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PANAMA CITY (AP) — Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino on Thursday said he hoped an ongoing legal battle with a Hong Kong firm over operations of Panama Canal ports would "not escalate," but that Panama's government would remain firm in its ruling against the company.

"Panama is a dignified country and will not allow itself to be threatened by any country on earth," Mulino said in his morning press briefing, responding to rebukes by the Chinese government.

Mulino's comment comes a week after Panama's Supreme Court ruled that a concession held by a subsidiary of Hong Kong's CK Hutchison Holdings in the Panama Canal was unconstitutional.

The court's decision was seen as a win for President Donald Trump, whoaims to block Chinese influenceover the strategic waterway. The push by the U.S. thrust the Central American nation into the center of a geopolitical tug-of-war.

China warned Panama would pay "a heavy price" if the Panamanian ruling was upheld.

Hong Kong's CK Hutchison Holdings said it strongly disagreed with last week's ruling, and on Wednesday its subsidiary announced it hadstarted arbitration proceedings against Panama.

Mulino said that until the court's ruling is executed — a period of time he did not specify — Panama's Maritime Authority would work with Panama Ports Company, the CK Hutchison subsidiary, to ensurecontinuing port operations.

Once the concession is formally ended, a local subsidiary of Danish logistics company A.P. Moller-Maersk will operate the ports in a transitional phase until a new concession can be bid and awarded, Mulino said.

The two Panama ports are part of a $23 billion sale of CK Hutchison's 43 global ports to a consortium of buyers including U.S. investment firmBlackRock. The deal, which was first announced last March, has been delayed by complications surrounding the Panama court case as well as elevated geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Analysts believe the Hong Kong conglomerate is likely to buy time with legal proceedings, such as the latest arbitration move, while looking for alternatives for the broader port deal.

For much of two decades, police, FBI agents and prosecutors investigated allegations thatJeffrey Epsteinsexually abused underage girls. Now, the Justice Department has released much of what they found to the public.

The millions of documents comprise the most detailed look yet at the inner workings of the multiple investigations into Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.

Those documents include some of the earliest police reports taken by police in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as recordings of some of Epstein's victims speaking on the phone and to investigators. And it includes internal Justice Department emails from as recently as a few months ago.

Here is a timeline of the Epstein investigations and the efforts to open up the government's files:

The investigation begins

March 2005: Palm Beach police begin investigating Epstein after the family of a 14-year-old girl reports she was molested at his mansion. Multiple underage girls, many of them high school students, would later tell police that Epstein hired them to give sexual massages.

May 2006: Police officials sign paperwork to charge Epstein with multiple counts of unlawful sex with a minor, but the county's top prosecutor, State Attorney Barry Krischer, takes the unusual step of sending the case to a grand jury.

July 2006: Epstein is arrested after a grand jury indicts him on a count of soliciting prostitution. The relatively minor charge upsets Palm Beach police leaders, whopublicly accuse Krischerof giving Epstein special treatment. The FBI begins an investigation.

2007: Federal prosecutors prepare an indictment, but for a year Epstein's lawyers engage in talks withthe U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, about a deal that would avoid federal prosecution. Epstein's lawyers decry his accusers as unreliable.

Secret deal leads to a light jail term

June 2008: Epstein pleads guilty to state charges: one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. He is sentenced to 18 months in jail.Under a secret arrangement, the U.S. attorney's office agrees not to prosecute Epstein for federal crimes. Epstein serves most of his sentence in a work-release program that allows him to leave jail during the day.

May 2009: One of Epstein's accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, files a lawsuit claiming Epstein and Maxwell arranged for her to have sexual encounters with "royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen" and others. The lawsuit doesn't name the men.

July 2009: Epstein is released from jail. For the next decade, Epstein's accusers wage a legal fight to get his federal non-prosecution agreement voided.

News media and lawsuits keep public interest high

March 2, 2011: The Daily Mail publishes an interview with Giuffre in which she describes traveling with Epstein to London at age 17 and spending a night dancing with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known asPrince Andrew. The story and a photo of the prince with his arm around Giuffre creates a crisis for the royal family. FBI agents subsequently interview Giuffre.

Dec. 30, 2014: Giuffre's lawyers file court papers claiming she had sexual encounters with Mountbatten-Windsor and other men, including "foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders." All those men deny the allegations.

November 2018: The Miami Heraldrevisits the handling of Epstein's casein a series of stories focusing partly on the role of Acosta — who by this point is President Donald Trump's labor secretary. The coverage intensifies public interest in Epstein.

New York prosecutors revive case

Dec. 6, 2018: FBI agents and the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan begin a new investigation into Epstein.

July 6, 2019: Epstein isarrested on new sex trafficking chargesbrought by the prosecutors in New York, who have concluded they aren't bound by the earlier non-prosecution agreement with Epstein in Florida. Days later, Acosta resigns as labor secretary.

Aug. 10, 2019:Epstein kills himself in his jail cellin New York.

July 2, 2020: Federal prosecutors in New Yorkcharge Maxwell with sex crimes, saying she helped recruit and abuse Epstein's victims.

Dec. 30, 2021: After a monthlong trial,a jury convicts Maxwellof sex trafficking and other crimes.

June 28, 2022: Maxwell is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

January, 2024: Public interest in the Epstein case surges again aftera judge makes more court records publicin a related lawsuit.

A new president and a fresh political crisis

Jan. 20, 2025: Trump, who was friends and neighbors with Epstein for years, becomes president again. During his 2024 campaign, he had suggested that he'd seek to open more government files on Epstein.

February 2025: Attorney General Pam Bondisuggests in a Fox News Channel interviewthat an Epstein "client list" is sitting on her desk. The Justice Department distributes binders marked "declassified" to far-right influencers, but much of the informationhad long been public.

April 25, 2025:Giuffre dies by suicide.

July 7, 2025: The Justice Department says Epsteindidn't maintain a "client list"and it won't make any more files related to his sex trafficking investigation public.

July 15, 2025: Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introducethe Epstein Files Transparency Act, which would force the Justice Department to make its investigative files on Epstein public.

July 17, 2025: The Wall Street Journal describes a sexually suggestive letter that thenewspaper says bore Trump's nameand was included in a 2003 album for Epstein's 50th birthday. Trump denies writing the letter andsues the newspaper.

July 24-25, 2025: In an effort to puta political crisis to rest, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviews Maxwell. She denies wrongdoing and says she never saw Trump involved in any sexually inappropriate activity. Afterward, she ismoved from a low-security prison in Floridato a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.

A prince loses his royal title

Oct. 21, 2025: Giuffre'sposthumous memoir is published. In it, she revisits her claims that Epstein and Maxwell sexually trafficked her to powerful men, including Mountbatten-Windsor.

Oct. 30, 2025:King Charles III strips Mountbatten-Windsorof his remaining titles, meaning he can no longer be referred to as "prince," and evicts him from his royal residence.

Nov. 12, 2025: A House committee releases a trove of email correspondence between Epstein and others, including Mountbatten-Windsor, Trump ally Steve Bannon, ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. In one 2019 email to a journalist, Epstein wrote that Trump"knew about the girls"but didn't explain what he meant by that.

Nov. 14, 2025: At Trump's urging, Bondi announces that the U.S. attorney in Manhattan willinvestigate Epstein's tiesto some of the Republican president's political foes, including former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat; Summers; and Hoffman, a prominent Democratic donor. None of those men has been accused of misconduct by Epstein's accusers.

Nov. 18, 2025: Congresspasses the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Trump signs it into law the next day.

Dec. 19, 2025: The Justice Department begins releasing records. The batch includes snapshots that Epstein kept in his home of various famous people he met over the years, including Trump and Clinton. After releasing just a sliver of the available documents, though, the Justice Department halts disclosures, saying it needs more time to review the records.

Jan. 30, 2025.: The Justice Department begins releasing what Blanche says are more than 3 million pages of documents, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. The files are posted to the department's website.

Follow the AP's coverage of Jeffrey Epstein athttps://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.

WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said that Washington and Moscow on Thursday agreed to ​reestablish high level military-to-military dialogue, following talks in ‌Abu Dhabi, a move which could signal a move towards normalizing ‌some ties between the United States and Russia.

The United States halted military-to-military communication with Moscow just before Russia invaded Ukraine. The conflict, which began in 2022, is the ⁠deadliest war in Europe ‌since World War Two and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since ‍the depths of the Cold War.

In a statement, the U.S. military said the aim of reestablishing the mechanism was to avoid ​miscalculation and escalation by either side.

"Maintaining dialogue between ‌militaries is an important factor in global stability and peace, which can only be achieved through strength, and provides a means for increased transparency and de-escalation," the statement added.

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The reestablishment comes after the commander of U.S. European ⁠Command, General Alexus Grynkewich, held ​talks with senior Russian and Ukrainian ​military officials in Abu Dhabi.

Even after high-level military talks were halted between the United States ‍and Russia, they ⁠maintained an emergency deconfliction line.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have directly spoken with ⁠each other on several occasions.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil ‌Stewart in Washington, Shubham Kalia in BengaluruEditing by ‌Ros Russell and Chizu Nomiyama )

Kelly Riparevealed she gave her three adult children the silent treatment over a disagreement about Instagram photos.

On the Tuesday (February 3) episode of herLet's Talk Off Camerapodcast, the long-time morning talk show host explained to her guest, Bronwyn Newport, that she recently got into an argument with her children, Michael (28), Lola (24), and Joaquin (22).

The incident happened over the holidays when Ripa wanted to post aslideshow of family photos on Instagram. What should have been a simple task turned into a huge ordeal when her kids refused to approve certain pictures for public posting.

"I've got to tell you, I tried to post a family carousel on Instagram on Christmas," Ripa said, perPeople. "I stopped talking to my kids for about four hours on Christmas because of the fighting and the arguing over, 'You can't use that picture of me. Well, you can't use that picture of me.'"

She added, "I was like, 'Guys, it's just a picture of us at church. It's not that deep. We're just in front of the Christmas tree at church.'"

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Ripa, who shares her three children with her husband andLive with Kelly and Markco-hostMark Consuelos,has previously aired her frustrations about wrangling her kids for family photos.

In December, Ripa and Consuelos toldPeoplethat they decided to cut their kids out of their 2025 Christmas card. "We're tired of getting all the photos approved by our kids every year," Consuelos told the outlet. "They're out."

"We've cut them out," Ripa confirmed before revealing that her children were not happy about it. "They complained that they're not in the Christmas card this year. They feel very slighted, and [said] 'How could you?'"

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However, Ripa stood by the decision, adding, "I said, 'I'm tired of waiting around for you to approve a picture. I've got to move."

Instead, Ripa and Consuelos took their Christmas card snap with the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. "Mark just has a look on his face that is like… he's so excited and happy," Ripa said of the pic. "He's the happiest I've ever seen him in a Christmas card."

Another year, when the kids were being uncooperative, Ripa and Consuelos posed for a Christmas card photo with the latter's TV family from the showRiverdale.

As for future Christmas cards, Ripa said the dream is to take a snap with the Radio City Rockettes.

"Every year I'm like, 'We gotta get a picture with the Rockettes' but we do the show so late and I gotta get my Christmas card to the printer early," she explained. "So maybe we'll do a picture this year for next year's Christmas card."

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Catherine O'Hara in Los Angeles in 1986. Credit - Bonnie Schiffman—Getty Images

Two years ago,Oscar night. Backstage.Catherine O'Haraand I have mere minutes before we walk out to present, and we're riffing on how to make a funny entrance.

She says, "How 'bout when they introduce us, you go out real fast without waiting for me, and I'll go—'Hey, wait!'"

"Yeah. I like it. Let's do that," I say.

Ladies and gentlemen, here to present...

We enter. Do the bit. Crickets—mostly.

To this day, I replay it in my head, feeling like I let her down. Did I not sell it enough? Was I too subtle? Too real? I literally re-do the walk in my mind, trying to make it work.

With almost anyone else, I'd have forgotten it within seconds. But with her? It wasn't about the joke landing. It was because I liked her so damn much. To work comedically with Catherine, as I was lucky to get to do not just at the awards show but on twoBeetlejuicemoviesand projects likeThe PaperandGame 6across nearly 40 years, was like breathing rarefied air. And between takes, it was the greatest hang on set. The only thing better was the hang off set—in real life, as I call it.

When she talked to you, she talkedwithyou. When you told her a story, she looked right at you and was all in. A twinkle, a light, a glow—I don't know what the hell it was.

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To make her laugh was such a joy.

We had made tentative plans to get together in January. She and her husband Bo were going to come over to the house for dinner. I'm still kind of waiting.

Since herunthinkable passing at 71 on Jan. 30, I mostly managed to avoid any clips of her on my phone or TV, but I got blindsided by one that popped up—couldn't avoid it. I watched. I felt sad. I turned off the light and closed my eyes to sleep.

About four minutes later, I woke myself up to the sound of laughing. It was me.

I smiled and fell asleep.

To have a woman as your friend is a great thing. To have a brilliantly funny woman as your friend is special. To have Catherine O'Hara as your friend is a blessing.

Among so many great comedians, past and present, Catherine stood out. Comedically? Gold. As a person? Platinum.

I'll have dinner with Bo. You have laughs with John Candy.

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