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    Small Plane Crashes in a Minneapolis Suburb, Killing at Least One, Officials Say

    No one in the house was injured after the plane crashed in Brooklyn Park, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, officials said.A small plane crashed in a residential area in Brooklyn Park, Minn., on Saturday, leaving a house in flames.ABC NewsAt least one person was killed after a small plane crashed into a house in a Minneapolis suburb on Saturday afternoon, engulfing the home in flames, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and local officials.No one in the house was injured after the plane crashed in Brooklyn Park, Minn., Risikat Adesaogun, the city’s communications manager, said. Shawn Conway, the city’s fire chief, said no one aboard the plane survived, though it was not immediately known how many people were aboard.The plane, which the F.A.A. identified as a SOCATA TBM7, seats a maximum of seven people, according to GlobalAir.com.The home that was hit was a “complete loss” and there was minor damage to nearby homes, Ms. Adesaogun said. The F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board were traveling to Brooklyn Park to investigate the crash.The plane took off from Des Moines International Airport in Iowa and was headed to Anoka County-Blaine Airport in Minnesota, the F.A.A. said, when it crashed at 12:20 p.m. in Brooklyn Park, a city of about 82,000 people that is 11 miles north of Minneapolis.Footage from a Ring security camera appeared to show the plane nose-diving a short distance away. Videos from the scene also showed a large home engulfed in flames.Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said on social media that his team was “monitoring the situation closely.” More

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    S.N.L. Is for Me and All the Other Outsiders

    In December 2019, when my children were in third and fifth grade, I decided to show them a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that, decades before, my three siblings and I had loved: Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn as the Sweeney Sisters singing a Christmas medley at a party. I had trouble finding this particular sketch, but as my kids and I inhaled, via YouTube, a random assortment of other ones from over the years — among them such classics as “NPR’s Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls” and “The Love Toilet” — I inadvertently yet happily created what would become our 2020 hobby, while quarantined in our Minneapolis home. I also welcomed my offspring into a time-honored tradition: watching “S.N.L.” when you’re a little too young for it.I myself began doing this in the mid-80s, in my friend Annie’s attic, when her older brothers introduced us to “Choppin’ Broccoli,” “A Couple of White Guys” and “The Church Lady.” As it happens, “S.N.L.” and I are the same age. I arrived in August 1975, and “S.N.L.” debuted in October. It’s therefore a little brain-scrambling to me that “S.N.L.” is now, with deserved fanfare, celebrating 50 years while I’m not quite 49 and a half, but apparently a TV show’s first season starts immediately, while a human’s first season starts when she turns 1.In any case, when I think of being too young for “S.N.L.” and enjoying it anyway, I don’t exactly mean because of the risqué content. Admittedly, as my family started watching entire episodes in reverse order of their airing — we especially enjoyed the golden age of Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant — my husband and I occasionally fast-forwarded through sketches not because they were crude (bring on “Undercover Office Potty”) but because they were innocence-destroying (the intentionally misogynistic “Guy Who Just Bought a Boat”).But I suspect that for a child watching “S.N.L.,” the joke itself doesn’t necessarily matter. If you’re 8 or 10, you might never even have heard of the politician or cultural trend being mocked. But you still know that you’re watching something funny; the magic of “S.N.L.” is that with its costumes and collaboration and the cast members regularly cracking up themselves and one another, it makes adulthood itself seem fun.My parents had friends and attended and threw parties, but even so, there was something about adulthood that struck me as serious when I was a kid — adults spent their days getting their oil changed, filling out paperwork, going to funerals — and the sheer silliness of “S.N.L.” seemed charmingly, enticingly at odds with that. If you were lucky, perhaps you could build a life around silliness. As it turned out, I did and I didn’t: I’m not a comedian, but as a novelist, I did build a life around making stuff up, reconstituting what the culture offers.Back in Minneapolis, the pandemic dragged on, and eventually my family was joined on our TV-watching couch by a rescue Chihuahua named Weenie. As we all watched episode after episode, it dawned on me that in addition to being a kid’s festive idea of adulthood, “S.N.L.” embodies several other elusive and aspirational ideas: an idea of New York for people who, like me, have never lived there; an idea of having hilarious friends or co-workers instead of annoying ones; an idea of being able to metabolize political instability into biting jokes instead of feeling helpless about it; an idea of glamorous after-parties that we want to want to attend when most of us don’t really want to stay up that late. (Though here I might just mean me. My kids are now teenagers and go to bed after I do. But my family has never watched “S.N.L.” live; we usually watch it on Sunday around 7 p.m.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Walz Spoke of Gun Violence Affecting His Son. Here’s an Account of the Shooting.

    At Tuesday’s debate, Gov. Tim Walz said that his son, Gus Walz, witnessed a shooting at a community center. A volleyball coach said Gus helped other young players to safety.Gov. Tim Walz has spoken before of a shooting last year at a recreation center in St. Paul, Minn., that he said had an impact on his teenage son, Gus. But in the vice-presidential debate with Senator JD Vance of Ohio on Tuesday night, Mr. Walz went further in saying that his son witnessed the shooting, which left one teenager seriously wounded.On Wednesday, a volleyball coach who played a central role in the response that day described what he, Gus and others experienced in the frightening moments after they had heard gunfire outside.The coach, David Albornoz, said he ran to investigate, while Gus, a team captain and an assistant coach on a boys’ volleyball team, helped guide young people in the gym to a safe location when many thought a mass shooting was occurring.“We heard the gunshots,” Mr. Albornoz said. “You hear the screaming. I had no more information than what I gathered.”The shooting, which was propelled into the national spotlight when Mr. Walz and Mr. Vance discussed how they would address gun violence in the country, was widely reported in St. Paul at the time. It took place in January 2023 outside the Jimmy Lee Recreation Center, part of the Oxford Community Center, one of the largest and busiest facilities in the city’s parks and recreation system. It is also across the street from Central High School, where Gus is a student.According to several court documents, the 16-year-old victim, JuVaughn Turner, and some of his friends were outside when a young woman got into a dispute with an employee at the recreation center, Exavir Binford.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Is Your Flight Delayed by the Tech Outage? Here’s What You Need to Know.

    While service is slowly recovering, flights have been delayed and canceled worldwide. Here’s information on the most affected airlines and airports, passengers’ rights and how to reach airline customer service.Travel plans across the world were thrown into disarray on Friday, as a global technology outage disrupted businesses and services — including air travel — leaving thousands of flights canceled or delayed across the United States and beyond.While service was slowly recovering by midmorning Eastern time, the ripple effect was still snarling travel plans as delayed and canceled flights created a buildup of passengers waiting at airports, and some planes and crews out of position.“The anxiety is getting up a little,” said Adonis Ajayi, 35, at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Friday morning. Mr. Ajayi was on his way to Key West, Fla., for a long weekend and said he had been checking social media constantly for flight updates — his flight had been delayed for nearly three hours. “I’ve never seen anything of this scale.”The outage was caused by a flawed update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, whose software is used globally by scores of industries to protect Microsoft systems. Messages posted on social media by travelers worldwide showed flights grounded, some terminal monitors down and crowds of stranded passengers waiting at airport gates and customer service desks. Some passengers at one airport in India had to stand in long lines to obtain handwritten boarding passes.Which airports have been hit the worst?In the United States, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, the world’s busiest airport, appeared to have the most flights affected by the outage on Friday morning, with more than 230 incoming and outgoing flights canceled and more than 370 flights delayed, according to FlightAware, a real-time flight tracker.Many other airports, including hubs in New York, Chicago and Charlotte, N.C., also appeared to experience significant disruption.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Prosecutor Drops Murder Charges Against Minnesota Trooper Amid Pushback

    The prosecution of Ryan Londregan, a white Minnesota state trooper who fatally shot a Black motorist last year, sparked rare bipartisan outrage. The top prosecutor in Minneapolis has dropped murder charges against a state trooper who fatally shot a motorist last year after a traffic stop, her office said on Sunday, a stunning turnaround in a case that ignited a political firestorm.The trooper, Ryan Londregan, had been charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Ricky Cobb II. But the prosecutor, Mary Moriarty, a longtime public defender who was elected Hennepin County attorney in 2022, said she concluded that the evidence was too weak to take to trial.For months, Ms. Moriarty defended the murder charges amid criticism from both Democratic and Republican officials, as well as law enforcement officials. In a statement on Sunday, she said that the announcement dismissing the charges was “one of the most difficult I’ve made in my career.”The pushback over the charges reflected a shifting view on policing in the state four years after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a national outcry over racism and abuses by law enforcement. Mr. Cobb, 33, was Black; Trooper Londregan, 27, is white. Ms. Moriarty took office promising sweeping changes in the wake of Mr. Floyd’s murder, including stronger efforts to hold officers accountable for misconduct. Civil rights activists had hailed her decision to charge Trooper Londregan as courageous. Gov. Tim Walz, a fellow Democrat, had voiced his unease and made clear that he was considering using his legal authority to remove the case from her purview. In recent months, six of the state’s eight members of Congress issued statements criticizing the prosecution. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Two Killed in Shooting in Minneapolis

    Two police officers were also injured after a person opened fire south of downtown on Thursday, the authorities said.Two people were killed and two police officers were left injured after a shooting at an apartment building south of downtown Minneapolis on Thursday, the authorities said. A shooter, who police have not identified, was also killed, they said.The episode took place in Whittier, a neighborhood about a mile south of downtown, the Minneapolis Police Department said on X. The circumstances of the injuries and deaths were not clear.The police said in an email on Thursday evening that the public was not in danger.Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said on social media that the Minnesota State Patrol was on the scene to help local law enforcement and that the state was ready to provide resources.Jeremy Zoss, a spokesman for the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, said he did not have any more information to provide about the episode.This is a developing story. More

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    A Quick Remark Becomes a Region’s Rallying Cry

    Minnesota Timberwolves fans have picked up on a phrase uttered by their star, and are hardly put off by its mild vulgarity.Dearest Times readers:The following article contains a three-letter word beginning with an A that is considered vulgar. We would avoid the term, but it doesn’t seem possible. Profoundest apologies in advance.OK, deep breath:“Bring ya ass.”In the last day or so, basketball fans and the people of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in general have been saying it. That includes the city’s basketball star, who launched it, the local tourism council, and many fans gleeful about a great victory.It started with the win: In a do-or-die Game 7, the Minnesota Timberwolves rallied from 20 points down to defeat the defending champion Denver Nuggets, 98-90.Afterward, the winning team’s star, Anthony Edwards, was interviewed by the TV commentator and former N.B.A. great Charles Barkley.“I have not been to Minnesota in maybe 20 years,” Barkley said. Edwards interrupted him: “Bring your —” and so on.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Kamala Harris Will Visit Abortion Clinic, in Historic First

    The vice president plans to meet with abortion providers and staff members in Minneapolis, a striking political move that shows how assertive Democrats have grown on the issue.Vice President Kamala Harris plans to meet with abortion providers and staff members on Thursday in the Twin Cities, a visit that is believed to be the first stop by a president or vice president to an abortion clinic.The appearance at a health center will be the latest leg in a nationwide tour by Ms. Harris, who has emerged as the most outspoken defender of abortion rights in the administration. While White House officials say they have largely reached the limits of their power to protect abortion rights, the issue has emerged as a linchpin of their re-election strategy.Ms. Harris plans on Thursday to tour the center with an abortion provider and highlight what the administration has done to try to preserve access to the procedure as conservative states enact growing restrictions.Minnesota has become a haven for abortion seekers since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ushering in restrictive laws and bans in neighboring states. The Society of Family Planning, a health research organization, found that the average number of abortions in the state increased by about 36 percent in the year after the Supreme Court decision.Last year, Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation enshrining abortion rights into state law, an effort to ensure the procedure remains legal no matter who takes office in the state. Ms. Harris will be joined on Thursday by Minnesota Democrats including Mr. Walz and Representative Betty McCollum. The tour is part of a White House initiative led by Ms. Harris to highlight abortion rights.The mere sight of a top Democratic official walking into an abortion clinic will offer the clearest illustration yet of how the politics of abortion rights have shifted for the party — and the nation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More