Good news for suburban eaters: Chef Thomas Boemer has been named the culinary director for The Wondrous Collective restaurant group.
The group owns more than a dozen restaurants in the Twin Cities area, from Mean Miners street tacos in Eagan and Apple Valley to Minnesota Burger Company in Apple Valley and Farmtown Brew Hall in Farmington.
Boemer, a James Beard Award nominee who was co-owner of Revival, Corner Table and In Bloom, all closed now, is known for his takes on southern cuisine and smoked and wood-fired meats.
The Wondrous Collective owner Tony Donatell announced Boemer’s hire in a news release, which read in part:
“We’ve developed a reputation for bold, boundary-pushing cocktail programs and a talent for building spaces that feel like a celebration of everyday life. But we’ve always known there was more we could do with the food. Today, I’m proud to share that we’ve found the missing piece.”
Boemer has already begun tweaking the menu at The Farmer’s Cellar, a Lakeville cocktail bar, and has just unveiled a full menu refresh at Revolve Hall in Apple Valley. Within that food hall, Boemer has debuted his first new concept for the restaurant group: The Wanderer: Adventure-Inspired Provisions. It’s described as “a fast-casual kitchen built on live-fire, flavor and a love for the road less traveled.”
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) — The leader of an MS-13 clique in the suburbs of New York City was sentenced Wednesday to 68 years in prison in a federal racketeering case involving eight murders, including the 2016 killings of two high school girls that focused the nation’s attention on the violent Central American street gang.
Alexi Saenz pleaded guilty last year for his role in ordering and approving the killings as well as other crimes during a rash of bloody violence that prompted President Donald Trump to make several visits to Long Island and call for the death penalty for Saenz and other gang members during his first term in the White House.
Saenz’s lawyers sought a sentence of 45 years behind bars, but prosecutors wanted the judge to impose the maximum sentence of 70 years. Prosecutors, who previously withdrew their intent to seek the death penalty, said Saenz deserves to live out his days in prison for his “senseless” and “sadistic” crimes.
Judge Gary Brown, in handing down the sentence, said the reduction of two years from the maximum recognized Saenz’s role in pleading guilty and avoiding a painful and costly trial, as well as his efforts in convincing his younger brother, the gang’s second-in-command, to do the same.
“This small adjustment is more than what was afforded to his victims,“ the judge said, “none of whom will ever enjoy another day on this planet.“
Saenz’s lawyers had argued for leniency, saying in their own legal filings that the now-30-year-old is remorseful and “on a journey of redemption” while incarcerated.
“With the passage of time and much reflection, it is hard for Mr. Saenz to reconcile the person he is today with the person he was when he committed the crimes,” their sentencing memo reads. “He is profoundly sorry, and although he knows the families may not accept his apology, it is sincere, and he accepts full responsibility for his participation in these crimes.”
Saenz’s lawyers also say he suffers from intellectual disabilities and lasting trauma from an abusive father and a difficult upbringing in his native El Salvador. They say Saenz was recruited and unwittingly “groomed” into MS-13 because he was an “easily influenced” and “gullible” high school student on Long Island.
Prosecutors, however, countered that Saenz remained “firmly entrenched” in MS-13 while in a federal lockup in Brooklyn for the past eight years.
They cited photos of him posing with other gang members behind bars and displaying gang signs and gang paraphernalia. They also said Saenz was disciplined for assaulting other inmates, refusing staff orders and possessing sharpened metal shanks, cellphones and other contraband.
“Indeed, the same pattern of violence and mayhem that has marked his life on the street has not waned with the passage of time,” prosecutors wrote.
Related Articles
Why Tohono O’odham Nation’s centuries-old saguaro fruit harvest is experiencing a revival in Arizona
After Diddy’s conviction, here’s where his business ventures stand
The US plans to begin breeding billions of flies to fight a pest. Here is how it will work
A look at the potential sentence faced by Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs in his sex trafficking trial
Daughter of assassinated civil rights leader sees painful echoes of political violence in America
Saenz, also known as “Blasty” and “Big Homie,” was the leader of an MS-13 clique operating in Brentwood and Central Islip known as Sailors Locos Salvatruchas Westside.
He admitted last July that he’d authorized the eight killings and three other attempted killings of perceived rivals and others who had disrespected or feuded with the clique.
Saenz also admitted to arson, firearms offenses and drug trafficking — the proceeds of which went toward buying firearms, more drugs and providing contributions to the wider MS-13 gang.
Among the killings Saenz oversaw were the deaths of Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, lifelong friends and classmates at Brentwood High School who were slain with a machete and a baseball bat.
Other victims included Javier Castillo, 15, of Central Islip, who was befriended by gang members only to be cut down with a machete in an isolated marsh.
Another victim, Oscar Acosta, 19, was found dead in a wooded area near railroad tracks nearly five months after he left his Brentwood home to play soccer.
MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is a transnational criminal organization believed to have been founded as a neighborhood street gang in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by people fleeing civil war in El Salvador.
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Cousins Tanisha Tucker Lohse and Maria Francisco set off from their desert camp around dawn on most early summer days, in search of ripe fruit from the towering saguaro cactus, an icon of the Southwest that is crucial to the Tohono O’odham Nation’s spirituality.
One plucks the small, thorn-covered fruits called “bahidaj” with a 10-foot-long (3-meter-long) stick made with a saguaro rib as the other catches them in a bucket. The harvest ritual is sacred to the O’odham, who have lived for thousands of years in what are now U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and it’s enjoying a renaissance as many seek to protect their traditional way of life.
The fruit collected in late June is central to annual summer rain ceremonies, which mark the New Year. The laborious, weekslong harvest process also reinforces crucial connections to the Creator, the natural environment and fellow O’odham across generations.
“I feel like I’m surrounded by all the people that were here before us, all the ancestors,” Francisco said in a desert wash lined with saguaros, flowering creosote bushes and spiny cholla cacti. “We talk about them constantly when we’re out here.”
Foremost for the cousins’ extended family is “Grandma Juana.” In the 1960s, elder Juanita Ahil campaigned to preserve their access to the harvesting camp in the foothills west of Tucson after the land became part of Saguaro National Park. Tucker Lohse’s late mother, Stella Tucker, carried on the harvesting tradition that’s now organized by the two cousins.
“I’m taking on a big responsibility, a big legacy,” said Tucker Lohse, who brought her 4-year-old daughter along this year. “My mom knows we’re still here.”
An umbrella is used to catch fresh fruit picked from a saguaro cactus during a harvest season day by the Tohono Oʼodham people in Saguaro National Park near Tucson, Ariz., on Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Clayborne Thomas, of the Tohono Oʼodham nation, picks saguaro cactus fruit during a harvest day in Saguaro National Park near Tucson, Ariz., on Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Clayborne Thomas, of the Tohono Oʼodham nation, looks at his harvested saguaro cactus fruit picked the traditional way during harvest season in Saguaro National Park near Tucson, Ariz., on Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Maria Francisco, left, presses saguaro cactus fruit juice through a strainer accompanied by Tanisha Tucker Lohse, right,dur ing a harvest day by the Tohono Oʼodham people in Saguaro National Park near Tucson, Ariz., on Monday, June 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
1 of 4
An umbrella is used to catch fresh fruit picked from a saguaro cactus during a harvest season day by the Tohono Oʼodham people in Saguaro National Park near Tucson, Ariz., on Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Saguaros are the iconic plant of the Sonoran Desert, a land straddling the border between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, that’s surprisingly lush even though it receives less than 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain yearly and summer temperatures routinely soar above 100 (38 degrees Celsius).
The treelike cacti start to produce fruit at 30 years old, then sprout their trademark arms around 75 and live up to 200 years. Most of the fruit is near the top, which can be more than four times the average person’s height, so the fruit of the tallest can be beyond their reach.
They’re an essential shelter and food source for desert creatures from mice to wrens, which is why harvesters — traces of whose camps date back to the 1500s — never pick them clean, Tucker Lohse said.
Related Articles
After Diddy’s conviction, here’s where his business ventures stand
The US plans to begin breeding billions of flies to fight a pest. Here is how it will work
A look at the potential sentence faced by Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs in his sex trafficking trial
Daughter of assassinated civil rights leader sees painful echoes of political violence in America
Gun suicides in US reached record high in 2023
“We don’t look at land and animals as a resource — we create a relationship,” she said, echoing perspectives shared by Indigenous people across North and South America.
For the O’odham, the saguaros, or “ha:sañ” in their language, provide far more than food, tools and shelter material — they’re family.
“Ha:sañ to us are like people, and we respect them that way,” said Silas Garcia, Francisco’s partner. He started harvesting as a child with his aunt on the O’odham reservation, which is one of the largest in the United States.
Garcia said there is a specific creation story about the saguaros — though like many stories sacred to Native Americans, it cannot be told in summer — and their spiritual presence makes the harvest central to the O’odham.
“It’s being reconnected to the desert, to who I am, to where our stories talk about where we come from as a people,” Garcia said as he built a mesquite wood fire to boil the sugary fruit pulp into syrup.
From saguaro fruit to New Year’s wine
Starting in May, O’odham families check the saguaro buds. The fruit is usually ripe by mid-June, opening a one-to-four week harvesting window until the fruit is spoiled by the first summer monsoons.
After picking the first fruit, harvesters praise the Creator, believed to reside in a nearby mountain peak, the Baboquivari, that has been the site of many rescues of migrants who tried to evade U.S. border authorities.
Then they bless themselves with some of the pulp, often making a cross-like sign over their foreheads and hearts — for some, a reference to Christian beliefs many O’odham also embrace. They taste it and thank the saguaro for providing for them.
When it’s cut open — using the saguaro’s dried-up flower as a knife and leaving the pods by the saguaro for animals — the fruit is the color of a ripe watermelon. It changes shades from fuchsia to blood red as it’s processed at camp.
After the pulp is boiled for about an hour, it’s strained to remove any debris, fiber and seeds. The latter two are collected into patties that, after being dried in the relentless sun, make natural pectin for saguaro jam. Then the juice is cooked again, reducing it to a syrup, and its flowery, caramel-like smell pervades the camp.
Since the syrup is one-tenth the quantity of the harvested fruit pulp, it takes a pair of harvesters about 10 hours in the desert to get enough to make 64 ounces (1.9 liters) of syrup.
Finally, a bit of syrup is mixed with water and left to ferment to make wine for Nawait I’i. That’s the dayslong ceremony in which O’odham pray together to their Creator to keep sending the monsoon rains that make it possible to plant traditional crops like beans, squash and corn.
The resurgence of traditional ways of life
For many Native Americans, losing access to land, natural cycles of agriculture and the local foods that sustained them for centuries has meant spiking rates of diabetes, alcoholism and other diseases that disproportionately plague their communities.
Too many elders lost their lives this way, putting at risk their language and traditions and more of their land.
“I watched them slowly pass away and no one took over,” Tucker Lohse said. That’s why she, Francisco and others push to teach youth about saguaro harvesting and other practices.
“I’m really proud Maria has picked it up,” said Francisco’s mother, Josephine Ramon, adding that she’s relearning some traditions she was taught as a child from her daughter.
Ramon said she regrets not teaching the language to younger family members who lived off the reservation, as about one third of the nation’s 30,000 members do.
City living also distances many from heirloom crops, which the Indigenous-run San Xavier Co-op Farm just south of Tucson is trying to regenerate, said one of its managers, Amy Juan, who harvests near the cousins’ camp.
“With everything we do, there’s a teaching of some sort,” added Garcia, who said he’s encouraged by programs on the reservation and beyond that help youth connect to their ancestral culture.
Francine Larson Segundo, who also harvests nearby, said her grandparents taught her about planting and caring for the saguaro.
“They’re people, and they are our people, and when we’re gone, one will take our place,” she said after picking the fruit for nearly two hours. “Anybody that’s younger than me, I have a responsibility to teach as much as I can.”
Francisco’s aunt Helen Ramon, widely known as “Grandma Helen,” stopped by. She’s especially adamant about instilling in youth the need to treat the natural environment with the same respect due to fellow beings.
“They need to carry on our traditions,” she said. “We can’t lose our ways of being Native.”
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — An emboldened Russia has ramped up military offensives on two fronts in Ukraine, scattering Kyiv’s precious reserve troops and threatening to expand the fighting to a new Ukrainian region as each side seeks an advantage before the fighting season wanes in the autumn.
Kremlin forces are steadily gaining ground in the strategic eastern logistics hub of Pokrovsk, the capture of which would hand them a major battlefield victory and bring them closer to acquiring the entire Donetsk region. The fighting there has also brought combat to the border of the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time.
In an effort to prevent Moscow from bolstering those positions in the east, Ukrainian forces are trying to pin down some of Russia’s best and most battle-hardened troops hundreds of kilometers away, in the northeast Sumy region.
“The best-case scenario for Ukraine,” said Russian-British military historian Sergey Radchenko, “is that they’re able to stall or stop the Russian advance” in the Ukrainian industrial heartland known as Donbas, which includes the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Then Ukraine could “use that as the basis for a ceasefire agreement.”
“There’s a better chance for Russia to come to some kind of terms with Ukraine” in the fall when the Russians “see the extent of their offensive,” Radchenko added.
While the battles rage, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is waiting to learn whether the Trump administration will support tougher sanctions against Russia and back a European idea to establish a “reassurance force” to deter Moscow.
A setback came with the U.S. decision Tuesday to halt some weapons shipments to Ukraine out of concern over America’s own depleted stockpiles.
FILE – A soldier of Ukraine’s 30th Separate Mechanized Brigade prepares to fires a rocket launcher toward Russian positions at the front line in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko, File)
FILE – In this photo provided by Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Brigade press service, a soldier fires a 120 mm mortar toward Russian army positions near Chasiv Yar, Donetsk region, Ukraine, May 27, 2025. (Oleg Petrasiuk/Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Brigade via AP, File)
FILE – In this photo provided by Ukraine’s 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service, a woman takes shelter in the basement of an apartment building in Pokrovsk, the site of heavy battles with Russian troops, Donetsk region, Ukraine, March 25, 2025. (Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP, File)
FILE – A fragment of a rocket is seen following a Russian strike on Sumy, Ukraine, on Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Yehor Kryvoruchko, Kordon Media, File)
1 of 4
FILE – A soldier of Ukraine’s 30th Separate Mechanized Brigade prepares to fires a rocket launcher toward Russian positions at the front line in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko, File)
In the Sumy region, Ukrainian forces face a constant barrage of aerial glide bombs, drones and relentless assaults by small groups of Russian infantrymen. They endure the attacks to prevent Russian forces from being moved to other battlegrounds in the eastern Donetsk region.
Ukrainian forces intensified their own attacks in Sumy in April and even conducted a small offensive into Russia’s neighboring Kursk region to prevent up to 60,000 battle-hardened Russian forces from being moved to reinforce positions in the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, Ukraine’s top army commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said last week.
If those troops had been moved, they could have increased the tempo of Russian attacks across the front line and stretched Ukrainian forces thin.
The strategy did not come without criticism. Commanders who were ordered to execute it complained that it resulted in unnecessary loss of life.
Russian forces have penetrated up to 7 kilometers (4 miles) into the northern Sumy region from different directions along the border.
Ukrainian forces are determined to keep them there to avoid freeing up Russian forces to fight in the east. So far they have succeeded, locking up to 10,000 Russian troops in the Glushkovsky district of the Kursk region alone, where Ukraine maintains a small presence after being mostly forced out by Russian and North Korean troops earlier in the year.
Russia seeks maximum gains in Donetsk
The war’s largest battle is being waged in Donetsk as Russia inches toward its stated goal of capturing all of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Unable to tackle the strategically significant logistical hub of Pokrovsk directly, Russian forces are attempting to encircle the city, a maneuver that requires encroaching on the borders of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Bringing the war to a sixth Ukrainian region would be detrimental for Ukrainian morale and give Russia more leverage in negotiations if its forces manage to carve out a foothold there.
Related Articles
Ukraine looks to jointly produce weapons with allies as the US halts some shipments
Greenland has a message for the rest of the world: Come visit
Iran’s president orders country to suspend cooperation with UN nuclear watchdog IAEA
Hamas is open to a ceasefire. But Netanyahu says there’s no room for Hamas in postwar Gaza
Today in History: July 2, Civil Rights Act signed into law
Sabotage groups have crossed the border, only to be eliminated by Ukrainian forces.
But in time, commanders fear that Russia will advance as Ukraine continues to grapple with severe shortages.
Lack of soldiers and supplies across the 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) front line mean that Ukrainian forces must concentrate on holding their positions and conserving resources rather than advancing, said Oleksii Makhrinskyi, deputy commander of the Da Vinci Wolves battalion.
Commanders describe battles so intense under drone-saturated skies that rotating forces in and out of position has become a deadly operation. Ukrainian forces remain in combat positions for several weeks at a time or more, relying on supplies carried in by drones.
The Russians’ goal “is just to enter Dnipropetrovsk region, to have a good position politically if the presidents negotiate peace,” said Andrii Nazerenko, a commander of the 72nd Brigade, a drone unit in eastern Ukraine, referring to potential talks between Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“They’re really close to getting what they want,” he said.
All eyes on Trump’s next move
Zelenskyy hopes U.S. President Donald Trump will move away from his administration’s past ambivalence toward Ukraine and signal his intention to continue American support, a move that could also alter Moscow’s calculations.
The two presidents met last week on the sidelines of a NATO summit and discussed a possible weapons package, including Patriot missile systems that Ukraine intends to purchase with European support.
The U.S. Defense Department announcement now calls that into question although it did not specify which weapons were being held back when it disclosed the Pentagon review of American weapons stockpiles Tuesday. The halt of any weapons from the U.S. would be a blow to Ukraine as it struggles to confront Russia’s daily aerial barrages.
Zelenskyy also hopes Trump will punish Russia by imposing harsher sanctions on its energy and banking sectors, which bankroll the Kremlin’s war effort.
Europe and the U.S. have imposed successive sanctions on Russia since the full-scale invasion in 2022, but Zelenskyy says those measures have not been enough to pierce Moscow’s war machine. He has proposed a $30 per barrel price cap on Russian oil.
EU sanctions envoy David O’Sullivan said Europe needs to maintain the sanctions pressure while also “holding out the prospect that if Russia behaves correctly, we could have some kind of ceasefire and some kind of sense of negotiation, but for the moment Russia doesn’t seem to want that.”
Kyiv’s closest European allies are also awaiting a sign from Trump that he will support a plan to deploy foreign troops in Ukraine to guard against future Russian aggression after a ceasefire agreement. That is likely the best security guarantee Ukraine can hope for in lieu of NATO membership.
Meanwhile on the battlefield, Russian forces appear increasingly confident.
Nazerenko noticed a shift in the morale of advancing Russian infantrymen in recent months. Instead of running away while being assailed by Ukrainian drones, they keep pushing forward.
Nazerenko could not help but ask a Russian prisoner: “You know you will die. Why go?”
Because, the Russian soldier replied: “We will win.”
Associated Press journalist Volodymyr Yurchuk contributed to this report.
