RIP

Famed LA cougar P-22 euthanized following health problems

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This Nov. 2014, file photo provided by the U.S. National Park Service shows a mountain lion known as P-22, photographed in the Griffith Park area near downtown Los Angeles. P-22, the celebrated mountain lion that took up residence in the middle of Los Angeles and became a symbol of urban pressures on wildlife, was euthanized after dangerous changes in his behavior led to examinations that revealed poor health and an injury likely caused by a car. (U.S. National Park Service, via AP, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — P-22, the celebrated mountain lion that took up residence in the middle of Los Angeles and became a symbol of urban pressures on wildlife, was euthanized Saturday after dangerous changes in his behavior led to examinations that revealed worsening health and injuries likely caused by a car.

Officials with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said the decision to euthanize the beloved big cat was made after veterinarians determined it had a skull fracture and chronic illnesses including a skin infection and diseases of the kidneys and liver.

“His prognosis was deemed poor,” said the agency’s director, Chuck Bonham, who fought back tears during a news conference announcing the cougar’s death. “This really hurts ... it’s been an incredibly difficult several days.”

The animal became the face of the campaign to build a wildlife crossing over a Los Angeles-area freeway to give mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, deer and other animals a safe path between the nearby Santa Monica Mountains and wildlands to the north.

Seth Riley, wildlife branch chief with the National Park Service, called P-22 “an ambassador for his species,” with the bridge a symbol of his lasting legacy.

State and federal wildlife officials announced earlier this month that they were concerned that P-22 “may be exhibiting signs of distress” due in part to aging, noting the animal needed to be studied to determine what steps to take.

The mountain lion was captured in a residential backyard in LA’s trendy Los Feliz neighborhood on Dec. 12, a month after killing a Chihuahua on a dogwalker’s leash. An anonymous report that indicated P-22 may have been struck by a vehicle was confirmed by a scan that revealed injuries to his head and torso, wildlife officials said.

State authorities determined that the only likely options were euthanasia or confinement in an animal sanctuary — a difficult prospect for a wild lion.

P-22 was believed to be 12 years old, longer-lived than most wild male mountain lions.

His name was his number in a National Park Service study of the challenges the wide-roaming big cats face in habitat fragmented by urban sprawl and hemmed in by massive freeways that are not only dangerous to cross but are also barriers to the local population’s genetic diversity.

The cougar was regularly recorded on security cameras strolling through residential areas near his home in Griffith Park, an oasis of hiking trails and picnic areas in the middle of the city.

P-22 was born in the western Santa Monica Mountains, and he was partly famous for apparently crossing two heavily traveled freeways on his trek east to the 4,200-acre (1,700-hectare) park in the urbanized eastern end of the mountain range.

“P-22’s survival on an island of wilderness in the heart of Los Angeles captivated people around the world and revitalized efforts to protect our diverse native species and ecosystems,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement Saturday.

Ground was broken this year on the wildlife crossing, which will stretch 200 feet (61 meters) over U.S. 101. Construction is expected to be completed by early 2025.

P-22 was outfitted with a tracking collar in 2012. A year later his celebrity was solidified when he appeared in a National Geographic feature with an iconic photo of the big cat on an LA hillside with the Hollywood sign in the background.

In 2017, the cougar became the star of a permanent exhibit at the Natural History Museum called “The Story of P-22, LA’s Most Famous Feline” that documents the lion’s life and times in Southern California. The exhibit will be upgraded next year to pay tribute to the animal’s legacy, officials said Saturday.

“Even in his death, P-22 continues to inspire LA to embrace urban wildlife conservation and the nature that surrounds us,” said Miguel Ordeñana, the museum’s Senior Manager of Community Science.

P-22 usually hunted deer and coyotes, but in November the National Park Service confirmed that the cougar had attacked and killed a Chihuahua mix that was being walked in the narrow streets of the Hollywood Hills.

The cougar also is suspected of attacking another Chihuahua in the Silver Lake neighborhood this month.

Beth Pratt, California Regional Executive Director of the National Wildlife Federation, said she hopes P-22′s life and death will inspire the construction of more wildlife crossings in California and across the nation. The nonprofit was a major advocate for the LA-area bridge.

“He changed the way we look at LA. And his influencer status extended around the world, as he inspired millions of people to see wildlife as their neighbors,” Pratt said.

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Associated Press reporter John Antczak contributed.

Shoppers, workers clash over post-pandemic expectations

By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO

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File - An employee stocks shelves in the toy section of a Walmart in Secaucus, N.J., Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022. More than two and a half years into the pandemic, many businesses haven't been able to resume the same hours of operations or services as they continue to grapple with worker shortages. 

(AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Before the pandemic, Cheryl Woodard used to take her daughter and her friends to eat at a local IHOP in Laurel, Maryland after their dance practice. But now they hardly go there anymore because it closes too early.

“It is a little frustrating because it’s not as convenient as it used to be,” said Woodard, 54, who also does most of her shopping online these days instead of in person because of stores limiting their hours.

Before the pandemic, consumers had gotten accustomed to instant gratification: packages and groceries delivered to their doorstep in less than an hour, stores that stayed open around the clock to serve their every need.

But more than two and a half years later in a world yearning for normalcy, many workers are fed up and don’t want to go back to the way things were. They are demanding better schedules, and sometimes even quitting their jobs altogether.

As a consequence, many businesses still haven’t been able to resume the same hours of operations or services as they continue to grapple with labor shortages. Others have made changes in the name of efficiency. For instance, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer and private employer, announced this past summer it doesn’t have any plans for its supercenters to return to its pre-pandemic 24-hour daily operations.

IHOP says a vast majority of its locations have returned to their pre-pandemic hours and some have even expanded them. But others, like the Laurel location that Woodward used to frequent, have indeed cut back.

The changes are creating a disconnect between customers who want to shop and dine like they used to during pre-pandemic times and exhausted employees who no longer want to work those long hours — a push-pull that is only being heightened during the busy holiday shopping season.

“Nobody is winning,” said Sadie Cherney, a franchise owner with three resale Clothes Mentor boutiques in South Carolina. “It is so demoralizing to see that you are falling short on both ends.”

Across all industries, the average number of hours worked per week per worker totaled 34.4 hours in November, unchanged from February 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But for the retail industry, it slipped 1.6% to 30.2 hours per week during the same period. Hours worked at restaurants were down by similar amount in October, according to the most recent data.

Meanwhile, the National Restaurant Association’s most recent monthly survey of 4,200 restaurant operators conducted in early August found that 60% of restaurants reduced hours of operation on the days they were open, while 38% closed on the days they would normally be open compared to right before the pandemic. And a report published by food and beverage research firm Dataessential showed the average U.S. restaurant as of October was open around six fewer hours per week than in 2019 — a 7.5% decline.

Cherney noted her stores returned to pre-pandemic hours last year but with the worsening labor shortages and higher labor costs, she has struggled to keep those same hours this year.

Her store in Columbia is open one hour later, but she had to offer wage increases to her workers. For her two other locations in Greenville and Spartanburg, hours have been reduced for personal shopping appointments throughout the week, and no longer accept second-hand clothing from shoppers on Sundays.

Cherney noted customers often complain about long waits to process their second-hand offerings, while her staff is overextended because they’re working 20% more than what they would like. The end result: Cash flow and profitability have both taken a hit.

Mani Bhushan, owner of Taco Ocho, a taco restaurant with four locations in the Dallas area, still struggles to hire cooks at his McKinney location, which opened in July 2021. He said many workers can’t afford to live in this upscale suburb and have to travel from elsewhere. Several times a week he’s had to close the location early — something he has never had to do in the 40 years he has worked in the business.

Even when Bhushan is able to keep his normal hours of operation, he still has to cut off online orders earlier in the day and the service is not up to par with his other locations.

“I am a perfectionist,” he said. ”I am not happy. But I can’t fix it right now.”

The worker shortages should remain acute into next year even as several big tech companies have reduced staff or have frozen corporate hiring. The economy added 263,000 jobs while the unemployment rate remained at 3.7% in November, still near a 53-year low, according to the Labor Department. And while U.S. job openings dropped in October from September, the number ticked up 3% in retail.

For mall operator Taubman Centers, which manages or leases 24 premier centers in the U.S. and Asia, many stores are opening later than its centers to save on employee costs, according to Bill Taubman, president and chief operating officer. However, he said that causes frustration among customers who go to the mall thinking the store where they want to shop will be open.

Vicky Thai, a 27-year-old studying to be a physician’s assistant in West Hartford, Connecticut, said she’s often frustrated over the waits to get served at restaurants and stores. She recalled a recent restaurant experience where it took a long time just to get some water; at a local clothing store, she spent 30 minutes in line to buy an item because of staffing shortages.

But for every frustrated customer, there is a frustrated worker. Artavia Milliam, 39, of Brooklyn, New York, is a visual merchandiser at H&M in Times Square. She said she spends more of her time helping out on the sales floor than updating the mannequins because of the shortage of staff.

“It can get overwhelming,” she said. “Everyday, I encounter someone who is rude.”

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Associated Press Business Writer Haleluya Hadero in New York contributed to this report.

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Follow Anne D’Innocenzio: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio

New abnormal: Climate disaster damage ‘down’ to $268 billion

By SETH BORENSTEIN

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 Homes are surrounded by floodwaters in Sohbat Pur city, a district of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, Aug. 30, 2022. This past year has seen a horrific flood that submerged one-third of Pakistan, one of the three costliest U.S. hurricanes on record, devastating droughts in Europe and China, a drought-triggered famine in Africa and deadly heat waves all over. (AP Photo/Zahid Hussain, File)

This past year has seen a horrific flood that submerged one-third of Pakistan, one of the three costliest U.S. hurricanes on record, devastating droughts in Europe and China, a drought-triggered famine in Africa and deadly heat waves all over.

Yet this wasn’t climate change at its worst.

With all that death and destruction in 2022, climate-related disaster damages are down from 2021, according to insurance and catastrophe giant Swiss Re. That’s the state of climate change in the 2020s that $268 billion in global disaster costs is a 12% drop from the previous year, where damage passed $300 billion.

The number of U.S. weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage is only at 15 through October and will likely end the year with 16 or 17, down from 22 and 20 in the last two years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But because of Hurricane Ian, overall damage amounts are probably going to end up in the top three in American history.

Weather disasters, many but not all of them turbocharged by human-caused climate change, are happening so frequently that this year’s onslaught, which 20 years ago would have smashed records by far, now in some financial measures seems a bit of a break from recent years.

Welcome to the new abnormal.

“We’ve almost gotten used to extremes. And this year compared to many years in the past would be considered a pretty intense year, but compared to maybe the most extreme years, like a 2017, 2020 and 2021, it does look like ... a slight adjustment down,” said NOAA applied meteorologist and economist Adam Smith, who calculates the billion dollar disasters for the agency. “We’re just getting used to it but that’s not a good way to move into the future.”

A goose walks across a dried bed of Lake Velence in Velence, Hungary, 

Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Anna Szilagyi)

Wildfires in the United States weren’t as costly this year as the last couple years, but the Western drought was more damaging than previous years, he said. America’s billion dollar disasters in 2022 seemed to hit every possible category except winter storms: hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, heat waves, hail storms and even a derecho.

When it comes to 2022’s financial damages globally and the United States, Ian, which walloped Florida, was the big dog, even though Pakistan’s flooding was more massive and deadly. In terms of just looking at dollars not people, Ian’s damages eclipsed the drought-triggered African famine that affected more people. It also overshadowed river levels in China and Europe that dropped to levels so low it caused power and industrial problems and the heat waves in Europe,India and North America that were deadly and record-breaking.

Smith said NOAA hasn’t finished calculating the damages from Ian yet, but there’s a good chance it will have more than $100 billion in damage, pushing past 2012’s Superstorm Sandy that swamped New York and New Jersey, ranking only behind 2005’s Katrina and 2017’s Harvey for damaging hurricanes.

In the 1980s, the United States would average a billion-dollar weather disaster every 82 days. Now it’s every 18 days, Smith said. That’s not inflation because damages are adjusted to factor that out, he said. It’s nastier weather and more development, people and buildings in harm’s way, he said.

Globally “if you zoom in the last six years, 2017 to 2022, this has been particularly bad” especially compared to the five years before, said Martin Bertogg, Swiss Re’s head of catastrophic peril.

“It felt like a regime change, some people called it a new normal,” Bertogg said. But he thinks it was more getting back, after a brief respite, to a long-term trend of disaster costs steadily rising 5% to 7% a year.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said the increasing number of disasters makes the case for reducing emissions.

“You’re spending money now because we’re not doing the things we ought to be doing,” Kerry said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’ll be spending a hell of a lot more under much more stringent circumstances than we are today if we don’t move faster.”

Cracked earth is visible at a tributary leading into the dried arid stretch of the Poyang Lake in north-central China's Jiangxi province on Oct. 31, 2022.

(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Not every year has to be a whopper. The U.S. got a break in 2019 when there were “only” 14 billion-dollar disasters, NOAA’s Smith said.

“A growing body of evidence indicates that climate change is increasing the variability as well as the average” of weather disasters, said Stanford University environment director Chris Field, who led a United Nations 2012 report on extreme weather. “What this means is that in some years we get hit harder than others. In other years we get hit like never before.”

“The important thing is that the trend in disasters is increasing,” Field said. “And it will continue to increase until we halt the warming.”

Looking at damages, mostly insured losses, can give a skewed picture because how much a disaster cost depends greatly on how wealthy the area that the disaster hit, less so than the scale of the disaster itself, said Debarati Guha-Sapir, who runs the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

A Somali woman and child wait to be given a spot to settle at a camp for displaced people amid a drought on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia on Sept. 20, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

And even more important, these figures are about dollars, not people, and that distorts the true picture, said Guha-Sapir and University of Washington health and climate professor Kristie Ebi.

“What is insured is a small fraction of total infrastructure and the people killed in Pakistan,” which lowers the damage amount despite 1,700 people killed, Ebi said.

The flood in Pakistan, which submerged one-third of a country that’s bigger than Texas, was not the only thing that hit that developing country.

“Pakistan just couldn’t catch a break this year. A January snowstorm killed 23 followed by a lethal spring heatwave, then devastating floods from June-October took over 1,700 lives and untold livelihoods,” said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell climate Research Center in Cape Cod. “Many other surprising, less publicized, and alarming events wreaked havoc on local communities, such as the sudden collapse of the lucrative snow crab fishery in the Bering Sea, rapid demise of European glaciers, inundation of several coastal villages in Alaska by ex- tropical cyclone Merbok.”

“Additional heat in the atmosphere is sucking moisture out of soils, exacerbating drought and heatwaves,” Francis said. “Evaporation from oceans and land also increases the amount of moisture in the air, which provides more fuel for storms and heavier downpours.”

Swiss Re’s Bertogg said although climate change is at work he estimates two-thirds, perhaps more, of the rise in damages is due to more people and things in harm’s way.

The bridge leading from Fort Myers to Pine Island, Fla., is seen heavily damaged in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian on Pine Island, Fla., Oct. 1, 2022.

 (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Urbanization across the globe puts more people in dense environments, which increases damage when disaster hits, Bertogg said. Then add urban sprawl that takes those cities and makes them geographically bigger and thus more vulnerable, he said. A good example of that is how wildfires started damaging more homes in California as more homes got built in rural areas, he said.

Plus more construction is being built on the coast and along waterways making them more vulnerable to storms and flooding, with flooding as “the biggest threat for the global economy,” Bertogg said.

But NOAA’s Smith keeps searching for a little silver lining in storm clouds: “I just hope the trends get a little bit less profound and less stressful for society. We all need a break.”

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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

UK cost-of-living woes stir push for more free school meals

By SYLVIA HUI

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A general view of pupils during lunch hour at Hillstone Primary School, in Birmingham, England, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2022. For some children in low-income areas in England, a school lunch may be the only nutritious hot meal they get in a day. School lunches are given for free to all younger children in England and to some of the poorest families. But the Food Foundation charity estimates that there are 800,000 children in England living in poverty who are not eligible for the free meals. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) — As the school bell rings, dozens of children begin filing into the canteen at Hillstone Primary School. The day’s offering, a roast dinner, is a popular one, and many are eager to tuck into their plates of turkey slices, roasted potatoes, broccoli and gravy.

For some children in this area of suburban Birmingham, central England, where many families are low income, it may be the only nutritious hot meal in a day.

Some students eating sandwiches from their lunchboxes instead say they get one hot lunch a week, but they would like more. “My mum says it costs a bit more,” one girl said last week.

Free school lunches are provided for all 4- to 7-year-olds in England, but most parents of older children have to pay about 2.20 pounds ($2.70) a day for their child to have a cooked meal. That may sound like a small amount, but charities and teachers say it’s becoming increasingly unaffordable for hundreds of thousands of families struggling to cope with the United Kingdom’s worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.

Whether Britain’s government should spend to feed more schoolchildren is a hot-button issue as more families fall into poverty and cannot afford basics after paying their skyrocketing energy and food bills. The government said it will keep reviewing meal eligibility and pointed to other relief given to needy families.

Inflation in the U.K. has hit a 41-year high of 11.1%, driven in large part by gas and electricity costs, which have almost doubled from last winter amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. Prices for staples like milk, butter and pasta also have shot up by some 30%.

To qualify for free school lunches, England’s households have to receive government benefits and earn less than 7,400 pounds ($9,021) a year. That’s below the threshold in parts of the U.S., Europe and even elsewhere in the U.K.

The Food Foundation, a charity leading a campaign to extend the free school lunch program, argues the income level is too low. It estimates that 800,000 children in England are living in poverty but not eligible for free meals.

“It’s those children who we are really worried right now during the cost-of-living crisis, because those families are having to make really tough choices about where to spend their money,” said Anna Taylor, the charity’s executive director.

To save cash, many parents don’t pay for a school meal and pack their kids a lunch, which often isn’t as nutritious, Taylor said.

“We’ve been hearing from teachers that children are going to school with empty lunchboxes or with stuff that they’re very ashamed to show to their friends,” she added.

During the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Food Foundation and soccer star Marcus Rashford persuaded Britain’s government to provide free meals to children in poverty over the school holidays. Rashford, who spoke of his mother struggling to put food on the table, helped sway the government to change its policies that allowed 1.3 million children to claim free meals.

Taylor said many Britons are now even worse off because some never recovered from pandemic job losses before being hit with massively higher bills. Monthly surveys conducted by her charity suggested that the number of families saying they have had to skip or have smaller meals because they couldn’t afford food has doubled over the course of January to October.

“It’s unprecedented levels of food insecurity right now,” she said.

The Department of Education said the government understands the “pressures” many households face and that it is already giving cost-of-living subsidies to millions of the poorest families, supporting “more children and young people than ever before.” It added that officials will “keep all free school meal eligibility under review.”

At Hillstone Primary, 51% of children qualify for free lunches, and headteacher Jason King says many of the others also need financial help. Some parents even approached the school for food.

“When I started here 27 years ago, there were no food banks in the area. It wasn’t heard of,” King said. The school recently put together food parcels for a parent who said he had no money left for food. “They’ve got no food at home. They come to us — we’re not going to turn them away.”

Louise Glew, a parent who volunteers at the school, said she was getting by but knew plenty of others struggling. She said she didn’t understand why the government couldn’t find the money to extend free school meals to all elementary students.

“Parents are prideful, they don’t want to go, ‘I need help.’ But if the dinner was free for all (schoolchildren) they wouldn’t need to,” Glew said. “They would get a warm meal every day, and the parent wouldn’t have to panic, thinking, ‘Oh, have they had something warm? Have they eaten enough?’”

The government said over one-third of students in England receive free school meals, including all 4- to 7-year-olds and about 1.9 million older children who qualify based on family income.

England lags other parts of the U.K. The Welsh government, for example, says it will provide free school lunches for all elementary school students by 2024.

Some European countries, like Sweden and Finland, provide free lunches almost entirely through school life. Others, like France and Germany, have varied policies including subsidies that depend on parents’ income.

In the U.S., the states decide. A federal law made meals free for all schoolchildren during the pandemic, but those benefits expired before this school year. The experience has sparked local efforts to make universal free school lunch permanent, with California and Maine passing bills last year.

In the U.K., Taylor acknowledged that the government has little spare cash for public spending but argued that the cost — an estimated 477 million pounds a year — is a long-term investment needed now more than ever.

“This is not a sort of a ‘nice to have,’” she said. “Children will wear the effects of these decisions in their bodies and in their achievements in life.”

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AP reporter Ashraf Khalil contributed from Washington.

EXPLAINER: What’s at stake in Turkey’s new Syria escalation

By BASSEM MROUE and SUZAN FRASER

American soldiers patrol near prison that was attacked on Jan. 20 by the Islamic State militants in Hassakeh, Syria, Feb. 8, 2022. U.S. forces have stopped joint military patrols in northern Syria to counter Islamic State extremists, as Turkish threats of a ground invasion stymie those missions with Kurdish forces. 

(AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad, File)


BEIRUT (AP) — After weeks of deadly Turkish airstrikes in northern Syria, Kurdish forces and international players are trying to gauge whether Ankara’s threats of a ground invasion are serious.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly warned of a new land incursion to drive Kurdish groups away from the Turkish-Syrian border, following a deadly Nov. 13 bombing in Istanbul. Turkish authorities blamed the attack on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and on the Syria-based People’s Protection Units, or YPG. Both have denied involvement.

On Nov. 20, Ankara launched a barrage of airstrikes, killing dozens, including civilians as well as Kurdish fighters and Syrian government troops. Human Rights Watch has warned that the strikes are exacerbating a humanitarian crisis by disrupting power, fuel and aid.

In the most recent development, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin flew to Turkey this week for talks on the situation in Syria.

Here’s a look at what various foreign powers and groups embroiled in the Syria conflict stand to gain or lose:

WHAT TURKEY WANTS

Turkey sees the Kurdish forces along its border with Syria as a threat and has launched three major military incursions since 2016, taking control of large swaths of territory.

Erdogan hopes to relocate many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to northern Syria and has begun building housing units there. The plan could address growing anti-refugee sentiment in Turkey and bolster Erdogan’s support ahead of next year’s elections, while diluting historically Kurdish-majority areas by resettling non-Kurdish Syrian refugees there.

Erdogan has also touted plans to create a 30-kilometer (19-mile) security corridor in areas currently under Kurdish control. A planned Turkish invasion earlier this year was halted amid opposition by the U.S. and Russia.

THE KURDISH RESPONSE

Kurdish groups are pressing the U.S. and Russia, both of which have military posts in northern Syria, to once again prevent Turkey from carrying out its threats.

The Kurds are worried that West will stand aside this time to appease Ankara in exchange for approval of Sweden and Finland joining NATO.

“This silence toward Turkey’s brutality will encourage Turkey to carry out a ground operation,” said Badran Jia Kurd, deputy co-chair of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.

Kurdish groups, which fought against the Islamic State group alongside a U.S.-led coalition and now guard thousands of captured IS fighters and family members, warn that a Turkish escalation would threaten efforts to stamp out the extremist group.

In recent weeks, officials from the U.S. and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said they had stopped or scaled back joint patrols against IS because of the airstrikes, although patrols have since resumed.

THE ROLE OF THE SYRIAN INSURGENTS

The so-called Syrian National Army, a coalition of Turkey-backed Syrian opposition groups with tens of thousands of fighters, would likely provide foot soldiers for any future ground offensive. In previous incursions, including the 2018 offensive on the town of Afrin, the SNA was accused of committing atrocities against Kurds and displacing tens of thousands from their homes.

Several officials from the SNA did not respond to calls and text messages by The Associated Press. One official who answered said they were ordered by Turkish authorities not to speak about plans for a new incursion.

THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT’S STANCE?

The Syrian government has opposed past Turkish incursions but also sees the SDF as a secessionist force and a Trojan horse for the U.S., which has imposed paralyzing sanctions on the government of Bashar Assad.

Damascus and Ankara have recently been moving to improve relations after 11 years of tension triggered by Turkey’s backing of opposition fighters in Syria’s civil war. Damascus has kept relatively quiet about the killing of Syrian soldiers in the recent Turkish strikes.

WILL THE UNITED STATES GET INVOLVED?

The United States maintains a small military presence in northern Syria, where its strong backing of the SDF has infuriated Turkey.

However, the U.S. at first said little publicly about the Turkish airstrikes, speaking more forcefully only after they hit dangerously close to U.S. troops and led to anti-IS patrols being temporarily halted. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin last week voiced “strong opposition” to a new offensive.

Asked if the U.S. had any assurances for Kurds worried that the U.S. might abandon them to coax a NATO deal out of Turkey, a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said only that there had been no changes to U.S. policy in the region.

WILL RUSSIA BROKER A DEAL?

Russia is the Syrian government’s closest ally. Its involvement in Syria’s conflict helped turn the tide in favor of Assad.

Although Turkey and Russia support rival sides in the conflict, the two have coordinated closely in Syria’s north. In recent months, Russia has pushed for a reconciliation between Damascus and Ankara.

Moscow has voiced concerns over Turkey’s recent military actions in northern Syria and has attempted to broker a deal. According to Lebanon-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, the chief of Russian forces in Syria, Lt. Gen. Alexander Chaiko, recently suggested to SDF commander Mazloum Abdi that Syrian government forces should deploy in a security strip along the border with Turkey to avoid a Turkish incursion.

IRAN’S INTERESTS

Iran, a key ally of the Assad government, strongly opposed Turkish plans for a land offensive earlier this year but hasn’t commented publicly on the possible new incursion.

Tehran also has a sizable Kurdish minority and has battled a low-level separatist insurgency for decades. Iran has seen sustained protests and a deadly crackdown by security forces since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman, in the custody of the country’s morality police in mid- September.

Iran has blamed much of the unrest on Kurdish opposition groups exiled in neighboring Iraq, charges those groups deny, and has carried out strikes against them. Another Turkish incursion into Syria could provide a model for a wider response if the unrest in Iran’s Kurdistan continues to escalate.

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Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Associated Press writers Andrew Wilks in Istanbul and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed.

Fight to curb food waste increasingly turns to science

By DEE-ANN DURBIN

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Apples are washed and inspected at the BelleHarvest packing and storage facility, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022 in Belding, Mich. BelleHarvest is the second largest packing and storage facility for apples in the state of Michigan. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Hate mealy apples and soggy french fries? Science can help.

Restaurants, grocers, farmers and food companies are increasingly turning to chemistry and physics to tackle the problem of food waste.

Some are testing spray-on peels or chemically enhanced sachets that can slow the ripening process in fruit. Others are developing digital sensors that can tell — more precisely than a label — when meat is safe to consume. And packets affixed to the top of a takeout box use thermodynamics to keep fries crispy.

Experts say growing awareness of food waste and its incredible cost — both in dollars and in environmental impact — has led to an uptick in efforts to mitigate it. U.S. food waste startups raised $4.8 billion in 2021, 30% more than they raised in 2020, according to ReFed, a group that studies food waste.

“This has suddenly become a big interest,” said Elizabeth Mitchum, director of the Postharvest Technology Center at the University of California, Davis, who has worked in the field for three decades. “Even companies that have been around for a while are now talking about what they do through that lens.”

In 2019, around 35% of the 229 million tons of food available in the U.S. — worth around $418 billion — went unsold or uneaten, according to ReFed. Food waste is the largest category of material placed in municipal landfills, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which notes that rotting food releases methane, a problematic greenhouse gas.

ReFed estimates 500,000 pounds (225,000 kilograms) of food could be diverted from landfills annually with high-tech packaging.

Among the products in development are a sensor by Stockholm-based Innoscentia that can determine whether meat is safe depending on the buildup of microbes in its packaging. And Ryp Labs, based in the U.S. and Belgium, is working on a produce sticker that would release a vapor to slow ripening.

SavrPak was founded in 2020 by Bill Birgen, an aerospace engineer who was tired of the soggy food in his lunchbox. He developed a plant-based packet — made with food-safe materials approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — that can fit inside a takeout container and absorb condensation, helping keep the food inside hotter and crispier.

Nashville, Tennessee-based hot-chicken chain Hattie B’s was skeptical. But after testing SavrPaks using humidity sensors, it now uses the packs when it’s catering fried foods and is working with SavrPak to integrate the packs into regular takeout containers.

Brian Morris, Hattie B’s vice president of culinary learning and development, said each SavrPak costs the company less than $1 but ensures a better meal.

“When it comes to fried chicken, we kind of lose control from the point when it leaves our place,” Morris said. “We don’t want the experience to go down the drain.”

But cost can still be a barrier for some companies and consumers. Kroger, the nation’s largest grocery chain, ended its multiyear partnership with Goleta, California-based Apeel Sciences this year because it found consumers weren’t willing to pay more for produce brushed or sprayed with Apeel’s edible coating to keep moisture in and oxygen out, thus extending the time that produce stays fresh.

Apeel says treated avocados can last a few extra days, while citrus fruit lasts for several weeks. The coating is made of purified mono- and diglycerides, emulsifiers that are common food additives.

Kroger wouldn’t say how much more Apeel products cost. Apeel also wouldn’t reveal the average price premium for produce treated with its coating since it varies by food distributor and grocer. But Apeel says its research shows customers are willing to pay more for produce that lasts longer. Apeel also says it continues to talk to Kroger about other future technology.

There is another big hurdle to coming up with innovations to preserve food: Every food product has its own biological makeup and handling requirements.

“There is no one major change that can improve the situation,” said Randy Beaudry, a professor in the horticulture department at Michigan State University’s school of agriculture.

Beaudry said the complexity has caused some projects to fail. He remembers working with one large packaging company on a container designed to prevent fungus in tomatoes. For the science to work, the tomatoes had to be screened for size and then oriented stem-up in each container. Eventually the project was scrapped.

Beaudry said it’s also hard to sort out which technology works best, since startups don’t always share data or formulations with outside researchers.

Some companies find it better to rely on proven technology — but in new ways. Chicago-based Hazel Technologies, which was founded in 2015, sells 1-methylcyclopropene, or 1-MCP, a gas that has been used for decades to delay the ripening process in fruit. The compound — considered non-toxic by the EPA — is typically pumped into sealed storage rooms to inhibit the production of ethylene, a plant hormone.

But Hazel’s real breakthrough is a sachet the size of a sugar packet that can slowly release 1-MCP into a box of produce.

Mike Mazie, the facilities and storage manager at BelleHarvest, a large apple packing facility in Belding, Michigan, ordered around 3,000 sachets this year. He used them for surplus bins that couldn’t fit into the sealed rooms required for gas.

“If you can get another week out of a bushel of apples, why wouldn’t you?” he said. “It absolutely makes a difference.”

The science is promising but it’s only part of the solution, said Yvette Cabrera, the director of food waste for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Most food waste happens at the residential level, she said; lowering portion sizes, buying smaller quantities of food at a time or improving the accuracy of date labels could have even more impact than technology.

“Overall as a society, we don’t value food as it should be valued,” Cabrera said.

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AP National Writer and Visual Journalist Martha Irvine contributed from Belding, Michigan.

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This story has been corrected to show that food waste startups raised $4.8 billion in 2021, 30% more than they raised in 2020, not $300 billion in 2021, double the amount raised in 2020.

Oregon lawsuit spotlights destruction of Black neighborhoods

By ANDREW SELSKY

- In these photos provided by the Fouther Family Archives and Ariel Kane are Elizabeth Fouther-Branch and Bobby Fouther as children standing in front of their great-aunt’s home and in 2021 standing in the front of the parking lot where the house used to stand in Portland, Ore. The siblings are now among 26 Black people who either lived in the neighborhood or who are descendants of former residents who are suing Portland, the city's economic and urban development agency and Legacy Emanuel Hospital for the "racist" destruction of the homes and forced displacement. 

(Della Williams/Fouther Family Archives and Ariel Kane via AP)

A home that was a fixture of Bobby Fouther’s childhood is now a parking lot, the two-story, shingle-sided house having been demolished in the 1970s along with many other properties in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Portland, Oregon.

“Growing up there was just all about love,” Fouther said.

Fouther and his sister, Elizabeth Fouther-Branch, are now among 26 Black people who either lived in the neighborhood or are descendants of former residents and are suing Portland, the city’s economic and urban development agency and Legacy Emanuel Hospital, accusing them of the “racist” destruction of the homes and forced displacement.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in Portland, shines a light on how urban improvement projects and construction of the nation’s highways often came at the cost of neighborhoods that aren’t predominantly white.

“In many cases, city and state planners purposely built through Black neighborhoods to clear so-called slums and blighted areas,” according to a 2020 report by Pew Charitable Trusts, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit public policy group.

People who were part of racial minorities were often obligated to live in those neighborhoods because of “redlining” — banks discriminating against home loan applicants based on race — and even due to laws that maintained all-white neighborhoods.

In 1934, Fouther’s great-aunt and her husband bought a house, which he and his sister visited almost daily, in the Albina neighborhood of Portland, according to the lawsuit.

But even after buying homes and building lives in Albina, residents were forced to move by so-called urban renewal and highway building.

Albina had already been partially destroyed and carved up in the 1950s and ’60s by the building of Interstate 5 and Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the original home of the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers. But then a hospital expansion was announced.

Between 1971 and 1973, the Portland Development Commission demolished an estimated 188 properties, 158 of which were residential and inhabited by 88 families and 83 individuals. A total of 32 business and four church or community organizations were also destroyed, according to the lawsuit. Of the forcibly displaced households, 74% were Black.

A first phase, in the 1950s and ’60s, involved city officials secretly agreeing to compensate the hospital for the full cost of the purchases and demolitions, the lawsuit said. The homeowners were intimidated by hospital representatives and told that if they didn’t leave, the city would take their homes. They were not fairly compensated and in some cases not compensated at all, according to the lawsuit.

“This case is about the intentional destruction of a thriving Black neighborhood in Central Albina under the pretense of facilitating a hospital expansion that never happened,” the lawsuit says, adding that the loss of homes “has meant the deprivation of inheritance, intergenerational wealth, community, and opportunity.”

Much of the land that used to be a thriving neighborhood, where Black families felt safe and had social and spiritual connections, became parking lots or stood vacant.

“I was taken out of my safe and loving community. I was moved into a neighborhood that saw me as a nuisance and to a school where I was one of three Black children,” said Connie Mack, one of the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit said the defendants are benefiting from “unjust enrichment” from “this horribly racist chapter from Portland’s past.”

Legacy Health, which owns Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying it is evaluating it. Prosper Portland, formerly the Portland Development Commission, also said it is evaluating the complaint and had no additional comment. City officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Albina is now called the Eliot neighborhood, which boasts trendy shops, cafes and eateries.

“Our neighborhood, in the heart of the former city of Albina, is a great place to live, work and play,” the Eliot Neighborhood Association proclaims on its website.

Many of the plaintiffs’ homes, if they had not been destroyed, would have been worth more than $500,000 today, the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory damages from defendants in amounts to be determined at trial.

Chevron a lead investor in carbon storage efforts

Chevron supports modular CCS technology under development by Canada's Svante.

Chevron said it was a lead investor in efforts to support the technology necessary to pull carbon dioxide from industrial polluters and send it off for other users.

 File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 16 (UPI) -- The clean energy arm of U.S. energy major Chevron said it was a lead investor in a fundraising effort targeting carbon sequestration efforts from Canadian abatement company Svante.

Chevron New Energies said it was the lead investor in a Svante-sponsored fundraising round, which drew in a total of $318 million to support carbon sequestration technology.

"This funding will support Svante's commercial-scale filter manufacturing facility in Vancouver, which is anticipated to produce enough filter modules to capture millions of tons of carbon dioxide per year across hundreds of large-scale carbon capture and storage facilities," Chevron announced.

This is the second announcement of its kind from Chevron New Energies this week. The company on Wednesday said it identified a location in Nevada to explore further opportunities for geothermal energy at a site that's already proved to have some potential.

RELATEDNew federal building standards seek to cut energy use and emissions

Less than 2% of the world's total energy comes from geothermal resources, though scientists suspect it could be a near-inexhaustible source of energy.

Using specialized adsorption materials, meanwhile, Svante is developing modular technology for carbon capture, storage and utilization (CCUS) to capture CO2 from industrial flue gas and concentrate that CO2 for industrial end users, such as the beverage industry.

"We are advancing a full value chain carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) business and believe Svante is poised to be a leader in enabling carbon capture solutions," said Chris Powers, a vice president of carbon programs at Chevron's clean energy arm. "Innovation is key to enabling these types of breakthrough technologies and lower carbon solutions, and we look forward to applying our experience and expertise to help drive this effort forward."

RELATED Enbridge, Oxy review CCS technology for U.S. Gulf Coast

Carbon capture technologies promise to scrub CO2 from the flumes and exhaust pipes of coal and gas plants. The captured carbon can be permanently buried underground or sold for other uses like making fertilizers or boosting oil extraction. High costs have prevented wide-scale adoption, however.

Korean firms team up to build autonomous outdoor robots

By Kim Yoon-kyoung & Kim Tae-gyu, UPI News Korea

KT AI robotics business division chief Lee Sang-ho (L) holds an agreement with Neubility CEO Lee Sang-min to cooperate in developing an outdoor autonomous robot in a signing ceremony held at a KT office in Seoul on Friday. Photo courtesy of KT

SEOUL, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- South Korea's telecom giant KT announced Friday it is partnering with a local robotics company, Neubility, to create autonomous mobile robots.

Under the agreement, KT will provide the know-how for the robotics platform and wireless network, while Neubility will contribute the software and hardware.

Founded in 2017, Neubility has succeeded in developing affordable robotics, such as the camera-based autonomous driving robots, the kind that can operate without expensive lidar sensors.

The Seoul-based startup has produced a self-driving delivery robot, named "Neubi," accumulating data and streamlining the autonomous navigation system along the way.

Autonomous mobile robots are expected to take over such tasks as last-mile delivery, urban cleaning services and even certain hospitality functions.

Delivery robots, in particular, are projected to be commercialized the fastest as demand increases for doorstep deliveries that do not require human drivers.

According to U.S. business tracker Allied Market Research, the global delivery robot market could grow from $3.53 billion in 2020 to $30.05 billion by 2030, registering an annual growth rate of 24.5%.

"It's a great opportunity for Neubility, the company with an advantage in autonomous driving technology and related data," KT's AI robotics business division head Lee Sang-ho said in a statement.

"The collaboration will allow us to create a new kind of robot that businesses need in daily outdoor settings," he said.

The share price of KT went down 0.95% Friday on the South Korean stock exchange. Neubility has yet to go public.

Space company Maxar plans to go private with $6.4 billion deal


Sirius XM's latest broadcasting satellite, SXM-7, is shown where it was built at Maxar Technologies' plant in Palo Alto, Calif. Maxar announced an agreement Friday to go private through a deal with Advent International.

 File Photo courtesy of Sirius XM/Maxar


Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Space company Maxar announced an agreement to go private on Friday in an acquisition led by private equity firm Advent International.

The deal gives Maxar a value of $6.4 billion. Advent will take a $3.1 billion stake in the space company, with British Columbia Investment Management Corporation making a $1 billion equity contribution.

"Today's announcement is an exceptional outcome for stockholders and is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team, the value Maxar has created and the reputation we have built in our industry," said Daniel Jablonsky, president and CEO of Maxar.

"Advent has a proven record of strengthening its portfolio companies and a desire to support Maxar in advancing our long-term strategic objectives. As a private company, we will have enhanced flexibility and additional resources to build on Maxar's strong foundation, further scale operations and capture the significant opportunities in a rapidly expanding market."

Maxar shares closed at $23.10 on Thursday. The agreement with Advent at $53 represents a nearly 130% increase.

"We have tremendous respect and admiration for Maxar, its industry-leading technology and the vital role it serves in supporting the national security of the United States and its allies around the world," said David Mussafer, chairman and managing partner of Advent

Maxar's agreement with Advent is a 60-day "go-shop period," which means the company has until Feb. 14 to consider other offers.