By DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — A number of charities on Monday severed ties with Sarah Ferguson, the ex-wife of Prince Andrew, after British newspapers published an email that she reportedly wrote to the late convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, describing him as a “supreme friend.’’

Julia’s House, a children’s hospice, said that the reported correspondence made it inappropriate for Ferguson, also known as the Duchess of York, to remain a patron. A spokesman for Ferguson said that she sent an email on the advice of her lawyers after Epstein threatened to sue her for associating him with sexual abuse in a media interview, Britain’s Press Association reported.

“Following the information shared this weekend on the Duchess of York’s correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein, Julia’s House has taken the decision that it would be inappropriate for her to continue as a patron of the charity,’’ the charity said. “We have advised the Duchess of York of this decision and thank her for her past support.”

A food allergy charity, The Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, and Prevent Breast Cancer, were also among the charities that cut ties in light of recent revelations. The Teenage Cancer Trust, which had an association with Ferguson for 35 years, also dropped her as a patron.

The email referred to a 2011 interview with the Evening Standard newspaper in which she apologized for accepting 15,000 pounds from Epstein.

“I abhor paedophilia and any sexual abuse of children and know that this was a gigantic error of judgment on my behalf. I am just so contrite I cannot say,’’ Ferguson said in the interview. “Whenever I can, I will repay the money and have nothing ever to do with Jeffrey Epstein ever again.”

But the following month, Ferguson sent an email to Epstein in which she “humbly apologized” for linking him to sex abuse, saying “you have always been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family,” The Sun newspaper reported over the weekend.

The Associated Press couldn’t independently confirm that the email is authentic.

The story comes less than a month after Andrew himself was criticized for staying in touch with Epstein for five years longer than previously claimed.

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Leaked email correspondence between Epstein and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak indicated that the prince had been in touch with Epstein as late as 2015, the Times of London reported. Andrew told the BBC in 2019 that he ceased all contact with Epstein in December 2010, after the late financier pled guilty to sex crimes in Florida.

Andrew and his ex-wife have faced a series of scandals amid concerns that the prince has tried to profit from his royal status.

He was forced to give up all royal duties and charity roles after the 2019 interview with the BBC in which he was criticized for trying to minimize his connections with Epstein and failing to show sympathy for his victims. Last year, it emerged that a suspected Chinese spy had developed close links with Andrew, raising concerns about efforts to put undue influence on other members of the royal family.

A 51-year-old St. Paul man was sentenced to a five-year prison term Friday for shooting a man in the leg during a firefight outside a White Bear Lake bar nearly two years ago.

Kardell Baraka Otae Jackson (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

A Ramsey County jury in June convicted Kardell Baraka Otae Jackson of second-degree assault and possession of a firearm or ammunition by a convicted felon in connection with the shooting in the parking lot of Doc’s Landing shortly before 1 a.m. Sept. 24, 2023.

Jackson and Charles Edward Stevens-Thigpen fired a total of 13 rounds at each other after getting into a “heated dispute” in the bar. One bullet grazed a 48-year-old man who was sitting in the bar.

According to court documents, Jackson and Stevens-Thigpen, 37, of St. Paul, both grabbed guns from their SUVs. Jackson fired off a shot at Stevens-Thigpen, who took cover behind a Tesla, and the two men exchanged gunfire.

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Stevens-Thigpen nearly shot a woman who ran toward Jackson’s Chevrolet Tahoe. Jackson helped her get into the SUV before he again shot at Stevens-Thigpen. Stevens-Thigpen “grimaced” and began to favor his right leg, the documents say.

As Jackson and the woman fled the parking lot, Stevens-Thigpen fired three to four more rounds at the Tahoe. He ran to a GMC Denali and also fled.

In February, Stevens-Thigpen was given three years’ probation after pleading guilty to second-degree assault. He had no prior felony convictions, and his attorney argued he was not the initial and primary aggressor.

By MATIAS DELACROIX and MEGAN JANETSKY, Associated Press

JAQUE, Panama (AP) — As the boat bounced across choppy Pacific waters, Mariela Gómez and her two children huddled for 17 hours on top of sloshing gas tanks, uncertain of what lay ahead in the dense jungle.

The 36-year-old Venezuelan mother was among a million migrants to journey across the continent in recent years in the hopes of reaching the United States. But with legal pathways slashed under U.S. President Donald Trump, she and thousands of other Venezuelans are now trying to make their way back in a “reverse migration.”

Over 14,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have returned to South America since Trump’s immigration crackdown began, according to figures from Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica.

Struggling to buy even food after failed attempts to stay in the U.S., Gómez can’t afford the $280-per-person charge for the more frequented Caribbean route to Colombia. So a growing number of migrants like her are boarding boats that ferry cargo between Panama’s capital and Colombia’s jungle-clad Pacific coast.

The new route is half the price and twice as dangerous.

“We lost hope,” she said. “We’re trying to return, but we don’t have the money to go back.”

‘Only the clothes on their backs’

In recent years, migrants fleeing the crisis in Venezuela once crossed the perilous jungles of the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama and waited months in Mexico for an asylum appointment in the U.S. But when Trump took office, many of those people were left stranded in Mexico. Without other options, they turned back, winding down through Central America on buses.

They chug aboard slow-moving cargo boats packed with merchandise along Panama’s other coast in the Pacific Ocean for days, before boarding precarious motor boats that shoot along the coast. The boats are often packed with 15 to 30 people. Hundreds so far have traveled the route, according to a United Nations report released earlier this month.

“People arrive with very few resources, some with only the clothes on their backs,” said 56-year-old boat driver Nacor Rivera. “Many can’t pay for the boat ride, so I’ve had to help a lot of them, carrying them for free.”

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In June, one of those boats carrying 38 people crashed at sea, injuring a pregnant woman, children and a person with a disability who lost their wheelchair.

They land in jungled swathes of Colombia, a region rife with armed groups that prey on migrants, where there are no shelters and little access to medical care, according to the U.N. report.

“We urge authorities to care for people in this reverse migration to stop them from falling into criminal and trafficking networks of illegal armed groups, and turn them into victims of even greater violence,” said Scott Campbell, a U.N. human rights officer in Colombia, in a statement.

Migrants land with serious cases of dehydration, burns, malnutrition and mental health issues. Those without money can “remain stranded in inhumane conditions,” the report said.

That was the case of Jesús Aguilar, a Venezuelan migrant who was stuck in a rural Panamanian town in the Darien Gap for two months. He managed to slowly scrounge together money to pay for a boat ride to Colombia after a local offered him work cleaning their farm.

Trying luck back in South America

Others, like Gómez’s family, spent months in Panama City saving money to travel back to Venezuela, but when they came up short, they decided to take the cheaper route along the Pacific.

Sitting on top of gasoline tanks, Gómez cradles her 5-year-old son swaddled in blankets. The family fled the South American country in 2017 in the face of a spiraling economy and mounting government repression.

For years, she lived in Colombia and Peru, like millions of other Venezuelans who have fled the country in recent years. Unable to make ends meet in countries that have struggled to manage the crush of vulnerable people, Gómez began to look to the U.S. with hopes of building a new life.

After crossing the Darien Gap and later the U.S.-Mexico border to Texas in October, her family was quickly swept up by the U.S. Border Patrol and handed over to Mexican authorities who dropped them in southern Mexico.

Shortly after, she decided her only way forward was to return home. Without work and with cartels preying on migrants like her, staying in southern Mexico wasn’t an option.

At least in Venezuela she has her home and her family, she said.

“It would have been risking our lives and risking the life of my child” to keep going, Gómez said. “We’re just hoping God protects us.”

Now, as she returns home, she’s not sure what she will find in Venezuela, which has faced an ongoing crackdown on dissent by the government following last year’s contested elections.

She said if the government of President Nicolás Maduro remains in power, staying in her country doesn’t seem like an option. “I would have to leave my country again, maybe go to Chile,” she pondered. “I would have to try my luck in another country. Again.”

“But right now, we just have to focus on getting to Colombia,” she added.

Janetsky reported from Mexico City.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

A St. Paul woman is jailed on suspicion of criminal vehicular homicide in a single-vehicle Maplewood crash that left her 1-year-old son dead.

The Minnesota State Patrol said alcohol was involved in the crash.

Two additional sons of the driver, ages 5 and 6, sustained non-life threatening injuries.

A Ramsey County Attorney’s Office spokesperson said Monday they are reviewing the case for potential charges.

The 28-year-old woman was driving a Chevrolet Tahoe SUV east on Minnesota 36 to southbound U.S. 61 at 6:25 p.m. Saturday. She “appeared to lose control on the exit ramp while traveling at a high rate of speed,” according to a brief report from the State Patrol.

The vehicle went off the road, rolled into the right ditch on the ramp and landed upside down. The vehicle was in about 1 to 2 feet of water. A 1-year-old “was extricated from underneath the vehicle but later pronounced dead,” the State Patrol said.

The child who died was identified as Raevon Melvin Anthony Todd, who turned 1 in January.

The driver, a 32-year-old passenger from Mounds View and the two other children were treated at the hospital.

The driver was booked into the Ramsey County jail Saturday night and remains in custody.

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