A motorcyclist died in a crash on a downtown St. Paul highway Tuesday night, according to the Minnesota State Patrol.

The 32-year-old driver was northbound on Interstate 35E, approaching eastbound Interstate 94 about 11:15 p.m. As the highway curved, the motorcyclist struck the center median and crashed, the State Patrol said.

No other vehicles were involved. The State Patrol said they plan to release the name of the driver, a St. Paul resident, on Thursday.

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On a three-dog January night in southside San Antonio, a brightly painted coffee-and-beer joint burbles to life with a bundled-up crowd, chiefly young and hip, many sporting black-and-white keffiyehs—the scarves that serve as worldwide symbols of solidarity with Palestine.

Ringing a spacious side yard, vendors arrange wares on tables. Music equipment for a DJ and band waits on a covered patio. String lights line the property’s perimeter. 

The occasion: a show and market billed as “Puro Pinche Palestina,” a coinage that would only suffer from direct translation but that is basically a very San Antonio way of declaring support for the Palestinian cause. 

A pair of “mutual aid” groups—peer-to-peer alternatives to traditional charities—planned the evening. The event’s earnings will go to an outfit called San Antonio for Justice in Palestine (SAJP), which is pushing for local responses, such as a city council ceasefire resolution, to the horrors unfolding in the Levant.

“Being in San Antonio and so far away from everything, it’s hard to feel connected to the struggle for the liberation of Palestine,” says Basseema Abouassaad, a Palestinian organizer with SAJP. “But whenever we come to events like this, along with protests, along with rallies or art builds or classes or things like that, people can literally turn 360 [degrees] … to get a visual of how many people give a fuck.” 

The crowd mingles at the “Puro Pinche Palestina” fundraising event. Gus Bova

A series of indie rock and punk bands strum the night along. Between sets, the DJ spins Palestinian and South African tracks. (In December, South Africa brought charges of genocide against Israel over the latter’s actions in Palestine.) Attendees peruse the vendors’ offerings: art prints, jewelry, zines, crystals, tarot cards, books both new and used. Friends huddle around firepits to ward off the chill.

Half a world away in the Gaza Strip, the 140-square-mile slice of Palestinian territory abutting Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, the day’s news features such headlines as “Israeli drones attack hospital in southern Gaza,” “The desperate struggle to find food in Gaza,” and “A kitchen table amputation without anesthetic in Gaza is one of many.” The death toll in the Strip, population 2.2 million, soars toward 30,000 as Israel prosecutes its campaign of vengeance against Hamas, the militant group governing Gaza that killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7. Most of Israel’s victims, per the Gaza Health Ministry, are women and children.

Back in San Antonio, savory-scented steam rises from a stockpot of sumaqiyya, a classic Gazan stew spiced with tangy sumac. A four-person crew with a Palestinian food pop-up called Saha ladles out the dish, along with pita and hummus. Moureen Kaki, Saha’s proprietor, says she’s paused operations since October 7 other than for events focused on the Gaza crisis—even though she knows there’s a flood of potential customers looking to support Palestinian-owned businesses. “I felt weird because I don’t need people giving me more business because my people are getting genocided,” she says. “But for an event like this, it feels kind of good.” 

The crew of Saha, a San Antonio-based Palestinian food pop-up, serves Gazan cuisine. Gus Bova

Judith Norman, a philosophy professor and organizer with the pro-Palestine group Jewish Voice for Peace, oversees a nearby table topped with political pamphlets, “Free Palestine” stickers, and flowers. 

“When I started to get involved in organizing … I had a lot of compassion for and empathy for Palestinians, but I just saw them as victims,” she says. “And it really sort of turned things around when a lot of Palestine events were stressing joy and resiliency and culture and Palestine as not something [where] you’re fighting against Israel but fighting for.”

One pamphlet outlines the call for San Antonio City Council to pass a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, a thus-far unsuccessful effort led by SAJP. The tract also details other entanglements between San Antonio and the far-off conflict, including trainings in Israel of Bexar County law enforcement officials and the local presence of military contractors. SAJP is trying to focus criticism on Caterpillar, the massive maker of construction equipment, which provides armored bulldozers to the Israeli army and has multiple facilities in the San Antonio area. 

At another table, local artist Alexa Wilson displays her work: intricate drawings of solvable mazes forming a variety of shapes including, in one case, the Palestinian flag. Since October, she says, her eyes have been opened to injustice in Palestine.

“The work that I do is mostly mazes, but I have this theme of how mazes are life. We’re all living through these; there’s only one way in and there’s one way out, and it’s up to us to determine which way we’re going,” Wilson explains. “And the people in Gaza are experiencing their own brutal maze right now. … It’s not clear what the way out is, but there is an end, and I’m hoping that there is, like, a light—a good end.”

MOBILE, Ala. — Kerry Joseph doesn’t have any thoughts yet on the Chicago Bears’ biggest offseason decision, the one that holds the key to the NFL draft.

The team’s new quarterbacks coach, hired Friday, doesn’t even know where his office is at Halas Hall. He has been on a whirlwind tour since the season ended, free to seek a new job after the Seattle Seahawks forced out coach Pete Carroll.

Joseph, the assistant quarterbacks coach for the Seahawks the last two seasons, spent one day in Lake Forest interviewing for the Bears job. In between, he was scrambling to get to Mobile, where he’s serving as quarterbacks coach of the American team in the Senior Bowl.

Somehow along the way, Joseph got hooked up with Bears gear and was wearing a team-issued navy hat, navy shorts and gray sweatshirt at practice Tuesday at Hancock Whitney Stadium on the South Alabama campus.

He doesn’t have preliminary thoughts on Justin Fields. Joseph was the assistant wide receivers coach in Seattle in 2021, when the Bears drafted Fields. He has yet to dig in on this year’s draft, in which the Bears hold the first and ninth picks and are in position to select a new quarterback.

“I was getting transitioned to coming out here,” the 50-year-old Joseph said.

It’s the first time he has been an NFL position coach — above the assistant position coach level. The connection is easy to make. He worked with new Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, who came from the Seahawks. The Bears also interviewed Seahawks quarterbacks coach Greg Olson for the offensive coordinator job.

The last first-time quarterbacks coach the Bears hired was Shane Day in 2010 based on his experience working with then-offensive coordinator Mike Martz in San Francisco. Since Day, the Bears have rolled through Jeremy Bates, Matt Cavanaugh, Dowell Loggains, Dave Ragone, John DeFilippo and most recently Andrew Janocko.

It would be overly dramatic to say this is the most important offseason for a Bears quarterbacks coach. There has been urgency to get the position right for the longest time. It just so happens they own the No. 1 draft pick as they prepare to thoroughly examine a talented group of passers, including USC’s Caleb Williams, North Carolina’s Drake Maye (who was a spectator at practice Tuesday), LSU’s Jayden Daniels and Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy.

Joseph, who was responsible for red-zone preparation with the Seahawks, had a hand in helping revive Geno Smith’s career in Seattle as Smith threw for 4,282 yards and 30 touchdowns in 2022. Joseph’s knowledge of Waldron’s system will be critical whether the Bears draft a quarterback or not.

“When you think about Shane and what we were able to do with the (Seahawks) offense, I think quarterback play is about having confidence,” Joseph said. “Quarterback play is just about being competitive. It’s about being smart, being dependable, having a good IQ of the game, being passionate.

“When you think about traits, when you talk about quarterback play and when you talk about Shane’s mentality, it’s just about being connected to the play caller, being connected to the offense. There are some things you’ve got to have and you’ve got to bring to it.”

Joseph was a quarterback at McNeese State and had a 42-11 record as a four-year starter, helping the Cowboys to two Southland Conference titles. He spent time with the Cincinnati Bengals in 1996 as an undrafted free agent before playing in NFL Europe. He tried to make the Washington Redskins as a slot back and then played safety for the Seahawks from 1998 to 2001, appearing in 56 games with 14 starts.

He returned to quarterback in the Canadian Football League in 2003, winning a Grey Cup with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 2007, when he was named the league’s most outstanding player. After retiring following the 2014 season, he got into coaching at the college level with stops at his alma mater and Southeastern Louisiana before joining the Seahawks as an offensive assistant in 2020.

The diverse background — having played defense in the NFL — gives him a different perspective to teach offensive football.

“It helps me tremendously,” Joseph said, “because playing the safety position, playing that dime (position), playing down in the box helped me understand how defenses attack the offense, how guys fit. So now that I’ve gone back to quarterback, I see it from a defensive mentality.

“Being able to help guys to understand the game, not just from the offensive side but from the defensive side, kind of helped (with) where to put their eyes. That’s what it did for me as a player, and I try to teach it that way with a defensive mentality.”

Joseph will learn where his office is soon, and then he can hit the ground running as the Bears prepare for the draft and install a new offense — quite possibly with a new quarterback. As far as his philosophy on developing a young quarterback, he leaned into some basic tenets.

“I use three things: accountability, responsibility, communication,” Joseph said. “It’s about trust, believing and having confidence in each other. A quarterbacks coach and a quarterback, you’ve got to have those three things.

“Then, hey, it’s about the fundamentals. It’s about developing the fundamentals, developing the mentality to be a good leader. To be a winner. Just willing to compete. There are so many things that I have in my philosophy as a person that I take into the coaching world and into the quarterback room to help develop a group of guys.”

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Chicago Bears wide receiver DJ Moore could reunite with his former college coach.

The Bears are working to hire Chris Beatty to be their wide receivers coach, though it was not yet official Tuesday morning, a source confirmed. Beatty was Moore’s position coach for two of his three seasons at Maryland, including 2017, when Moore was the Big Ten wide receiver of the year.

Beatty would join the Bears after three seasons as the Los Angeles Chargers wide receivers coach, his first NFL stint after 15 years coaching in college.

He would replace Tyke Tolbert, whom the Bears fired along with offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and three other offensive staffers earlier this month. ESPN first reported the news of the expected hire.

Along with his time at Maryland, where he was promoted to associate head coach and co-offensive coordinator, Beatty was a position coach at Pittsburgh, Virginia, Wisconsin, Illinois, Vanderbilt, West Virginia, Northern Illinois and Hampton. He was the co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under Tim Beckman during his lone season with the Illini in 2012.

A former wide receiver at East Tennessee State and in the Canadian Football League, Beatty started his coaching career at the high school level.

He would be tasked with coaching a wide receivers group that Bears general manager Ryan Poles might look to bolster after it lacked production beyond Moore in 2023.

In his first season with the Bears and quarterback Justin Fields, Moore had a career-high 96 catches for 1,364 yards and eight touchdowns.

But Darnell Mooney had his worst season with 31 catches on 61 targets for 414 yards and a touchdown. And rookie Tyler Scott had a bumpy first season, finishing with 17 catches on 32 targets for 168 yards.

Beatty would be the fifth Bears coaching hire this offseason. They previously hired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, quarterbacks coach Kerry Joseph and defensive coordinator Eric Washington and are hiring