AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT

The impacts on basic needs — food and medical care — underscored how the impasse is hitting homes across the United States. Plans by the Trump administration to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Saturday were halted by federal judges, but the delay in payouts will still likely leave millions of people short on their grocery bills.

It all added to the strain on the country, with a month of missed paychecks for federal workers and growing air travel delays. The shutdown is already the second longest in history and entered its second month on Saturday,.

“This is more than a crisis,” said the Rev. John Udo-Okon, who runs the Word of Life Christian Fellowship International food pantry in the Bronx, where hundreds more people than usual lined up in the New York City borough as early as 4 a.m. Saturday to collect groceries. “Right now, you can see the desperation, you can feel the frustration that the people are going through."

But back in Washington, there was little urgency to end the government funding impasse. Lawmakers are away from Capitol Hill and both parties are entrenched in their positions.

Furloughed federal workers face delays getting unemployment pay during shutdown

For more than two weeks now during the government shutdown, Imelda Avila-Thomas has been trying in vain to get approved for unemployment compensation to help cover essentials such as food and mortgage payments for her family while she's on unpaid furlough from her federal government job.

She kept asking questions and was ultimately sent a hyperlink to upload proof-of-income documents, which she did earlier this week. But Avila-Thomas, who works for the Department of Labor in San Antonio, said the system still deems her ineligible for benefits, saying it cannot verify her wages. She wonders whether someone who might help her has also been furloughed.

A mother of a 12-year-old daughter and local union leader, Avila-Thomas is among the thousands of furloughed federal workers trying to navigate the unemployment system — a sharp increase, but still a fraction of the 670,000-plus furloughed workforce, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. The dollar amounts and length of benefits vary by state.

About 26,000 federal workers filed initial claims from Sept. 28 through Oct. 18, according to raw data published by the Department of Labor. Some 3,300 applied in the week that ended days before the Oct. 1 shutdown start.

Furloughed workers have some factors to consider. For instance, if they receive back pay as expected when the shutdown ends, they would need to repay the unemployment aid. For Avila-Thomas, refunding the money later is preferable to taking on debt.

Israel says the latest remains returned from Gaza by Hamas are not of hostages

JERUSALEM (AP) — The remains of three people Hamas handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza do not belong to any hostages, Israel said Saturday, in the latest setback to the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

The handover followed Israel’s return on Friday of the bodies of 30 Palestinians to Gaza, which completed an exchange after militants turned over remains of two hostages earlier in the week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office confirmed that the remains of the three people did not belong to hostages. It was unclear who the remains belonged to.

Hamas' armed wing said it had offered to hand over samples on Friday of unidentified bodies but Israel refused and asked for the remains for examination.

“We handed the bodies over to stop the claims of Israel," the statement said. Health officials in Gaza have struggled to identify bodies without access to DNA kits.

Trump threatens Nigeria with potential military action, escalates claim of Christian persecution

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday said he's ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action in Nigeria as he stepped up his criticism that the government is failing to rein in the persecution of Christians in the West African country.

The president also warned that he “will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria.”

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump posted on social media. “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”

The warning came after Nigeria's President Bola Ahmed Tinubu earlier on Saturday pushed back on Trump announcing a day earlier that he was designating the West African country “a country of particular concern” for allegedly failing to rein in the persecution of Christians.

In a social media statement on Saturday, Tinubu said that the characterization of Nigeria as a religiously intolerant country does not reflect the national reality.

Trump to host al-Sharaa in first-ever visit by a Syrian president to White House, official says

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump will host Ahmad al-Sharaa for talks, a first-ever visit by a Syrian president to the White House, an administration official said Saturday.

The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly about the yet to be formally announced engagement, said that the meeting is expected to take place Nov. 10.

Trump met with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in May in what was the first encounter between the two nations’ leaders in 25 years and one that could serve as a turning point for Syria as it struggles to emerge from decades of international isolation.

The meeting, on the sidelines of Trump’s get-together with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, marked a major turn of events for a Syria that is still adjusting to life after the over 50-year, iron-gripped rule of the Assad family.

Al-Sharaa once had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.

With bombs and bravado, Trump puts his own stamp on Reagan's 'peace through strength' mantle

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — It wasn’t so long ago that President Donald Trump spoke of building a legacy as a “peacemaker.”

His administration would measure “success not only by the battles we win,” Trump said in his inaugural address, “but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”

But nine months into his second go-round in the White House, Trump is beating a curious path to executing his “peace through strength” foreign policy agenda, a phrase he borrowed from a fellow Republican president, Ronald Reagan, who saw building a strong military and economy as the bedrock to Soviet deterrence.

Trump's take on the Reagan doctrine includes sharper threats, bombings and no shortage of bravado.

It’s too soon to tell how history will judge Trump’s version, but the Gipper had his doubters, too.

Ukraine says it hit a key fuel pipeline near Moscow that supplies Russian forces

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces hit an important fuel pipeline in the Moscow region that supplies the Russian army, Ukraine's military intelligence said Saturday, as Russia kept up a sustained campaign of massive drone and missile attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

The operation was carried out late Friday, according to a statement on the Telegram messaging channel. The agency, which is known by its acronym HUR, described it as a “serious blow” to Russia’s military logistics.

HUR said its forces struck the Koltsevoy pipeline, which spans 400 kilometers (250 miles) and supplies the Russian army with gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from refineries in Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow.

The operation, which targeted infrastructure near Ramensky district, destroyed all three fuel lines, HUR said.

The pipeline was capable of transporting up to 3 million tons of jet fuel, 2.8 million tons of diesel and 1.6 million tons of gasoline annually, HUR said.

FBI raid at Idaho horse track shows how immigration is a top focus across law enforcement

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The first sign something was amiss was the thwack of helicopter rotors overhead, followed by screams. Within moments, Anabel Romero was on the ground with her hands restrained behind her, she said, as law enforcement officers brandishing guns removed her 14-year-old daughter from a nearby truck and zip-tied the teen while her young siblings looked on.

Romero and her daughter, both U.S. citizens, were among about 400 people detained for hours at a privately owned race track about an hour west of Boise as part an FBI-led investigation into illegal gambling that resulted in more than 100 arrests, nearly all for immigration violations.

Romero isn't sure what agency the officers who zip-tied her daughter were from. More than 200 officers from at least 14 agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, as well as local police, participated in the raid at La Catedral Arena.

The Oct. 19 operation is a striking example of how immigration has become a major driver across federal law enforcement, demonstrating a previously unheard of level of coordination to address President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. It also shows how immigration dragnets marked by a heavy use of force have entangled U.S. citizens and legal residents.

The raid on La Catedral Arena struck nerves in Canyon County, which has the most Hispanic residents in Idaho and where Trump got 72% of the vote last year.

Andrew's royal exit is the latest crisis for Britain's monarchy

LONDON (AP) — Holding prestige but not power, Britain’s monarchy is finely tuned to public sentiment.

That's been evident with the disgrace of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, who was stripped of his princely title and his spacious home by his brother King Charles on Thursday, a banishment that has left the disgraced royal increasingly exposed to scrutiny both in the U.K. and the U.S. over his friendship with the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Following years of scandals related to Andrew, Charles arguably took the biggest step of his reign by seeking to insulate the monarchy from any further scandals relating to Andrew and his connections with Epstein, who took his own life in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, more than a decade after his initial conviction.

It's not the first time the current iteration of the British monarchy — the House of Windsor — has been in crisis over the past century and where the future of the institution has been threatened.

George Gross, a royal expert at King’s College London, said the most recent precedent for what has happened to Andrew is the 1917 Titles Deprivation Act, which “saw various members of loosely affiliated royals and dukes and members of the peerage losing titles if they had sided with Germany in the First World War.”

Joyful Day of the Dead commemorations rally US Latino communities despite immigration raid fears

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — More than 100 people followed Aztec dancers through an arch of paper flowers into El Colegio High School on Saturday morning to visit altars that students had created to commemorate Día de Muertos or Day of the Dead.

“It’s ... a way of greeting our ancestors into our homes, back into our lives, even if they’re like not here physically, but spiritually,” said Daniela Rosales, a senior at the small, bilingual school in Minneapolis. “It’s a way of just having the community come all together and knowing that in some way they might feel safe.”

These crucial religious, family and community celebrations for most Mexicans and many other Latin Americans have taken on special significance this year in U.S. Latino communities, as the Trump administration escalates immigration enforcement raids, including in Minnesota.

While some organizers worried that fears of deportation would cast a pall on public celebrations, participants turned out in droves in cities big and small, saying the rituals brought a much-needed sense of resilience and community pride.

“We decided we can’t cave,” said Justin Ek, one of the founders of the Day of the Dead festival in Mankato, a city in the Minnesota farmland. “Our cultural celebrations are what we need to fill our souls for what’s to come.”