The city of Falcon Heights hosts their Fall Fest this Saturday at Falcon Heights Elementary School.

​ The event is a free event to celebrate the fall season from 1 to 3 p.m. This is the second annual Fall Fest for Falcon Heights, according to City Administrator Jack Linehan.

“We started Fall Fest to get people out of their homes meet their neighbors and build some community,” Linehan said.

The event will include members of the St. Anthony Police Department and the St. Paul Fire Department through the Touch a Truck activity, according to the Falcon Heights website. Some of the other events include a bouncy house, axe-throwing, and yard games.

There will be food and beverages from Karol Coffee and Floyd’s Mini Doughnuts.

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By JULIA FRANKEL

JERUSALEM (AP) — Numbers alone cannot capture the toll the Israel-Hamas war has taken on the Gaza Strip.

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But they can help us understand how thoroughly the conflict has upended the lives of 2.1 million Palestinians living in the territory and decimated the territory’s 140 square miles.

Out of every 10 people, one has been killed or injured in an Israeli strike. Nine are displaced. At least three have not eaten for days. Out of every 100 children, four have lost either one or both parents. Out of every 10 buildings that stood in Gaza prewar, eight are either damaged or flattened. Out of every 10 homes, nine are wrecked. Out of every 10 acres of cropland, eight are razed (more than three out of every four hectares).

The war began when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza.

In response, Israeli leaders promised a punishing offensive on the strip to annihilate Hamas — which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, and European Union — and free the hostages.

Here’s a closer look at the devastation that followed, by the numbers.

Roughly 11% of Gaza’s population has been killed or injured

Cemeteries are overflowing. Mass graves dot the strip. Israeli airstrikes have killed entire families in their homes. More than 2,500 people seeking food have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. In some cases Israel has acknowledged firing warning shots at chaotic crowds attempting to obtain desperately needed aid.

FILE.- Faten Mreish holds her son’s body at a hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Aug. 28, 2024, after he and others were killed in an Israeli bombardment. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana,File)

Israeli attacks on health care facilities and limitations on the entry of medical supplies have left overwhelmed doctors to treat advanced burn victims with rudimentary equipment. Israel says it strikes hospitals because Hamas operates in them and uses them as command centers, though it has offered limited evidence. Hamas security personnel have been seen in hospitals and have kept some areas inaccessible. Israel has said restrictions on imports are needed to prevent Hamas from obtaining arms.

The war is the deadliest conflict for journalists, health workers and U.N. aid workers in history, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists and the U.N. The British Medical Journal says the prevalence of patients with injuries from explosives in Gaza compares to data on injured U.S. combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Experts commissioned by a U.N. body and major rights groups have accused Israel of genocide, charges it vehemently denies.

In all, Israel’s campaign has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 170,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. More than 40,000 of those wounded have life-altering injuries, according to the World Health Organization.

The death toll does not include the thousands of people believed buried under the rubble. The ministry — part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals — does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. Its figures are seen as a reliable estimate by the U.N. and many independent experts.

Israel blames Hamas for the high civilian toll, saying the group’s presence in residential areas has turned the population into human shields. Still, its strikes often hit homes, killing many inside with no word of who the target was.

Nearly the entire population is displaced and thousands are missing

Countless Palestinian families have fled the length of Gaza and back, forced to move every few months to dodge successive Israeli offensives. Many have been displaced multiple times, moving between apartments and makeshift tent camps as they try to survive. Squalid tent cities now sprawl across much of Gaza’s south.

Displacements have separated families. Heavy bombardment has left thousands buried under the rubble. Troops round up and detain men, from dozens to several hundreds at a time, searching for any they suspect of Hamas ties. The result is families split apart.

Israel occupies the vast majority of Gaza

Israel’s military has gained control of the vast majority of Gaza, pushing most of the Palestinian population to a small zone along the southern coast. Under Israeli control, Gaza’s land has been transformed. Forces have flattened or bulldozed entire neighborhoods of Gaza City and small agricultural towns dotting the border, carved new roads across the territory and built up new military posts.

Bombardment has carpeted the Gaza Strip in a blanket of rubble roughly 12 times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Using imagery of Gaza from space, the U.N.’s Satellite Center says that at least 102,067 buildings have been destroyed. In the wreckage lie the ruins of grade schools and universities, medical clinics and mosques, greenhouses and family homes.

At least 30% of people go days without eating

Hundreds of Palestinians crowd charity kitchens jostling for a bowl of lentils. Babies are so emaciated they weigh less than at birth. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry and the World Health Organization, more than 400 people, including over 100 children, have died from complications of malnutrition, most of them this year.

FILE.- Yazan Abu Ful, a 2-year-old malnourished child, poses for a photo at his family home in the Shati refugee camp, in Gaza City on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi,File)

After months of warnings from aid groups, the world’s leading authority on food crises said in August that Gaza City had fallen into famine. Israel disputes the determination.

Towns have been leveled

Towns scattered across the strip, where Palestinian farmers used to plant strawberries and watermelons, wheat and cereals, are now emptied and flattened. Between May and October 2025, Israeli bombardment and demolitions virtually erased the town of Khuzaa, whose rows of wheat and other cereals made it a breadbasket for the city of Khan Younis.

With the war entering its third year, Israel has launched an offensive to take over Gaza City and kill the Hamas combatants it says are hiding there.

Israel says it also aims to free the 48 hostages who remain in Gaza, about 20 of whom the government believes are alive. Since the war began, 465 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza.

A new American peace plan is on the table, even as Israeli tanks and ground troops threaten the heart of Gaza City.

A graphic with this story has been corrected to show that some 6,000 people have been reported by relatives to be under the rubble in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, not more than 10,000. Another graphic has been corrected to show that data from Israel’s prison service provided to the Hamoked rights group shows that 2,662 Palestinians from Gaza are in Israeli prisons who have been processed since the start of the war, not 2,762.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

With a new head coach and 13 different players in the Gophers men’s basketball program this season, there will be a longer acclimation process needed for fans this fall. And that’s saying something in the already transient era of the NCAA transfer portal.

Head coach Niko Medved and two players — Isaac Asuma and Jaylen Crocker-Johnson — tried to share Thursday what the Gophers identity will be and who some key players are during their appearances at Big Ten Media Day in Rosemont, Ill.

Asuma is one of only two players who returned to the U after coach Ben Johnson was fired last March. The sophomore guard from Cherry, Minn., said it took only one conversation with Medved to keep his name out of the portal.

“Just saw the vision he had for the program, and I want to be a part of that,” Ausma told Big Ten Network. “I think that he has a special future in sight.”

Jaylen Crocker-Johnson played for Medved at Colorado State and the 6-foot-8 junior forward transferred away from Fort Collins, Colo., to follow his former coach to Minnesota.

“At CSU, we built a strong relationship throughout the (years), just on and off the court, just building that bond,” Crocker-Johnson said on the Big Ten network’s coverage of Thursday’s event. “And I already knew right then and there, as soon as he left, I wanted to go with him.”

The first glimpse of Medved’s team will come at the Maroon and Gold Scrimmage at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Williams Arena. It starts four hours before the Gophers football team plays Purdue across the street at Huntington Bank Stadium.

The next two chances will be home exhibition games against North Dakota State (Oct. 16) and North Dakota (Oct. 25). The season opener is Nov. 3 against Gardner-Webb at The Barn.

Medved shared what he expects from his first squad, harkening to what he did at Colorado State. Last March, the Rams came within a buzzer-beater against Maryland from making the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Tournament.

“They played an unselfish brand,” Medved said on BTN. “You look at our teams across the board, they’ve always been among the leaders in the country in assists to field goals made. We’ve also been among the leaders in two-point field goal percentage, even though we haven’t been big. I think we cut well, we move it well, we put a lot of pressure on the paint.

“We’ve been a connected team defensively, that’s feisty, that scraps and a team, I hope, that pulls for each other. The places that we’ve been, we play a brand that our fans can get excited about cheering for, and that’s really our charge this year, it’s to start to build those things.”

The Gophers were picked to finish 16th in the 18-team Big Ten, according to the Columbus Dispatch-Indianapolis Star preseason poll released Wednesday. Last year, the Gophers finished in a five-way tie for 12th at 7-13 in league play.

Given the 87% roster turnover, Asuma and Crocker-Johnson were asked by host Raphael Davis which players have stood out in summer workouts and preseason practices.

“It’s really been a team thing, for sure,” Crocker-Johnson said. “Because we are trying to meet coach’s standards.”

But Crocker-Johnson went on to mention Western Michigan transfer Chansey Willis Jr., Northern Colorado guard Langston Reynolds and North Carolina forward Cade Tyson.

“Just like leading the break, being more of the older guys, trying to set a good example, leading on and off the court,” Crocker-Johnson said.

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A growing number of people are turning to AI for therapy not because it’s now smarter than humans, but because too many human therapists stopped doing their jobs. Instead of challenging illusions, telling hard truths and helping build resilience, modern therapy drifted into nods, empty reassurances and endless validation. Into the void stepped chatbots, automating bad therapy practices, sometimes with deadly consequences.

Recent headlines told the wrenching story of Sophie Rottenberg, a young woman who confided her suicidal plans to ChatGPT before taking her own life in February. An AI bot offered her only comfort; no intervention, no warning, no protection. Sophie’s death was not only a tragedy. It was a signal: AI has perfected the worst habits of modern therapy while stripping away the guardrails that once made it safe.

I warned more than a decade ago, in a 2012 New York Times op-ed, that therapy was drifting too far from its core purpose. That warning proved prescient and that drift has hardened into orthodoxy. Therapy traded the goal of helping people grow stronger for the false comfort of validation and hand-holding.

For much of the last century, the goal of therapy was resilience. But in the past decade, campus culture has shifted toward emotional protection. Universities now embrace the language of safe spaces, trigger warnings and microaggressions. Therapist training, shaped by that environment, carries the same ethos into the clinic. Instead of being taught how to challenge patients and build their strength, new therapists are encouraged to affirm feelings and shield patients from discomfort. The intention is compassion. The effect is paralysis.

When therapy stops challenging people, it stops being therapy and becomes paid listening. The damage is real. I’ve seen it firsthand in more than two decades as a practicing psychotherapist in New York City and Washington, D.C. One patient told me her previous therapist urged her to quit a promising job because the patient felt “triggered” by her boss. The real issue, difficulty taking direction, was fixable. Another case in the news recently centered on a man in the middle of a manic spiral who turned to ChatGPT for help. It validated his delusions, and he ended up hospitalized twice. Different providers, same failure: avoiding discomfort at all costs.

A mindset trained to “validate first and always” leaves no room for problem-solving or accountability. Patients quickly sense the emptiness — the hollow feeling of canned empathy, nods without challenge and responses that go nowhere. They want guidance, direction and the courage of a therapist willing to say what’s hard to hear. When therapy offers only comfort without clarity, it becomes ineffective, and people increasingly turn to algorithms instead.

With AI, the danger multiplies. A bad therapist can waste years. A chatbot can waste thousands of lives every day, without pause, without ethics, without accountability. Bad therapy has become scalable.

All this is colliding with a loneliness epidemic, record levels of anxiety and depression and a mental-health tech industry potentially worth billions. Estimates by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration suggest that roughly 1 in 3 Americans is comfortable turning to AI bots rather than flesh-and-blood therapists for emotional or mental health support.

The appeal of AI is not wisdom but decisiveness. A bot never hesitates, never says “let’s sit with that feeling.” It simply answers. That is why AI feels like an upgrade. Its answers may be reckless, but the format is quick, confident and direct — and it is addictive.

Good therapy should look nothing like a chatbot — which can’t pick up on nonverbal cues or tone, can’t confront them, and can’t act when it matters most.

The tragedy is that therapy has taught patients to expect so little that even an algorithm feels like an upgrade. It became a business of professional hand-holding, which weakened patients and opened the door for machine intervention. If therapists keep avoiding discomfort, tragedies like Sophie Rottenberg’s will become more common.

But therapy can evolve. The way forward is not to imitate machines, but to reclaim what made therapy effective in the first place. In my own practice, I ask hard questions. I press patients to see their role in conflict, to face the discomfort they want to avoid and to build the resilience that growth requires. That approach is not harsh. It is compassion with a purpose: helping people change rather than stay stuck.

Modern therapy can meet today’s crisis if training programs return to teaching those skills. Instead of turning out young therapists fluent in the language of grievance, programs should focus on developing clinicians who know how to challenge, guide and strengthen patients. Patients deserve honesty, accountability and the tools to move forward. Therapy can remain a business of listening, or it can be a catalyst to change.

Jonathan Alpert is a psychotherapist practicing in New York City and Washington and the author of the forthcoming“ Therapy Nation.” He wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.