When Mallory Heyer announced weeks before the season opener she would be leaving Minnesota’s program, some of the power forward’s responsibilities landed in the hands of Amaya Battle.

Battle, a senior wing who spent her first two seasons as the point guard, was going to have to rebound more. It wasn’t too much of an issue for the Hopkins product; she had always been a strong rebounder for a guard.

Indiana’s Nevaeh Caffey, left, can’t get to Minnesota’s Amaya Battle before she releases a jump shot in the Gophers’ 71-48 victory Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, in Bloomington, Ind. Battle scored a game-high 20 points and grabbed eight rebounds. (Meghan Bielich / Gophers Athletics)

Thirteen games later, Battle leads the Gophers in rebounding (7.8 per game) and assists (3.9). She can score a little, too.

Battle led all scorers with 20 points and added eight boards on Monday as Minnesota routed Indiana, 71-48, in Bloomington, Ind. It was the Gophers’ first victory at Assembly Hall since 2019.

“It’s hard to do this against a team that’s really good at home, to do that on the road, in a really tough environment,” coach Dawn Plitzuweit said on the team’s postgame radio broadcast.

Battle was a major reason. She was only credited with one assist, but that’s not indicative of her effect on the offense with three offensive boards, and the transitions she started with rebounds on the other end.

“I’ve always liked rebounding, even when I was younger,” the Hopkins graduate said on KFAN’s postgame show. “It’s not just this year. I’ve always loved to go and rebound it, especially on defense; then I get out and push it. Or under the boards, and I can kick it out and find another shooter.

“I just like grabbing the ball out of the air.”

Tori McKinney scored 17 points, and Sophie Hart finished with a game-high 12 rebounds and nine points for the Gophers, who improved to 10-3 overall, 1-1 in the Big Ten.

Minnesota scored the first 17 points of the third quarter as the Gophers turned a small halftime lead into a 23-point advantage. They trailed by seven in the first quarter, and held a 34-28 lead at halftime before they throttled the Hoosiers (11-3, 0-2) defensively in the second half.

Battle scored eight points — and two steals and a rebound — during the Gophers’ 17-0 third-quarter run. For the game, Minnesota scored 21 points off 21 Indiana turnovers. Battle finished with three steals, and McKinney and Mara Braun had two apiece.

Battle’s 20 points were a season high for the four-year starter.

“She leads us in assists and in rebounding; that’s hard to do,” Plitzuweit said. “To have eight rebounds, and do so much for us defensively in terms of matchups and switches and guarding the point guard. We rely a great, great deal on her. I thought she performed at a really high level.”

The Gophers’ next game is Jan. 5 at No. 6 Michigan (10-1).

Related Articles

World Junior Championship: Injured U.S. D Cole Hutson back with team

World Junior Hockey Championship games will play as scheduled today

How Gophers football plans to attack transfer portal next week

Gophers expected to hire Stanford assistant Bobby April as rush ends coach

While other programs tampered, Anthony Smith announces his return to Gophers for 2026

By SARA CLINE and JACK BROOK

NEW ORLEANS, La. (AP) — A National Guard deployment in New Orleans authorized by President Donald Trump will begin Tuesday as part of a heavy security presence for New Year’s celebrations a year after an attack on revelers on Bourbon Street killed 14 people, officials said Monday.

Related Articles

US military carries out 30th strike on alleged drug boat

These former members of Congress are seeking comebacks in 2026

Trump administration rolls out rural health funding, with strings attached

Homeland Security says a fraud investigation is underway in Minneapolis

Trump says the US ‘hit’ a facility along shore where he says alleged drug boats ‘load up’

The deployment in New Orleans follows high-profile National Guard missions the Trump administration launched in other cities this year, including in Washington and Memphis, Tennessee. But the sight of National Guard troops is not unusual in New Orleans, where troops earlier this year also helped bolster security for the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras.

“It’s no different than what we’ve seen in the past,” New Orleans police spokesperson Reese Harper said.

The Guard is not the only federal law enforcement agency in the city. Since the start of the month, federal agents have been carrying out an immigration crackdown that has led to the arrest of at least several hundred people.

Harper stressed that the National Guard will not be engaging in immigration enforcement.

“This is for visibility and just really to keep our citizens safe,” Harper said. “It’s just another tool in the toolbox and another layer of security.”

The Guard is expected be confined to the French Quarter area popular with tourists and won’t be engaging in assisting in immigration enforcement, Harper said. Guardsmen will operate similar to earlier this year when they patrolled the area around Bourbon Street following the vehicle-ramming attack on Jan. 1.

The 350 Guard members will stay through Carnival season, when residents and tourists descend on the Big Easy to partake in costumed celebrations and massive parades before ending with Mardi Gras in mid-February.

Louisiana National Guard spokesperson Lt. Col. Noel Collins said in a written statement that the Guard will support local, state, and federal law enforcement “to enhance capabilities, stabilize the environment, assist in reducing crime, and restoring public trust.”

An opened gate is seen at the Bourbon Street corner in New Orleans on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, the site of a Jan. 1, 2025, fatal vehicle ramming attack which led the city to bolster its safety measures in the area. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)

In total, more than 800 local, state and federal law enforcement officials will be deployed in New Orleans to close off Bourbon Street to vehicular traffic, patrol the area, conduct bag searches and redirect traffic, city officials said during a news conference Monday.

The extra aid for New Orleans has received the support of some Democrats, with Mayor LaToya Cantrell saying she is “welcoming of those added resources.”

The increased law enforcement presence comes a year after Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove around a police blockade in the early hours of Jan. 1 and raced down Bourbon Street, plowing into people celebrating New Year’s Day. The attacker, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran who had proclaimed his support for the Islamic State militant group on social media, was fatally shot by police after crashing. After an expansive search, law enforcement located multiple bombs in coolers placed around the French Quarter. None of the explosive devices detonated.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, 100 National Guard members were sent to the city.

In September, Gov. Jeff Landry asked Trump to send 1,000 troops to Louisiana cities, citing concerns about crime. Democrats pushed back, specifically leaders in New Orleans who said a deployment was unwarranted. They argued that the city has actually seen a dramatic decrease in violent crime rates in recent years.

Cline reported from Baton Rouge.

By ALEXA ST. JOHN

Climate change worsened by human behavior made 2025 one of the three hottest years on record, scientists said.

Related Articles

How bomb cyclones form and create dangerous conditions

A power outage can turn dangerous fast. Here’s how to prepare

It’s been 25 years since America decided to save the Everglades. Where do we stand?

Hawaii’s Big Island bans feeding feral cats in an effort to help endangered native species

Virginia offshore wind developer sues over Trump administration order halting projects

It was also the first time that the three-year temperature average broke through the threshold set in the 2015 Paris Agreement of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times. Experts say that keeping the Earth below that limit could save lives and prevent catastrophic environmental destruction around the globe.

The analysis from World Weather Attribution researchers, released Tuesday in Europe, came after a year when people around the world were slammed by the dangerous extremes brought on by a warming planet.

Temperatures remained high despite the presence of a La Nina, the occasional natural cooling of Pacific Ocean waters that influences weather worldwide. Researchers cited the continued burning of fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — that send planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

“If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels very, very, quickly, very soon, it will be very hard to keep that goal” of warming, Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution and an Imperial College London climate scientist, told The Associated Press. “The science is increasingly clear.”

Extremes in 2025

Extreme weather events kill thousands of people and cost billions of dollars in damage annually.

WWA scientists identified 157 extreme weather events as most severe in 2025, meaning they met criteria such as causing more than 100 deaths, affecting more than half an area’s population or having a state of emergency declared. Of those, they closely analyzed 22.

That included dangerous heat waves, which the WWA said were the world’s deadliest extreme weather events in 2025. The researchers said some of the heat waves they studied in 2025 were 10 times more likely than they would have been a decade ago due to climate change.

FILE – Tourists use umbrellas to shelter against the sun outside Hagia Sophia mosque during a hot summer day in Istanbul Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

“The heat waves we have observed this year are quite common events in our climate today, but they would have been almost impossible to occur without human-induced climate change,” Otto said. “It makes a huge difference.”

Meanwhile, prolonged drought contributed to wildfires that scorched Greece and Turkey. Torrential rains and flooding in Mexico killed dozens of people and left many more missing. Super Typhoon Fung-wong slammed the Philippines, forcing more than a million people to evacuate. Monsoon rains battered India with floods and landslides.

FILE – People traverse a flooded street in Poza Rica, Veracruz state, Mexico, Oct. 15, 2025, after torrential rain. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez, File)

The WWA said the increasingly frequent and severe extremes threatened the ability of millions of people across the globe to respond and adapt to those events with enough warning, time and resources, what the scientists call “limits of adaptation.” The report pointed to Hurricane Melissa as an example: The storm intensified so quickly that it made forecasting and planning more difficult, and pummeled Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti so severely that it left the small island nations unable to respond to and handle its extreme losses and damage.

Global climate negotiations sputter out

This year’s United Nations climate talks in Brazil in November ended without any explicit plan to transition away from fossil fuels, and though more money was pledged to help countries adapt to climate change, they will take more time to do it.

Officials, scientists, and analysts have conceded that Earth’s warming will overshoot 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), though some say reversing that trend remains possible.

Yet different nations are seeing varying levels of progress.

FILE – Debris surrounds damaged homes along the Black River, Jamaica, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025, in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)

China is rapidly deploying renewable energies including solar and wind power — but it is also continuing to invest in coal. Though increasingly frequent extreme weather has spurred calls for climate action across Europe, some nations say that limits economic growth. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Trump administration has steered the nation away from clean-energy policy in favor of measures that support coal, oil and gas.

“The geopolitical weather is very cloudy this year with a lot of policymakers very clearly making policies for the interest of the fossil fuel industry rather than for the populations of their countries,” Otto said. “And we have a huge amount of mis- and disinformation that people have to deal with.”

FILE – Local residents and volunteers work together to battle an encroaching wildfire in Larouco, northwestern Spain, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Lalo R. Villar, File)

Andrew Kruczkiewicz, a senior researcher at the Columbia University Climate School who wasn’t involved in the WWA work, said places are seeing disasters they aren’t used to, extreme events are intensifying faster and they are becoming more complex. That requires earlier warnings and new approaches to response and recovery, he said.

“On a global scale, progress is being made,” he added, “but we must do more.”

Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

Read more of AP’s climate coverage.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

GRAND MARAIS, Minn. — An employee of the Cook County Co-op has been arrested and faces attempted second-degree murder and other charges following a stabbing Saturday afternoon in the store.

Donovan Michael Vondall (Courtesy of the Cook County sheriff’s office)

Donovan Michael Vondall, 32, of Grand Portage, is accused of slashing the neck of a customer. The customer — Thomas Wayne Peterson of St. Paul — said the attack was unprovoked, according to the criminal complaint.

Peterson told Cook County Sheriff investigator Angelique Homan he noticed Vondall perspiring and looking at him in an agitated fashion just before the attack. As he pulled open the door to a refrigerated case, Peterson said he felt a “sharp punch” on his right jaw and saw the suspect holding a knife.

Realizing that he had been cut, Peterson said he began to run toward the front of the store in search of assistance, with his assailant in pursuit.

Vondall allegedly told Homan he chased Peterson with the initial intent to ensure his death. But he then retreated to the rear of the store, exiting through a staff entrance.

Vondall, who has twice been civilly committed to psychiatric care (once in 2012 and again in 2013), told police he had considered staying home that day “because he felt like hurting someone,” according to the criminal complaint.

A Cook County Sheriff’s deputy responded to the incident at 3:48 p.m. Saturday and found Peterson lying on the floor of the store with a bystander pressing bandages to his neck in an attempt to stanch the bleeding. Peterson was transported to North Shore Health for emergency care.

Homan interviewed Peterson at the Grand Marais hospital and noted that he had difficulty speaking, having “suffered nerve damage to the right side of his face, causing his face to droop and his tongue to feel partially numb.”

Arrested at home

Shortly after the incident, authorities received a call from the co-op manager, who was not on the scene, informing them that he had spoken to Vondall’s brother and was advised that the suspect was at home and waiting, unarmed, for officers to take him into custody.

Vondall was arrested without incident. His grandmother said he has schizophrenia and had not been taking medication to control the condition, according to the complaint.

Vondall reportedly told Homan he did not sleep well, “and it might have been from drinking vodka and White Claw.”

At the residence, authorities recovered a black fold-out knife with a serrated edge. Vondall confirmed the weapon had been in his possession, the complaint said.

When asked why he had targeted Peterson, Vondall reportedly told Homan he had seen the customer previously and considered him friendly, “but it was the look on (Peterson’s) face that day.” Vondall said “people staring at him is a trigger for him, and he also thought there was some racism happening,” the complaint states.

Community shaken

In addition to attempted second-degree murder, Vondall also faces charges of first-degree assault causing great bodily harm and second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon used to inflict substantial bodily harm.

Cook County Sheriff Pat Eliasen described Grand Marais as a small town “where these types of things typically don’t happen.”

“This level of violence has a lot of people shaken up,” he said, even though he noted there is no further threat to public safety.

Related Articles

Chisago City man charged with fatal Christmas Day assault of hospital security guard

Dakota County woman shot on Christmas Eve was mom of 2 young kids

Judge orders release of transcript of closed hearing for man accused of killing Charlie Kirk

David Brom’s supervised release hearing set for Jan. 13

Stabbing investigated at Grand Marais food co-op, sheriff says

Joe Friedrichs, a local author and freelance journalist, said he and fellow residents were particularly taken aback by the setting and the timing of the attack, just a few days after Christmas.

“It makes people feel uneasy, especially given the fact that the co-op is so much more than a grocery store for our community. It’s a place for healthy, friendly social interactions. So, that juxtaposition in itself is just so alarming and unsettling,” he said.

Eliasen concurred but added: “A violent crime like this is horrific, no matter where it happens.”

Co-op management could not be reached for comment Monday. The establishment has remained closed since the incident Saturday, but it was slated to reopen Tuesday, Dec. 30, according to its website.