A national organization is recognizing the director of the St. Paul-based Jacob Wetterling Resource Center for her work in advocating for missing and murdered people, and for sexual abuse prevention.

Alison Feigh is one of 28 recipients around the country of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s annual Visionary Voice Awards, the center announced Tuesday.

Alison Feigh (Courtesy of the Zero Abuse Project)

She was a classmate of Jacob Wetterling when he was abducted and killed at age 11 in 1989 in St. Joseph, Minn. The experience “lit the flame” that led to her career, Feigh said Tuesday. She’s worked in the field for nearly 20 years.

The Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault nominated Feigh for the award. She “is a bold advocate,” wrote Ashley Sturz-Griffith, the coalition’s advocacy, medical forensic and prevention programs manager.

Through the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, Feigh educates communities about child abuse prevention, organizes events to honor families of missing people, is active at the Legislature and provides guidance at community notification meetings, Sturz-Griffith wrote. She has authored children’s books on safety.

“It’s hard to prove the impact of investing in teaching parents how to talk about safety, investing in online safety,” Feigh said, adding she’s thankful for people who champion prevention. “We can end child abuse, we can end crimes against children.”

Feigh will be speaking on a panel with other sexual assault advocates during Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s annual fundraiser on April 25.

Information about the virtual event, held during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, can be found at EventBrite.

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Phoenix was the only team to beat the Timberwolves three times this season, and the Suns did it decisively. Not only were all three Phoenix victories of the double-digit variety, but the Wolves were never within nine at any point in the second half of any game.

Domination.

That’s largely been chalked up to a matchup issue for Minnesota. The Wolves play big, often touting two center-like players in their lineups. Phoenix has the scorers — and, more specifically, shooters — to stretch the Timberwolves’ typically dominant defense out. It’s difficult for Rudy Gobert to have the same impact on the interior when Karl-Anthony Towns is put in a compromising position guarding the likes of sharpshooter Grayson Allen.

Yes, Phoenix may have been one of the worst-possible matchups for the Timberwolves in Round 1 of the NBA playoffs.

But wouldn’t that have been true for just about any team?

The only team to win multiple games in a series against the Denver Nuggets last season on their championship run was Phoenix. And that was after Chris Paul got hurt in Game 1.

For the rest of the series, Devin Booker and Kevin Durant were accompanied in the starting lineup by: DeAndre Ayton, who is a solid center, but was not a good fit for the roster; Josh Okogie, who is now out of the rotation, and Cam Payne, who plays sparingly now in Philadelphia.

The key reserves were Landry Shamet, a bench player this season for a cellar dweller in Washington; T.J. Warren, who’s not in Minnesota’s rotation now; Terrence Ross, who is out of the NBA, and Jock Landale, who played 14 minutes per game for Houston this season.

Not exactly a murderer’s row. That the Suns stole two games from the Nuggets was an indicator of the excellence of Booker and Durant. And now, those two are armed with a much stronger supporting cast.

Phoenix made a big splash in the offseason, trading for multi-time all-star Brad Beal for pennies on the dollar thanks to Beal’s exorbitant salary. It dealt Ayton to Portland for a better fit in Jusuf Nurkic. That same trade, which also sent Dame Lillard to Milwaukee, also brought Allen to the Suns. Phoenix signed Eric Gordon for the minimum in free agency and then dealt for “3-and-D” wing Royce O’Neale at the trade deadline.

Suddenly, a roster that was two and a half players deep in last year’s playoffs can now comfortably include seven or eight quality players. Minnesota sports one of the NBA’s best benches. The Wolves are Boston’s only rival when it comes to depth and versatility.

But Phoenix will no longer have its top-10 talent torpedoed by incompetence elsewhere. All of those new pieces had a tough time gelling for much of the season, especially with Beal missing ample time, but Phoenix appears to be hitting its stride at the perfect time of the year.

For starters, Beal has gotten going. Over his last 22 games, he is averaging 18.7 points, 5.8 assists and 4.6 rebounds while shooting a blistering 52 percent from beyond the arc. In Sunday’s win over Minnesota in the final game of the regular season, Beal scored 36 points while going a perfect 6 for 6 from deep.

“This guy’s one of the best players in the world, and people see him as a good player. When he plays like this, he’s one of the best players in the world,” Phoenix coach Frank Vogel said after the win over the Wolves. “He was doing it at both ends. He was guarding Ant on the other end, and he’s locking down and doing a great job and competing as best he can. … I can’t speak highly enough about the performance he had today.”

Since their Christmas Day loss to Dallas, the Suns are 35-18, the fourth-best mark in the NBA. For reference, the Wolves are 34-20 in that span. The Suns are sixth in offense and 10th in defense in that time.

Phoenix won 10 of its final 14 games of the regular season to narrowly escape the play-in tournament.

“I mean, we’ve been playing well. Whether it’s our best, we probably still don’t know,” Beal said. “We haven’t even really put together a full season with us three playing together still, with the amount of games we’ve played, but I think we’re definitely hitting our stride at the right time. In the playoffs, anything can happen. Every team is tough. We’ve just got to make sure to buckle down, lock in every single game.”’

The Phoenix Suns bench celebrates guard Bradley Beal’s 3-point basket against the Minnesota Timberwolves during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, April 14, 2024, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Matt Krohn)

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s once most powerful drug lord, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is claiming he cannot get phone calls or visits in the maximum security U.S. prison where he is serving a life sentence.

Guzmán, who in the past was able to break out of Mexican prisons seemingly at will, wrote a letter to District Court Judge Brian M. Cogan in the Eastern District of New York in late March, complaining that he hadn’t been able to speak with his twin daughters.

He was convicted for running an industrial-scale drug smuggling operation and is serving his sentence at a maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.

In May 2023, “the facility stopped giving me calls with my daughters. And I haven’t had calls with them for seven months,” Guzmán wrote. “I have asked when they are going to give me a call with my daughters and the staff here told me that the FBI agent who monitors the calls does not answer. That’s all they’ve told me.”

“It is unprecedented discrimination against me,” Guzmán complained. “They have decided to punish me by not letting me talk to my daughters.”

Guzmán also asked the judge to authorize a visit by his wife, Emma Coronel, but did not say when he was last allowed to see her. Coronel also pleaded guilty to drug charges in 2021 but was later released.

“I ask that you please authorize her to visit me and to bring my daughters to visit me, since my daughters can only visit me when they are on school break, since they are studying in Mexico,” Guzmán wrote.

Cogan responded last week, saying that once Guzmán was convicted, all arrangements are in the hands of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, and that he had no power to intervene.

In his reply, Cogan also said that after his conviction, “the Bureau of Prisons became solely responsible” for the conditions of Guzmán’s confinement and that the judge cannot change them.

“Accordingly, his request must be denied,” the judge said.

The letters were filed by the court to the case file, which is accessible to the public.

In December, Guzmán’s 95-year-old mother died in Mexico’s northern state of Sinaloa. She apparently had not seen her son since he was sent to the prison in Colorado.

Lawyers for Guzmán’s family did not respond to messages requesting comment..

Guzmán led the Sinaloa cartel in bloody drug turf battles that claimed the lives of thousands of Mexicans. He escaped twice from Mexican prisons, once through a mile-long tunnel dug running from his cell.

After he was extradited to New York, his three-month trial included tales of grisly killings, political payoffs, cocaine hidden in jalapeno cans and jewel-encrusted guns.

There is also a chance he may one day see his son in prison. In 2023, Mexico extradited one of his many sons, Ovidio Guzmán López, to the United States to face drug trafficking, money laundering and other charges.

The younger Guzmán is believed to have led the Sinaloa cartel’s push to produce and export fentanyl to the United States, where it has been blamed for about 70,000 overdose deaths annually.

After a 4-2 loss to Winnipeg on April 6, the Wild embarked for Chicago to start a five-game, eight-day road trip. They returned with three wins but were officially eliminated from the postseason in a 5-2 loss last Tuesday at Colorado.

That doesn’t mean the Wild came home empty-handed.

Minnesota will play its season finale on Thursday against the Seattle Kraken at Xcel Energy Center with a narrative, a positive one, that will take them through a long offseason — just their second in 12 years without a postseason appearance.

Promising rookies.

Already bolstered by strong seasons from Brock Faber and Marco Rossi, the Wild got big points on their longest road trip from less-seasoned rookies Declan Chisholm, Marat Khusnutdinov and Liam Ohgren. It’s a promising development for a team that will still be saddled with $14.7 million in dead salary cap space next season.

Perhaps as important, the team’s perpetually disappointed fan base — the Wild haven’t won a playoff series since 2015 — has something positive to hang onto until training camp begins in late September. Rather than cynically stew all summer over the failure of a roster top-heavy with veterans under long-term deals, Wild fans can at least wonder whether rookies will be able to provide at least some of the secondary scoring the team has lacked all season.

Faber will essentially be one of two finalists for the Calder Trophy, battling Chicago forward Connor Bedard, and Rossi’s 21 goals rank behind only Bedard’s 22 this season. On a trip that started with a 4-0 victory at Chicago and ended with a 3-1 victory over the Kings in Los Angeles on Monday, Faber, Rossi, Chisholm, Khusnutdinov and Ohgren combined for four goals and 14 points.

Average age, 21.6 years, big news for a team in desperate need of secondary scoring.

“For sure, it’s good for the young guys to come in (at) 20-, 21-years-old and score goals, score points,” said leading scorer Kirill Kaprizov, entering his 26. “Those guys play hard, smart and try to win battles. It’s been pretty good for them.”

Through 81 games, Kaprizov (45 goals), Joel Eriksson Ek (30) and Matt Boldy (29) have accounted for a whopping 42 percent of the Wild’s goal-scoring.

Mats Zuccarello leads the team with 51 assists but has 11 goals, his lowest scoring production in a season with at least 50 games played since 2012-13. Rossi and Ryan Hartman each have 21 goals, but beyond that it’s rough.

The other forwards who have played at least 20 games have combined for 34 goals in a combined 303 games.

Of that group, Marcus Johansson has 11 goals in 77 games after scoring six in 20 games after being acquired at the trade deadline in 2022-23, and Freddy Gaudreau has five goals and 15 points in 66 games. Marcus Foligno, a locker-room leader who was solid defensively in 55 games before season-ending surgery, scored only 10 goals.

Those three are under contract for next season, and Foligno and Gaudreau are signed through 2027-28. Both struggled with injuries this season, but their production was a disappointment.

It will take more than rookies to turn the tide next season, and with little available money or trade assets, general manager Bill Guerin has few options to add veteran scoring. The Wild need more from the guys already here, and the rookies that make the roster next fall.

Rookie Gains

During the Wild’s just-completed, five-game road trip — the longest of the season — the team got promising production from a handful of rookies it likely will count on next season:

Player/age                      G   A   Pts.
Brock Faber, 21               0   4    4
Marat Khusnutdinov, 21  1   2    3
Marco Rossi, 21              1   2    3
Declan Chisholm, 24       1   1    2
Liam Ohgren, 20             1   1    2

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