U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar met with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican Friday with a group of Ukrainians who are working to help return more than 19,000 children abducted by Russian forces during the war.

Klobuchar has pushed for support for Ukraine following the Russian invasion of that country in 2022. The Minnesota Democrat was invited by the Ukrainians to join their delegation advocating for the return of children.

“Pope Leo is a true moral force for peace and justice and a champion for children around the world. It was an honor to meet him as part of our mission to bring home the Ukrainian children abducted by Russia and chart a path towards peace and healing for Ukraine,” said Klobuchar, in a statement. “We cannot accept a world where children are abducted during wartime and used as hostages for negotiations. The United States must remain steadfast in our support for Ukraine’s fight for freedom, and we should all heed Pope Leo’s example of serving those in need, pursuing the common good, and calling for peace.”

Also during her meeting, Klobuchar presented the Pope with a resolution honoring the victims and survivors of the mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis this summer.

During her visit to Rome, Klobuchar also spoke met with other Vatican officials to talk about efforts to return children abducted by Russia. Klobuchar has worked on legislation aimed at the recovery of Ukrainian children with U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican.

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The Ukrainian delegation includes four children who were taken by Russian forces and have been reunited with their families.

There have been 19,546 confirmed reports of unlawful deportations and transfers of Ukrainian children to Russa, Belarus or Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian authorities. As of Oct. 9, about 1,800 have been returned.

According to a State Department report on human trafficking, Russia recruits or uses child soldiers, has a state-sponsored policy or pattern of human trafficking, and is among the worst hubs globally for human trafficking.

A St. Paul man who wore a sweatshirt that read “In Glock We Trust” while firing a fully automatic handgun at a car in Maplewood — wounding a passenger and causing two juveniles nearby to cower in fear — was sentenced Friday to just over six years in prison.

Muhnee Jaleel Bailey (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Muhnee Jaleel Bailey, 24, pleaded guilty in Ramsey County District Court to drive-by shooting in connection with the incident at an apartment building parking lot at Larpenteur Avenue and McMenemy Street about just before 6 p.m. on April 16.

In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss five other charges: second-degree attempted murder and four counts of possession of a firearm or ammunition by a person prohibited due to a conviction for a crime of violence.

The six-year, three-month sentence was part of the plea agreement. He received credit for 175 days already served in custody.

According to the criminal complaint, surveillance video showed Bailey get out of a Chevrolet Malibu and fire three volleys, which were in rapid succession, at a gold sedan. Police found 18 spent casings in the parking lot.

Video also showed a 10-year-old girl who had just got off a school bus and another juvenile “cowering in fear as they tried to get into the apartment building,” the complaint read.

A 22-year-old passenger of the gold sedan was soon dropped off at Regions Hospital in St. Paul and treated for gunshot wounds to his shoulder and leg. He did not want to talk to police, the complaint said.

After law enforcement identified the license plate on the Chevrolet, police pulled over the car on April 22 in Minneapolis. Bailey was driving.

Officers discovered Bailey was on release from the Federal Bureau of Prisons to a halfway house in Minneapolis. He had pleaded guilty in March 2023 to a federal charge of possession of a firearm as felon.

Police carried out a search warrant at his house and found a Glock with an extended magazine, another Glock in a backpack, a pistol without a serial number and the sweatshirt.

Bailey has a lengthy criminal history that goes back to when he was a teenager, state court records show. Recent convictions in separate cases include drive-by shooting, fleeing police in a vehicle and possession of a machine gun after being caught with a Glock pistol that had an auto sear, or “switch,” making it fully automatic.

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By JOSH FUNK

The fiery crash of a UPS plane shortly after its left engine flew off its wing and sparked a massive fire during takeoff could spell the end of the 109 remaining MD-11 airliners that have been exclusively hauling cargo for more than a decade.

The fate of the planes won’t be determined until after UPS, FedEx and Western Global see how expensive the repairs the Federal Aviation Administration orders will be and learn whether there is a fatal flaw in their design. The package delivery companies may have already been thinking about retiring their MD-11s — which average more than 30 years old — over the next few years and replacing them with newer planes that are safer and more efficient. The FAA grounded all MD-11s and the 10 remaining related DC-10s after the crash.

Fourteen people — including the plane’s crew of three — died after the aircraft crashed into several businesses just outside the Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky, on Nov. 4. The plane got only 30 feet into the air.

This combination photo provided by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) via UPS shows a sequence of framegrabs made from video where an engine is seen detaching from the plane’s left wing upon takeoff at the Louisville International Airport in Louisville, Nov. 4, 2025. (UPS/NTSB via AP)

Mary Schiavo, a former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General, said it probably won’t be worth fixing the planes when better options are available from Boeing and Airbus, though the manufacturers have such a backlog that it takes years to get a plane after it is ordered. Still, it will depend on exactly what investigators find.

“For them to order inspections and to ground them as readily as they did makes me think that they’re worried about them,” Schiavo said.

Losing an engine recalls a similar 1979 crash

The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that its investigators discovered cracks in key parts that failed to keep the rear of the engine attached to the UPS plane’s wing. The crash reminded experts of the 1979 disaster that killed 273 after the left engine of an American Airlines jet catapulted up and over its wing after takeoff in Chicago.

That crash led to the worldwide grounding of 274 DC-10s, the predecessor to the MD-11. The airline workhorse was allowed to return to the skies because the NTSB determined that maintenance workers improperly using a forklift to reattach the engine damaged the plane that crashed. That meant the crash wasn’t caused by a fatal design flaw even though there had already been a number of accidents involving DC-10s.

The lugs that the NTSB said were cracked and failed in the crash earlier this month are located close to the part that failed in the 1979 crash, but they are different. Investigators will have to determine whether there is a common defect between the UPS plane and other MD-11s or whether the problem that caused the engine to fall off was unique to the plane.

An FAA spokesperson said the agency is working with NTSB and Boeing, which bought the company that made the MD-11s in 1997, to determine what needs to be done.

Both the DC-10 and MD-11 have some of the highest accident rates of any commercial planes, according to statistics published annually by Boeing. Twice in the 1970s, a DC-10 lost its rear cargo door in flight. The second time in 1974 caused a crash outside Paris that killed 346 people. But airlines loved the DC-10 for years, and the Air Force maintained a fleet of dozens of tankers based on the DC-10 that it flew for decades before retiring them last year.

Planes launched with a lot of promise

Formerly independent aircraft company McDonnell Douglas announced the MD-11 in 1984. The three-engine plane appeared promising with its larger capacity and longer range than the DC-10, but its performance never fully lived up to expectations, and newer planes from Boeing and Airbus eclipsed it. Schiavo said the MD-11 was “practically obsolete” when it came out compared to two-engine planes, which are cheaper to operate. Only 200 MD-11s were built between 1988 and 2000.

Most MD-11s started out carrying passengers, but eventually airlines decided to retire the model in favor of other planes. The last MD-11 passenger flight by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines took place in 2014.

MD-11 aircraft made up about 9% of the UPS fleet and 4% of the FedEx fleet, the companies have said. Western Global only owns 16 MD-11 planes.

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MD-11s might still fly again

Aviation journalist Wolfgang Borgmann, who devoted one of his “Legends of Flight” books to the history of the MD-11s and DC-10, said, “I think there is still much more useful life in them.” He pointed to the B-52 bombers that are still key planes for the Air Force even though they debuted in 1955.

“Age doesn’t matter in aviation. It’s the maintenance that counts,” said Borgmann, editor of the Aero International magazine in Germany.

Investigators are looking at the maintenance history of the UPS plane closely. NTSB said the last time a detailed inspection was done on its engines was in 2021. A similar inspection was not done during the extended maintenance the plane underwent the month before the crash, and the plane wasn’t due for another in-depth engine inspection until after roughly 7,000 more flights. Boeing and the FAA will have to determine whether that current maintenance schedule is adequate.

Whenever he has talked about veteran center Ryan Kelly working his way through the recovery process, head coach Kevin O’Connell has used a common phrase. He has repeatedly said he wants the 32-year-old “banging down the door” to his office before he gets back on the field.

The hinges on that door might be close to coming off.

After being placed on injured reserve last month in response to a pair of concussions, Kelly appears to be in line to make his return on Sunday afternoon at Lambeau Field when the Vikings play the Green Bay Packers.

Though he’s technically still on injured reserved — and thus, would need to be activated in order to suit up — Kelly is being listed as questionable after progressing enough to be a full participant in practice this week.

“His veteran presence goes beyond above the neck,” O’Connell said. “It seems like every shotgun snap is right on the money. His comfort for the quarterback is something that we feel from the first snap he’s back in there. Just his overall awareness, control, and poise at the line of scrimmage.”

If Kelly is indeed able to play, it will the first time this season the Vikings have had their projected starting offensive line fully in tact. That would be Kelly flanked by left guard Donavan Jackson and right guard Will Fries on the interior, with left tackle Christian Darrisaw and right tackle Brian O’Neill serving as the bookends.

It was a welcome sight for O’Connell. He acknowledged that not everything hasn’t gone according to plan after the Vikings spent so much money in free agency to fortify the trenches.

“We’re coming up on Thanksgiving here next week; not necessarily how we maybe envisioned it,” O’Connell said with a laugh. “But certainly (we’re) very excited to potentially have the opportunity to have those guys out there together.”

That should help young quarterback J.J. McCarthy feel more comfortable as he continues to iron out some of his mechanics. It feels like the only way the projected starting offensive line isn’t intact will be if Kelly suffers a setback over the next 24 hours.

It sure doesn’t sound like that it’s going to be the case.

“That’s a guy that’s played for a really long time at that position,” O’Connell said. “He has basically seen everything there is to see, and I think it’s going to be huge for us to potentially have the chance to have him back.”

Briefly

The only other player with an injury designation is edge rusher Jonathan Greenard (shoulder) after logging a couple of practices as a limited participant. He’s being listed as questionable for Sunday’s game.

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