MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert must serve a one-game suspension due to the number of flagrant fouls he has accumulated this season.
The NBA announced that Gobert will sit out on Tuesday when the Timberwolves visit the Milwaukee Bucks. They'll also be without star guard Anthony Edwards, who was ruled out for maintenance of a right foot injury that kept him out of three games last month.
Gobert, the four-time Defensive Player of the Year award winner, was called for a level 1 flagrant foul during the fourth quarter of Minnesota's 104-103 victory over the San Antonio Spurs on Sunday, when he aggressively closed out against Victor Wembanyama behind the 3-point line.
The game officials ruled that Gobert impeded Wembanyama's ability to safely land on the follow-through from his jump shot, giving him six flagrant foul points for the season. League rules dictate an automatic suspension after a game in which a player's flagrant foul point total exceeds five.
“It’s tough, because I try to be aggressive contesting shots in the heat of the moment,” Gobert said after the game on Sunday. “I don’t think there’s, at any time, any intention of getting anybody hurt or putting people in dangerous situations.”
Level 1 calls are worth one point, and Level 2 calls for more severe and intentional contact are worth two points. Gobert will be vulnerable to further punishment, too. Another level 1 flagrant foul call on him during the regular season would prompt an automatic one-game suspension, or a two-game ban for a level 2 call. Beyond that, either level of flagrant foul once a player hits seven points triggers an automatic two-game suspension.
“As long as they keep calling flagrants when I get hit in the back of the head, which happens every night, I’m cool with it,” Gobert said. "Protecting the players I think is important, but let’s protect all the players.”
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA
CORRECTS TO SATURDAY, JAN. 10, NOT SUNDAY, JAN. 4 - Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert, left, fouls Cleveland Cavaliers center Jarrett Allen, right, in the first half of an NBA basketball game Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert (27), center front, collides with San Antonio Spurs guard Dylan Harper, center back, while gaining possession of the ball during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
BRUGES, Belgium (AP) — The clatter of suitcases rolling over cobblestones, motorboats chugging along a canal and visitors chattering in a smattering of languages provide a soundtrack to Bruges that makes it clear you are in one of Belgium’s most touristic cities.
And yet, about two dozen women residents and visitors have found a hidden sanctuary from its bustle in a spot over a small bridge and under an ornate arch with an engraved Latin phrase “sauvegarde,” or “safe place” in English.
Nestled in a sea of yellow daffodils lies an oasis of calm and tranquility founded in 1245: the Princely Beguinage Ten Wijngaerde of Bruges.
For 22 years, Trees Dewever has called this beguinage her home. She said it provides "an overwhelming feeling of calm and I think we need that in this world.”
Her neighbor, 23-year beguinage resident Jo Verplaetsen, said the spirit of the medieval shelter is today soothing and social.
“Each day you are thankful to be here," she said.
However serene now, the beguinages emerged after the 12th century as an antidote to devastation.
Conflicts in the Middle Ages ravaged the male population, creating a glut of widows and single women who needed some kind of stability. They often chose the looser rules of the beguinages instead of stricter convents, said Michel Vanholder, a volunteer at the Grand Beguinage Church of Mechelen.
“They didn’t want to go become nuns but nevertheless they wanted to live together without men because there were not enough men to marry," he said.
Women who joined were called beguines, and while forbidden to marry while residing in the beguinages, they were allowed free egress, could own their own property and did not take religious vows of celibacy and poverty like nuns in adjacent convents.
“Women who didn’t want to become real nuns or religious could have an in-between form, becoming a beguine," said Brigitte Beernaert, who moved into the Bruges beguinage more than 20 years ago.
Women in the beguinage often worked caring for the sick and poor, but also earned money with needlework and weaving lace. Some plowed profits back into the community.
But the beguinages were at different times embraced and persecuted by the Vatican. One prominent beguine, the French Christian mystic Marguerite Porete, was condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake in 1310.
Novelists Ken Follett, Charlotte Brönte and Umberto Eco have written about the beguines and their male counterparts the beghards.
Architecturally, the beguinages were designed for like-minded women to live in comfort, quiet and safety, with small gardens tucked into either easily accessible alleys or around a main square with houses facing a common courtyard. The heart of the community was almost always a chapel or church.
Today, UNESCO recognizes as world heritage sites 13 beguinages in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of Belgium.
German tourist Biata Weissbaeker who was visiting Bruges with her husband Achim said that such spaces were and remain crucial.
“Women need a place like this: a safe place that gives them the possibility to go inside themselves.”
While the last beguine in Belgium, Marcella Pattijn, died in 2013 at the age of 92, the central tenet of the beguinage community has persevered over the past 800 years.
“Once you are in here, you are safe — that was of course literal in the Middle Ages, once you lived here, the law couldn’t take you away,” she said. “Today it’s more like a safe place for women alone.”
The beguinage of Bruges to this day still allows only women, although the grounds are now owned and maintained by the city itself, with residents renting from the city.
The beguinages of Belgium organize public activities hoping to foster community within through gardening, and outside through open houses.
A few of the Bruges residents recently planted raspberry bushes against the wall near the canal and they keep bee hives for honey. “The world is terrible for the moment, and this gives us the impression that it’s still safe here," said Beernaert. "This gives Bruges already a little bit of a small paradise, if you want. And living inside that paradise feels unbelievable.” —
Associated Press writer Sam McNeil in Brussels contributed to this report.
Swans sleep outside the gate of the Beguinage Ten Wijngaerde in Bruges, Belgium, Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
Brigitte Beernaert, left, and Jo Verplaetsen speak during an interview in a house inside the Beguinage Ten Wijngaerde in Bruges, Belgium, Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
A visitor sits among the daffodils in the courtyard of the Beguinage Ten Wijngaerde of Bruges, Belgium, Tuesday March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
