U2 is the latest musical act to release a song about Minneapolis and the record surge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the state.

Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, is the topic of the opening track on the band’s newly issued six-song EP “Days of Ash.”

In an interview U2 published in an online magazine Wednesday, lead singer Bono said the track, “American Obituary,” is “a song of fury … but more than that a song of grief. Not just for Renee, but for the death of an America that at the very least would have had an inquiry into her killing. … Everyone knows the border has to be managed better, but at what cost … the disfiguring of American justice?”

Set to a musical bed that recalls both the band’s early punk days and the swagger of their “Achtung Baby” era, Bono sings about Good being “born to die free, American mother of three … Renee the domestic terrorist? What you can’t kill can’t die, America will rise.”

“Days of Ash,” which was released on Ash Wednesday, features five other politically charged songs including a track about 16-year-old Sarina Esmailzadeh, one of thousands of Iranian schoolgirls who took to the streets as part of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022 and another written for Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian father of three and nonviolent activist who was killed in his village on the West Bank in 2025.

“Going way back to our earliest days, working with Amnesty (International) or Greenpeace, we’ve never shied away from taking a position and sometimes that can get a bit messy, there’s always some sort of blowback, but it’s a big side of who we are and why we still exist,” drummer Larry Mullen Jr. said in a news release.

The band has been working on a new album, their first since 2017’s “Songs of Experience,” but in a news release Bono said these six tracks won’t appear on that record: “These songs were impatient to be out in the world. They are songs of defiance and dismay, of lamentation.”

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U2 follows Bruce Springsteen as a worldwide, massively successful act to issue a protest song about the ICE occupation. The Boss followed up his folk song “Streets of Minneapolis” with a surprise three-song performance at a benefit concert at First Avenue last month. Tuesday, he announced he’s kicking off a 20-city tour at Target Center in Minneapolis that will then hit Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles, two other cities that have endured ICE operations.

There’s no word yet whether U2 will also perform a surprise concert at First Avenue, the downtown Minneapolis venue where they made their local live debut in 1981, when the club was known as Uncle Sam’s.

In 2023 and 2024, U2 performed a residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Prior to that, the band’s most recent North American tour was in 2017. That outing included a local stop that September where they drew more than 43,000 fans to U.S. Bank Stadium.

DULUTH, Minn. — Heavy snow and fierce winds hit the North Shore on Wednesday, causing road and school closings and extensive power outages.

Snowfall amounts of 7 to 26 inches were measured by midday along Lake Superior, with accumulations increasing farther up the shore.

The Twin Cities were also seeing snowfall Wednesday following a record-breaking stretch of five days in the 50s, including the warmest Valentine’s Day since 1882 when the high reached 54 degrees. The National Weather Service in Chanhassen was expecting metro accumulations of 2 to 5 inches through Wednesday evening.

The National Weather Service in Duluth reported winds of nearly 70 mph Wednesday morning, with visibility less than a quarter mile. U.S. 61 was closed from Duluth to the Canadian border before being reopened by 7 a.m. as the winds began to ebb. However, travel is expected to remain hazardous through Thursday morning due to the blizzard conditions.

Difficult traveling conditions may also lead to extended power restoration times, according to Minnesota Power.

High winds could blow trees and tree branches onto power lines. Officials warned to stay away from downed power lines and not to attempt to remove branches that may have fallen on them.

“Always assume that downed wires are energized and can cause injury or death,” Minnesota Power said.

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“Black History Month gives us an opportunity to be honest about a reality that too often goes unspoken. New York City’s health system still does not consistently meet Black communities where they are, especially when people need coordinated, ongoing support.”

(Adi Talwar/City Limits)

February is a time to honor Black history, resilience, and progress. It is also a moment to confront an uncomfortable truth: in New York City, equity in health, family stability, and community well-being is still shaped by race and zip code. For too many Black families, structural inequities continue to limit access to care, not because of individual choices, but because of where people live and how our systems are designed.

Those of us working on the front lines of community health—including through organizations like EAC Network, which supports families across New York City and Long Island—see the consequences every winter. In February, families face compounded challenges such as cold weather, housing instability, financial strain, and reduced access to care. Emergency rooms become a last resort. Missed appointments turn into medical crises. Systems that are already difficult to navigate become even harder to access. For communities carrying the weight of long-standing inequities, the pressure can quickly become overwhelming.

Black History Month gives us an opportunity to be honest about a reality that too often goes unspoken. New York City’s health system still does not consistently meet Black communities where they are, especially when people need coordinated, ongoing support.

Health challenges do not exist in isolation. In this city, they are deeply intertwined with housing instability, food insecurity, involvement with the justice system, language barriers, and limited access to trusted providers. Black New Yorkers are more likely to experience these overlapping challenges and too often more likely to encounter fragmented systems that treat issues separately rather than addressing the whole person.

For families navigating substance use, chronic illness, reentry after incarceration, or child welfare involvement, the consequences of disconnected care can be severe. When people are forced to navigate multiple systems on their own, warning signs are missed. Care is delayed. Families fall through the cracks, and preventable crises escalate.

This is where culturally informed, integrated care coordination changes the trajectory. At organizations like EAC Network, which operates integrated health home care coordination programs across New York City and Long Island, this work is grounded in a simple but powerful principle: care works best when it is coordinated, accessible, and rooted in the lived experience of the people receiving it. That means understanding culture, language, family dynamics, and the historical realities that shape trust or mistrust in institutions.

When individuals and families have a consistent point of support, someone who can help them access medical care, behavioral health services, substance use treatment, court-mandated programs, and basic needs, outcomes improve. People are more likely to stay engaged in care. Medications are managed safely. Court involvement becomes a pathway to stability rather than punishment. Families remain intact. Communities become healthier.

This approach is especially critical during moments of transition, such as returning home from incarceration, navigating family court, managing a new diagnosis, or trying to stabilize after a health crisis. These are the moments when coordination matters most, and when culturally responsive providers can prevent long-term harm.

At EAC Network, we see this every day. When care is coordinated across health, justice, and social systems, and delivered by teams rooted in the community, people do not just survive crises. They build stability.

While February often exposes the gaps in our health and social care systems, the need for coordinated support does not end when winter does. Families need access to care year-round. That means sustained investment in community-based care coordination, health homes, family-centered court programs, and social care infrastructure that recognizes health as more than a single appointment or diagnosis.

New York City has made progress, but funding for these services remains fragmented and too often reactive. Emergency response alone is not a solution. Coordination is.

As the City Council considers priorities and budgets in the months ahead, this is the moment to act. Investing in culturally informed, integrated health home care coordination is not only a matter of equity. It is a matter of public health, family stability, and community well-being. Black communities must be partners in shaping and delivering these solutions.

Black History Month reminds us that real progress is built through action, not symbolism. Ensuring equitable access to coordinated, culturally responsive care is one of the most meaningful steps New York City can take, in February and every month that follows.

Neela Mukherjee Lockel is the president and chief executive officer at EAC Network, which provides wrap-around care for individuals and families in crisis across New York City and Long Island.

The post Opinion: Why Culturally Informed Health Care Matters in February—And All Year Long appeared first on City Limits.

As a computer science student at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Zin Khant likens the advent of artificial intelligence to the discovery of electricity — a modern Rosetta Stone that will allow future generations to unlock new inventions the current generation never knew it needed.

“Back in the days before cameras were invented, if you wanted a family picture, you had to have the money to hire somebody to paint one, which took hours,” said Khant, president and founder of the student-driven UST Nexus AI Club, which hopes to move conversations about artificial intelligence beyond ChatGPT and showcase how it can be harnessed ethically for the common good. “Once cameras were invented, family pictures became more widely available, and then available instantly to everyone.”

At a time when some Americans appear squeamish around the prospect of embracing AI, which has already eliminated certain jobs, Khant and other club members are asking up to 100 budding young creators to lean in for a healthy cause during their inaugural “Tommie Buildfest.” Starting Friday evening, the Nexus AI Club will host a free 24-hour “hackathon” where individuals or teams of creators use AI to work on new websites and software applications related to hunger, nutrition and food security.

The set-up is as much competition as brainstorming session, and prizes will be awarded Saturday evening. The Nexus AI Club is recruiting student participants from St. Thomas and beyond, ranging in age from high school through graduate school, as well as nonprofits interested in benefiting from their creativity.

The club has had at least initial conversations with Tommie Shelf, the on-campus grocery give-away, as well as Loaves and Fishes, which serves free meals throughout the Twin Cities, and The Food Group, which operates a food bank, a traveling grocery in a converted school bus and a farm-based agricultural program.

Nonprofits don’t have to attend the Buildfest to enjoy the fruits of its labor, though an optional 30-minute focus group session in advance would help the students understand each agency’s mission and needs.

“The organizations that would benefit the most from this probably have the least resources and are the least connected,” said Jonathan Keiser, associate vice president of Academic Technology and AI Enablement in the School of Education, who also is a faculty adviser for the club. “We will take participants and community partners right up until the day of.”

The goal is to create tools to reduce nutrition deficits in the community.

That could mean building an app to help families plan nutritious meals, maximize their food budget and track SNAP food benefits, or creating new internal tools for food banks and nonprofits to track inventory, predict demand and optimize distribution. It could also mean building a platform aggregating nutrition research, or some other AI-assisted solution to food insecurity.

Non-coders welcome

Khant noted that major tech companies like Reddit, the social media platform, and Stripe, the payment processor, have hosted their own tech hackathons over the years, with the goals of benefiting from a burst of competitive and creative juices blending on a compressed timeline.

The Tommie Buildfest opens at 8 p.m. Friday and moves into judging at 6 p.m. Saturday, with awards issued two hours later.

No coding experience is required, and Keiser noted that projects can combine design, business and technical skills, areas that lend themselves to folks outside the computer programming community. Working professionals can participate as mentors.

The hackathon is co-branded with Lovable, a Swedish start-up company that bills itself as a facilitator of “vibe coding,” or developing software using natural language instead of core coding skills. Lovable will provide building credits, or tokens, per participant, reducing the cost of AI computation for upper-level programming.

“I’m not a coder or developer by training,” Keiser said. “I have no background in it, and yet I’m able to build things just by natural language that work really well. It’s what AI is excellent at. AI can do this completely.”

Is that gratifying or terrifying? Keiser acknowledges that for most people, it could be a bit of both.

“I think it’s going to destabilize our society in some ways, and that’s how things happen where there’s creative destruction,” Keiser said. “I think it’s going to change our social contract. Instead of working 40 hours, in 15 years I think we’ll be working 30 or 20 hours per week, but that requires a societal conversation.”

‘It can democratize knowledge’

AI has already been blamed for eliminating some entry-level white collar jobs, as well as jobs in software development and customer service. In its “Future of Jobs” report, the World Economic Forum found last year that 40% of global employers surveyed expected to reduce hiring in certain areas as AI reshapes their job needs, and half expected to transition some workers to new roles. The vast majority of employers found they would need to “upskill” or retrain workers to meet changes in their industry.

Rather than a dystopian, jobless future controlled by merciless robots, Khant foresees a time when AI bots will read through reams of published data on underreported subjects such as women’s health to conduct its own research, filling in knowledge gaps for the betterment of mankind.

“It can democratize knowledge,” said Khant, one of eight founding members of the Nexus AI Club. “This tool can empower so many new things that we can’t even think about right now, that we can’t even imagine yet.”

The caveat, Khant said, is that everyday people need to understand the technology well enough to advocate for how it should be used ethically, rather than allowing a few interests to harness it for their own profit.

The hackathon is free to attend, with snacks and meals included, but requires registration. Individuals who register alone can join a team at the start of the Buildfest. Participants must bring a laptop, charger and any other hardware they’d like to use.

Students consider this year a bit of a trial run.

“Next year, they’re hoping to have one that goes from Friday evening to Sunday evening, so 48 hours,” Keiser said.

For more information, visit ustnexus.club/buildfest.

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