Minnesota lawmakers returned to the Capitol Monday morning to complete the state’s next two-year budget as agencies prepared to warn thousands of government employees of a potential government shutdown next month.

Most of the state government only has funding through the end of June after the Legislature failed to pass the majority of the bills that form the roughly $66 billion state budget by the end of the regular legislative session on May 19.

Gov. Tim Walz.

Gov. Tim Walz called a special session so lawmakers can finish their work. State leaders finalized the details in a series of mostly closed meetings over the last few weeks. The Senate and House went into session at 10 a.m. and are expected to finish their work by Tuesday morning.

However, there’s no guarantee that will happen.

Democratic-Farmer-Labor and Republican legislative leaders and the governor may have signed an agreement to finish up the special session by 7 a.m. Tuesday, but nothing can stop other state senators and representatives from introducing amendments and engaging in lengthy debate on controversial bills.

Health insurance issue

Some bills that are part of the budget deal between Walz, the tied House and DFL majority Senate may pass on thin margins.

A proposal to end state-funded health insurance for adults in the U.S. without legal immigration status is opposed by many DFLers and may only pass with the support of Republicans and the DFL leaders who signed the agreement.

Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, and House DFL Leader Melissa Hortman, of Brooklyn Park, have said they agreed to remove coverage for adults to avert a government shutdown, which would interrupt services on a much larger scale.

The immigrant care proposal was the first bill the House took up Monday morning, and representatives continued to debate the matter as noon approached.

If the measure passes both chambers, Walz would have a tough time vetoing it. Republicans managed to get DFLers to agree to tie the activation of health care spending to ending MinnesotaCare for around 17,000 adults in the state who came to the U.S. illegally.

Tax, transportation bills

Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers have expressed reservations about the tax and transportation bills.

The tax bill includes an increase to the sales tax on cannabis, and Republican leadership had initially said it wouldn’t support any new taxes, and some members may stick to that pledge.

There were also questions on Friday about whether a proposal to shift $93 million in sales tax revenue from metro counties to the Metropolitan Council would survive floor votes, as members of both parties might turn on shifting money from local governments to a central planning agency.

This is a developing story that will update throughout the day.

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By MICHAEL R. SISAK and JENNIFER PELTZ

NEW YORK (AP) — The foreperson of the jury deliberating in Harvey Weinstein ’s #MeToo retrial told the judge Monday that some jurors are ganging up and “pushing people to change their minds” based on information that wasn’t presented in court.

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“They fight together and I don’t like it,” the foreperson said in a closed-door conversation with Judge Curtis Farber and the prosecution and defense teams. The foreperson indicated to them that he’s made a decision, “and I don’t want to change my mind.”

Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala implored Farber to declare a mistrial, calling it a “tainted jury” and a “runaway jury.”

“People are considering things that were not brought into this trial as evidence,” Aidala argued. Jurors, he said, “are pushing people to change their minds. It’s not fair. They are talking about the past. It’s not about the past.”

Farber denied the mistrial request but said he would remind jurors that they must only weigh evidence that was presented to them during the trial and to disregard anything else they may know about the former movie mogul.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo argued that the juror’s concerns didn’t warrant a mistrial, noting that some aspects of Weinstein’s past were allowed into evidence. They included some accusers who recounted seeing a groundswell of allegations against Weinstein in the news media in 2017.

Weinstein, 73, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of committing a criminal sex act and one count of rape. The jury of seven women and five men began deliberating on Thursday.

The foreperson signaled his concerns in a note to the judge Monday just after jurors returned to court for a third day of deliberations. He wrote that he wanted to speak to the judge “about a situation that isn’t very good.”

Jurors also asked to be reminded of the definition of reasonable doubt and rules about avoiding a hung jury, suggesting they remained far apart on a verdict.

After Farber read the requested instructions, another juror hung back and updated the judge on the “temperature” of deliberations.

“I think things are going well today,” said the woman. ”We’re making headway.”

She noted that the “tone is very different” than on Friday when a different juror asked to be removed because he felt other jurors were treating one member of the panel in an “unfair and unjust” way.

The judge told that juror, a young man, that he had to keep deliberating and also denied a defense request for a mistrial over the issue.

Farber said he decided to hear the foreperson’s concerns in his robing room, outside the view of reporters and the public “solely for purposes of enabling that juror to speak freely.” A transcript of the conversation will be made available, the judge said. Weinstein waived his right to be present for the closed-door conversation.

Afterward, Weinstein’s lawyers returned to the courtroom and huddled around the court stenographer’s machine, jotting down notes while Farber heard another, unrelated case.

Weinstein was originally convicted in New York in 2020 of rape and sexual assault against two women in a verdict considered a landmark in the #MeToo movement.

But the conviction was subsequently overturned, leading to his retrial — with an additional accuser added last year — before a new jury and a different judge.

Weinstein was also convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape.

By TIA GOLDENBERG

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli naval forces, far from the country’s shores, intercepted and seized a Gaza-bound ship carrying international activists, including Greta Thunberg, in an early morning raid Monday. The operation sparked accusations that Israel’s actions, apparently in the high seas, were a breach of international law.

The activists say their journey was meant to protest Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there. The ship was carrying aid destined for people in Gaza, including baby formula and food. The activists, including Thunberg, were detained and were headed to Israel for likely deportation.

It’s not the first time Israel has halted ships carrying aid bound for the Palestinian territory. A raid in 2010 descended into violence between activists and Israeli commandos, leaving eight Turks and one Turkish-American killed. Most of the other operations against Gaza-bound boats have ended uneventfully, with ships diverted and activists detained.

Israel says the latest ship planned to violate its blockade on Gaza and says it acted in accordance with international law.

Can Israel storm a ship in the high seas? Here is a look at the legal debate.

Intercepted far off the coast of Gaza

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which organized the latest ship, says the Madleen was intercepted in international waters some 200 kilometers (124 miles) off the coast of Gaza, a claim that could not be independently verified. Israeli authorities have not disclosed the location where the ship was halted.

Robbie Sabel, an international law expert and former legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea stipulates that a state only has jurisdiction up to 12 nautical miles (19 kilometers) from its shores.

In general, states don’t have the right to seize ships in international waters, but there are exceptions, including during armed conflict, Sabel added.

He said that even before the latest war, Israel was in an armed conflict with Hamas, allowing it to intercept ships it suspected were violating its longstanding blockade of Gaza, which Egypt also enforced. Rights groups have long criticized the blockade as unlawful collective punishment against Palestinians. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Sabel cited a U.N. report on the 2010 raid that ended in activist fatalities, which stated that “attempts to breach a lawfully imposed naval blockade place the vessel and those on board at risk.” The debate over the legality of Israel’s blockade remains unresolved among legal experts.

The U.N. report urged states to be cautious in the use of force against civilian vessels and called on humanitarian missions to deliver aid through regular channels. It said a country maintaining a naval blockade “must abide by their obligations with respect to the provision of humanitarian assistance.”

A debate over Israel’s right to act

Yuval Shany, an expert on international law at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said that so long as Israel’s blockade of Gaza is “militarily justified” — meant to keep out weapons — and the ship intended to break it, Israel can intercept the vessel after prior warning.

Whether the blockade is militarily justified is also up for debate.

Suhad Bishara, head of the legal department at Adalah, a legal rights group in Israel representing the activists, said Israel was not justified in acting against a ship in international waters that posed no military threat.

“In principle, Israel cannot extend an arm into international waters and carry out whatever action against a ship there,” she said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said that “everything that was done was done in accordance with international law,” referring to the ship takeover.

Gaza and Israel’s obligations under international law

Rights groups say the legal questions are complicated by Gaza’s unique status.

The United Nations and much of the international community view Gaza as Israeli-occupied territory, along with east Jerusalem and the West Bank, all of which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want the three territories to form their future state.

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Israel argues that it withdrew from Gaza in 2005, when it pulled out its soldiers and settlers, even though it maintained control over Gaza’s coastline, airspace and most of its land border. Hamas, which does not accept Israel’s existence, seized power in Gaza two years later.

Amnesty International says Israel has an obligation as the occupying power to make sure that Palestinians in Gaza have enough access to humanitarian supplies, something Amnesty says Israel was preventing by not allowing the Madleen through.

Amnesty and other groups see the seizure of the Madleen as part of a campaign by Israel throughout the war to limit or entirely deny aid into Gaza.

Israel says it has allowed enough aid to enter Gaza to sustain the population and accuses Hamas of siphoning it off, while U.N. agencies and aid groups deny there has been any systematic diversion.

Israel’s aid policy during the war has driven the territory toward famine, experts say, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accused by the International Criminal Court of using starvation as a method of warfare by restricting humanitarian aid into Gaza, charges he has rejected.

“By forcibly intercepting and blocking the Madleen, which was carrying humanitarian aid and a crew of solidarity activists, Israel has once again flouted its legal obligations towards civilians in the occupied Gaza Strip,” Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, said in a statement.

The group called for the immediate and unconditional release of the activists, who it said were on a humanitarian mission.

By MARI YAMAGUCHI

TOKYO (AP) — An explosion at a storage site for unexploded ordnance at a U.S. military base on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa injured four Japanese soldiers, though the injuries are not life-threatening, officials said Monday.

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The four soldiers sustained finger injuries while working at a facility that belongs to Okinawa prefecture and temporarily stores unexploded ordnance, mostly from wartime and found on the island, local officials said. One of the harshest battles of World War II was fought on Okinawa.

Prefectural officials said the injuries were not life-threatening, but no other details were immediately known.

The U.S. Air Force said in a statement that the explosion occurred at the facility managed by the Okinawa prefectural government at Kadena Air Base’s munitions storage area. It said no U.S. servicemembers were involved in the incident.

The Self Defense Force’s joint staff said one of the devices suddenly exploded when the soldiers were inspecting it at the facility. The blast occurred when the soldiers were trying to remove rust, NHK television reported.

The SDF said they are trying to confirm what caused the accident.

Monday’s accident was believed to be the first ever since the 1974 launch of the Japanese army’s unexploded ordnance disposal unit.

Hundreds of tons of unexploded wartime bombs, many of them dropped by the U.S. military, remain buried around Japan and are sometimes dug up at construction sites and elsewhere. Many of them are still found on Okinawa, where about 1,856 tons of unexploded U.S. bombs are believed to remain.

In October, an unexploded wartime U.S. bomb exploded at a commercial airport in southern Japan, causing a large crater and suspending dozens of flights.