DENVER — In the race for Central Division supremacy, everything is trending the right way for the Minnesota Wild.

Thursday night’s 5-2 statement win in Colorado left Minnesota just five points back of the Avalanche and ahead in their season series, with one more head-to-head matchup to come next Sunday afternoon in Denver.

Colorado, which took a ridiculous 27-2-7 record into the Christmas break, is operating at a more manageable altitude of late, with an 8-8-2 mark since the calendar flipped to 2026. So, even with the Avalanche owning two games in hand on the Wild, there is a fighting chance that a second division champions banner could be hung inside Grand Casino Arena when the regular season concludes.

But when you ask the Wild if grabbing the Central’s top spot heading into the playoffs matters, you get decidedly different answers.

“It’d be awesome to catch them and surpass them,” Wild forward Marcus Foligno said before the team headed to Denver this week. “For a team that’s been in the NHL kind of looked at as a Goliath a little bit, to be right there with them at the (Olympic) break was huge. We feel confident. We want that number one spot for sure.”

It has only been done once before in the 25-year timeline of the Wild. Paced by 42 goals from Marian Gaborik in the 2007-08 season, the Wild won the Northwest Division, which they shared with Colorado, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver, and got home ice in the playoffs.

That accomplishment amounted to little more than that aforementioned banner, as the Avalanche took Minnesota out in six games in the opening round of the postseason.

Even with Thursday’s win in Colorado — Matt Boldy returned from the Olympic return with two goals and two assists — and a 9-1-1 streak heading into Friday’s late game in Utah, the Wild’s odds of catching Colorado are slim. Depending on which numbers-crunching website you believe, Minnesota currently has a sub-10% chance of winning the Central.

They would be wiser, many believe, to set their sights on finishing second ahead of Dallas, to get home ice in a first-round series against the Stars. The Wild entered play on Friday night leading Dallas by a point, although the Stars had a game in hand.

There is an awareness that emptying the regular-season tank to win the division would be unwise, that building toward their best hockey for April is a smarter play.

“I don’t think it’s about catching people, I think it’s about growing our game to get it to the best place it can possibly be,” Boldy said after Thursday’s win at Ball Arena. “That’s the biggest thing for us, I think, is the better we can grow our game, kind of keep improving and finding ways to play as a team. Then that stuff just happens, and it falls into place.”

Since Minnesota re-entered the NHL as an expansion team in 2000, the Avalanche are the only foe that has been a division rival for the Wild’s entire tenure. They have met in the playoffs three times, with the team owning home ice advantage getting eliminated in each series.

So, maybe a head of steam going into the playoffs would suit the Wild better than a new division title banner in the rafters. As the wins pile up, it is increasingly clear that this Wild team has its sights focused on a banner won in June, not April.

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Nine more people were arrested Friday in an anti-ICE protest at a St. Paul church, according to a civil rights attorney federally indicted in the case last month.

Protesters disrupted services inside Cities Church on Summit Avenue near Snelling Avenue on Jan. 18, chanting “ICE out” amid an immigration enforcement crackdown in Minnesota. People also shouted, “Justice for Renee Good,” who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. They said the acting field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota serves as a pastor at the church.

Seven people were indicted last month. Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Twin Cities civil rights attorney and activist, wrote on social media that the additional nine people were arrested Friday morning and are scheduled to be in court Friday afternoon.

The nine initially arrested are charged under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The FACE Act prohibits interference or intimidation of “any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”

They have pleaded not guilty. The people charged last month were Levy Armstrong, former CNN host turned independent journalist Don Lemon, St. Paul School Board Member Chauntyll Allen, independent Twin Cities journalist Georgia Fort, Hennepin County Attorney’s Office lobbyist Jamael Lundy, St. Paul activist Trahern Crews, social media personality William Scott Kelly, along with Jerome Deangelo Richardson and Ian Davis Austin.

One of the people arrested Friday is also an independent journalist, according to Levy Armstrong.

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What are the worst tourist traps in the world? What attractions live up to the hype?

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Stasher, a company that hooks travelers up with temporary luggage storage, weighs in with its blog post, “World’s Best and Worst Tourist Attractions, Ranked.” These rankings were calculated by considering five factors: online ratings, TikTok likes, distance from an airport, the country’s safety and quality of local lodging.

Ergo, Stasher has determined the worst tourist attraction in existence is the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “Located 38.1 km from the LAX airport, this sidewalk of celebrity stars had the lowest Google rating and safety score,” it writes. Other sites that supposedly suck in terms of a visitor experience include Disneyland Paris and the Dead Sea, dinged for “accessibility challenges” and “regional instability.”

Conversely, places that scored high include Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Here are the first five from each list; check out the full post for more.

Stasher has determined the worst tourist attraction in existence is the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The rankings were calculated by considering five factors: online ratings, TikTok likes, distance from an airport, the country’s safety and quality of local lodging. (Dreamstime/TNS)

Stasher’s best and worst tourist attractions in the world

Worst:

1 Hollywood Walk of Fame, L.A.

2 The Dead Sea

3 The Grand Bazaar, Istanbul

4 Great Wall of China

5 Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

Best:

Stasher has determined the best tourist attraction to be the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain. The rankings were calculated by considering five factors: online ratings, TikTok likes, distance from an airport, the country’s safety and quality of local lodging. (Dreamstime/TNS)

1 Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

2 Colosseum, Rome

3 Eiffel Tower, Paris

4 Milford Sound, New Zealand

5 Walt Disney World, Florida

Source: stasher.com/blog/worlds-best-and-worst-tourist-attractions-ranked

By MICHELLE CHAPMAN, AP Business Writer

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has received $110 billion in funding from Amazon, SoftBank and Nvidia, putting the technology company’s pre-money valuation at $730 billion.

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Amazon is leading the trio of tech heavyweights in commitments, putting up $50 billion, followed by $30 billion each from Nvidia and SoftBank, said OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman on Friday. Other investors are anticipated to join as the funding round progresses.

Amazon will start with an initial $15 billion investment and will invest an additional $35 billion in the coming months under preset conditions.

“These partnerships expand our global reach, deepen our infrastructure, and strengthen our balance sheet so we can bring frontier AI to more people, more businesses, and more communities worldwide,” he wrote.

Altman said that ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly active users, and more than 50 million consumer subscribers.

“We are entering a new phase where frontier AI moves from research into daily use at global scale,” he said. “Leadership will be defined by who can scale infrastructure fast enough to meet demand, and turn that capacity into products people rely on. This funding and these partnerships let us do both, and move faster on our mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.”

OpenAI and Amazon’s multiyear partnership will include bringing new advanced AI capabilities to enterprises and having Amazon Web Services serve as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier. OpenAI and AWS will expand their current $38 billion multiyear deal by $100 billion over eight years. The companies will partner on developing customized models available to Amazon developers to power Amazon’s customer-facing applications.

OpenAI said it is also expanding its partnership with Nvidia.

OpenAI and Microsoft have had a partnership since 2019. OpenAI said in a statement that nothing about the funding or new partners announced Friday “in any way changes the terms” of its relationship with Microsoft.

“The partnership remains strong and central,” OpenAI said.