DULUTH, Minn. — Mary Heilman and her husband recently received a $4,000 bill to fix their boiler.

As retirees living on a tight budget, Heilman said it’s hard enough to keep their propane tanks filled in the grueling Northland winters. So they were relieved when the Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency stepped in and covered the costs of the repair.

“Without energy assistance, there’s no way we could be in our home,” the Makinen resident said. “We own our house, we own our property, but we can’t even keep up with taxes and stuff.”

The Heilmans are among more than 100,000 Minnesota households that received help last winter with monthly heating bills and/or emergency services through the state’s Energy Assistance Program.

But federal funding for the initiative appears to be on the chopping block, state and local officials warned. Last month, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly fired the entire staff responsible for managing the program, and the Trump administration has proposed to eliminate its $4.1 billion budget.

“The average benefit for households this year has been just over $700, and those funds make a big difference in people’s lives,” Minnesota Commerce Commissioner Grace Arnold said Monday. “Without energy assistance, thousands of Minnesotans would face higher energy costs.

“And beyond that,” she said, “they would be at risk for having their utilities shut off in winter, receiving no help if their furnace breaks and they have no heat in the middle of winter, or being forced to choose between heating their homes and buying groceries or medicine.”

Residents of the 8th Congressional District spend an average of 13% of their household income on energy — the highest in the state, according to Department of Commerce data. Northeastern Minnesota also has the highest overall energy costs and the highest share of households receiving emergency benefits.

Annie Levenson-Falk, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, said her advocacy organization tracked 91,000 households that had electric or gas service disconnected by regulated utilities for nonpayment in 2024 — a record number that does not even include customers of rural cooperatives and municipal utilities or those who can’t afford to refill propane tanks.

She added that nearly half of households receiving assistance have a person over 60; 4 in 10 have a person with a disability; and 17% have a child under age 6.

“This figure has been persistently high since the pandemic,” Levenson-Falk said, “compounded by the cost of housing and inflation throughout the family budget. Energy is unaffordable for too many Minnesotans.”

AEOA surveys residents receiving benefits, according to energy assistance coordinator Jean Pelletier, and has found that many are retired, on Social Security and/or have been left in dire financial situations as a result of circumstances such as the death of a spouse.

“We may be able to resolve these life-threatening situations when funding is available,” she said, “but if (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) funding is cut, there will not be options to help our community members in need, and there are likely people that will not be able to stay in their homes.”

The state initiative is entirely funded by the federal program, Arnold said, and Minnesota stands to lose about $125 million annually if funding is eliminated. She noted the program also helps keep costs down across the board, as unpaid bills result in costs being passed on to other customers.

Advocates of LIHEAP urged Congress to maintain the program, which has for decades received broad, bipartisan support and helps roughly 6.2 million people nationally offset the costs of both heating and air conditioning.

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While Sophie Jaques was welcomed with open arms when she came to Minnesota in the middle of last season, the Frost defender did find one immediate challenge in sharing a team with star forward Taylor Heise. They had to share a nickname.

In 2022, Heise had won the Patty Kazmaier Award while playing for the Minnesota Gophers. A year later, Jaques won the trophy, given annually to the top player in women’s college hockey, while winning the NCAA title for Ohio State.

Heise was already being playfully referred to as “Patty” by her teammates when Jaques entered the chat. Never mind the fact that Frost forward Kendall Coyne-Schofield had also won the Kazmaier, in 2016 when she played at Northeastern.

So, the Frost roster was suddenly crowded with Pattys. With the Frost winning games, and both Heise and Jaques making key contributions, their teammates say they can work out a nickname sharing agreement.

“I think they both can have it at that point,” Frost forward Michaela Cava said. “They’re both incredible hockey players, and they can share it. They can both be Patty, they’re so good and so fun to watch.”

The Frost are back in action Wednesday, looking to close out their five-game, first-round playoff series against Toronto at Xcel Energy Center. Puck drop is set for 6 p.m.

With two goals and two assists in the Frost’s first three playoff games, Jaques is showing off some of the skills that made her a star as a Buckeye, controlling the play from the blue line, playing smart defense, and unleashing a scary-hard shot from time to time.

While she comes across as soft-spoken off the ice, Heise said in the locker room, on the bench and on the ice, Jaques’ teammates see a strong player who is known above all for her confidence.

“Hers is unwavering, truly. Say she gets her pocket picked once, she’s going to get (the puck) back. She’s going to skate it all the way down the ice, and she’s going to deke around a defender,” Heise said. “She has what we call sometimes a magnet. The puck sticks on her stick like no one else’s. She’s got great stickhandling skills, she can skate it up the ice. Plus, she can see the play.”

Starting her pro career in Boston, where she played in seven games without recording a point, Jaques, 24, was the centerpiece of the first trade in PWHL history when Minnesota acquired her one-third of the way through the 2023-24 season. She put up good numbers after the trade and was an important defensive player in Minnesota’s run to the 2024 league title.

She acknowledged, however, that switching time zones and teams midseason presented some challenges, and Jaques’ offensive numbers more than doubled — team-high 15 assists, seven goals in 25 regular-season games — in her first full season with the Frost.

“Last year, she really came on once she got here. Her game picked up. Her confidence level picked up. She kind of got back to where she was before,” Frost coach Ken Klee said. “And then she’s just continuing. You look at the points she put up this year. She’s still trying to take pride in her own zone and being an offensive threat when she can.”

Originally from Toronto, Jaques has gotten to face her hometown team two consecutive years in the opening round of the playoffs. While she relishes the chance to play near where she learned the game, Jaques admitted that with the Sceptres playing well, tickets are harder and harder to come by for all of the family and friends who turn out when the Frost visit.

“It’s good to see how the team has grown in Toronto, but I’m happy to still get a good group out to our games,” she said.

And with the Frost ending the regular season with must-win games in Ottawa and Boston, then traveling right to Toronto for the first two playoff games, playing close to home also meant playing close to her parents’ washer and dryer — a bonus.

“We had been on the road for about eight days, and then we still had about seven games left. So it made sense to get a load of laundry in, for sure,” Jaques said.

Sophie Jaques #16 of the Minnesota Frost skates against Kristin O’Neill #43 of the Montreal Victoire during the second period at Place Bell on Jan. 17, 2025 in Laval, Quebec, Canada. The Montreal Victoire defeated the Minnesota Frost 4-2. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)

By JESSE BEDAYN

A rock climber who fell an estimated 400 feet while descending a steep gully in Washington’s North Cascades mountains survived the fall that killed his three companions, hiked to his car in the dark and then drove to a pay phone to call for help, authorities said Tuesday.

The surviving climber, who has not been publicly identified, extricated himself from a tangle of ropes, helmets and other equipment after the accident and made the trek despite suffering internal bleeding and head trauma, Okanogan County Undersheriff Dave Yarnell said.

Falls like this leading to three deaths are extremely rare, and many details about what led up to it still aren’t known, said Cristina Woodworth, who leads the sheriff’s search and rescue team. Seven years ago, two climbers were killed in a fall on El Capitan at Yosemite National Park.

The group of four — including the victims, aged 36, 47 and 63 — were scaling the Early Winters Spires, jagged peaks split by a cleft that’s popular with climbers in the North Cascade Range, about 160 miles northeast of Seattle. The surviving climber was hospitalized in Seattle.

The group of four met with disaster that night when the anchor securing their ropes appears to have failed as they were descending in a steep gully, trying to reach the spire’s base, Yarnell said.

They plummeted for about 200 feet into a slanted gulch and then tumbled another 200 feet before coming to rest, he said. Authorities believe the group had been ascending but turned around when they saw a storm approaching.

A three-person search and rescue team reached the site of the fall Sunday, Woodworth said. The team used coordinates from a device the climbers had been carrying, which had been shared by a friend of the men.

Once they found the site, they called in a helicopter to remove the bodies one at a time because of the rough terrain, Woodworth said.

On Monday, responders poured over the recovered equipment trying to decipher what caused the fall, Woodworth said. They found a piton — basically a small metal spike that is driven into rock cracks or ice and used as anchors by climbers — that was still clipped into the climbers’ ropes.

Pitons are oftentimes left in walls. They can be there for years or even decades, and they may become less secure over time.

“It looked old and weathered, and the rest of their equipment looked newer, so we are making the assumption that it was an old piton,” Woodworth said.

Rock climbers secure themselves by ropes to anchors, such as pitons or other climbing equipment. The ropes are intended to arrest their fall if they should slip, and typically climbers use backup anchors, said Joshua Cole, a guide and co-owner of North Cascades Mountain Guides, who has been climbing in the area for about 20 years.

Generally, it would be unusual to rappel off a single piton, said Cole, adding that it is still unknown exactly what happened on the wall that night.

“We eventually, if possible, would like to get more information from surviving party,” Woodworth said.

The spires are a popular climbing spot. The route the climbers were taking, said Cole, was of moderate difficulty, and requires moving between ice, snow and rock.

But the conditions, the amount of ice versus rock for example, can change rapidly with the weather, he said, even week to week or day to day, changing the route’s risks.

Bedayn reported from Denver.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV has taken over the Vatican’s official social media handles, with a first Instagram post on Tuesday repeating the first words he said to the world as pope: “Peace be with you all!”

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The @Pontifex – Pope Leo XIV post featured some of the photos that have documented the first days of history’s first American pope.

The Vatican said it was archiving the posts from Pope Francis ’ 12-year papacy. On X, the new account didn’t appear to be active Tuesday.

The Vatican launched the @Pontifex handle in 2012 during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. It now comes in a variety of nine languages — English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Polish, Arabic, and Latin — and counts a combined 52 million followers.

Past popes didn’t actually send the posts, which were curated by the Vatican.

The former Cardinal Robert Prevost occasionally posted on X in an account started in 2011. It had been dormant since July 2023 but came back to life earlier this year to share criticism of Trump administration migration policies and comments by Vice President JD Vance.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.