Westbound Interstate 94 between Interstate 35E and Dale Street and eastbound I-94 between state Highway 280 and University Avenue E. in St. Paul will be closed starting at 10 p.m. on Friday through 5 a.m. on Monday.

This work is a part of an ongoing repair project on nine bridges over I-94 and I-35E in St. Paul.

Traffic this weekend on westbound I-94 will be detoured from northbound I-35E to westbound state Highway 36 to southbound state Highway 280. Traffic on eastbound I-94 will be detoured to northbound state Highway 280 to eastbound state Highway 36 to southbound I-35E.

The closing is a part of the rebuilding of the John Ireland Bloulevard bridge over I-94 between Kellogg Boulevard and Rice Street in St. Paul. Work on the bridge work started Oct. 6 and is expected to conclude August of 2026

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St. Paul: I-94, I-35E closures this weekend, also John Ireland Blvd. bridge work in October

This project will mean additional weekend closures of I-94 and partial bridge closures. For more information go to the project website at mndot.gov/metro/projects/johnirelandbridge.

By EDITH M. LEDERER and FARNOUSH AMIRI

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations said Thursday that 170,000 metric tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid is ready to enter Gaza and that it is seeking a green light from Israel to massively increase help for more than 2 million Palestinians following a deal to pause the war.

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In the last several months, the U.N. and its humanitarian partners have only been able to deliver 20% of the aid needed to address the dire situation in the Gaza Strip, U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said. Following the announcement Wednesday of a ceasefire deal, he said all entry points to Gaza must be opened to deliver aid at “a much, much greater scale.”

“Given the level of needs, the level of starvation, the level of misery and despair, will require a massive collective effort, and that’s what we’re mobilized for,” Fletcher said. “We are absolutely ready to roll and deliver at scale.”

The deal announced Wednesday by President Donald Trump marks the first time in months that U.N. officials have been hopeful about their ability to scale up deliveries after two years of war, expanding Israeli offensives and restrictions on humanitarian aid have triggered a hunger crisis, including famine in parts of the territory.

The conflict sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people has devastated Gaza, left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, sparked other conflicts in the region and isolated Israel on the world stage, including at the U.N.

UN hopes to bring more aid to Gaza soon

Speaking to U.N. reporters virtually from Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh, he said the U.N. has been “asking, demanding, imploring for the access, which we hope that in the coming days we will now have.”

Israel accused Hamas of siphoning off aid — without providing evidence of widespread diversion — and blamed U.N. agencies for failing to deliver food it has allowed into Gaza. It replaced the U.N. aid operation in Gaza in May with an Israeli- and U.S.-backed contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, as the primary food supplier.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Thursday that he was not aware of any role for GHF during the ceasefire.

Fletcher said the U.N. is being guided by the 20-point ceasefire plan put forward by the United States, which stresses “the importance of the U.N. role at the heart of the humanitarian response.”

These are the UN’s priorities during the ceasefire

In the first 60 days of the ceasefire, Fletcher said, the U.N. would aim to increase the number of trucks with aid entering Gaza to between 500 and 600 daily as well as scale up food deliveries to 2.1 million people and 500,000 who need nutritional supplements.

“Famine must be reversed in areas where it has taken hold and prevented in others,” he said, adding that special rations for those facing acute hunger would be distributed, and bakeries and community kitchens would be supported.

Fletcher said the U.N. aims to deliver medicine and supplies to restore Gaza’s decimated health system; to scale up emergency and primary health care, including mental health and rehabilitation services; to support medical referrals and medical evacuations; and to deploy more emergency teams.

The U.N. also aims to restore Gaza’s water grid and improve sanitation by installing latrines in households, repairing sewage leaks and pumping stations, and moving solid waste from residential areas, he said.

Ahead of winter and with most housing destroyed, Fletcher said, the United Nations also is planning to bring in thousands of tents every week in addition to heavy-duty waterproof tarpaulins.

As for education, he said, the U.N. plans to reopen temporary learning spaces for 700,000 school-age children and “provide them with learning materials and school supplies.”

Fletcher said the U.N. can deliver this plan as it has done before, but it needs to ensure protection for civilians, especially women and girls who have been victims of sexual violence, and to identify where unexploded ordnance is to reduce the risk of deaths and injuries.

It also needs Israel to allow the entry of the U.N.’s partners from humanitarian and other organizations, and it needs money — lots of it.

Fletcher warned that the 170,000 tons of aid ready to enter Gaza is just the tip of the iceberg for what is needed, and he called on developed countries to scale up contributions to the aid effort.

“Every government, every state, every individual who has been watching this crisis unfold and wondering, ‘What can we do? If only there is something we can do.’ Now is the time to make that generosity count,” he said.

With maintenance costs mounting, the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents has agreed to sell the historic Eastcliff mansion in St. Paul to the University of Minnesota Foundation, an independent nonprofit that manages major gifts on behalf of the school.

The $2.2 million sale will allow the foundation to lease the 20-room structure back to the university on a 40-year lease, rent-free, so it can continue to serve as the university president’s residence. Revenue from the sale will be put into a new maintenance account that will help cover the building’s day-to-day operating expenses, which total roughly $300,000 annually.

“To have one less old building that we have to maintain, to me there’s no other choice but to support this resolution,” said Gregg Goldman, the university’s executive vice president for finance and operations, prior to the 9-2 vote.

The goal of the sale, according to board members, is to leave future capital improvements in the hands of the nonprofit foundation, an independent entity that works closely with the university but that has its own board of directors, while allowing the school itself to retain ownership of the land it sits on and control of the building’s everyday management.

Built by lumber magnate Edward Brooks in 1921 overlooking the Mississippi River, Eastcliff has housed university presidents since the early 1960s and doubles as an event and welcome center for visiting dignitaries. Board members said transferring Eastcliff to the foundation would be in keeping with the spirit of the Brooks family’s 1958 donation, allowing the house to remain in service to the university and maintained by the school on a day-to-day basis.

Goldman encouraged the board to make what he described as a fiscally responsible decision to support the sale at a time of rising tuition and growing fiscal pressures, when too much of the university feels “held together with bubble gum and bailing wire.”

Two voices of dissent

The home, which sits on the National Register of Historic Places, is undergoing some $6 million in renovations in advance of the arrival of Dr. Rebecca Cunningham, who was appointed university president in July 2024. Those renovations are being paid for by the foundation, according to a spokesperson for the university on Thursday.

Board vice chair Penny Wheeler noted the sale follows the recommendation of the Eastcliff task force, which had encouraged using philanthropy to support the building’s growing capital expenses after previously mulling the possibility of a sale. The Board of Regents voted unanimously in July 2024 to support that recommendation.

The foundation, Wheeler said, “is in a perfect position” and “given the renovations currently under way, this is a really timely move for us as the Board of Regents. … If for some reason the foundation is unable to maintain (it), it comes back to university hands.”

Regents James Farnsworth, who represents the district Eastcliff sits in, and Robyn Gulley voted against the sale after expressing concern about transferring a historic university asset to an independent nonprofit. Regent Mary Turner was absent.

“I see the task force report — that I did vote in favor of in July 2024 — a little bit differently,” Farnsworth said. “(I) don’t see this proposed real estate transaction necessary in any way to help honor … those goals.”

“I won’t be able to support this today,” Farnsworth added. “This proposed transaction doesn’t feel right to me.”

Foundation’s long ties

Board vice chair Ruth Johnson noted that the foundation also owns the McNamara Alumni Center in Minneapolis, where the board’s finance and operations committee met Thursday — “the one we’re in right now,” she said.

“Our work is not affected here whatsoever by the fact that they own it,” added Johnson, who serves on the board of the U foundation and on an Eastcliff advisory board. The house is “an important part of our history. … But we can have them do the heavy lifting of supporting that.”

The 10,000-square-foot mansion has been home to eight university presidents and one governor since 1961. A frequent stop for visiting dignitaries, Eastcliff hosted the Dalai Lama in 2011.

Gov. Tim Walz and his family recently spent 19 months in Eastcliff while the governor’s Summit Avenue residence was undergoing its own improvements. The state’s first family left Eastcliff in February.

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By FATIMA HUSSEIN and ISABEL DEBRE

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States directly purchased Argentine pesos on Thursday and finalized a $20 billion currency swap line with Argentina’s central bank, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a social media post, a rare move aimed at stabilizing turbulent financial markets in the cash-strapped Latin American ally.

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“U.S. Treasury is prepared, immediately, to take whatever exceptional measures are warranted to provide stability to markets,” Bessent said, adding that the Treasury Department held four days of meetings with Argentine Economy Minister Luis Caputo in Washington D.C. to cement the deal.

Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei, a fervent admirer of U.S. President Donald Trump, thanked Bessent for his “strong support” and Trump for his “powerful leadership.”

“Together, as the closest of allies, we will make a hemisphere of economic freedom and prosperity,” Milei said in a social media post.

Bessent, under fire from U.S. farmers and Democratic lawmakers, has insisted that the credit swap is not a bailout. Farmers are angry about the idea of rescuing Argentina, whose own farmers have benefited from a recent gush of sales of soybeans to China at the expense of their U.S. counterparts. Lawmakers have pushed Trump to explain how this financial help aligns with his “America First” agenda.

After the announcement Thursday, a group of Democratic Senators introduced the “No Argentina Bailout Act,” which would stop the Treasury Department from using its Exchange Stabilization Fund assist Argentina.

“It is inexplicable that President Trump is propping up a foreign government, while he shuts down our own,” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “Trump promised ‘America First,’ but he’s putting himself and his billionaire buddies first and sticking Americans with the bill.”

It doesn’t help that repeated bailouts have failed to stabilize the crisis-stricken economy of Argentina. As the International Monetary Fund’s biggest debtor, it owes the global lender a staggering $41.8 billion.

Milei, a wild-haired far-right economist, came to office in late 2023 on the bold promise that this time would be different.

He vowed to take a chainsaw to reckless public spending that he inherited from his left-wing predecessor. But his radical austerity program has been painful, with no economic revival in sight and Argentines are losing patience.

Now Milei faces his greatest test yet as he heads into a midterm congressional election on Oct. 26 that could decide the fate of his free-market experiment. A disastrous defeat in local elections last month triggered a sudden exodus from Argentine assets as investors fretted over the country’s political dysfunction, overvalued peso and rapidly depleting foreign exchange reserves.

The U.S. financial help offers Milei a crucial reprieve. On Thursday, Argentina’s dollar-denominated bonds rose about 10% on Bessent’s confirmation of the credit line and the Buenos Aires stock market surged 15%.

Economy Minister Caputo expressed his “deepest gratitude” to Bessent following the announcement.

“Your steadfast commitment has been remarkable,” he wrote.

Bessent made no mention of any economic conditions attached to the swap line for Argentina, leading many observers to criticize the intervention as a pre-election reward for a loyal friend rather than an investment in a strategic partner.

DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.