By MANUEL VALDES

With breaches and tail slapping, a pod of orca whales put on a show near Seattle on Friday.

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The close encounter attracted dozens of people to the shore of the West Seattle neighborhood. Whale watchers identified the pod as Bigg’s killer whales, a group that hunts sea mammals and lives in the Salish Sea. The pod was seemingly hunting.

Among the people watching from Alki beach was Summer Staley. She drove from across the city to catch the whales after seeing a post on the Orca Network’s Facebook page alerting of the pod’s arrival. The group tracks whales using reports from people on land and in the water.

“It’s just such a beautiful connection with nature and with the universe to be sharing the same space with these beautiful creatures,” said Staley, who has seen the whales a few dozen times over the last year. “How lucky am I to be able to share this space with them?”

The whales breached and tail slapped for about hour. Sea birds and a bald eagle trailed the pod, looking for scraps.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety says state law enforcement agencies will be standing ready this weekend in Minneapolis to keep protesters safe but it is up to them to show the rest of the country that they can peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights.

State officials are preparing for a rally organized by conservative influencers and the potential for counter-protests and demonstrations by local groups.

Far-right activist Jake Lang, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Florida, said on X that thousands of people are coming to Minnesota to march as “Christian Crusaders” supporting ICE agents and calling for the arrest of Gov. Tim Walz.

Members of the Minnesota State Patrol, the Department of Natural Resources and Metro Transit and University of Minnesota police will be out supporting local law enforcement, and the National Guard will be on stand-by, said Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson during a Friday afternoon press conference.

He urged protesters to remain peaceful.

“We recognize and understand the deep concern and grief that they, and so many in our community and across the country, are still feeling following some recent events in our state,” Jacobson said. “We also know that demonstrations include strong emotions, beliefs and desires to be heard. And it is critical that those voices are expressed safely, so that they can be heard.”

Any actions that harm people, destroy property or jeopardize public safety will not be tolerated by law enforcement and could result in arrest, he said.

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By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor said Friday that a judge lacks the authority to appoint a neutral expert to oversee the public release of documents in the sex trafficking probe of financier Jeffrey Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.

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Judge Paul A. Engelmayer was told in a letter signed by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton that he must reject a request made earlier this week by the congressional cosponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act to appoint a neutral expert.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, say they have “urgent and grave concerns” about the slow release of only a small number of millions of documents that began last month.

In a filing to the judge they said they believed “criminal violations have taken place” in the release process.

Clayton, though, said Khanna and Massie do not have standing with the court that would allow them to seek the “extraordinary” relief of the appointment of a special master and independent monitor.

Engelmayer “lacks the authority” to grant such a request, he said, particularly because the congressional representatives who made the request are not parties to the criminal case that led to Maxwell’s December 2021 sex trafficking conviction and subsequent 20-year prison sentence for recruiting girls and women for Epstein to abuse and aiding the abuse.

Epstein died in a federal jail in New York City in August 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. The death was ruled a suicide.

The Justice Department expects to update the court “again shortly” regarding its progress in turning over documents from the Epstein and Maxwell investigative files, Clayton said in the letter.

The Justice Department has said the files’ release was slowed by redactions required to protect the identities of abuse victims.

In their letter, Khanna and Massie wrote that the Department of Justice’s release of only 12,000 documents out of more than 2 million documents being reviewed was a “flagrant violation” of the law’s release requirements and had caused “serious trauma to survivors.”

“Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act,” the congressmen said as they asked for the appointment of an independent monitor to ensure all documents and electronically stored information are immediately made public.

They also recommended that a court-appointed monitor be given authority to prepare reports about the true nature and extent of the document production and whether improper redactions or conduct have taken place.

Several familiar names are joining the 2026 Winter Carnival as members of its Senior Royalty.

During the Jan. 15 coronation at Landmark Center, married duo John Erb and Teri Theno-Erb were crowned King Winter and Queen of the Northlands, respectively. Kitty Ryan will be Princess of the Four Winds.

Ryan’s Winter Carnival history traces back to before the annual festival celebrated its 70th anniversary, much less this year’s 140th — and, still to this day, she remains the only person to have ever held the title she once did.

King Winter and Queen of the Northlands

Teri Theno-Erb from Oakdale sings during the 2023 Klondike Kate contest at the DoubleTree by Hilton Saint Paul East on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Theno-Erb is a longtime Carnival volunteer, and previously was a candidate for Queen of the Snows in 2022 and Klondike Kate in 2023. A St. Paul native who now lives in Oakdale, she’s the owner of Teri’s Hair Studio in Maplewood and also served as the senior queen for the Woodbury Ambassadors last year.

In his candidate bio, Erb, also born in St. Paul, describes himself as “a longtime Winter Carnival supporter” and a regular volunteer at Union Gospel Mission Twin Cities—Christ Recovery Center.

Princess of the Four Winds

In 1952, when Kitty Ryan was 14 years old, she joined the Vulcan Krewe — still the only woman to have ever done so.

She got the gig, she told the Pioneer Press a decade ago, because she could twirl a flaming baton. And the teenager, who grew up on a farm in Goodhue County, came up to Boreas Rex’s domain alone.

Kitty Ryan, the first and only woman Vulcan, stands (top row, center) with the 1952 Krewe in this pair of autographed photos, hanging in the personal collection of former Vulcanus Rex Tom Barrett on Jan. 12, 2022. In 2026, Ryan was crowned Princess of the Four Winds in the Carnival’s Senior Royalty. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)

“My parents were ecstatic, but they couldn’t come along — cows don’t milk themselves. I can’t believe I was 14 years old and alone in a hotel room,” she said in 2016. But as she tells it, that year’s Vulcan Krewe took care of her and ensured both her safety and adherence to a proper bedtime.

“It was like having seven dads,” she said.

Then, in 1956, Ryan was nominated as a candidate for Queen of the Snows, but there was one problem: She was engaged. The Carnival mandated at the time that Queen candidates be unmarried, a rule that persisted until the early 1990s. This put Ryan, an evident front-runner among the 26 candidates, in a gray area.

The compromise Carnival leaders offered was that they’d allow Ryan to be queen if she would just agree to not wear her engagement ring, she has said in interviews. She refused.

But now, seven decades later, Ryan is finally getting her royal moment.

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