When Amy Brendmoen took the helm of HourCar this year as its interim chief executive officer, she found a promising nonprofit carsharing model struggling to be seen. There were too few cars and too much confusion over its services. Insurance costs had skyrocketed.

Then came a decision by the Trump administration to cancel a $560,000 federal grant intended to enable HourCar to add dozens of electric vehicles on St. Paul’s East Side, a service area that commercial carsharing companies like Car2Go and ZipCar mostly avoided before exiting the Twin Cities a decade ago.

HourCar, based on Prior Avenue in St. Paul, announced this month that it had installed an electric-vehicle charging hub at an affordable-housing development on the East Side anyway, testing a partnership strategy it hopes to see expand to more housing sites over the coming year.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” said Brendmoen, former president of the St. Paul City Council, during a recent ride-along.

HourCar drew national attention in 2022 when it joined with St. Paul and Minneapolis to debut the all-electric Evie Spot Network. While commercial carsharing is nothing new, the prospect of a nonprofit rolling out a fleet of municipally backed electric vehicles for public use across city borders represented a national first for an industry still trying to raise its profile as an alternative to car ownership.

Rather than return a traditional HourCar to a handful of designated drop-off hubs, the electric Evies can be left overnight at no cost at any legal parking spot within their service area, which covers most but not all of both cities. That includes most parking meters and dozens of Evie Spot charging stations.

Through agreements with both cities, the charging stations have been installed along parks and public sidewalks, and in commercial lots or housing developments through arrangements with private property owners. The Evie Spot fleet has gradually grown from 175 electric vehicles to nearly 300, adding 45 Chevy Equinox vehicles in recent weeks despite the loss of federal backing.

Targeting affordable housing

Among her goals, Brendmoen has sought to emphasize that HourCar and the Evie Spot Network compose one network offering two types of services, which has been a point of confusion for some prospective customers.

Other innovations include a redesigned website, updated mobile app and online price calculator for trip planning. New carshare hubs were announced this month at three affordable multi-family housing developments, including the Little Mod apartments near Otto Avenue and Shepard Road, and the Capital View Apartments on Old Hudson Road, both of which are in St. Paul.

In Minneapolis, there’s a new charging hub at Children’s Village Apartments on Franklin Avenue.

“This is a workforce solution,” Brendmoen said. “It allows someone to use a car while they’re saving up to buy a car.”

More hubs will be added over the next year at affordable housing developments, Brendmoen said, and despite the loss of federal dollars, HourCar remains committed to expanding Evie’s charging stations elsewhere on St. Paul’s East Side.

A larger fleet and service area will require more car maintenance. To that end, financial support from 3M Gives and the city of St. Paul’s Neighborhood STAR program is allowing HourCar to upgrade its East Side repair shop by adding a second mechanic bay, new equipment and a second full-time mechanic, facilitating more in-house repairs for cost savings.

Expansion plans

The HourCar board of directors hopes to add more partnerships over the next year, possibly including additional cities, transit agencies, building owners and community organizations. Hospitals could be a next frontier. Evies can be left overnight at most parking meters without a fee, exceptions include meters on the University of Minnesota campus, which still charge users for parking by the minute.

The U has taken the general approach that fewer cars on campus would be better, but Brendmoen is quick to point out that carsharing allows exactly that. Vehicle turnover on campus is brisk, allowing more students to live virtually car-free while knowing they have vehicle access when they need it, she said.

Brendmoen maintains the HourCar/Evie system is price-competitive with hailing an Uber, even after $7 monthly (or $84 annual) subscription rates that include up to 200 daily miles. Low-income student rates are as low as $1 monthly.

“An average car drives 5% of the time,” she said, during the Dec. 19 ride-along. “Our cars drive 30% of the time. At the U of M, they sit only 40 minutes. If they’re at the U campus, they move.”

In a written statement Friday, Brendmoen added that her team had since met with the transportation department at the U this month “to discuss how to better leverage HourCar and Evie to help the University reach its goal to reduce car traffic on campus and to reduce its climate impact. A shared vehicle gives students ability to run errands or take short trips without the cost or storage issues that come with owning a vehicle. We are excited to forge an even stronger partnership … as we expand.”

Clean energy grants canceled

This is a challenging time for clean energy advocacy, on multiple levels.

St. Paul had been counting on more than $560,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to expand the Evie network to low-to-moderate income areas on the city’s East Side. The funding was eliminated in October, along with more than $7.5 billion in grants for clean energy projects across 16 states, all of which were states that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

The city has joined the Environmental Defense Fund and other environmental and energy-oriented advocacy groups in suing the federal Department of Energy and Office of Management and Budget over the loss in funding, which is undercutting 321 clean energy projects across the country.

Meanwhile, consumer hesitancy toward electric vehicles in America likely stems from a variety of factors, ranging from price to questions about where to charge them, especially during long trips.

In the United States, electric vehicles account for just 10% of new car sales. Even combined, hybrid, electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles constitute about 20% of sales, a modest showing compared to some European countries where they now comprise the majority of new purchases.

In April 2024, the St. Paul City Council approved new requirements that future surface parking lots spanning at least 15 parking stalls be developed with conduit ready for EV charging stations.

The rules do not require the installation of the chargers themselves, in recognition that the technology will evolve with time, but that 80% of the stalls in residential lots be conduit-ready. In commercial lots, the requirement is limited to 20% of all stalls, given that most drivers will not be charging their cars in business lots overnight.

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Brigitte Bardot, the pouty, tousle-haired French actress who redefined mid-20th-century movie sex symbolism in films beginning with “And God Created Woman,” then gave up acting at 39 to devote her life to the welfare of animals, died Sunday at her home in southern France. She was 91.

Fondation Brigitte Bardot, which she established for the protection of animals, announced her death.

Bardot was 23 when “And God Created Woman,” a box-office flop in France in 1956, opened in the United States the next year and made her an international star. Bosley Crowther, writing in The New York Times, called her “undeniably a creation of superlative craftsmanship” and “a phenomenon you have to see to believe.” Like many critics, he was unimpressed by the film itself.

Bardot’s film persona was distinctive, compared with other movie sex symbols of the time, not only for her ripe youthfulness but also for her unapologetic carnal appetite. Her director in “And God Created Woman” was her husband, Roger Vadim, and although they soon divorced, he continued to shape her public image, directing her in four more movies over the next two decades.

Author Simone de Beauvoir, in a 1959 essay, “Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome,” saw Bardot’s powerful onscreen erotic presence as a feminist challenge to “the tyranny of the patriarchal gaze” represented by the movie camera. The challenge failed, Beauvoir concluded, but it was a “noble failure.”

Few of Bardot’s movies were serious cinematic undertakings, and she later told a French newspaper that she considered “La Vérité,” Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Oscar-nominated 1960 crime drama, the only good film she ever made.

Nicknamed B.B. (pronounced in French much like the word for baby), she was best known for light comedies like “The Bride Is Much Too Beautiful” (1956), “Babette Goes to War” (1959) and “The Vixen” (1969), but she did work with some of France’s most respected directors.

Early in her career Bardot appeared in René Clair’s “Grandes Manoeuvres” (1955). Jean-Luc Godard directed her in the 1963 film-industry drama “Contempt.” Louis Malle was her director on “A Very Private Affair” (1962), a drama that also starred Marcello Mastroianni, and “Viva Maria!” (1965), a western comedy in which she and Jeanne Moreau played singing strippers who become revolutionaries in early-20th-century Central America. That film earned her the only acting-award nomination of her career, as best foreign actress, from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Although she made several films in English, Bardot never worked in the United States. The closest she came to Hollywood roles were small parts, when she was still unknown, in Robert Wise’s “Helen of Troy” (1956), a Warner Bros. picture filmed in Italy, and “Act of Love” (1953), a Kirk Douglas film shot in France and directed by Anatole Litvak. “Shalako,” a 1968 western in which she was cast opposite Sean Connery, was a British-German production filmed in Spain and England.

At the height of her popularity, almost everything about Bardot was copied — her deliberately messy hairstyle, her heavy eye makeup and her fashion choices, which included tight knit tops; skinny pants; gingham; and flounced skirts showing off bare, suntanned legs. In 1969, she became the first celebrity to be used as the model for Marianne, a traditional symbol of the French Republic that adorns town halls across the country.

In a statement on Sunday, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said, “Her films, her voice, her dazzling fame, her initials, her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, her face that became Marianne — Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom.”

She helped turn St.-Tropez, once a quiet fishing port in the South of France, into a painfully fashionable resort town after she bought a home there in 1958. Two decades later, when she publicly complained about the deteriorating quality of life in St.-Tropez, the mayor replied, “I ask the question: Who brought vice and lewdness here?”

When Bardot announced her retirement from films in 1973, she had already begun her work on behalf of animal rights and welfare (although she had told an American reporter in 1965, “I adore furs”). But it was only in 1986, a year after she was made a chevalier of France’s Legion of Honor, that she created the Fondation Brigitte Bardot, based in Paris, which has waged battles against wolf hunting, bullfighting, vivisection and the consumption of horse meat. In 1987, she auctioned off her jewelry and other personal belongings to ensure the foundation’s financial base.

“I gave my beauty and my youth to men,” she was quoted as saying at the time, “and now I am giving my wisdom and experience, the best of me, to animals.”

Four decades later, the foundation said in a statement on Sunday, it has taken in more than 12,000 animals and worked in 70 countries. It called Bardot “an exceptional woman who gave everything and sacrificed everything for a world that is more respectful of animals.”

In recent decades, Bardot continued to appear in public to promote animal rights, but she gained notoriety for her political views, which many saw as racist. This came to particular light in her two-volume memoir, “Initiales B.B.” (1996-97), in which she made negative comments about several groups, including Muslims.

In 2004, Bardot was convicted of inciting racial hatred, and fined, for similar comments in “A Cry in the Silence,” a nonfiction bestseller in which she referred to Muslims as “cruel and barbaric invaders” and made derogatory comments about gay people.

By 2008, she had been convicted of the same charge five times.

At best, Bardot was considered eccentric in her later years, prompting observations that this former sex kitten, as she was often called, had turned into a “crazy cat lady.” Interviewed by the magazine Paris Match in January 2018, she denounced the #MeToo movement, calling actresses’ claims of sexual harassment “hypocritical, ridiculous, without interest.”

A few weeks later, in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, Kate McKinnon, as Bardot, shouted, “Free Harvey Weinstein!” Catherine Deneuve, played by Cecily Strong in the sketch, explained, “Brigitte is very old and very wrong.”

But Bardot defended at least one important aspect of her chosen way of life.

“I am not a recluse,” she told The Toronto Star in 1988. “I live like an unsociable person; it is different.”

“People,” she added, “get on my nerves.”

Brigitte Bardot was born into wealth on Sept. 28, 1934, in Paris, the older of two daughters of Louis and Anne-Marie Bardot. Her father was an industrialist, and she grew up in the city’s affluent 16th arrondissement. She began modeling as a teenager and appeared on the cover of Elle magazine at 15.

Her parents objected both to her acting aspirations and to her relationship with Vadim, then a young assistant to the film director Marc Allégret. This led to the first of at least four reported suicide attempts. The Bardots eventually relented about Vadim, and she married him in 1952, less than three months after her 18th birthday.

She had already made her film debut that year in “Manina, la Fille Sans Voile,” a romantic adventure that was released in the United States six years later as “The Girl in the Bikini,” and a family comedy, “Le Trou Normand.” By the time “And God Created Woman” made Bardot a star, she had appeared in more than a dozen films. She would make fewer than four dozen altogether.

Her last movie appearance was a supporting role in “The Edifying and Joyous Story of Colinot,” a 1973 comedy about a young man’s numerous romantic encounters. (She played an older woman who taught him valuable life lessons.) Her last starring role was in “If Don Juan Were a Woman,” a poorly reviewed 1973 drama directed by Vadim that was released in the United States in 1976.

Bardot married four times and had well-publicized long-term romantic relationships with other men, including actor Jean-Louis Trintignant and singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. She and Vadim divorced in 1957. Her second husband (1959-62) was actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she had a son. After the couple divorced, the boy was brought up by Charrier’s parents, but he reconciled with his mother in adulthood. Charrier died in 2025.

Bardot was married to Gunter Sachs, a German industrialist, from 1966 to 1969. After their divorce, she did not marry again until 1992.

She is survived by her fourth husband, Bernard d’Ormale, a former adviser to the late right-wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died this past year in January; her son, Nicolas Charrier; a sister, Marie-Jeanne Bardot; two granddaughters; and three great-grandchildren.

Bardot often spoke with bitterness about her movie career and about fame, which she said had stolen her privacy and happiness. In 1996, she summed up her point of view to a reporter for The Guardian.

“With me, life is made up only of the best and the worst, of love and hate,” she said. “Everything that happened to me was excessive.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Crashes and flight delays were accumulating Sunday as a major winter storm swept through Minnesota and Wisconsin, bringing “dangerous, potentially life-threatening travel conditions” at the end of the holiday weekend, weather forecasters said.

The National Weather Service warned travelers about arctic air moving into the Plains on Sunday that would be followed by “a potent winter storm from the upper Midwest to the Great Lakes.”

That storm was expected to bring heavy snow and blizzard conditions to the region. Blizzard warnings were posted in southern and western parts of the state.

The weather service in Minnesota said that a band of at least 10 inches of snow was expected to develop across eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

By 8:30 a.m. local time Sunday, roads across western Minnesota were blanketed with snow and visibility was reduced to a half-mile or less, said the weather service, which shared images of nearly whiteout conditions on roads.

The dangerous conditions were expected Sunday through early Monday, the weather service said on social media, advising that residents not travel across the south central and southwest portions of Minnesota.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced a ground delay at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport because of the weather. Two inches of snow had fallen at the airport by noon Sunday. The airport had at least 200 delayed and 67 canceled flights as of Sunday afternoon.

Reports of crashes and spinouts in the state began piling up starting early Sunday. The Minnesota State Patrol reported at least 12 crashes resulting in injuries and at least five spinouts through Sunday afternoon.

Portions of Interstate 35, which runs north-south in the state, were closed in the afternoon because of the numerous crashes, the weather service said.

“Please delay or cancel travel plans until the storm has passed,” the State Patrol said.

The poor weather settled in as travelers were beginning to return home after the long holiday weekend.

As of Sunday afternoon, there were more than 24,000 delayed flights and more than 1,200 canceled flights across the country, according to the flight-tracking site FlightAware.

About 2.9 million people were expected to travel Sunday, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

Freezing rain ahead of a warm front was forecast for the Northeast on Sunday and then expected to move east through New England on Sunday evening.

A mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain will most likely affect northern New England before warmer air changes the wintry mix to all rain later Monday, the weather service said.

Portions of Rhode Island and Massachusetts could get 0.1 to 0.2 inches of ice while parts of southern New Hampshire may get as much as a half-inch through Monday morning, forecasters said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Cole Hutson was back with Team USA and is listed as day-to-day.

During the second period in Saturday’s 2-1 win over Switzerland at the 2026 IIHF World Junior Championships, Hutson was hit in the back of the neck with a shot. He was stretchered off the ice and sent to the hospital.

United States defenseman Cole Hutson, bottom, is looked at by medical staff after sustaining an injury as members of the United States team look on during the second period of an IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship game against Switzerland, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2025, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Matt Krohn)

U.S. coach Bob Motzko told the media on Sunday afternoon that Hutson rejoined the team about 30 minutes after the game ended. Hutson was at the Team USA practice but did not skate on Sunday afternoon at TRIA Rink in St. Paul.

“He’s back with us. He had a smile on his face this morning when he got on the bus,” Motzko said. “We’ll talk with the medical people and go day-to-day.”

U.S. players and coaches remain optimistic that Hutson will return to the lineup before the end of the tournament.

“We’re all scared. We talked about it last night,” Motzko said. “You don’t know what’s going on. He got looked at and was cleared to get back over here. Now it’s just day-to-day, and hopefully we get him back.”

Boston University teammate Cole Eiserman said he has been texting with Terriers head coach Jay Pandolfo over the last 24 hours about the injury. When Hutson was motionless on the ice, Eiserman was photographed by Getty photographer David Berding holding Hutson’s hand.

“I wasn’t really a hockey player in that moment,” Eiserman said.

“I’ve known Hutty since he was ‘Little Hutty.’ He’s been the same kid and guy since we were 7 years old, 8 years old, before we could even start playing AAA. It’s been a long friendship that’s been growing and growing and growing. He’s one of my best friends for life.”

Hutson is one of the most prolific WJC defenders in American history. He has three goals and 11 assists in nine WJC games over two years and tied with Ryan Suter for the second-most points by an American defenseman in WJC play.

Hutson has also had a prolific college career at BU.

The 5-foot-11, 172-pound, 43rd-overall pick by the Washington Capitals in 2024 had 14 goals and 34 assists for the Terriers in 2024-25. He has seven goals and 13 assists so far in his sophomore season.

“He’s one of the best defensemen in the world,” Motzko said. “That’s sports, man, it’s part of sports. The next guy’s got to step up. Everyone has to carry their weight as we trudge through this until we get him back in there.

“Tight group. They’re going to roll on. I think the fact that he’s back with us is a relief. We’re not worried about anything else. These are athletes, highly trained. He’s going to be inspirational to the guys.”

Hutson is a North Barrington, Ill., native who played in the U.S. National Team Development Program from 2022-24. He helped the U.S. earn its second consecutive gold medal at the 2025 WJC in Ottawa.

Motzko said that Hutson’s positive injury developments could provide a boost to the U.S. as it heads into its third preliminary game at 5 p.m. Monday against Slovakia.

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