Food shelves across the Twin Cities metro are bracing for an influx of need – as more than 400,000 Minnesotans lose access to SNAP funding Saturday morning.
In Dakota County, The Open Door Pantry is expanding hours. On Saturday, they opened for what they’re calling ‘temporary shutdown support’ – a chance to provide an additional 30,000 pounds of food to families in need.
The additional service was something Open Door Executive Director Jason Viana says was needed – as more than 10,000 Dakota County families rely on SNAP funding.
“Families are facing the uncertainty of knowing in the face of rising grocery prices, they might not be able to afford the trip to the store to give their family what they need for the week,” Viana said. “We’re going to do anything we can to not turn anyone away without food.”
Viana says this past week, community members dropped off hundreds of donated “to go bags” of groceries – enough to help drop-in clients in need.
“This is absolutely the closest thing we’ve felt to the pandemic since then. The thing that connects then and now is just the level of uncertainty,” Viana said. “One vote, one agreement, and we can go back to our normal level of helping people. I hope that our leaders will come together and figure out a way to solve this.”
A federal judge ruled that the Trump Administration has to fund SNAP benefits during the shutdown. The judge gave the option of either partially or fully funding SNAP. Court documents were filed Saturday stating a ruling by a Rhode Island judge ordering payments to SNAP must restart no later than Wednesday Nov. 5.
The Gaza Strip’s largest city is now gripped by famine, according to the world’s leading authority on food crises. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said Friday that famine was occurring in Gaza City and that this was likely to spread to the southern cities of Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah without a ceasefire and an end to restrictions on humanitarian aid.
Aid groups and food security experts have warned for months that Gaza was on the brink of famine, but the IPC report is the first official declaration that the situation has reached this level. Israel immediately rejected the IPC’s assessment, with the foreign ministry repeating bluntly a claim it has made for months, that “there is no famine in Gaza.”
But the IPC — which is comprised of more than a dozen U.N. agencies, aid groups, governments and other bodies and was first set up in 2004 during the famine in Somalia — said it had concluded based on “reasonable evidence” that famine “is confirmed in Gaza Governorate.”
Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Aug. 16, 2025.
Jehad Alshrafi/AP
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterized by starvation, destitution and death,” the group said, warning that 1.07 million more people in Gaza were currently in a slightly lower starvation risk category, and that the circumstances were likely to expand within the densely populated Palestinian territory.
“Between mid-August and the end of September 2025, conditions are expected to further worsen with Famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis. Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5), while those in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) will likely rise to 1.14 million (58 percent). Acute malnutrition is projected to continue worsening rapidly.”
The IPC said for the next year at least, “at least 132,000 children under five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition — double the IPC estimates from May 2025. This includes over 41,000 severe cases of children at heightened risk of death.”
In a separate statement, Tom Fletcher, who heads the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Israel’s “systematic obstruction” of aid had caused the famine in Gaza.
“It is a famine that we could have prevented if we had been allowed. Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel,” Fletcher told reporters in Geneva, calling it “a famine that will and must haunt us all.”
Israel insists “there is no famine in Gaza”
In a statement, the Israeli foreign ministry categorically rejected the findings of the UN-backed report.
“There is no famine in Gaza,” the ministry said, accusing the IPC of presenting a report “based on Hamas lies laundered through organizations with vested interests.”
“Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets,” the ministry said.
While more humanitarian aid has been allowed into Gaza in recent weeks, as Israel has come under intense international pressure, aid organizations say it is nowhere near the amount required. A controversial new U.S.- and Israeli-backed aid distribution group has also come under sharp criticism over the killing of numerous civilians near its four distribution hubs in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also repeatedly denied that there is widespread hunger in Gaza, calling reports of starvation “lies” promoted by Hamas.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency in charge of transferring aid to Gaza, said the report was “false and biased.” It said that in recent weeks significant steps had been taken to expand the amount of aid entering the strip.
What does a famine classification mean?
Famine can appear in pockets, sometimes small ones, and so a formal classification requires caution, food security experts say. The IPC has only confirmed famine a few times — in Somalia in 2011, and South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and last year in parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region. This is the first confirmed famine in the Middle East.
The IPC rates an area as in famine when all three of these conditions are confirmed:
20% of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving.
At least 30% of children 6 months to 5 years old suffer from acute malnutrition, based on a weight-to-height measurement; or 15% of that age group suffer from acute malnutrition based on the circumference of their upper arm.
At least two people, or four children under 5, per 10,000 are dying daily due to starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease.
Gaza has posed a major challenge for experts because Israel severely limits access to the territory, making it difficult to gather and confirm data.
In a separate report Friday, the Famine Review Committee, or FRC, said it, too, had concluded there was famine in part of Gaza. The FRC is a group of independent international food security experts regularly consulted by the IPC.
The group acts as an added layer of verification when the data shows there could be famine.
The data analyzed between July 1 and August 15 showed clear evidence that thresholds for starvation and acute malnutrition have been reached, according to the IPC. Gathering data for mortality has been harder, but the IPC said it is reasonable to conclude from the evidence that the necessary threshold has likely been reached.
Most cases of severe malnutrition in children arise through a combination of lack of nutrients along with an infection, leading to diarrhea and other symptoms that cause dehydration, said Alex de Waal, author of “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine” and executive director of the World Peace Foundation.
“There are no standard guidelines for physicians to classify cause of death as ‘malnutrition’ as opposed to infection,” he said.
Odesa, Ukraine — Ukrainian sea drones attacked a navy base at one of Russia’s largest Black Sea ports, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Friday, claiming that both of the drones used in the attack had been destroyed. Ukrainian sources said a Russian naval vessel was damaged in the attack, however, and video posted online appeared to show a ship listing to one side.
The overnight attack hit Russia’s Novorossiysk naval base on the Black Sea, and it reportedly forced a temporary halt to all ship movement at the key port.
The Olenegorsky Gornyak, a Russian Navy landing ship, center, is tugged to shore after apparently being damaged in a Ukrainian sea drone attack, off Novorossiysk, Russia, August 4, 2023 in a screengrab taken from a handout video.
Reuters/Handout
Clashes in and around Ukraine’s Black Sea ports — which are currently blockaded by Russian forces — and at least one major river port have escalated since the collapse of an internationally-brokered deal that had, for a year up until last month, allowed for the safe export of vital grain supplies from Ukraine.
Russia pulled out of that deal and has since attacked the ports from which Ukraine’s significant grain supplies are exported around the world, driving global grain prices up more than 10% in the immediate aftermath and threatening to keep them on the rise.
On Thursday, during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the world to insist that Russia stop using Ukraine’s food exports as “blackmail” and stop treating the world’s hungry and vulnerable people as leverage in its “unconscionable war.”
America’s top diplomat lashed out at Russia for ignoring appeals and pulling out of the year-old Black Sea Grain Initiative, which, during the year it was in effect allowed Ukraine to ship more than 32 million tons of grain from its Black Sea ports.
“What has Russia’s response been to the world’s distress and outrage? Bombing Ukrainian granaries, mining port entrances, threatening to attack any vessel in the Black Sea,” Blinken said. “Every member of this Council, every member of the United Nations should tell Moscow: Enough.”
The port that was attacked overnight by Ukrainian drones is one of Russia’s biggest on the Black Sea, and it’s a major hub for Russian exports, including its oil.
An image from video provided by Ukrainian intelligence sources to the Reuters news agency on August 4, 2023, purportedly from the perspective of a Ukrainian sea drone as it attacked and hit the Russian Navy’s Olenegorsky Gornyak landing ship at the Novorossiysk naval base in the Black Sea.
Reuters
Russian media didn’t offer any reports of injuries or deaths, and the only official word from Moscow was the claim that both drones used in the strike had been destroyed.
Earlier this week, Russia again attacked port infrastructure in the besieged southern Ukrainian city of Odesa, and for the first time it also struck grain export facilities at Ukraine’s Izmail port on the Danube river, just across from NATO member Romania. Izmail had become a main export route for Ukrainian grain following Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grain agreement on July 17.
Kyiv was preparing, meanwhile, for a peace summit to be hosted by Saudi Arabia over the weekend, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already been looking further down the road, discussing still-unplanned talks that he hopes to see take shape after the Jeddah summit.
The delegations at the Jeddah summit will discuss a peace plan that has 10 key points, much like a Chinese proposal offered months ago and another one proposed by a delegation of African leaders a few weeks ago.
Unlike the other proposals, this one calls for Russia to give up all the territory it has seized from Ukraine, to pull all its troops out of the country, and for a tribunal to be convened to try those responsible for the invasion.
That would include Vladimir Putin, and it’s worth noting that Russia has not been invited to this weekend’s summit.
Dnipro, Ukraine — Russia unleashed a drone attack Wednesday on a key river port in southern Ukraine, again targeting vital infrastructure used to export grain from the country. The Reuters news agency quoted sources as saying operations at Ukraine’s Izmail port, just across the Danube river from Romania, had to be suspended due to damage caused by the strike.
The river port had become the primary route for grain exports from Ukraine since Russia once again blocked shipping from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports last month, when Moscow pulled out of a year-long agreement to enable the shipments to continue.
“Unfortunately, there are damages,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a social media post after the drone attack on Monday. “The most significant ones are in the south of the country. Russian terrorists have once again attacked ports, grain, global food security.”
Reuters said the attack had sent global food prices rising again — a direct impact of Russia’s blockade and attacks on Ukrainian ports that officials in the country, in Washington and at the United Nations had warned about since Moscow pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative on July 17.
The U.N. Security Council, currently chaired by the U.S. delegation, was scheduled to hold an open debate on Thursday morning in New York on “famine and conflict-induced global food insecurity,” which was likely to focus on Russia’s actions in Ukraine and their impact on global food prices.
Ukrainian officials said more than 10 Russian drones were brought down by air defenses over the capital city of Kyiv on Wednesday as the others slammed into the Danube port, which is in the far southwest corner of the country.
An inspector surveys damage at a grain port facility after a reported attack by Russian military drones, in Izmail, Odesa region, Ukraine, August 2, 2023.
The salvo of explosive-laden drones came a day after Ukrainian drones struck a skyscraper in Moscow for the second time in two days. Wednesday was the fourth consecutive day of back-and-forth drone strikes between Russia and Ukraine.
Kyiv’s mayor said anti-aircraft units had taken out all of the drones that were aimed at the capital, but debris fell over several districts, causing some damage to the facades of buildings. There were no deaths or injuries reported from the latest Russian aerial assault, however.
Rescuers clear debris after a Russian drone hit an educational establishment in the northeast city of Kharkiv, Ukraine, August 1, 2023.
SERGEY BOBOK/AFP/Getty
In attacks across Ukraine on Tuesday, four Russian drones hit a college in the northeast city of Kharkiv and shelling blew the roof off a hospital in Kherson, in the southeast. That attack killed a doctor on his first day at work and left five of his colleagues wounded, according to Ukrainian officials.
The strikes are seen as Russia’s answer to Ukraine’s attempt to bring the war to Russian soil, as Zelenskyy himself pledged to do over the weekend. So far, Russia’s attacks have proven much deadlier.
Foreign nations and non-governmental organizations have promised assistance and started mobilizing supplies and rescue teams to help authorities in Turkey and Syria cope with the thousands of people injured and displaced by the massive earthquakes that struck on Monday.
The United Nations’ refugee and children’s agencies and its World Food Program were among the agencies rushing to respond to the disaster.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said it could launch a new earthquake appeal, but noted that it was still in the early stages of determining what and how much help was required in the quake zone. The agency has long-standing appeals already out to support its work with refugees in both Turkey and Syria, and those appeals remain significantly under-funded.
UNHCR was already seeking $348 million to help refugees in Turkey alone, but says so far, international donors have pledged only 11% of that figure. In Syria, the agency’s appeal is for $465 million, and only 7% of that funding has been promised.
The U.N.’s World Food Program has also worked for years to help refugees and others displaced by conflict in the earthquake zone, and it said resources were already being mobilized for quake survivors in Syria. You can support WFP’s work by clicking here.
The U.N.’s children’s agency, UNICEF, also has staff on the ground in Turkey and Syria helping people after the earthquakes. You can support that agency’s work here.
The Syrian American Medical Society, a charity based in the U.S., said it was also helping earthquake victims on the ground inside war-torn Syria.
“Hospitals are overwhelmed with patients filling the hallways,” the organization said in an appeal for donations. “There is an immediate need for trauma supplies and a comprehensive emergency response to save lives and treat the injured.”
“Across our operational facilities, we’ve been receiving victims of the quake as they come into our hospitals while simultaneously working to guarantee the wellbeing of our over 1,700 staff in Syria, and 90 at the epicenter near Gaziantep, Turkey,” said SAMS’ President Dr. Amjad Rass.
With winter conditions making rescue and relief efforts all the more difficult and urgent across the earthquake zone, aid agencies stressed the importance of a unified international response.
