would keep,” Hynes said, noting that several of the players who will start with the Iowa Wild had flashes in training camp practices and preseason games to state their case for NHL roster spots.
“We feel like this is the group we’ll start with and see where they go,” he said.
In the final tuneup practices before the regular season opens in St. Louis on Thursday, the forward lines have looked like this:
Top line: Marco Rossi centering with Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy on wings.
Second line: Joel Eriksson Ek centering with Marcus Foligno and Vladimir Tarasenko on the wings.
Third line: Ryan Hartman centering with Yakov Trenin and Marcus Johansson on wings.
Fourth line: Nico Strum centering with some combination of Danila Yurov, Liam Ohgren and Vinnie Hinostroza on the wings.
Mats Zuccarello is injured to start the season. On Tuesday, the team placed Zuccarello and Nico Sturm on injured reserve and designated forwards Cameron Butler and Michael Milne and defenseman Stevie Leskovar as injured, non-roster players.
Hinostroza, who the Wild claimed off waivers from Nashville last February, will likely be the veteran wing on the fourth line, with either Yurov or Ohgren on the other side.
“I think Vinnie’s had a strong camp,” Hynes said. “He didn’t get as much action later in the games, but he does have experience, we know what he can do. With Ohgren and Yurov, we’re still working those guys in, and now that camp’s over, see what they look like in different positions.”
Defensively, the pairings have been:
-Jake Middleton with Brock Faber
-Zeev Buium with Jared Spurgeon
-Zach Bogosian with David Jiricek
Newly re-acquired Daemon Hunt and veteran Jonas Brodin – who is still making his way back from off-season surgery – will be the reserve defenseman at the season’s start. Hynes said they initially did not expect to have Brodin much in October, but he’s made good progress in practice.
“I’m sure they’re going to have to test his strength, meet with the doctor, and then maybe put him in a little bit more heavier contact,” Hynes said. “The fact that he’s doing what he’s doing is really encouraging.”
The goalie tandem of Filip Gustavsson and Jesper Wallstedt is set, with veteran Cal Petersen heading to his home state to tend the Iowa net. Like most Wild fans, Hynes smiled at the contract extension given to Gustavsson over the weekend, and the stability it means in the Minnesota crease.
“It’s nice that he’s got that confidence, and I think he’s earned it. He’s the guy for us,” Hynes said. “You can’t win without good goaltending, and the way that he played last year and the way that he looks now is going to be really important for us.”
Among those waiting in the wings in Iowa are defensemen Carson Lambos and Matt Kiersted and forwards Tyler Pitlick and Hunter Haight, all of whom had strong showings in training camp and were among the final cuts.
Veteran forward Brett Leason and veteran defenseman Jack Johnson both attended Wild camp on professional tryouts, but neither was offered a contract.
Similar to October 2024, the Wild will learn much about themselves while getting to know one another away from home.
After the opener in St. Louis, they play home games versus Columbus on Saturday and versus Los Angeles on Monday, Oct. 13. Then the Wild head out on a five-game road trip, during which they’ll visit the Stars, Capitals, Flyers, Rangers and Devils.
Briefly
The Wild’s “Skate It Forward” program — which was announced last season as an effort to promote growth in youth hockey participation in Minnesota, western Wisconsin and the Dakotas — announced its initial grant recipients for the 2025-26 season this week.
The 11 community hockey programs included are Anoka, Bloomington Jefferson, Delano, Langford Park (St. Paul), Minnesota Sled Hockey, Mounds View Irondale, Osseo-Maple Grove, St. Paul Capitals, Waseca, Willmar and Winona. For every first-year player under the age of eight that registers for hockey in those associations, the Skate It Forward program will provide a $250 grant to help encourage more young players to take up the game.
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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. government shutdown is waving a caution flag at private companies racing to make the move to the public market.
The market for initial public offerings has been on a years-long recovery after spiking inflation slammed the brakes on activity in 2022. The IPO market is already on track for its best year since 2021 with 163 deals and $31 billion in proceeds raised so far, according to Renaissance Capital.
Companies rely on the U.S. government, through the Securities and Exchange Commission, to review and approve IPO filings, while monitoring the ongoing process. The SEC is now operating with minimal staff, significantly delaying or halting those reviews and approvals.
Investors and companies are dealing with more than just technical issues. A prolonged government shutdown could sap confidence in the U.S. markets and economy. IPO activity typically remains strong through October, then slows in the U.S. during the final two months of the year.
“That’s always an end of the year factor,” said Samuel Kerr, head of global equity capital markets at Mergermarket.
Investors and companies had been mostly brushing off much of the uncertainty roiling the U.S. government and economy through the year, including an unpredictable trade policy, ongoing worries about inflation, a weakening job market and questions about Federal Reserve policy. Amid all that, the stock market has notched record after record and new companies keep joining the ranks.
The impasse in Washington, though, has brought a reminder of the challenges facing the market.
“It (the shutdown) reminds you that we’re not operating in normal times,” Kerr said.
Investors have been drawn to IPOs because stocks have looked pricey for a while, especially in the technology sector, leaving them looking for other ways to get into the market. IPOs have offered a way to do that. Many of the bigger IPOs in 2025 have been in growing technology fields, including cryptocurrency technology and artificial intelligence.
Circle Internet Group, the U.S.-based issuer of one of the most popular cryptocurrencies made its public debut in June for about $1.1 billion.
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Circle issues USDC, a stablecoin that can be traded at a 1-to-1 ratio for U.S. dollars, and EURC, which can similarly be traded for euros. It’s shares priced at $31, soared on the first day of trading and currently trade for around $152.
Cryptocurrency exchange Bullish raised about $1.1 billion in August. Cloud-computing company CoreWeave raised about $1.5 billion when it went public in March.
Klarna, the Swedish buy now, pay later company, entered the public market in September, raising $1.37 billion. That made it the largest IPO of the year, according to Renaissance Capital. The IPO priced at $40 and shares currently trade around $42.
Outside of the shutdown, market conditions remain ideal, said Bill Smith, CEO of Renaissance Capital, in a note to investors.
“The IPO market still has a bit of gas in the tank,” he said.
By WAFAA SHURAFA and SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza City (AP) — When Israeli bombs began falling, Mohammad al-Najjar, his wife and six children fled their house in southern Gaza in the dead of night, dispersing in terror alongside hundreds of others from their neighborhood.
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When the dust settled and al-Najjar huddled with his family in a shelter miles away, his son Ahmad, 23, was missing. After daybreak, the family searched nearby hospitals and asked neighbors if they had seen him.
There was no trace. Nearly two years later, they are still looking.
“It is as if the earth has swallowed him,” said Mohammad al-Najjar. He spoke from the family’s tent in Muwasi, along Gaza’s southern coast, their ninth displacement camp since that fateful night in December 2023.
Thousands in Gaza are looking for relatives who are missing in one of the most destructive wars of the past decades. Some are buried under destroyed buildings. Others, like al-Najjar’s son, simply disappeared during Israeli military operations.
In a war where the true number of the dead is unknown, “what the accurate number (of missing persons) is, nobody knows,” said Kathryne Bomberger, director general of the International Commission on Missing Persons.
The al-Najjar family has searched through the rubble of their bombed-out home. They went to morgues and checked with the International Committee for the Red Cross.
“Is he a prisoner (in Israel), is he dead?” the 46-year-old father said. “We are lost. We are tormented by everything.”
The Israeli Prison Services and the military said they could not release identifying details about specific prisoners and refused to comment on al-Najjar’s status.
An enormous task
Some 6,000 people have been reported by relatives to still be buried under rubble, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The true number is likely thousands higher because in some cases entire families were killed in a single bombing, leaving no one to report the missing, said Zaher al-Wahidi, the ministry official in charge of data.
Separately, the ministry received reports from families of some 3,600 others missing, al-Wahidi said, their fate unknown. So far, it has only investigated over 200 cases. Of them, seven were found detained by Israel. The others were not among those known to be dead or buried under rubble.
The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government. The U.N. and many independent experts consider its figures to be reliable.
The ICRC has its own separate list of missing — at least 7,000 cases still unresolved, not including those believed to be under rubble, said chief spokesman Christian Cardon.
Ruins of apartments destroyed by Israeli strikes litter the area next to Khaled Nassar’s home in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza City Feb. 9, 2025. Nassar’s daughter, Dalia, and his son, Mahmoud, were killed in separate airstrikes, leaving both buried under their homes. (AP Photo/Abdel Hana)
There have been many ways to disappear during the chaos of offensives, strikes on buildings and mass displacements of almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people. Hundreds have been detained at Israeli checkpoints or were rounded up in raids with no notification to their families. Experts commissioned by a U.N. body and major rights groups have accused Israel of genocide, charges it vehemently denies.
During Israeli ground assaults, bodies have been left in the streets. Palestinians have been shot when they came too close to Israeli military zones and their bodies are found weeks or months later, decomposed.
The Israeli military has taken an unknown number of bodies, saying it is searching for Israeli hostages or Palestinians it identifies as fighters. It has returned several hundred corpses with no identification to Gaza, where they were buried in anonymous mass graves.
Investigating the missing requires advanced DNA technology, samples from families and unidentified bodies, and aerial imagery to locate burial sites and mass graves, said Bomberger. “It is such an enormous undertaking,” she said.
But Israel has restricted DNA-testing supplies from entering Gaza, according to Bomberger and Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israeli military authorities would not immediately comment when asked if they were banned.
Bomberger said it is the state’s responsibility to find missing persons — in this case, Israel, as the occupying power. “So it would depend on the political will of the Israeli authorities to want to do something about it.”
Fadwa al-Ghalban holds a cellphone showing a photo of her son, Mosaab, at her tent in Muwasi, along Gaza’s southern coast, Oct. 3, 2025. She has had no word from him since July, when his cousins last saw him near their house as an Israeli strike destroyed it in the southern town of Maan. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Fadwa al-Ghalban holds clothes belonging to her son, Mosaab, at her tent in Muwasi, along Gaza’s southern coast, Oct. 3, 2025. Fadwa has had no word from Mosaab since July, when his cousins last saw him near their house as an Israeli strike destroyed it in the southern town of Maan. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
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Fadwa al-Ghalban holds a cellphone showing a photo of her son, Mosaab, at her tent in Muwasi, along Gaza’s southern coast, Oct. 3, 2025. She has had no word from him since July, when his cousins last saw him near their house as an Israeli strike destroyed it in the southern town of Maan. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Fadwa al-Ghalban has had no word about her 27-year-old son Mosaab since July, when he went to get food from their family house, believing Israeli troops had already left the area near the southern town of Maan.
His cousins nearby saw Mosaab lying on the ground. They shouted his name, but he didn’t answer, and with Israeli troops nearby it was too unsafe to approach him and they left. They presumed he was dead.
Returning later, family members found no body, only his slippers.
Her family has put up notices on social media, hoping someone saw Mosaab in Israeli detention or buried him.
Al-Ghalban lives off hope. Another relative had been presumed dead, then four days after the family formally received those giving condolences, they learned he was in an Israeli prison.
Whatever her son’s fate, “there is a fire in my heart,” al-Ghalban said. “Even if someone buried him, it is much easier than this fire.”
Rights groups say Israel is “disappearing” hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza, detaining them without charges or trial, often incommunicado.
Israel does not make public the number being held, except through Freedom of Information Act requests. Under a wartime revision to Israeli law, detainees from Gaza can be held without any judicial review for 75 days and denied lawyers for even longer. Appearances before a judge usually take place in secret via video.
All al-Ghalban has left of her son is his last change of clothes. She refuses to wash them.
“I keep smelling them. I want a scent of him,” she said, her voice cracking into tears. “I keep imagining him coming, walking toward me in the tent. I say he is not dead.”
Khaled Nassar looks over the destruction at his apartment in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza City Feb. 9, 2025. Nassar’s daughter, Dalia, and his son, Mahmoud, were killed in separate airstrikes, leaving both buried under their homes. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Even a ring
With most of Gaza’s bulldozers destroyed, families must search on their own through wreckage, hoping to find even the bones of lost loved ones.
Khaled Nassar’s daughter, Dalia, 28, and his son, Mahmoud, 24, were killed in separate airstrikes, leaving both buried under their homes in the Jabaliya refugee camp.
Rescue workers have largely been unable to access Jabaliya, which was hit by repeated strikes, raids and ground offensives and is now under Israeli military control and off-limits.
Dalia and her husband were killed in their home on Oct. 9, 2023, the third day of the war. Her children survived. They now live with their grandfather.
“We searched and we could not find her,” Nassar said. “She seemed to have evaporated with the rocket.”
A year later, Israel struck the family’s home, burying Mahmoud, who had returned to shower in the house after the family had evacuated.
When the ceasefire began in January, Nassar and his wife Khadra went to search for him. Every day, the 60-year-old father of 10, a former construction worker, used a hammer, shovel and small tools to chip away at the rubble. His wife carried away buckets of sand and debris.
They dug through half the house and found nothing. Then Israel broke the ceasefire in March and they had to flee.
Khadra refuses to despair. If there is a new ceasefire, she will resume digging, she said, “even if I only find (Mahmoud’s) ring on his finger or some bones to put in a grave to call it my son’s.”
El Deeb reported from Beirut. AP correspondents Mel Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, Julia Frankel in New York, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, and Toqa Ezzidin in Cairo contributed to this report.
