The Ramsey County Board formally accepted a $4 million grant from the state aimed at family homelessness prevention on Tuesday.

The agreement with the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency will go toward the county’s Family Homeless Prevention and Assistance Program and its community partners and last until September 2027. The program provides eligible residents whose income is at or below 200% of federal poverty guidelines and are either homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness with financial assistance and support.

County officials view the funding “as an opportunity to invest in our prevention-related work and make sure that we’re deepening our service-oriented components of the programs that we have in the community,” said Renee Theese, a Ramsey County planning specialist.

Plans include street outreach for youth, rapid rehousing projects for youth and families and a coordinated entry project. The grant will primarily fund the county’s homelessness prevention efforts, which includes eviction prevention. The county’s coordinated entry system works to assess homeless households and match them with supportive housing opportunities, Theese said.

County prevention efforts are supported by community partners American Indian Family Center, Neighborhood House, Solid Ground, Catholic Charities and the ‘HouseCalls’ project, a Minnesota Community Care collaboration with Ramsey County Public Health.

FHPAP officials had asked for a $23 million grant for Ramsey County based on need so the $4 million was less than expected. The program is estimated to need at least $20 million a year just for eviction prevention work, Theese said. That includes funding for work with households that go through the county’s housing court financial clinic, which averages around 180 households every month that owe a collective balance of around $700,000.

“So if we look at just kind of those averages, we estimate that just to address these crisis situations, we would need 20 million a year,” Theese said. “But really our impact is aimed at not just addressing the crisis but really providing the service and care through resource and referral, through connection to other community agencies or programs, that’s our focus with FHPAP.”

From the prior state grant, the county’s office of Housing Stability has received $11.1 million supporting 13 agencies and 17 projects through this October. A second round of funding from the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency provided another $3.5 million to the county.

For more information on county homeless prevention resources, go to ramseycounty.us/residents/assistance-support/assistance/housing-services-support/homeless-prevention-resources

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By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A record 383 aid workers were killed in global hotspots in 2024, nearly half of them in Gaza during the war between Israel and Hamas, the U.N. humanitarian office said Tuesday on the annual day honoring the thousands of people who step into crises to help others.

U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said the record number of killings must be a wake-up call to protect civilians caught in conflict and all those trying to help them.

“Attacks on this scale, with zero accountability, are a shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy,” Fletcher said in a statement on World Humanitarian Day. “As the humanitarian community, we demand — again — that those with power and influence act for humanity, protect civilians and aid workers and hold perpetrators to account.”

The Aid Worker Security Database, which has compiled reports since 1997, said the number of killings rose from 293 in 2023 to 383 in 2024, including more than 180 in Gaza.

Nearly 400 humanitarian aid workers were killed last year. (AP Digital Embed)

Most of the aid workers killed were national staffers serving their communities who were attacked while on the job or in their homes, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA.

This year, the figures show no sign of a reversal of the upward trend, OCHA said.

There were 599 major attacks affecting aid workers last year, a sharp increase from the 420 in 2023, the database’s figures show. The attacks in 2024 also wounded 308 aid workers and saw 125 kidnapped and 45 detained.

There have been 245 major attacks in the past seven plus months, and 265 aid workers have been killed, according to the database.

One of the deadliest and most horrifying attacks this year took place in the southern Gaza city of Rafah when Israeli troops opened fire before dawn on March 23, killing 15 medics and emergency responders in clearly marked vehicles. Troops bulldozed over the bodies along with their mangled vehicles, burying them in a mass grave. U.N. and rescue workers were only able to reach the site a week later.

“Even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve,” the U.N.’s Fletcher said. “Violence against aid workers is not inevitable. It must end.”

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According to the database, violence against aid workers increased in 21 countries in 2024 compared with the previous year, with government forces and affiliates the most common perpetrators.

The highest numbers of major attacks last year were in the Palestinian territories with 194, followed by Sudan with 64, South Sudan with 47, Nigeria with 31 and Congo with 27, the database reported.

As for killings, Sudan, where civil war is still raging, was second to Gaza and the West Bank with 60 aid workers losing their lives in 2024. That was more than double the 25 aid worker deaths in 2023.

Lebanon, where Israel and Hezbollah militants fought a war last year, saw 20 aid workers killed compared with none in 2023. Ethiopia and Syria each had 14 killings, about double the number in 2023, and Ukraine had 13 aid workers killed in 2024, up from six in 2023, according to the database.

By CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-McLAY

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand soldier who tried to spy for a foreign power has admitted to attempted espionage in a military court.

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Monday’s conviction was the first for spying in New Zealand’s history. The soldier’s name was suppressed, as was what country he sought to pass secrets to.

Military court documents said the man believed he was engaged with a foreign agent in 2019 when he tried to communicate military information including base telephone directories and maps, assessments of security weaknesses, his own identity card and log-in details for a military network. The wording of the charge said his actions were “likely to prejudice the security or defense of New Zealand.”

He wasn’t speaking to a foreign agent, but an undercover New Zealand police officer collecting intelligence on alleged right-wing extremist groups, documents supplied by the military court showed.

The soldier came to law enforcement attention as part of an operation that was established after a March 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in the city of Christchurch, when an Australian white supremacist opened fire on Muslim worshipers, killing 51.

Officers spoke to the man twice about his involvement in a group, court documents showed, and after the government became aware he had expressed a desire to defect he was contacted by the undercover officer.

When the soldier’s hard drive was searched, investigators found a copy of Christchurch gunman Brenton Tarrant’s livestreamed video of his massacre and a manifesto document he published online before the killings. Possession of either without permission is a criminal offense in New Zealand and the soldier, who admitted that charge too, joins several others convicted in New Zealand of having or sharing the terrorist’s banned material.

In a statement read to the court by his lawyer, the man said the two nationalist groups with which he was involved were “no more than groups of friends with similar points of view to my own,” according to Radio New Zealand.

The laywer, Steve Winter, added that his client denied supporting the Christchurch shooter’s ideology, RNZ reported.

A soldier wears a New Zealand army emblem on exercise in the Nausori Highlands in Fiji, Sept. 9, 2022. (Petty Officer Chris Weissenborn/NZ Defence via AP)

The soldier — who was based at Linton Military Camp near the city of Palmerston North — also pleaded guilty to accessing a military computer system for dishonest purposes. The amended suite of three charges replaced 17 counts levelled against him earlier in the proceedings.

Each of the three charges he admitted carries a maximum prison term of either seven or 10 years in New Zealand. His sentence was expected to be delivered by a military panel within days after Monday’s conviction.

The man was due to stand trial by court martial on the charges before he admitted the offenses.

His was the first charge in a New Zealand military court for espionage or attempted spying. The last time such a case reached the civilian courts before was in 1975, when a public servant was acquitted on charges alleging he had passed information to Russian agents.

A spokesperson for New Zealand’s military said they would not comment until the proceedings against the soldier finished.

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE and AAMER MADHANI, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday offered his assurances that U.S. troops would not be sent to help defend Ukraine against Russia after seeming to leave open the possibility the day before.

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Trump also said in a morning TV interview that Ukraine’s hopes of joining NATO and regaining the Crimean Peninsula from Russia are “impossible.”

The Republican president, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders held hours of talks at the White House on Monday aimed at bringing an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine. While answering questions from journalists, Trump did not rule out sending U.S. troops to participate in a European-led effort to defend Ukraine as part of security guarantees sought by Zelenskyy.

Trump said after his meeting in Alaska last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Putin was open to the idea of security guarantees for Ukraine.

But asked Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” what assurances he could provide going forward and beyond his term that American troops would not be part of defending Ukraine’s border, Trump said, “Well, you have my assurance, and I’m president.”

Trump would have no control over the U.S. military after his terms ends in January 2029.

The president also said in the interview that he is optimistic that a deal can be reached to end the Russian invasion, but he underscored that Ukraine will have to set aside its hope of getting back Crimea, which was seized by Russian forces in 2014, and its long-held aspirations of joining the NATO military alliance.

“Both of those things are impossible,” Trump said.

Putin, as part of any potential deal to pull his forces out of Ukraine, is looking for the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as recognition of Crimea as Russian territory.