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

The documents released Friday include Epstein’s communications with former White House advisers, an NFL team co-owner and billionaires including Bill Gates and Elon Musk.

The fallout already includes the resignation of a top official in Slovakia, Miroslav Lajcak, who once had a yearlong term as president of the U.N. General Assembly.

Lajcak resigned after photos and emails were made public detailing meetings he had with Epstein in the years after Epstein was released from jail.

President Donald Trump's Department of Justice said it would be releasing more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images under a law intended to reveal most of the material it collected during two decades of investigations involving the wealthy financier.

Former Prince Andrew can't escape Epstein's shadow as new documents reveal details about friendship

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s royal family is facing a fresh round of embarrassment after the latest release of documents from the U.S. investigation into Jeffrey Epstein revealed unsavory details about the relationship between the convicted sex offender and a correspondent who appears to be the man formerly known as Prince Andrew.

Emails released by the U.S. Justice Department include an invitation for Epstein to dine at Buckingham Palace, Epstein’s offer to introduce his correspondent to a 26-year-old Russian woman, and photos that appear to show Andrew kneeling over an unidentified person who is lying on the floor.

The revelations come three months after King Charles III stripped Andrew of his royal titles, including the right to be called a prince, as he tried to insulate the monarchy from a steady stream of stories about his younger brother’s relationship with Epstein that has tarnished the royal family for more than a decade. The former prince is now known simply as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

As a result of that move, the damage from the latest emails is likely to be limited to Mountbatten-Windsor, said Craig Prescott, an expert on constitutional law and the monarchy at Royal Holloway, University of London.

The documents show that “they had to do something to separate Andrew from the rest of the family, and the nuclear option was the clearest way of doing it,” Prescott said. “And as more comes out, then you do feel that they have been justified.”

Judge says she won’t halt the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota as a lawsuit proceeds

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal judge says she won’t halt the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota and the Twin Cities as a lawsuit over it proceeds.

Judge Katherine M. Menendez on Saturday denied a preliminary injunction sought in a lawsuit filed this month by state Attorney General Keith Ellison and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

It argues that the Department of Homeland Security is violating constitutional protections. State and local officials sought a quick order to halt the enforcement action or limit its scope. Lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice have called the lawsuit “legally frivolous.”

The ruling on the injunction focused on the argument by Minnesota officials that the federal government is violating the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which limits the federal government’s powers to infringe on the sovereignty of states. In her ruling, the judge relied heavily on whether that argument was likely to ultimately succeed in court.

The federal government argued that the surge, dubbed Operation Metro Surge, is necessary in its effort to take criminal immigrants off the streets and because federal efforts have been hindered by state and local “sanctuary laws and policies.”

Judge orders 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his dad released from ICE detention

A 5-year-old boy and his father must be released by Tuesday from the Texas center where they’ve been held after being detained by immigration officers in Minnesota, a federal judge ordered Saturday in a ruling that harshly criticized the Trump administration’s approach to enforcement.

Images of Liam Conejo Ramos, wearing a bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack, being surrounded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers sparked even more outcry about the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, who sits in San Antonio and was appointed by former Democratic President Bill Clinton, said in his ruling that “the case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

Biery had previously ruled that the boy and his father could not be removed from the U.S., at least for now.

Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, who is originally from Ecuador, were detained in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights on Jan. 20. They were taken to a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

Israeli strikes kill 30 Palestinians, including children, as Gaza ceasefire inches forward

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hospitals in Gaza said Israeli strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians including several children on Saturday, one of the highest tolls since the October ceasefire, a day after Israel accused Hamas of new truce violations.

The strikes hit locations throughout Gaza, including an apartment building in Gaza City and a tent camp in Khan Younis, said officials at hospitals that received the bodies. The casualties included two women and six children from two different families. Another airstrike hit a police station in Gaza City, killing at least 14 and wounding others, Shifa Hospital director Mohamed Abu Selmiya said.

The strikes came a day before the Rafah crossing along the border with Egypt is set to open in Gaza’s southernmost city. All of the territory’s border crossings — the rest are with Israel — have been closed throughout almost the entire war. Palestinians see Rafah as a lifeline for tens of thousands needing treatment outside the territory, where the majority of medical infrastructure has been destroyed.

The crossing's opening, limited at first, will occur as the U.S.-brokered Israel-Hamas ceasefire plan moves into its second phase. Other challenging issues include demilitarizing the strip after nearly two decades of Hamas rule and installing a new government to oversee reconstruction.

Egypt, one of the ceasefire mediators, in a statement condemned the Israeli strikes in the “strongest terms” and warned that they represent “a direct threat to the political course” of the truce. Qatar, another mediator, in a statement called Israel's strikes a “dangerous escalation” and said continuing them poses a “direct threat” to the political process.

What to know about the partial government shutdown and its impact

WASHINGTON (AP) — The partial government shutdown that started Saturday is vastly different from the record closure in the fall.

That is mostly because the shutdown may not last long.

The House will try to pass funding legislation quickly when lawmakers return Monday, and that would end the shutdown. Congress already has passed half this year’s funding bills, ensuring that several important federal agencies and programs continue to operate through September. Nutrition assistance programs, for example, should be unaffected.

Funding will lapse, at least temporarily, for the Pentagon and agencies such as the departments of Homeland Security and Transportation. Essential functions will continue, but workers could go without pay if the impasse drags on. Some could be furloughed.

The government funding process had been going smoothly, with key lawmakers in the House and Senate finding bipartisan agreement. But the shooting deaths this month of two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renée Good, by federal agents in Minneapolis, changed the dynamic.

Power outages hit Ukraine and Moldova as Kyiv struggles against the winter cold

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Emergency power cuts swept across several Ukrainian cities as well as neighboring Moldova on Saturday, officials said, amid a commitment from the Kremlin to U.S. President Donald Trump to pause strikes on Kyiv as Ukraine battles one of its bleakest winters in years.

Ukraine’s Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said that the outages had been caused by a technical malfunction affecting power lines linking Ukraine and Moldova.

The failure “caused a cascading outage in Ukraine’s power grid,” triggering automatic protection systems, he said.

Blackouts were reported in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions, in the center and northeast of the country respectively. The outage cut water supplies to the Ukrainian capital, officials said, while the city’s subway system was temporarily suspended because of low voltage on the network.

Moldova also experienced major power outages, including in the capital Chisinau, officials said.

Powerful storm starts hitting East Coast, including parts unaccustomed to heavy snow

Blizzardlike conditions stemming from a “ bomb cyclone ” were starting to bring heavy snow to the Southeast and were ushering in frigid temperatures to much of the East Coast Saturday, as tens of thousands of homes and businesses remained without power after being hit by a different icy storm last week.

About 240 million people were under cold weather advisories and winter storm warnings, a forecaster said. The frigid cold was expected to plunge as far south as Florida. Some areas unaccustomed to snow were bracing for several inches to fall by Sunday.

The powerful winter storm system came after another blast of snow and ice last weekend snarled traffic, knocked down trees, and caused more than 100 deaths.

A low temperature of minus 27 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 33 degrees Celsius) was recorded Saturday morning in West Virginia, said Bob Oravec, lead meteorologist for the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.

Parts of the southern Appalachians, the Carolinas and Georgia could see 6 to 10 inches (15 to 25 centimeters) of snow, he said. The Carolinas could see blizzard conditions stemming from the bomb cyclone, a term Oravec used to described an intense, rapidly strengthening storm system off the Southeast coast packing strong winds.

US ambassador arrives in Venezuela to reopen diplomatic mission after 7 years

CARACAS (AP) — U.S. Ambassador Laura Dogu arrived in Caracas on Saturday to reopen the American diplomatic mission in Venezuela after seven years of severed ties.

The move comes almost one month after a military action ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump removed the South American country's then-leader Nicolás Maduro from office.

“My team and I are ready to work,” Dogu said in a message posted by the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela 's account on X. It also posted pictures of her upon her landing at Maiquetia airport.

Venezuela and the United States broke off diplomatic relations in February 2019 in a decision by Maduro and closed their embassies mutually after Trump gave public support to lawmaker Juan Guaidó in his claim to be the nation’s interim president in January of that year.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, one of Venezuela's most powerful politicians and a Maduro loyalist, said earlier in January that reopening the U.S. embassy would give the Venezuelan government a way to oversee the treatment of the deposed president, who is jailed in the U.S.

Coast Guard suspends search for people missing from fishing vessel that sank off Massachusetts

GLOUCESTER, Mass. (AP) — The U.S. Coast Guard on Saturday suspended the search for seven people who were aboard a commercial fishing vessel that sank off the coast of Massachusetts in rough, frigid waters.

The Coast Guard launched a search and rescue mission early Friday after receiving an alert from the 72-foot (22-meter) Lily Jean about 25 miles (40 kilometers) off Cape Ann. Searchers found a debris field near where the alert was sent along with a body in the water and an empty life raft, the Coast Guard said.

Crews covered about 1,000 square miles (2,589 square kilometers) using aircraft, cutters and small boats over a 24-hour period. However, after consultation between search and rescue mission coordinators and on-scene commanders, the Coast Guard announced Saturday that it had determined that all reasonable search efforts for the missing crew members had been exhausted.

Officials said there wasn’t a mayday call from Lily Jean as it navigated the frigid Atlantic Ocean on its way home to Gloucester, Massachusetts, America’s oldest fishing port. The Coast Guard was notified by the boat’s beacon that alerts when it hits the water.

The Coast Guard is investigating the cause of the sinking. Officials did not immediately release the names of those who were lost.