The St. Paul City Council is urging state leaders to put a temporary halt to energy and gas shutoffs during Operation Metro Surge, the ongoing occupation of the Twin Cities by federal agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The council voted on Wednesday in support of a resolution asking Gov. Tim Walz and state officials to direct the state’s Public Utility Commission to enact an energy and gas shutoff moratorium “to keep Minnesota families safe and protect them from ICE.”

They noted the 55106 zip code, which covers much of St. Paul’s East Side, had the highest rate of utility shut-offs in all of Xcel Energy’s customer area even before Operation Metro Surge began.

“The federal government’s campaign of discriminatory mass deportation has inflicted terror nationwide, and the Trump administration’s fixation on Minnesota has cruelly targeted our community with harassment, intimidation, and violence,” reads the council resolution.

“Many residents are unable to move freely due to the threat of harassment, violence, and abduction, forcing them to shelter-in place and impacting their ability to work and provide for their families,” it goes on to say.

Council members acknowledged that some cold weather protections already exist in Minnesota under the Cold Weather Rule, but they said those protections — which expire April 30 — kick in after a resident proactively contacts their utility to negotiate a payment plan or enroll in an energy assistance program.

They also noted that Xcel Energy provides customer assistance in English and Spanish on their support line, leaving payment plans virtually inaccessible to residents with other language barriers. The council resolution calls on Xcel Energy to add bill payment assistance in Hmong, Karen and Somali.

Most state and federal assistance programs are only open to U.S. citizens who share Social Security information, “which could potentially be exploited by ICE if they subpoenaed that information,” reads the council resolution.

The resolution, which was sponsored by Council Members Nelsie Yang and HwaJeong Kim, was included on the council’s consent agenda, where items are voted on en masse.

The council had previously voted Jan. 21 to ask the governor and state leaders for a temporary eviction moratorium, with the goal of protecting workers impacted by Operation Metro Surge from losing their housing.

The governor enacted an emergency moratorium on residential evictions in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission coordinated a similar moratorium on disconnections for state-regulated utilities.

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By BERNARD CONDON and MATT O’BRIEN

NEW YORK (AP) — Elon Musk vowed this week to upend another industry just as he did with cars and rockets — and once again he’s taking on long odds.

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The world’s richest man said he wants to put as many as a million satellites into orbit to form vast, solar-powered data centers in space — a move to allow expanded use of artificial intelligence and chatbots without triggering blackouts and sending utility bills soaring.

To finance that effort, Musk combined SpaceX with his AI business on Monday and plans a big initial public offering of the combined company.

“Space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale,” Musk wrote on SpaceX’s website Monday, adding about his solar ambitions, “It’s always sunny in space!”

But scientists and industry experts say even Musk — who outsmarted Detroit to turn Tesla into the world’s most valuable automaker — faces formidable technical, financial and environmental obstacles.

Here’s a look:

Feeling the heat

Capturing the sun’s energy from space to run chatbots and other AI tools would ease pressure on power grids and cut demand for sprawling computing warehouses that are consuming farms and forests and vast amounts of water to cool.

But space presents its own set of problems.

Data centers generate enormous heat. Space seems to offer a solution because it is cold. But it is also a vacuum, trapping heat inside objects in the same way that a Thermos keeps coffee hot using double walls with no air between them.

“An uncooled computer chip in space would overheat and melt much faster than one on Earth,” said Josep Jornet, a computer and electrical engineering professor at Northeastern University.

One fix is to build giant radiator panels that glow in infrared light to push the heat “out into the dark void,” says Jornet, noting that the technology has worked on a small scale, including on the International Space Station. But for Musk’s data centers, he says, it would require an array of “massive, fragile structures that have never been built before.”

Musk is undaunted.

“You can mark my words,” Musk said in a preview of a Cheeky Pint podcast episode airing Thursday. “In 36 months, but probably closer to 30 months, the most economically compelling place to put AI will be space. And then it will get ridiculously better to be in space.”

Floating debris

Then there is space junk.

A single malfunctioning satellite breaking down or losing orbit could trigger a cascade of collisions, potentially disrupting emergency communications, weather forecasting and other services.

FILE – A SpaceX logo is displayed on a building, May 26, 2020, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)

Musk noted in a recent regulatory filing that he has had only one “low-velocity debris generating event” in seven years running Starlink, his satellite communications network. Starlink has operated about 10,000 satellites — but that’s a fraction of the million or so he now plans to put in space.

“We could reach a tipping point where the chance of collision is going to be too great,” said University at Buffalo’s John Crassidis, a former NASA engineer. “And these objects are going fast — 17,500 miles per hour. There could be very violent collisions.”

No repair crews

Even without collisions, satellites fail, chips degrade, parts break.

Special GPU graphics chips used by AI companies, for instance, can become damaged and need to be replaced.

“On Earth, what you would do is send someone down to the data center,” said Baiju Bhatt, CEO of Aetherflux, a space-based solar energy company. “You replace the server, you replace the GPU, you’d do some surgery on that thing and you’d slide it back in.”

But no such repair crew exists in orbit, and those GPUs in space could get damaged due to their exposure to high-energy particles from the sun.

Bhatt says one workaround is to overprovision the satellite with extra chips to replace the ones that fail. But that’s an expensive proposition given they are likely to cost tens of thousands of dollars each, and current Starlink satellites only have a lifespan of about five years.

Competition — and leverage

Musk is not alone trying to solve these problems.

A company in Redmond, Washington, called Starcloud, launched a satellite in November carrying a single Nvidia-made AI computer chip to test out how it would fare in space. Google is exploring orbital data centers in a venture it calls Project Suncatcher. And Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin announced plans in January for a constellation of more than 5,000 satellites to start launching late next year, though its focus has been more on communications than AI.

Still, Musk has an edge: He’s got rockets.

Starcloud had to use one of his Falcon rockets to put its chip in space last year. Aetherflux plans to send a set of chips it calls a Galactic Brain to space on a SpaceX rocket later this year. And Google may also need to turn to Musk to get its first two planned prototype satellites off the ground by early next year.

Pierre Lionnet, a research director at the trade association Eurospace, says Musk routinely charges rivals far more than he charges himself —- as much as $20,000 per kilo of payload versus $2,000 internally.

He said Musk’s announcements this week signal that he plans to use that advantage to win this new space race.

“When he says we are going to put these data centers in space, it’s a way of telling the others we will keep these low launch costs for myself,” said Lionnet. “It’s a kind of powerplay.”

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Green Bay general manager Brian Gutekunst remains optimistic about the Packers’ long-term outlook as they head into the offseason after a gut-wrenching playoff loss to the Chicago Bears.

But he acknowledges they must do a much better job of finishing games.

Gutekunst spoke to reporters Wednesday for the first time since the Packers signed him as well as coach Matt LaFleur and executive vice president/director of football operations Russ Ball to multiyear contract extensions last week. The move by new Packers team president/CEO Ed Policy keeps the Packers’ football leadership triad intact despite a string of disappointing postseason defeats.

“In every season, there’s successes, and there’s failures and there’s disappointments,” Gutekunst said. “I was proud of our team in a lot of areas this year, but finishing games is certainly something that we got to concentrate on as we head into 2026.”

The Packers (9-8-1) dropped their final five games, including a 31-27 wild-card loss to the Bears in which they blew a 21-3 halftime lead and allowed 25 fourth-quarter points.

Green Bay hasn’t reached the Super Bowl since the 2010 team — assembled by GM Ted Thompson, coached by Mike McCarthy and quarterbacked by four-time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers — won it all. And the team has won only one playoff game since ending the 2020 season with an NFC championship game loss to Tom Brady and the eventual Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The final loss to the Bears came after the Packers went 9-3-1 to start the season and had a four-point lead entering the fourth quarter of a 34-26 loss to the Denver Broncos on Dec. 14.

The Packers had won four in a row at that point, but they watched No. 1 wide receiver Christian Watson leave the stadium in an ambulance after suffering a chest injury, then lost All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons to a torn ACL in his left knee later in the game.

While Watson returned the following week, Parsons was lost for the season, just as the team had lost emerging star tight end Tucker Kraft to an ACL tear in his right knee in a Nov. 2 loss to the Carolina Panthers.

“We were 9-3-1, and I didn’t think we had played particularly great football during the season. I thought we had moments, but I thought we had an opportunity to round into form there in the second half of the season,” Gutekunst said. “And obviously it didn’t work out that way.”

And now, the Packers face a challenging offseason full of potential change. Not only did they lose defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, who left to become the Miami Dolphins head coach, but they have a number of starters and key contributors from their 2022 draft class set to hit free agency in March.

Those players who could leave include left tackle Rasheed Walker, middle linebacker Quay Walker, center/guard Sean Rhyan and wide receiver Romeo Doubs. Prized backup quarterback Malik Willis, who played well in place of an injured Jordan Love, also is a free agent and could land a starting opportunity elsewhere.

“We have one goal here, and we never run from it. We’re here to win championships,” Gutekunst said. “And I think this team is capable of that.

“(The) 2026 (team) will be a different team, but the expectations won’t change. Again, I thought there’s some really good things during the (2025) season. There also were some major disappointments. But I really do like the guys we have in that locker room, the guys that are coming back, and we’ll continue to add to that. And we’re all excited to get at it.”

___

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL

By PHILIP MARCELO

NEW YORK (AP) — Nude photos. The names and faces of sexual abuse victims. Bank account and Social Security numbers in full view.

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All of these things appeared in the mountain of documents released publicly by the U.S. Justice Department as part of its effort to comply with a law requiring it to open its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein.

That law was intended to preserve important privacy protections for Epstein’s victims. Their names were supposed to have been blacked out in documents. Their faces and bodies were supposed to be obscured in photos.

Mistakes, though, have been rampant. A review by The Associated Press and other news organizations has found countless examples of sloppy, inconsistent or nonexistent redactions that have revealed sensitive private information.

A photo of one girl who was underage when she was hired to give sexualized massages to Epstein in Florida appeared in a chart of his alleged victims. Police reports with the names of several of his victims, including some who have never stepped forward to identify themselves publicly, were released with no redactions at all.

Despite the Justice Department’s efforts to fix the oversights, a photo of one topless woman remained on the site, with her face in full view, Wednesday evening.

Some accusers and their lawyers called this week for the Justice Department to take down the site and appoint an independent monitor to prevent further errors.

A judge scheduled a hearing for Wednesday in New York on the matter, then cancelled it after one of the lawyers for victims cited progress in resolving the issues. But that lawyer, Brittany Henderson, said they were still weighing “all potential avenues of recourse” to address the “permanent and irreparable” harm caused to some women.

“The failure here is not merely technical,” she said in a statement Wednesday. “It is a failure to safeguard human beings who were promised protection by our government. Until every document is properly redacted, that failure is ongoing.”

Annie Farmer, who said she was 16 when she was sexually assaulted by Epstein and his confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, said that while her name has previously been public, other details she’d rather be kept private, including her date of birth and phone number, were wrongly revealed in the documents.

“At this point, I’m feeling really most of all angry about the way that this unfolded,” she told NBC News. “The fact that it’s been done in such a beyond careless way, where people have been endangered because of it, is really horrifying.”

Trump administration defends its Epstein files redaction efforts

The Justice Department has blamed technical or human errors on the problems and said it has taken down many of the problematic materials and is working to republish properly redacted versions.

The task of reviewing and blacking out millions of pages of records took place in a compressed time frame. President Donald Trump signed the law requiring the disclosure of the documents on Nov. 19. That law gave the Justice Department just 30 days to release the files. It missed that deadline, in part because it said it needed more time to comply with privacy protections.

Hundreds of lawyers were pulled from their regular duties, including overseeing criminal cases, to try and complete the document review — to the point where at least one judge in New York complained that it was holding up other matters.

The database, which is posted on the Justice Department website, represents the largest release of files to date in the yearslong investigations into Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

Epstein files rife with missed or incomplete redactions

Associated Press reporters analyzing the documents have so far found multiple examples of names and other personal information of potential victims revealed.

They have also found many cases of overzealous redactions.

In one news clipping included in the file, the Justice Department apparently blacked out the name “Joseph” from a photo caption describing a nativity scene at a California church. “A nativity scene depicting Jesus, Mary and (REDACTED),” it said.

In an email released in the files, a dog’s name appeared to have been redacted: “I spent an hour walking (REDACTED) and then another hour bathing her blow drying her and brushing her. I hope she smells better!!” the email said.

The Justice Department has said staff tasked with preparing the files for release were instructed to limit redactions only to information related to victims and their families, though in many documents the names of many other people were blacked out, including lawyers and public figures.

Images remain uncensored

The Justice Department has said it intended to black out any portion of a photo showing nudity, and any photos of women that could potentially show a victim.

In some photos reviewed by The AP, those redactions did obscure women’s faces, but left plenty of their bare skin exposed in a way that would likely embarrass the women anyway. Photos showed identifiable women trying on outfits in clothing store dressing rooms or lounging in bathing suits.

One set of more than 100 images of a young woman were nearly all blacked out, save for the very last image, which revealed her entire face.

Associated Press reporters from around the world contributed to this report.

The AP is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.