AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EST

The 25-year-old Iranian fashion designer hoped that mass protests nearly four years ago — the ones that erupted after a young woman was arrested and died in custody for not wearing the hijab properly — would improve civil rights in the Islamic Republic.

Not much changed, though. Being on those streets, she felt, may have been for nothing. But it didn't deter her.

In early January, she protested again. The sea of people across Tehran’s busy streets lifted her spirits. This time, the spark was inflation and the plummeting value of the Iranian rial — though chants soon targeted the country's theocratic leaders.

The crowd was larger, more diverse, she said. Protests in Iran erupt every few years. But this momentum felt unprecedented, she said.

Ukraine is bracing for brutal weather as Trump says Putin agreed to halt power grid attacks

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine awaited signs Friday that Russia is abiding by a commitment that U.S. President Donald Trump said it made to temporarily halt attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, as Kyiv and other regions are gripped by the bitterest winter weather for years.

Trump said late Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to his request not to target the Ukrainian capital and other towns for one week, as the region experiences frigid temperatures that have brought widespread hardship to civilians.

Trump didn't say when the call with Putin took place or when the moratorium would go into effect, and the White House didn't immediately respond to a query seeking clarity about the scope and timing of any limited pause. There was no immediate confirmation from the Kremlin that Putin has committed to the move.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was skeptical about Putin’s readiness for such a step as Russia’s all-out invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, approaches its four-year anniversary next month with no signs that Moscow is willing to reach a peace settlement despite a U.S.-led push to end the fighting.

“I do not believe that Russia wants to end the war. There is a great deal of evidence to the contrary,” Zelenskyy said Thursday in comments made public on Friday.

Hypothermia risks increase in Mississippi and Tennessee with next wave of frigid temperatures

BELZONI, Miss. (AP) — With another wave of dangerous cold heading for the U.S. South on Friday, experts say the risk of hypothermia heightens for people in parts of Mississippi and Tennessee who are entering their sixth day trapped at home without power in subfreezing temperatures.

“The longer you’re exposed to the cold, the worse it is,” said Dr. Hans House, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Iowa. “The body can handle cold temperatures briefly very well, but the prolonged exposure is a problem."

The National Weather Service said arctic air moving into the Southeast will cause already frigid temperatures to plummet into the teens (minus 10 degrees Celsius) on Friday night in cities like Nashville, where more than 79,000 homes and businesses still lacked power nearly a week after a massive storm dumped snow and ice across the eastern U.S.

People who are more vulnerable — the elderly, infants and those with underlying health conditions — may have started experiencing hypothermia symptoms within hours of being exposed to the frigid temperatures, explained Dr. Zheng Ben Ma, medical director of the University of Washington Medical Center’s northwest emergency department. That includes everything from exhaustion to slurred speech and memory loss.

But almost a week in and the situation is nearing a turning point, he explained: Younger people who are generally healthy could potentially begin to fall victim to these symptoms as well.

Senate leaders scramble to save bipartisan deal and avert partial government shutdown at midnight

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate leaders were scrambling to save a bipartisan spending deal and avert a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday as Democrats have demanded new restrictions on federal immigration raids across the country.

Democrats struck a rare deal with President Donald Trump Thursday to separate funding for the Homeland Security Department from a broad government spending bill and fund it for two weeks while Congress debates curbs on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The deal came as irate Democrats had vowed to vote against the entire spending bill and trigger a shutdown in the wake of the deaths of two protesters at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis.

“Republicans and Democrats have come together to get the vast majority of the government funded until September” while extending current funding for Homeland Security, Trump said in a social media post Thursday evening. He encouraged members of both parties to cast a “much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ vote.”

Trump had said earlier in the day that “we don't want a shutdown.”

Still, passage of the agreement was delayed late Thursday as Senate leaders were still working to win enough support for the package.

Masked agents, face scans and a question: Are you a citizen? Inside Trump’s Minnesota crackdown

Luis Martinez was on his way to work on a frigid Minneapolis morning when federal agents suddenly boxed him in, forcing the SUV he was driving to a dead stop in the middle of the street.

Masked agents rapped on the window, demanding Martinez produce his ID. Then one held his cellphone inches from Martinez’s face and scanned his features, capturing the shape of his eyes, the curves of his lips, the exact quadrants of his cheeks.

All the while, the agent kept asking: Are you a U.S. citizen?

The encounter in a Minneapolis suburb this week captures the tactics on display in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, which it describes as the largest of its kind and one that has drawn national scrutiny after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens this month.

Across Minnesota and other states where the Department of Homeland Security has surged personnel, officials say enforcement efforts are targeted and focused on serious offenders. But photographs, videos and internal documents paint a different picture, showing agents leaning heavily on biometric surveillance and vast, interconnected databases — highlighting how a sprawling digital surveillance apparatus has become central to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Trump threatens tariffs on any country selling oil to Cuba, backing Mexico into a corner

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, a move that could further cripple an island plagued by a deepening energy crisis.

The order would primarily put pressure on Mexico, a government that has acted as an oil lifeline for Cuba and has constantly voiced solidarity for the U.S. adversary even as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has sought to build a strong relationship with Trump.

Trump was asked by a reporter Thursday whether he was trying to “choke off” Cuba, which he called a “failing nation.”

“The word ‘choke off’ is awfully tough,” Trump said. “I’m not trying to, but, it looks like it’s something that’s just not going to be able to survive."

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez and a number of other Cuban officials condemned Trump’s executive order. Rodríguez called it a “brutal act of aggression against Cuba and its people … who are now threatened with being subjected to extreme living conditions.”

Trump says he will announce his Federal Reserve chair nominee on Friday morning

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he plans to announce his choice for chairman of the Federal Reserve on Friday morning, a long-awaited decision that could set up a showdown on whether the U.S. central bank preserves its independence from the White House and electoral politics.

For the past year, the president has aggressively attacked Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term as the head of the U.S. central bank ends in May. Trump maintains that Powell should cut the Fed's benchmark interest rates more drastically to fuel faster economic growth, while the Fed chair has taken a far more judicious approach in the wake of Trump's tariffs because inflation is already elevated.

“I’ll be announcing the Fed chair tomorrow morning,” Trump told reporters Thursday night as he went into a screening of the documentary “Melania” about his wife. “It’s going to be, somebody that is very respected, somebody that’s known to everybody in the financial world. And I think it’s going to be a very good choice. I hope so.”

Trump stayed relatively cryptic about his pick. His search was led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with four known finalists: Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor; Christopher Waller, a current Fed governor; Rick Rieder, an executive with the financial firm BlackRock; and Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council. Trump previously suggested Hassett was the frontrunner, only to recently say that he wanted him to remain in his current post.

Trump did say on Thursday night that “a lot of people think that this is somebody that could have been there a few years ago,” fueling speculation that he had chosen Warsh, who was a finalist in the 2017 search for Fed chair that led to Powell's selection.

US futures fall and world shares are mixed as markets await Trump's word on replacing Fed chief

U.S. futures dropped while European shares opened higher on Friday after markets retreated in Asia ahead of a possible announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump on his nominee to replace Jerome Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve.

Oil prices dropped and the prices of gold and silver weakened.

The future for the S&P 500 sank 0.8% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.7% lower.

Trump chose Powell to led the U.S. central bank in 2017 but has relentlessly assailed him for not cutting interest rates quickly as quickly as the president would like. The appointment to replace him must be confirmed by the Senate.

In early European trading, Germany's DAX picked up 0.8% to 24,506.41, while the CAC 40 in Paris advanced 0.4% to 8,107.50. Britain's FTSE 100 edged 0.2% higher, to 10,189.05.

Trump sues IRS and Treasury for $10 billion over leaked tax info

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is suing the IRS and Treasury Department for $10 billion, as he accuses the federal agencies of a failure to prevent a leak of the president's tax information to news outlets between 2018 and 2020.

The suit, filed in a Florida federal court Thursday, includes the president's sons Eric Trump and, Donald Trump Jr. and the Trump organization as plaintiffs.

The filing alleges that the leak of Trump and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax records caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”

In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn of Washington, D.C. — who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security tech firm — was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax information about Trump and others to news outlets.

Littlejohn, known as Chaz, gave data to The New York Times and ProPublica between 2018 and 2020 in leaks that appeared to be “unparalleled in the IRS’s history,” prosecutors said.

Venezuela’s acting president signs oil industry overhaul, easing state control to lure investors

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez on Thursday signed a law that opens the nation’s oil sector to privatization, reversing a tenet of the self-proclaimed socialist movement that has ruled the country for more than two decades.

The reform will undoubtedly be her government’s signature policy as it positions the oil sector – Venezuela’s engine – to lure the foreign investment needed to revamp a long-crippled industry. Rodríguez enacted the measure less than a month after the brazen seizure of then-President Nicolás Maduro in a U.S. military attack in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.

Rodríguez, facing oil workers and ruling-party supporters, signed the bill less than two hours after the National Assembly approved it. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Treasury officially began to ease punishing economic sanctions on Venezuelan oil, which were imposed by the first Trump administration, and expanded the ability of U.S. energy companies to operate in the South American nation.

Rodríguez on Thursday also spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who a day earlier explained to U.S. senators in a hearing how the administration is planning to handle the sale of tens of millions of barrels of oil from Venezuela and oversee where the money flows. Venezuela has the largest proven reserves of crude in the world.

The moves by both governments are paving the way for yet another radical geopolitical and economic shift in Venezuela.