The University of Minnesota Board of Regents voted 12-0 on Friday to approve a preliminary agreement that sets the framework for a new 10-year partnership with Fairview Health Services and the M Physicians faculty practice.

The three-way settlement agreement, hashed out over the course of seven weeks with the assistance of a team of mediators, preserves the 30-year partnership between the three institutions, while sunsetting the six-year-old “M Health Fairview” brand.

Rebecca Cunningham. (Courtesy of the University of Minnesota)

“There is a win for our health and healthcare practitioners … and it’s a win for Minnesota,” said U president Rebecca Cunningham. “The news around health and healthcare affects so many across the university and across the state.”

“This agreement is a milestone and now we have clarity and stability, and with clarity and stability, we can serve Minnesota better … and grow in our national competitiveness,” she added.

‘Strategic pivot’

Key roles will change, said Cunningham, who called the preliminary agreement “a strategic pivot, instead of a joint venture like the current model.”

Fairview will be more firmly in charge of hospital operations, while dedicating $1 billion in funding to update medical facilities on the U campus over the course of the decade. Fairview will also provide $50 million in annual funding for the medical school, with the “potential for additional funding based on system performance,” according to a joint announcement.

At the same time, the framework “clarifies our non-exclusive relationship with Fairview,” allowing for “additional and expanded partnerships to advance high-quality care across Minnesota,” Cunningham said.

Leadership council

A new leadership council aims to improve collaboration between the university, Fairview and M Physicians, and a future program will help residents of rural Minnesota access specialized care, backed by an initial commitment of $10 million from Fairview.

University officials have noted that the M Health Fairview brand provides medical services for 1.2 million people annually and trains 70% of Minnesota doctors, and they scrambled last year to preserve its core components after being initially shut out of negotiations between Fairview and the M Physicians group.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office, which regulates charities, became involved in discussions and assisted with finding mediators.

The new framework sets the stage for three separate “definitive agreements,” which have yet to be finalized. They include the academic affiliation agreement between the U and Fairview, the master agreement between M Physicians and the U, and an amendment to the Fairview/M Physicians “stability agreement” that was agreed upon last November, as well as a new lease for the U’s Clinics and Surgery Center in Minneapolis.

Medical school dean departs

Also Friday, the Board of Regents bid farewell after nine years to University of Minnesota Medical School Dean Jakub Tolar, who has been named the new president, chief executive officer and executive dean of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

In his place, the regents on Friday unanimously approved a two-year appointment for Dr. Carol Bradford to serve as both dean of the medical school and interim executive vice president for Health Affairs.

Bradford has been dean of the Ohio State University College of Medicine and vice president for Health Sciences at its Wexner Medical Center since September 2020.

She is a past president of the American Academy of Otolaryngology and former executive vice dean for academic affairs at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Moment of silence

Regent Joel Bergstrom closed Friday’s meeting with a moment of silence in memory of University of Minnesota alum Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse, and Renee Good, two protesters killed by federal agents this month.

Bergstrom also made a personal plea for an end to Operation Metro Surge, the federal Department of Homeland Security initiative that has sent as many as 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota, most of them concentrated in the Twin Cities.

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“As the university community, we continue grieving for the loss of life, which includes one of our own,” said Cunningham, at the outset of the meeting, while praising the ways in which university students, faculty and staff were supporting each other.

“It gives me hope,” she said. “We can be a light in this time.”

By DEREK GATOPOULOS and THEODORA TONGAS, Associated Press

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — If the rules of ancient Greece were observed today, drone and missile fire over Ukraine would stop on Friday as guns fall silent in the Olympic tradition.

FILE- People look at the damage following a rocket attack the city of Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)

The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics begin in one week, and the United Nations and organizers are calling for a 7-week pause of all wars worldwide — as they do every time the Olympics take place.

It serves to set a moral baseline at a time when some researchers say there are more armed conflicts than ever before and Earth is at its closest to destruction.

An ancient pause, a modern plea

In ancient Greece, a truce was respected by warring city-states, allowing athletes and spectators to travel safely to Ancient Olympia for competitions and ceremonies of supreme athletic and spiritual significance.

The Olympics were revived in their modern form in 1896. The truce’s resurgence followed nearly a century later, in 1994, as war raged through the former Yugoslavia.

The proposed timeout starts one week before the Winter Games open on Feb. 6 and runs until one week after the March 15 Paralympics’ close. It is backed by a U.N. General Assembly resolution.

But fighting that continued in Ukraine and elsewhere on Friday confirmed the truce’s dismal record at 0-17.

FILE – Fireworks explode during the closing ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 20, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)

Sarajevo, Korea and the power of sport

The first modern Olympic truce, during the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, did produce a one-day pause in the siege of Sarajevo, allowing aid convoys to deliver food and medicine to the Bosnian capital’s desperate residents. In Sydney six years later, North and South Korea marched together at the opening ceremony.

Governments around the world overwhelmingly agree that sport can unite and heal.

“Wherever possible, we should strive toward creating even a small space for peace,” Constantinos Filis, director of the International Olympic Truce Center, told The Associated Press.

Ceasefire initiatives still count in an era of global disorder and political polarization, as unilateral aggression increasingly threatens international cooperation, argues Filis, who is also director of the Institute of Global Affairs in Athens.

“This may not always be achievable in practice,” he said, “but the message reaches every corner of the globe.”

Arithmetic of a world’s wars

Outside the Swedish capital of Stockholm, a group of academics has tracked global war trends for more than 80 years. It reported that 2024 had the highest number of active armed conflicts in a single year: 61.

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“We’ve seen quite a strong increase in the number of conflicts over the past five or six years,” said Shawn Davies, a senior analyst at Uppsala University’s Department of Peace and Conflict Research. And its upcoming annual report will show 2025 had even more conflicts than the prior year, he added.

As the U.S. steps back from multilateralism, Davies said, countries are becoming more likely to test their neighbors, creating a more volatile, fragmented security landscape.

Some major conflicts remain largely unnoticed in the West, he said, pointing to western Africa, where al-Qaida and Islamic State group affiliates continue to spread across borders.

And the “Doomsday Clock”, a symbolic gauge of Earth’s existential peril, edged closer to midnight this week, according to an announcement from members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Hope versus broken promises

U.N. truce resolutions typically pass with broad majorities. Yet signatories repeatedly break their own pledge. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 infamously began during a truce period.

“I think the Olympics are an excellent moment to symbolize peace, to symbolize respect for international law, and to symbolize international cooperation,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters Thursday.

Kirsty Coventry, the multi-Olympic swimming champion who last year became the first woman to lead the International Olympic Committee, addressed the General Assembly at the latest vote in November.

Watching peaceful competition, she said, inspired her to begin her gold-medal journey as a young girl in Zimbabwe.

“Even in these dark times of division, it is possible to celebrate our shared humanity and inspire hope for a better future,” Coventry said.

“Sport — and the Olympic Games in particular — can offer a rare space where people meet not as adversaries, but as fellow human beings,” she said. “This is why the Olympic Truce is so important.”

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report from the United Nations.

By PAT GRAHAM

Before Mikaela Shiffrin, Lindsey Vonn and other World Cup ski racers chase gold at the Milan Cortina Olympics, they will star in a new docuseries that gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it’s like on the circuit.

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Some of the biggest names in the sport are featured in ESPN’s five-episode series called “On the Edge: World Cup Ski Racing,” which starts Friday with three segments. Besides Shiffrin and Vonn, the docuseries features Swiss standout Marco Odermatt and Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, the Norwegian-born racer who represents Brazil and definitely likes to entertain.

The last episode in the series, titled “The World’s Stage,” will air on April 10 and focus on Swiss racer Camille Rast as she reflects on the fatal fire in a bar in the ski resort Crans-Montana during a New Year’s celebration. That particular episode will also look back at the Olympics and how the 41-year-old Vonn, who returned to the circuit after a partial knee replacement, and others performed.

The Milan Cortina Games are Feb. 6-22.

The series kicks off with the spotlight on Shiffrin and her fiancé, Norwegian standout Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, as they support each other following their returns from severe injuries.

“This kind of storytelling is so important to the future of our sport,” Sophie Goldschmidt, the president & CEO of U.S. Ski & Snowboard, said in a text to The Associated Press. “‘On the Edge’ gives ski racing an even bigger platform and broader reach — and that’s how you inspire participation.

United States’ Mikaela Shiffrin celebrates winning an alpine ski, women’s World Cup slalom, in Spindleruv Mlyn, Czech Republic, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Giovanni Auletta)

“We hope this series encourages more kids to fall in love with ski racing and dream of becoming the next Mikaela Shiffrin, Lindsey Vonn or Ryan Cochran-Siegle. We have so many amazing stories to share about both our U.S. and international athletes.”

The project is directed by filmmaker Pat Dimon, who explores the journey of racers toward Olympic gold and the grind behind the World Cup season. It also features racers such as New Zealand’s Alice Robinson; Italy’s Sofia Goggia, Federica Brignone and Dominik Paris; and Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen.

Brazil’s Lucas Pinheiro Braathen celebrates at the finish area of an alpine ski, men’s World Cup slalom, in Schladming, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Trovati)

“Growing up a lifelong skier in Vermont, I learned that what matters most often happens away from the gates and finish line,” Dimon said of the series that premieres on the ESPN app and ESPN on Disney+. “’On the Edge’ is about seeing past the polished surface and dropping into the real line of World Cup racing — the grind of travel, the toll of injuries, the pressure, and the mindset it takes to be and stay at that level.”

AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing and AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — The Venezuelan man convicted of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley is set to appear in court Friday, where a judge will hear arguments on his request for a new trial.

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Jose Ibarra was convicted in November 2024 of murder and other crimes in Riley’s death nine months earlier. Ibarra, 28, had entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and was allowed to stay while he pursued his immigration case. Riley’s killing heightened tensions in the national debate over immigration.

The first bill President Donald Trump signed upon taking office last year, the Laken Riley Act, was inspired by the 22-year-old’s killing. It requires the detention of people who are in the country without authorization and are accused of theft and violent crimes.

Prosecutors said Ibarra encountered Riley while she was running on the University of Georgia campus in Athens on Feb. 22, 2024, and killed her during a struggle. Riley was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which has a campus in Athens, about 70 miles east of Atlanta.

Ibarra’s lawyers argue that his constitutional rights were violated by the judge’s denial of a request for a delay so the defense could have an expert review key evidence and by the admission of cellphone evidence the defense sought to exclude. They are asking that his guilty verdict and life sentence be vacated and that he be granted a new trial.

Under Georgia law, a notice of appeal must be filed within 30 days of a conviction becoming final, which is the date of sentencing or the date of the denial of a motion for a new trial, whichever is later. Therefore, the filing of a motion for new trial effectively extends the deadline to file an appeal.

Ibarra’s trial attorneys filed a motion for a new trial within weeks of his conviction. New lawyers have since taken over his case and filed an amended motion for a new trial earlier this month.

Friday’s arguments will be held before Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who heard and decided Ibarra’s case after Ibarra waived his right to a jury trial.

Before trial, Ibarra’s lawyers had asked the judge not to allow evidence stemming from the search of two cellphones the state believed belonged to Ibarra. They argued that the search warrants used to seize and search the phones were not valid because police lacked probable cause to obtain the warrants. Haggard rejected those arguments.

Ibarra’s trial attorneys had also asked the judge to exclude evidence and expert testimony based on the use of TrueAllele Casework, software that is used to analyze DNA. After an expert told defense attorneys she would need six weeks to review the data and complete a report, they asked the judge to delay a hearing set a few weeks before trial and, therefore, the trial. The judge ultimately proceeded with the trial as scheduled.