The NCAA likes putting regional tournaments in Fargo. It’s a good-sized city with plenty of hotel and restaurant options, it’s got a perfect-sized rink, it’s got an airport that makes North Dakota’s largest city accessible for fans from anywhere in the country. And when the University of North Dakota makes the national tournament, the tickets disappear in a hurry.

And even though North Dakota hasn’t qualified for the 16-team tournament the last two times Fargo has played host to a regional, fans from the other side of the Red River have stepped in and snapped up any available seats in the 6,000-seat venue.

Mason Nevers skates with the puck during Minnesota’s 3-2 loss to Notre Dame at Mariucci Arena on Friday, March 7, 2025. (Kelly Lynn / Gophers Athletics)

“Talking to the guys who played here two years ago in Fargo and the crowd that comes out of Minnesota fans,” Minnesota Gophers forward Oliver Moore said after his team practiced at Scheels Arena on Wednesday. “We walked in yesterday and (fifth-year forward) Mason Nevers said he didn’t remember the seats were black because there was so much maroon and white when he was playing here.”

The Gophers, who face Massachusetts at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday in their tournament opener, are hoping to use Fargo and a de facto home ice advantage as the springboard to a Frozen Four trip for the second time in three years. In 2023 they defeated Canisius and St. Cloud State at Scheels Arena to reach their second Frozen Four under coach Bob Motzko.

If Minnesota (25-10-4 overall) is to survive and advance past the Minutemen, they will need to find a balance between being rested and being rusty. The Gophers were upset by Notre Dame in the first round of the Big Ten tournament on March 9, and will have gone 18 days without a game by the time the puck drops on Thursday evening.

“For us it’s about the first period, finding our feet, getting going,” said Motzko, who has the Gophers in the NCAA tournament for the fifth consecutive season. “We want to be sharp on our toes. No self-inflicted wounds early.”

The coach admitted that his team went a bit harder in practice the past few weeks than they otherwise might have in March, but it was by necessity to keep them in game shape with no actual games to play. After splitting goalies in the three-game playoff series loss to Notre Dame, Motzko announced that more experienced netminder Liam Souliere will get the start on Thursday. Two years ago Souliere backstopped Penn State to overtime in a regional final before the Nittany Lions fell to Michigan. He is 13-7-2 in 24 appearances for Minnesota this season.

The atmosphere in Fargo is likely to be the opposite of the last time the Gophers and Minutemen met. In the 2022 opener of the Worcester (Mass.) regional, UMass was the clear crowd favorite, and had the arena roaring before the Gophers rallied for and overtime win. Sophomore goalie Michael Hrabal has been the key to the Minutemen success this season, backstopping 18 of their 20 wins with a .926 saves percentage.

“I think our group is ready for this. This is a tough region to come out of, but we’re playing as well as we have all year,” said Greg Carvel, who has coached UMass to a 20-13-5 overall mark. “We’re healthy and we’re ready to go. I like this group.”

Thursday’s game will be televised by ESPN2 with Roxy Bernstein and former Gopher Ben Clymer on the call. The Fargo regional begins with Minnesota State Mankato and top seed Western Michigan facing off at 4 p.m. on ESPNU.

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Key votes on rent control, tenant protections, a public safety committee and other hot-button issues loom before the St. Paul City Council, but the first order of business will be to appoint an interim and potentially tie-breaking seventh member, a process that has proven to be unexpectedly contentious.

A divided city council voted 3-2 on Wednesday to recommend lobbyist and clean energy advocate Matt Privratsky for the newly vacant Ward 4 seat, following some pointed words between council members who said they were taken aback by the process. Their final vote on the five-month appointment will be held Friday.

The council received 20 applications to fill the temporary appointment and interviewed four finalists last week: artist and community organizer Sean Lim, art conservator and neighborhood advocate Lisa Clare Nelson, nonprofit consultant Melissa Martinez-Sones and Privratsky, who had previously served as a legislative aide in the Ward 4 office.

A general timeframe announced by the council’s director of operations on March 17 called for the council to vote on the interim appointment on March 26, and then swear in the appointee in early April.

Amendment

On Wednesday, Council President Rebecca Noecker was unexpectedly absent because of a family issue, leaving just five of seven members to vote on recommending an appointee by resolution. Council Member Saura Jost provided a written amendment intended to insert Privratsky’s name into the blank spaces on the draft resolution, with a final vote to be laid over to 3 p.m. on Friday.

Appearing taken aback, Council Vice President HwaJeong Kim — who acted as meeting chair in Noecker’s absence — called for a recess, left the table to confer with others, and then returned a few minutes later.

“I don’t feel that this would pass with Council President Noecker here,” Kim said, adding later: “This amendment is not the intended name to be inserted into the resolution on Friday.”

Kim motioned to hold off on inserting any name into the resolution language until Friday, but her request failed 3-2. Jost then read aloud her recommendation to add Privratsky, noting he had previously served as former Council President Mitra Jalali’s legislative aide and “he understands Ward 4, its current top issues, navigating them, and the work (required).”

‘What you’re doing is very inappropriate’

Expressing alarm, Council Member Nelsie Yang said she felt Jost was “taking advantage” of Noecker’s absence to push through an appointment that might not otherwise get approved.

“I’m very taken aback by your resolution,” Yang said. “There were previous conversations to figure out a proper date and time so everyone could be present. That was done … out of respect. This is a vote that will have impact citywide, and this is a colleague.”

“I really have no words,” Yang added. “What you’re doing is very inappropriate.”

Yang then added: “I’ll be really frank. You’re going to be out sometimes, too.”

Jost reminded her that the vote was not final, and the council can revisit the issue Friday.

Council Member Cheniqua Johnson said Jost’s recommendation was “the first amendment that I’ve seen with an actual name attached to the item,” and “this is a reflection of what this has been like internally.” She noted, however, that she was “working really hard to make sure that I’m operating not only in the best interest of our council, but our Ward 4 residents.”

The council then voted to support Jost’s amendment, with Anika Bowie, Johnson and Jost voting in favor and Kim and Yang opposed. The council will reconvene at 3 p.m. Friday to finalize the appointment.

The Ward 4 appointee will serve through the ranked-choice election on Aug. 12, which has already drawn multiple candidates. The winner of that election will serve through 2028.

Jalali announced in January her plans to vacate her seat and officially left city employment on March 8.

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By SAMY MAGDY, FATMA KHALED and SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press

CAIRO (AP) — Thousands of Palestinians marched between the wreckage of a heavily destroyed town in northern Gaza on Wednesday in the second day of anti-war protests, with many chanting against Hamas in a rare display of public anger against the group.

The protests, which centered mainly on Gaza’s north, appeared to be aimed generally against the war, with protesters calling for an end to 17 months of deadly fighting with Israel that has made life in Gaza insufferable.

But protesters also leveled unusually direct and public criticism of Hamas, which has quashed dissent violently in the past in Gaza, a territory it still rules months into the war with Israel.

Palestinians chant slogans during an anti-war protest and against Hamas in a rare show of public anger against the group that rules the territory, in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

In the town of Beit Lahiya, where a similar protest took place Tuesday, about 3,000 people demonstrated, with many chanting “the people want the fall of Hamas.” In the hard-hit Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City, dozens of men chanted “Out, out out! Hamas get out!”

“Our children have been killed. Our houses have been destroyed,” said Abed Radwan, who said he joined the protest in Beit Lahiya “against the war, against Hamas, and the (Palestinian political) factions, against Israel and against the world’s silence.”

Palestinians chant slogans during an anti-war protest and against Hamas in a rare show of public anger against the group that rules the territory, in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Ammar Hassan, who took part in a protest Tuesday, said it started as an anti-war protest with a few dozen people but swelled to more than 2,000, with people chanting against Hamas.

“It’s the only party we can affect,” he said by phone. “Protests won’t stop the (Israeli) occupation, but it can affect Hamas.”

Hamas has violently cracked down on previous protests. This time no outright intervention was apparent, perhaps because the group is keeping a lower profile since Israel resumed its war against it.

Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim, in a post on Facebook, wrote that people had the right to protest but that their focus should be on the “criminal aggressor,” Israel.

‘We want to stop the killing’

Family elders from Beit Lahiya expressed support for the protests against Israel’s renewed offensive and its tightened blockade on all supplies into Gaza. Their statement said the community fully supports armed resistance against Israel.

“The protest was not about politics. It was about people’s lives,” said Mohammed Abu Saker, a father of three from the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, who joined a demonstration Tuesday.

“We want to stop the killing and displacement, no matter the price. We can’t stop Israel from killing us, but we can press Hamas to give concessions,” he said.

Palestinians chant slogans during an anti-war protest and against Hamas in a rare show of public anger against the group that rules the territory, in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

A similar protest occurred in the heavily destroyed area of Jabaliya on Tuesday, according to witnesses.

One protester in Jabaliya, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said they joined the demonstration because “everyone failed us.”

They said they chanted against Israel, Hamas, the Western-backed Palestinian Authority and Arab mediators. They said there were no Hamas security forces at the protest but scuffles broke out between supporters and opponents of the group.

Later, they said they regretted participating because of Israeli media coverage, which emphasized the opposition to Hamas.

Palestinians attend an anti-war protest and against Hamas in a rare show of public anger against the group that rules the territory, in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz urged Palestinians to join the protests.

“You too should demand the removal of Hamas from Gaza and the immediate release of all Israeli hostages. That is the only way to stop the war,” he said.

A 19-year-old Palestinian, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution said he planned to join demonstrations on Wednesday. His mother has cancer and his 10-year-old brother is hospitalized with cerebral palsy, and he said the family has been displaced multiple times since their home was destroyed.

“People are angry at the whole world,” including the United States, Israel and Hamas, he said. “We want Hamas to resolve this situation, return the hostages and end this whole thing.”

Palestinians chant slogans during an anti-war protest and against Hamas in a rare show of public anger against the group that rules the territory, in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Renewed fighting brings more death and displacement

The protests erupted a week after Israel ended its ceasefire with Hamas by launching a surprise wave of strikes that killed hundreds of people. Earlier this month, Israel halted deliveries of food, fuel, medicine and humanitarian aid to Gaza’s roughly 2 million Palestinians.

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Israel has vowed to escalate the war until Hamas returns the 59 hostages it still holds — 24 of them believed to be alive. Israel is also demanding that the group give up power, disarm and send its leaders into exile.

Hamas has said it will only release the remaining captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack into Israel, in which Palestinian combatants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 50,000 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. Israel’s bombardment and ground operations have caused vast destruction and at their height displaced some 90% of Gaza’s population.

Hamas won a landslide victory in the last Palestinian elections, held in 2006. It seized power in Gaza from the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, dominated by the secular Fatah movement, the following year after months of factional unrest and a week of heavy street battles.

Rights groups say both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas violently suppress dissent, quashing protests in the areas they control and jailing and torturing critics.

El Deeb reported from Beirut.

By KIM TONG-HYUNG, Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s truth commission concluded the government bears responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption program rife with fraud and abuse, driven by efforts to reduce welfare costs and enabled by private agencies that often manipulated children’s backgrounds and origins.

The landmark report released Wednesday followed a nearly three-year investigation into complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the United States, and Australia, representing the most comprehensive examination yet of South Korea’s foreign adoptions, which peaked under a succession of military governments in the 1970s and ’80s.

The government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission said it confirmed human rights violations in 56 of the complaints and aims to review the remaining cases before its mandate expires in late May.

However, some adoptees and even a commission investigator criticized the cautiously written report, acknowledging that investigative limitations prevented the commission from more strongly establishing the government’s complicity.

Peter Møller, left, Boonyoung Han, second from left, co-founders of the Danish Korea Rights Group, and adoptee Yooree Kim, second from right, attend a press conference at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

That investigator, Sang Hoon Lee, also lamented that the panel on Tuesday deferred assessments of 42 other adoptees’ cases, citing a lack of documentation to sufficiently prove their adoptions were problematic. Lee and the commission chairperson, Sun Young Park, did not specify which types of documents were central to the discussions.

However, Lee implied that some members of the commission’s decision-making committee were reluctant to recognize cases in which adoptees had yet to prove beyond doubt that the biological details in their adoption papers had been falsified — either by meeting their birth parents or confirming information about them.

Most Korean adoptees were registered by agencies as abandoned orphans, although they frequently had relatives who could be easily identified or found, a practice that often makes their roots difficult or impossible to trace. Government data obtained by The Associated Press shows less than a fifth of 15,000 adoptees who have asked South Korea for help with family searches since 2012 have managed to reunite with relatives.

Lee said the committee’s stance reflects a lack of understanding of the systemic problems in adoptions and risks excluding many remaining cases.

“Personally, I find yesterday’s decision very regrettable and consider it a half-baked decision,” Lee said.

Promoting adoptions to reduce mouths to feed

After reviewing government and adoption records and interviewing adoptees, birth families, public officials and adoption workers, the commission assessed that South Korean officials saw foreign adoptions as a cheaper alternative to building a social welfare system for needy children.

Through policies and laws that promoted adoption, South Korea’s military governments permitted private adoption agencies to exercise extensive guardianship rights over children in their custody and swiftly transfer custody to foreign adopters, resulting in “large-scale overseas placements of children in need of protection,” the commission said.

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Authorities provided no meaningful oversight as adoption agencies engaged in dubious or illicit practices while competing to send more children abroad. These practices included bypassing proper consent from biological parents, falsely documenting children with known parents as abandoned orphans, and switching children’s identities, according to the commission’s report. It cited that the government failed to ensure that agencies properly screened adoptive parents or prevent them from excessively charging foreign adopters, who were often asked to make additional donations beyond the standard fees.

The commission’s findings broadly aligned with previous reporting by The AP. The AP investigations, which were also documented by Frontline (PBS), detailed how South Korea’s government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to supply some 200,000 Korean children to parents overseas, despite years of evidence that many were being procured through questionable or outright unscrupulous means.

The military governments implemented special laws aimed at promoting foreign adoptions, removing judicial oversight and granting vast powers to private agencies, which bypassed proper child relinquishment practices while shipping thousands of children to the West every year. Western nations ignored these problems and sometimes pressured South Korea to keep the kids coming as they focused on satisfying their huge domestic demands for babies.

“The commission determined that the state violated the human rights of adoptees protected under the constitution and international agreements, by neglecting its duty to ensure basic human rights, including inadequate legislation, poor management and oversight, and failures in implementing proper administrative procedures while sending large numbers of children abroad,” the commission said in a statement. It said the government “actively utilized” foreign adoptions, which “required no budget allocation,” rather than strengthening a social safety net for needy children.

When asked why the commission’s report focused on the government’s negligence and monitoring failures, rather than highlighting its more direct responsibility for creating a system that put children at risk, Lee acknowledged a need for a deeper investigation into the government’s role, citing limitations in the commission’s reach.

A more extensive review of the systemic problems would require a closer look at adoptions to the United States, which by far was the largest recipient of Korean children, Lee said. U.S. adoptees accounted for a smaller number of complaints received by the commission, most of which were filed by adoptees in Europe.

“Rather than producing a final conclusion, we focused on pointing out the problems the best we could,” Lee said.

Commission calls for government apology

The commission recommended the government issue an official apology over the problems it identified and develop plans to address the grievances of adoptees who discovered that the biological origins in their adoption papers were falsified. It also urged the government to investigate citizenship gaps among adoptees sent to the United States and to implement measures to assist those without citizenship, who may number in the thousands.

South Korea’s government has never acknowledged direct responsibility for issues surrounding past adoptions. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, the government department that handles adoption issues, and adoption agencies didn’t immediately comment on the commission’s report.

During the news conference, Yooree Kim, who was sent at age 11 by an adoption agency to a couple in France without her biological parents’ consent, pleaded for the commission to strengthen its recommendations.

She said the government should encourage broader DNA testing for biological families to increase the chances of reunions with adoptees and officially declare an end to foreign adoptions. She said adoptees who fell victim to illicit practices should be entitled to “compensation from the Korean government and adoption agencies, without going through lawsuits.”

South Korea’s practices in the past seven decades formed what’s believed to be the world’s largest diaspora of adoptees. Recent reforms, including a 2011 law that required foreign adoptions go through family courts, have led to a significant decline, with only 79 cases of South Korean children placed abroad in 2023.