In 2010, Dreama Gentry met Geoffrey Canada, founder of Harlem Children’s Zone, a much-lauded nonprofit that supports youth from birth through college in a roughly 100-block area of central Harlem. The program was an inspiration for Gentry, who had launched a college-access program in rural eastern Kentucky about a decade earlier.

“We realized that college access actually starts at birth,” Gentry says. “It starts with the family, and it starts with the place.” She and her staff soon began to modify their approach.

A breakthrough came that year when Gentry’s group — today called Partners for Rural Impact, or PRI — received a Promise Neighborhood grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The federal effort helps communities design anti-poverty projects modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone’s “cradle-to-career” approach. PRI became one of the first organizations, and the first rural effort, to receive the grant.

Today, the organization helps leaders in rural towns and districts identify programming gaps and tap into comprehensive educational, medical, and social services — largely funded by federal grants. It measures community progress across indicators like kindergarten readiness, third-grade reading, eighth-grade math, and high school graduation rates. Many of those areas saw substantial improvement over the past decade, although the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted progress.

Now two funders — the Ballmer Group and Blue Meridian Partners — along with regional grantmakers and individual donors, are supporting PRI to adapt the model it honed in Appalachia for rural places in Texas, Missouri, and beyond.

“It quickly became clear to us that Dreama’s vision for this field and this work was much broader than what she was doing in Appalachia,” says Cecilia Gutierrez, a managing director at Blue Meridian Partners.

The grantmaker gave PRI $2 million in 2023 for its work in Kentucky. Now a second two-year grant of $5 million is helping the nonprofit assist other rural communities to develop partnerships among schools, local governments, health-care systems, and other sectors to improve the lives of students.

Rural areas tend to have fewer and less accessible institutional resources than suburban or urban places, says Jeff Edmondson, executive director of community impact at the Ballmer Group. For that reason, he says, the role of an organization that helps keep a diverse group of community leaders on track to meet common goals is particularly important “to ensure that they’re using very limited resources as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

This year, the Ballmer Group committed $12.5 million over five years to support PRI’s efforts to assist other regions in forging community partnerships that help improve the lives of students. That’s in addition to the $2.58 million the Ballmer Group has contributed to PRI since 2022.

In the past year, PRI began working in two towns in rural East Texas and Mexico, Missouri, the hometown of Tyronn Lue, head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers. Lue provided $2.5 million to support that work alongside Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO and Ballmer Group founder who owns the NBA team.

Over the next four and a half years, PRI plans to identify two more regions or towns to launch locally led partnerships. The idea is that these communities, along with those in Kentucky, Missouri, and Texas, will serve as “proof of concept” for what can work to improve education outcomes for rural families, says Gentry. “Our goal is that a superintendent in a rural place who’s really considering doing a collective impact, place-based partnership could say, ‘Hey, we see ourself in one of those five places and recognize that works in rural America.'”

No matter where PRI sets up shop, the work is led by locals, Gentry says.

PRI Appalachia has a service area that spans 31 counties and 42 school districts. In Leslie County, where executive director Amon Couch was born and his father worked in the coal mines, the population is declining as people leave for better economic opportunities. The school system serves around 1,500 students, down from more than 3,500 students 30 years ago.

Transportation is a major challenge as population density declines, and the area is a resource desert in terms of health and dental care. “The needs of our students are the greatest they’ve ever been, financially,” says Brett Wilson, the district superintendent. Around 70% of students receive some type of public assistance.

Last year, the district transported hundreds of students to dental checkups through a partnership with a local health system and using money from a grant through the Department of Education’s Full-Service Community Schools program and a local philanthropy.

“You can’t learn English or math or anything else when your teeth are throbbing,” Couch says.

Federal and state grants will always be PRI’s bread and butter, Gentry says. “Public dollars should support education,” she says. Today Partners for Rural Impact’s budget is around $78.2 million, with 78% coming from the government.

It’s often a challenge for rural communities to come up with the matching funds some federal grants require. But philanthropy helps fill in the gaps, providing matching dollars to pay the 60 or so AmeriCorps members who work with PRI in a given year.

Rural areas are at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting philanthropy.

A 2015 U.S. Department of Agriculture analysis found that from 2005 to 2010, rural areas received just 5 to 6% of foundation grant dollars. A 2021 FSG report found that share increased marginally to 7%, even though those communities account for 14 to 20% of the population. depending on the definition of “rural.”

Grantmakers’ focus on how many people they can serve always puts rural groups at a disadvantage, Gentry says. But she’s successfully made the case that while total population numbers may be lower, donors can have a deeper impact outside of urban areas.

“Your scale could be doing the same intervention in multiple rural places around the country,” she says.

In rural East Texas, the T.L.L. Temple Foundation has committed $2 million over five years with an additional $1 million in matching funds to help PRI establish a presence in Diboll and Pineland.

“The issues we deal with in rural communities are very similar to what you see in urban communities — transportation, access to health care, access to child care, food deserts, lack of broadband,” says Wynn Rosser, the foundation’s president. “The issues just express themselves differently when the context is rural and remote.”

The foundation is the region’s largest grantmaker, with wealth from the Temple family, who owned a lumber and paper manufacturing company. It has long funded efforts to increase rates of third-grade literacy and math and help more high school students earn postsecondary credentials aligned to the region’s labor market.

Already, PRI has helped bring together schools, colleges, nonprofits, and other community programs to work toward common goals and attract new federal funding, Rosser says. “Their method works, their leadership works, their belief in rural people and rural communities, all those things are already coming through.”

—Eden Stiffman, senior writer at the Chronicle of Philanthropy Chronicle of Philanthropy

This article was provided to the Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a partnership to cover philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content.

Alphabet’s Google said on Monday it signed the world’s first corporate agreement to buy power from multiple small modular reactors as the technology company looks to meet electricity demand from artificial intelligence.

The agreement with Kairos Power aims to bring Kairos’s first small modular reactor online by 2030, followed by additional deployments through 2035.

The companies did not reveal financial details of the agreement or where in the U.S. the plants would be built. Google said it has agreed to buy 500 megawatts of power from six to seven reactors, which is smaller than the output of today’s nuclear reactors.

“We feel like nuclear can play an important role in helping to meet our demand . . . cleanly in a way that’s more around the clock,” Michael Terrell, senior director for energy and climate at Google, told reporters on a call.

Technology firms have signed several recent agreements with nuclear power companies this year as artificial intelligence boosts power demand for the first time in decades.

In March, Amazon.com purchased a nuclear-powered datacenter from Talen Energy. Last month, Microsoft and Constellation Energy signed a power deal to help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, the site of the worst U.S. nuclear accident in 1979.

U.S. data center power use is expected to roughly triple between 2023 and 2030 and will require about 47 gigawatts of new generation capacity, according to Goldman Sachs estimates, which assumed natural gas, wind and solar power would fill the gap.

The Google deal will depend on Kairos getting full permitting from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and local agencies.

Kairos late last year got a construction permit from the NRC to build a demonstration reactor in Tennessee. But Kairos needs design and construction permits from the NRC for the reactors in the deal announced on Monday.

Small modular reactors are intended to be smaller than today’s reactors with components built in a factory, instead of onsite, to help cut construction costs.

Critics say SMRs will be expensive because they may not be able to achieve the economy of scale of larger plants. In addition, they will likely produce long-lasting nuclear waste for which the country does not yet have a final repository.

Google said by committing to a so-called order book framework with Kairos, instead of buying one reactor at a time, it is sending a demand signal to the market and making a long-term investment to speed development of SMRs.

“We’re confident that this novel approach is going to improve the prospects of our projects being delivered on cost and on schedule,” said Mike Laufer, cofounder and CEO of Kairos.

—Timothy Gardner, Reuters

The Internet Archive is back online after new of a cyberattack took out its digital library and popular Wayback Machine on October 9.

The Wayback Machine, a free online tool that lets users view old versions of websites, is back in a provisional, read-only manner, founder Brewster Kahle said in a post on X. “Safe to resume but might need further maintenance, in which case it will be suspended again. Please be gentle.”

Because the Internet Archive is back in read-only format, users can’t upload web pages to be added to the site’s billions of captured links. Rather, users can access content that’s been archived over time.

“Distributed denial-of-service” attacks (DDoS), which occur when bad actors try to overwhelm networks with fake traffic or information requests, have brought repeated havoc to the company in recent months. In May, hackers launched a days-long attack against the Internet Archive. Hackers also gained access in September to a user authentication database with 31 million unique records. It’s unclear if the attacks and the breach are related. The organization, according to Kahle, has been using time off to strengthen its security and scrub its systems.

Kahle added on X that volume is back to normal on the site, with the Wayback Machine processing 1,500 requests per second.

“[Internet Archive] is being cautious and prioritizing keeping data safe at the expense of service availability,” Kahle said.

Chipmaker Nvidia’s stock may just be the hottest thing on the stock market—and as share prices rise, it’s getting closer to becoming the most valuable company in the world.

Nvidia’s shares were up Monday, priced at more than $138 at the end of trading day. That’s up from below $135 on Friday, and up more than 18% over the past month. Opening up the aperture even more, Nvidia’s shares are up almost 61% over the past six months, and more than 187% year-to-date.

So, it’s hard to say that there’s a hotter stock on the market than Nvidia. But what’s fueling the recent surge to start the week?

In a broader sense, demand for chips to fuel AI technology is what’s really giving the company a boost. But within the past week or so, analysts have reaffirmed their bullishness on Nvidia, which is what may be helping to propel share prices.

Specifically, Citigroup analysts recently gave Nvidia a “buy” rating with a price target of $150 per share, and a Goldman Sachs analyst piled on by likewise increasing its price target to $150, according to reporting from The Street.

As of Monday, the increase in share prices has lifted Nvidia’s market cap to nearly $3.4 trillion. That’s closing in on Apple, which has a market cap of roughly $3.49 trillion, and by that measure, is the most valuable company in the world. If Nvidia’s shares were to breach the $141 mark, it should be enough to push Nvidia’s market cap past Apple’s—making it the new most valuable company.

While it’s uncertain whether that will happen, Nvidia does have the wind in its sales. Its most recent earnings report, from late August, showed that the company beat expectations and reported quarterly revenues of $30 billion, an increase of 122% year-over-year. And this year, Nvidia stock has outperformed key rivals by a wide margin—including Apple, Meta Platforms, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft.

A long-standing hardware wholesaler, True Value, is filing for bankruptcy.

The 75-year-old brand made the announcement Monday, noting that it will sell its operations to rival wholesaler, Do It Best.

In the announcement, True Value said it will continue operations at its 4,500 stores, as they are independently owned and operated.

“After a thorough evaluation of strategic alternatives, we determined that the sale of our business was the path forward to maximize value and best serve our retail partners and other stakeholders into the future,” said Chris Kempa, True Value’s chief executive officer, in the press release.

Kempa added, “We believe that entering the process with an agreed offer from Do It Best, who has a similar decades-long history in the home-improvement space and also operates with a focus on supporting members and helping them grow, is the most beneficial next step for True Value and our associates, customers, and vendor partners.”

True Value joins the rapidly growing number of home improvement stores that are struggling amid inflation and a challenging housing market. That list includes Home Depot, Big Lots, and LL Flooring, which recently shuttered. As homeowners continue cutting costs to focus on nonnegotiables, they’re becoming choosier about purchases. Therefore, home renovations and updates have largely fallen by the wayside.

True Value’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings include a $153 million stalking horse bid from Do It Best, which will be able to offer “significant cash consideration and meaningful assumption of liabilities related to the ongoing business,” the release said.

According to the announcement, True Value hopes to complete the sale by the end of 2024.

Dan Starr, Do It Best president and chief executive officer, explained in the release that the sale will be an impactful one for the hardware industry.

“A successful acquisition of True Value assets would represent a strategic milestone for Do It Best and home improvement retailers around the world,” Starr said.

Citigroup has struggled to adequately train employees in risk, compliance and data roles, according to the bank’s own assessment, shedding light on why it is taking it years to fix regulatory issues even as billions are spent on an overhaul.

Citi’s analysis, a portion of which was seen by Reuters and has not been previously reported, shows the bank has been grappling with a shortage of skilled personnel, finding at times that it did not have the right training and assessment tools to fix its regulatory challenges. The bank, which has for the past four years been operating under two regulatory reprimands, called consent orders, must resolve these problems for the decrees to be lifted.

In one place, for example, the analysis cites “insufficient compliance risk management skills” among staff directly dealing with such issues. The sections of the analysis seen by Reuters did not address why Citi had not been able to fix these issues. They were laid out in a December 2023 spreadsheet tracking Citi’s progress on various aspects of the consent orders.

Separately, four sources familiar with the matter said the situation was further complicated when CEO Jane Fraser launched a massive exercise in September 2023 to simplify the bank, firing thousands of people and reducing the number of management layers there.

In the process, some staff involved in issues related to the consent orders were also let go, according to the sources.

Reuters could not independently determine whether the layoffs set back the bank’s overall efforts to resolve the consent orders. Without providing specifics, Citi denied this, saying that “cherry picking numbers will paint a misleading picture.”

“We continue to invest heavily in talent and training to ensure we have the right people and expertise in critical areas such as data, risk, controls and compliance,” the bank said in a statement. It added that it proactively assesses “the evolving skills needed so that we can hire” and enhance skills accordingly.

In response to questions posed by Reuters, Citi said further that it has invested billions of dollars in its “transformation,” a project to address risks, controls and data management — issues raised in the 2020 consent orders from the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The analysis seen by Reuters was done in response to the Fed’s consent order.

Citigroup said it had about 13,000 people dedicated to the project to overhaul its controls and systems, with thousands more supporting the effort across the bank. The bank has about 229,000 employees overall.

The Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency declined to comment.

CEO Jane Fraser has said previously that resolving Citi’s regulatory problems is a top priority. Regulators have said the bank’s widespread risk and data flaws they have identified speak to its financial safety and soundness. The bank was put in the penalty box after it mistakenly sent nearly $900 million of its own funds in August 2020 to creditors of cosmetics company Revlon.

In July, the Fed and the OCC once again reprimanded and fined the bank. The OCC said Citi had “failed to make sufficient and sustainable progress” in complying with its consent order. The OCC also required it to enact a new quarterly process to ensure it devoted enough resources to meet compliance milestones. As of mid-July, the plan had not been agreed with regulators.

Last month, the company announced its technology head Tim Ryan would take on data management efforts alongside Chief Operating Officer Anand Selvakesari.

Hard problems

The bank’s analysis shines a light on why the problems are proving to be intractable. In one section, for example, the bank said its staff’s technical skills, including on data governance — policies that set out how data is handled — needed to be improved. But then it also noted that when it came to data governance, its training curriculum did not sufficiently address “skills identified as needing enhancement.”

It also identified areas such as data analytics and digital literacy as needing improvement.

For critical roles in compliance, the bank found it had not spelled out the skills that were needed to succeed. It also said it did not have an adequate assessment of whether employees had the right skills sets for those functions.

Citi did not comment on the specific issues raised in its analysis.

Citi layoffs

The sources familiar with the bank’s operations said Fraser’s layoffs led to the removal of some of the people involved in regulatory work.

In risk management, for example, the bank laid off or redeployed 67 people out of a group of 441, according to a Citi document that lists some of the roles affected in one of the rounds of layoffs.

Some of the sources said the layoffs disrupted work because employees feared for their jobs and loss of managers at times meant lack of direction. But Citi challenged this view, saying it was careful to not let the layoffs affect work on consent orders.

“The facts speak for themselves, but cherry-picking numbers will paint a misleading picture of the significant resources dedicated to this effort,” the bank said. “Our approach was disciplined and methodical, and prioritized protecting our ability to deliver on our regulatory commitments and accelerate this important work.”

—Lananh Nguyen and Tatiana Bautzer, Reuters

K-pop star Hanni, a member of the group NewJeans, made an emotional appeal on Tuesday for young artists to be treated better in the multi-billion dollar industry, as she relayed her experience of workplace bullying during a parliamentary hearing.

For years the K-pop industry has been dogged by complaints of high pressure and bullying, sparking calls for companies to protect their artists better.

“I hope trainees don’t suffer these incidents and that’s why I decided to appear,” the 20-year-old Vietnamese Australian singer said during the televised parliamentary audit.

Her testimony in South Korea’s parliament is a rare appearance by a major K-pop star to address bullying in the industry.

“I know it’s not going to solve all the problems in the world, but if we just respect each other, at least there will be no problems with bullying and harassment in the workplace,” Hanni said, choking back tears at times.

The group itself has been caught in the middle of a clash between executives of its parent powerhouse label HYBE and the former CEO of its subsidiary Ador, which manages NewJeans.

The singer, whose full name is Hanni Pham, recounted to parliament’s labour committee how she had heard a manager telling staff to ignore and pretend not to see the group when she bumped into them in a corridor.

A series of actions at the workplace made the group feel they were hated by the company, she said.

Ador CEO Kim Ju-young told the parliamentary hearing that she was reviewing the situation but has yet to find proof to establish Hanni’s claims.

HYBE has multiple labels that manage some of the biggest K-pop stars, including BTS.

Earlier this year, former Ador CEO Min Hee-jin credited with creating NewJeans accused HYBE of sabotaging the girl group. She was later ousted from the label’s CEO position.

K-pop idols are often held to impossibly high standards for their behaviour and face expectations to maintain a squeaky-clean public image, including pressure from some fans not to have partners.

—Hyunsu Yim, Reuters

With characteristic bravado, Donald Trump has vowed that if voters return him to the White House, “inflation will vanish completely.”

It’s a message tailored for Americans who are still exasperated by the jump in consumer prices that began 3 1/2 years ago.

Yet most mainstream economists say Trump’s policy proposals wouldn’t vanquish inflation. They’d make it worse. They warn that his plans to impose huge tariffs on imported goods, deport millions of migrant workers and demand a voice in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies would likely send prices surging.

Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a letter in June expressing fear that Trump’s proposals would “reignite” inflation, which has plummeted since peaking at 9.1% in 2022 and is nearly back to the Fed’s 2% target.

Last month, the Peterson Institute for International Economics predicted that Trump’s policies would drive consumer prices sharply higher two years into his second term. Peterson’s analysis concluded that inflation, which would otherwise register 1.9% in 2026, would instead jump to between 6% and 9.3% if Trump’s economic proposals were adopted.

Many economists aren’t thrilled with Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic agenda, either. They dismiss, for example, her proposal to combat price gouging as an ineffective tool against high grocery prices. But they don’t regard her policies as particularly inflationary.

Moody’s Analytics has estimated that Harris’ policies would leave the inflation outlook virtually unchanged, even if she enjoyed a Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress. An unfettered Trump, by contrast, would leave prices higher by 1.1 percentage points in 2025 and 0.8 percentage points in 2026.

Consumers pay for tariffs

Taxes on imports — tariffs — are Trump’s go-to economic policy. He argues that tariffs protect American factory jobs from foreign competition and deliver a host of other benefits.

While in office, Trump started a trade war with China, imposing high tariffs on most Chinese goods. He also raised import taxes on foreign steel and aluminum, washing machines and solar panels. He has grander plans for a second term: Trump wants to impose a 60% tariff on all Chinese goods and a “universal” tariff of 10% or 20% on everything else that enters the United States.

Trump insists that the cost of taxing imported goods is absorbed by the foreign countries. The truth is that U.S. importers pay the tariff—and then typically pass along that cost to consumers in the form of higher prices. Americans themselves end up bearing the cost.

Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely of the Peterson Institute have calculated that Trump’s proposed 60% tax on Chinese imports and his high-end 20% tariff on everything else would, in combination, impose an after-tax loss on a typical American household of $2,600 a year.

The Trump campaign notes that U.S. inflation remained low even as Trump aggressively imposed tariffs as president.

But Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said that the magnitude of Trump’s current tariff proposals has vastly changed the calculations. “The Trump tariffs in 2018-19 didn’t have as large an impact as the tariffs were only just over $300 billion in mostly Chinese imports,” he said. “The former president is now talking about tariffs on over $3 trillion in imported goods.”

And the inflationary backdrop was different during Trump’s first term when the Fed worried that inflation was too low, not too high.

Trump would reverse an immigration surge that helped ease inflation

Trump, who has invoked incendiary rhetoric about immigrants, has promised the “largest deportation operation” in U.S. history.

Many economists say the increased immigration over the past couple years helped tame inflation while avoiding a recession.

The surge in foreign-born workers has made it easier for fill vacancies. That helps cool inflation by easing the pressure on employers to sharply raise pay and to pass on their higher labor costs by increasing prices.

Net immigration — arrivals minus departures — reached 3.3 million in 2023, more than triple what the government had expected. Employers needed the new arrivals. As the economy roared back from pandemic lockdowns, companies struggled to hire enough workers to keep up with customer orders.

Immigrants filled the gap. Over the past four years, the number of people in the United States who either have a job or are looking for one rose by nearly 8.5 million. Roughly 72% of them were foreign born.

Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the Brookings Institution found that by raising the supply of workers. the influx of immigrants allowed the United States to generate jobs without overheating the economy.

In the past, economists estimated that America’s employers could add no more than 100,000 jobs a month without igniting inflation. But when Edelberg and Watson factored in the immigration surge, they found that monthly job growth could reach 160,000 to 200,000 without exerting upward pressure on prices.

Trump’s mass deportations, if carried out, would change everything. The Peterson Institute calculates that the U.S. inflation rate would be 3.5 percentage points higher in 2026 if Trump managed to deport all 8.3 million undocumented immigrant workers thought to be working in the United States.

A politicized Fed would make inflation-fighting harder

Trump alarmed many economists in August by saying he would seek to have “a say” in the Fed’s interest rate decisions.

The Fed is the government’s chief inflation-fighter. It attacks high inflation by raising interest rates to restrain borrowing and spending, slow the economy and cool the rate of price increases.

Economic research has found that the Fed and other central banks can properly manage inflation only if they’re kept independent of political pressure. That’s because raising rates can cause economic pain—perhaps a recession—so it’s anathema to politicians seeking reelection.

As president, Trump frequently hounded Jerome Powell, the Fed chair he had chosen, to lower rates to try to juice the economy. For many economists, Trump’s public pressure on Powell exceeded even the attempts that Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon made to push previous Fed chairs to keep rates low — moves that were widely blamed for helping spur the chronic inflation of the late 1960s and ’70s.

The Peterson Institute report found that upending the Fed’s independence would increase inflation by 2 percentage points a year.

—Paul Wiseman and Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writers

A federal appeals panel has temporarily halted two permits needed to begin construction on a pipeline project in Tennessee that will supply a natural gas plant.

In a split 2-1 decision, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel delivered a ruling Friday that, for now, prevents Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company LLC from starting to build its 32-mile (50-kilometer) pipeline through Dickson, Houston and Stewart counties.

The project would fuel the Tennessee Valley Authority’s combined-cycle natural gas facility at the site of the coal-fired Cumberland Fossil Plant that is being retired.

Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company could have begun construction as soon as Tuesday, according to the court records.

TVA, meanwhile, plans to mothball its two-unit coal plant in two stages—one, by the end of 2026, to be replaced the same year by the 1,450-megawatt natural gas plant; and the second, shuttered by the end of 2028, with options still open on its replacement.

“This pause is a crucial opportunity to rethink the risks of fossil fuel development and prioritize the health and environment of Cumberland and our region,” said Emily Sherwood, a Sierra Club senior campaign organizer, in a news release Monday.

TVA’s plans to open more natural gas plants have angered advocates who want a quick redirection away from fossil fuels and into solar and other renewables, as TVA plans to retire its entire coal fleet by the mid-2030s.

The case is set for oral arguments on Dec. 10. If additional appeals are filed and succeed, the timeline could be reset again.

“We do not agree with the court’s temporary stay and are evaluating our options to ensure this project can be constructed in a timely manner,” the pipeline firm’s parent company, Kinder Morgan, said in a statement Monday.

Spokespeople for the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Army Corps of Engineers declined to comment. Chad Kubis, a spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office, said officials there are evaluating their next steps.

The Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Mountain Advocates, on behalf of Appalachian Voices and the Sierra Club, asked the appeals court in August 2023 to reconsider a water quality permit issued by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation for the pipeline. In September, the groups requested an appellate review of another permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In the ruling, Judges Eric Clay and Karen Moore argued that the groups risk irreparable harm if pipeline construction begins before the judges decide their case. The company’s plans would cross scores of streams and wetlands, where construction could do long-lasting damage to waterways and wildlife, the plaintiffs contend.

Judge Amul R. Thapar, in dissent, contended the court lacks jurisdiction for the state agency claim, and that the plaintiffs haven’t shown they would suffer irreparable harm or that their case would likely succeed.

TVA’s plans for expanding its natural gas fleet have drawn additional lawsuits, including over the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s approval of the Cumberland pipeline.

Another lawsuit claims that TVA’s environmental review of the Cumberland plant was perfunctory, in violation of the law. A separate challenge contests the decision-making for a planned 1,500-megawatt natural gas facility with 4 megawatts of solar and 100 megawatts of battery storage at the Kingston Fossil Plant, the site of a massive 2008 coal ash spill. Late last month, a judge dismissed a different lawsuit that challenged TVA’s process to approve plans for gas turbines at a retired coal plant in New Johnsonville.

The groups suing over gas expansion plans note that TVA is off track to meet the Biden administration’s goal of eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 to try to limit the effects of climate change, even with a majority of the board appointed by President Joe Biden. Several of TVA’s proposals for new natural gas plants have prompted criticism from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, including a warning that its environmental review of the Kingston project doesn’t comply with federal law.

TVA CEO Jeff Lyash has said repeatedly that gas is needed because it can provide power regardless of whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. He added that it will improve on emissions from coal and provide the flexibility needed to add 10,000 megawatts of solar to its overall system by 2035. TVA has a goal of 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2035 over 2005 levels and net-zero emissions by 2050.

TVA provides power to 10 million people across seven Southern states.

—Jonathan Mattise, Associated Press

Isabel Arriaga Lozano carefully fills a small pastry with a savory mix of meat, potatoes and chili pepper. She is crafting a “paste” (pronounced PAH-stay), a beloved Mexican snack with a rich history.

Originating in the mining town of Real del Monte, in the Mexican central state of Hidalgo, the “paste” was introduced by British miners in the 1820s and has since become a local culinary tradition. Each year, food enthusiasts converge on Real del Monte to celebrate the International Paste Festival, honoring its delicious heritage.

Pastes are popular across Mexico, with fillings ranging from spicy Mexican mole to sweeter concoctions like pineapple or blueberry with cheese.

And although many are unaware of their surprising origin, a graveyard at the top of a cobbled hill holds the clue: around 700 graves sit covered in moss and lichen with distinctly English names. These are the graves of the hundreds of miners who traveled to Mexico in 1824 to work in Real del Monte, extracting silver, copper, zinc, gold and mercury.

The miners came from Cornwall, a region on the southwest of England which had a similar strong mining community in the 19th century. They brought with them this iconic snack, known in England as a “Cornish pasty.”

Cornish pasties date from the 13th century, when they were the food of nobility and the upper crust. By the 19th century, they became popular with working class Cornish families. A simple shortcrust pastry case was filled with cheap cuts of meat alongside potatoes, rutabaga and onion. The pastry was then crimped at the side, sealing the ingredients and giving the eater something to hold onto.

The crimped side would serve as a sort of handle, meaning that the miners could hold onto their lunch without getting the rest of the pasty dirtied with mud and grime from working in the mines.

Arriaga said she has made pastes for 30 years. She married into a paste-making family and took over the business when her husband passed away. Pastes, she said, have become a crucial part of life in the “magical town” of Real del Monte. “I think around 50% of us here make a living from this,” she said, highlighting a very special ingredient that goes into every snack. “It’s, above all, the love we put into every paste that makes it a good product.”

She said pastes have persisted thanks to the “mexicanization” of the ingredients. Compared to Cornish pasties, she said, “in Mexico (…) we always look for that spicy flavor … we add pepper, we add parsley.”

Pastes are such an iconic snack in Real del Monte that they have their own museum.

“The paste arrived in the year 1824, with the English miners from Cornwall who came to Real del Monte to start working in the mines,” said Epifanio Garcés Torres, director of the town’s Paste Museum. “The first Englishwoman to bake (one) here in Real del Monte was Mary Jenkins in 1824.”

Visitors at this year’s paste festival tried an array of treats. Where pastes in the U.K. have adopted fillings such as “full English breakfast,” “steak and ale” or “lamb and mint,” the Mexican influence on the pastry here is clear: Frijoles (beans); spiced mole sauce or Mexican style tuna—with the obligatory chili pepper—are on the menu.

“They’re delicious,” said one festival goer.

The festival featured colorful banners and signs displaying the Mexican, British and Cornish flags, highlighting a unique connection between Mexico and Britain that goes back 200 years—and linking the towns of Real del Monte and Cornwall, which sit more than 5,300 miles (8,530 kilometers) apart.

—India Grant, Associated Press

Jubilee founder Jason Y. Lee wants to solve the problem of media echo chambers.

Lee’s idea is relatively simple: Present professionally filmed, two-sided debates on YouTube, and give the exchanges scintillating titles like “Can 1 Woke Teen Survive 20 Trump Supporters?” His bet is that, once they get under the hood of that face-off (which can easily run over an hour), viewers will leave with a better understanding of the other side. 

The bet has paid off. In 2022, Jubilee Media announced a $1.1 million funding round, pushing their total raised to $3.25 million. Among the investors are YouTube cofounder Steve Chen and Patreon cofounder Sam Yam. Jubilee’s bread and butter are those clickbait series which veer hard into identity politics (i.e. “Asian or Not? Test Your Radar” and “5 Gay Men vs 1 Secret Straight Guy.”). But, as the election draws closer, their political debate videos are gaining traction: The last five debates have all crossed the million view threshold, gaining a combined 34 million views. 

But the internet has other ideas for the Jubilee exchanges. The debate’s best “owns” are relentlessly reposted across TikTok, Instagram, and X in clips that are packaged as snippets of partisan victory. That’s the challenge to Lee’s business model: Can he construct long-form political dialogue in a short-form economy? In an era of drastic polarization, where the ideological gap has grown on most major issues from abortion to gun control, viewers could simply be more interested in seeing their side win. 

“We’re actually featuring voices from both sides as equally and accurately as possible,” Lee says. “You’d be hard-pressed to say that Jubilee has a partisan bent. I think that’s something that’s really unique.”

A look at Jubilee Media’s mission

When describing the mission of Jubilee’s debates, Lee frequently comes back to the word “empathy.” He wants to build connections across the aisle, exposing viewers to the viewpoints they won’t hear everyday. One of their series, Middle Ground, asks partisans from both sides to come together and find commonalities. 

“There is a seat at the table for everyone here, but the rule is, you cannot flip over the table,” Lee says, describing Jubilee’s guiding principle. “Even difficult dialogue is better than no dialogue at all.”

While Lee’s goal is to foster nonpartisanship, some of his debate participants aren’t so convinced that’s a likely outcome. Hannah Cox, a content creator who calls herself a “rabid capitalist,” has now participated in two Jubilee debates. Her first, “Capitalists vs Communists,” was a thoughtful conversation, even if she was annoyed with one of the other side’s debaters for clogging up their time.

In Cox’s second debate, “Pro-Gun vs Anti-Gun,” she advocated fiercely for her position to protect gun rights. When the video premiered, she was disappointed to see that Jubilee included fact-checking banners, which Cox claims were selectively used and often didn’t address the claims made. 

“If the fact checkers want to debate me, pull up a chair,” Cox says. “It was always against my side. It was never done on the other side at all. There were several times where they would fact check something, they would throw up a statistic that was completely unrelated to what was even being said, but it gave the appearance of debunking.” 

Looking online, Cox saw commenters dunking on her and her fellow debaters. She assumes that most Jubilee watchers lean left, saying that they were “looking for a cop out” to not engage with her ideas.

But Naima Troutt, a left-leaning senior at the University of Southern California, had a different takeaway after appearing on Jubilee’s debates: that the audience base skews conversative. She participated in Jubilee’s Surrounded debate, teaming up with other college students to take on alt-right talking head Charlie Kirk. Her offhanded remark that Kirk’s smile was “creepy” immediately turned into a meme. 

After the video’s release, Troutt saw a flood of negative comments, saying she and her peers looked “lost” and “suck.” “I’ve been called the  N-word more in the last three weeks than I have in my entire life,” she says. (Across the board, Lee says he’s found the reactions to be quite equal, something he takes as proof of Jubilee’s maintained balance.)

Troutt has continued to participate in Jubilee videos, remaining positive on the company and their mission. Still, she notes an experience gap in these Surrounded debates. “The one thing that I would like to see from Jubilee is a debate in which the Republican member isn’t at an advantage,” Troutt says. “The level of experience on the conservative type side tends to be a little bit higher.” 

Even with its nonpartisan aim, Jubilee is walking the same tightrope as all other political media companies. It has its critics from both the left and the right; that could be a sign that it’s reached some sort of balance.

Where does Jubilee fit into the clip economy?

For those unwilling to sit for 90-minutes of nonstop debate (plus ads), Jubilee’s content is clipped and strewn about other social media apps like TikTok, Instagram and X. That’s not necessarily a problem for Jubilee’s business; their millions of views are certainly enough to run a fruitful company. But it could pose a threat to Lee’s vision of political empathy and understanding. 

These Jubilee cuts often show a major win for one side or another. One college student got Kirk to admit that, if his own daughter were raped, he’d force her to deliver the baby. The video bounced around TikTok incessantly, scored by mellow beats or sad Billie Eillish songs. After one conservative teen listed the dangers that men face disproportionately, a liberal mom snapped back, “And who set that system up?” The response is now the subject of dozens of fancams.

Lee says that he’s seen both conservative- and liberal-skewed clips of his company’s content across the internet. In fact, he’s watched as the same exact clip gets touted online as a big win by both the left and the right. 

But Angelo Carusone, president of progressive watchdog Media Matters, values Jubilee for its ability to give liberals good talking points. Sure, he argues, right-wingers will get value out of the clips too, but we shouldn’t diminish the value of some of the talking points “simply because others are going to misuse it.” 

Ultimately, short-form edits aren’t Lee’s ideal method of content consumption. To truly realize his vision of political discourse, viewers need to see the debate play out. That’s how you “get the full context of what we’re hoping to do,” he says.

Rural communities in the Andes of Colombia and Ecuador are fighting to protect fragile high-altitude wetlands that regulate the area’s water cycles, as sharp water and energy rationing hit both nations.

Colombia and Ecuador—both largely dependent on hydroelectric dams for energy—have been battered by a strong El Nino weather pattern that has caused drought conditions, which scientists say were further exacerbated by climate change and damaging human activity.

Grassroots activists in the two countries, aided by international advocacy groups like Conservation International, have been working to protect the high-altitude wetlands, called paramos, and save water, especially through efforts to restore native plants.

Most of the world’s paramos—which regulate the water cycle by absorbing and slowly releasing rain—are found in the Andes in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

“Deforestation in the Amazon, combined with variations that are being caused by climate change and the degradation of the soils is what has caused water dynamics to change,” said Patricia Bejarano, director of the sustainable high mountain landscapes program run by Conservation International’s Colombian chapter.

The crisis comes as Colombia prepares to host the United Nations’ conference on biodiversity in the city of Cali at the end of October.

The paramos illustrate how protecting nature is vital to fighting climate change, as well as protecting water and ensuring the future of agriculture.

Drought has led to rotating water rationing in Bogota, Colombia’s capital of almost 10 million people, while Ecuador’s energy grid has been pushed to the brink, prompting power cuts to conserve water in dams.

Colombia suspended electricity exports to its neighbor to shore up its own power reserves.

Thirteen members of El Tablon, a rural community on the outskirts of Quito, work in a nursery in Paluguillo paramo to rear paper trees, a species of polylepis, which are then replanted.

“They’re plants native to the paramo that help us conserve water,” said Diana Sopalo, 29, who has been working for four years in the Fund for Protecting Water (FONAG) nursery, set up by international advocacy group the Nature Conservancy.

A water factory

Paper trees, with their large surface area, are great for capturing and storing water, Sopalo said, adding that during dry season the species begins to slowly release water into the earth where it rejoins the water cycle.

The nursery, led by women, has planted 40,000 trees and is growing another 100,000.

“It’s a water factory,” Sopalo said.

Quito depends on water from the paramos, said FONAG’s Paola Fuentes, a water analysis specialist.

“The water originates in this area and conserving these paramos, these wetlands, is essential for the low areas in the city,” Fuentes said.

Some 26 rangers work to protect and monitor the region for FONAG.

“If the paramos weren’t being managed, we would simply have much less water than we have now,” said Galo Medina, Ecuador lead for The Nature Conservancy.

In Colombia’s Guatavita, local activists and regional authorities are developing plans for Vista Hermosa de Monquentiva, a protected area within the Chingaza paramo, including expanding its borders.

Protecting the park and its species—including plants like frailejones, or espeletia, famed for their ability to conserve water—is vitally important for keeping drinking water and hydroelectric reservoirs full, said Doris Ramos, 52, who works on environmental issues for the Guatavita mayor’s office.

The park, once used for cattle farming, has been a protected area since 2018 and precious frailejones and other species have slowly grown on the land.

“While we are restoring this ecosystem, it brings great potential for water, flora and fauna. It is also vulnerable to all the consequences of climate change,” she said.

—Oliver Griffin and Alexandra Valencia, Reuters

Walgreens is targeting to close approximately 1,200 stores over the next three years, with 500 of those closures happening in the 2025 fiscal year, the drugstore company told Fast Company.

In June, Walgreens said it would close a substantial number of its 8,600 U.S. stores, saying a quarter of its locations were unprofitable.

“This turnaround will take time, but we are confident it will yield significant financial and consumer benefits over the long term,” said Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO Tim Wentworth in a company statement.

On Monday, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. approved a plan to “optimize its footprint and close underperforming stores, primarily in the U.S., to align with evolving demographic trends and . . . respond more effectively to shifts in consumer behavior and buying preferences,” according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Like many drugstore chains, including CVS and Rite Aid, Walgreens’ store closings come as it struggles with online competition from Amazon and decreased profits from prescription drugs due to lower reimbursement rates. Rite Aid, the nation’s third-largest stand-alone pharmacy chain, filed for bankruptcy last year and reportedly closed 400 to 500 of its approximately 2,200 stores.

Walgreens has also been plagued by pharmacist walkouts over work conditions. Meanwhile, it has attempted to combat inflation by slashing prices, but it hasn’t been enough to lure consumers back into stores.

Walgreens was once a staple in many towns and cities in the U.S. Now, these store closings could create so-called pharmacy deserts, limiting access to medicine and essentials in some communities. Researchers found pharmacy closures increased health risks in older adults, who were less likely to take medication.

Despite the challenges, Walgreens narrowly beat fourth-quarter earnings estimates and was mostly in line with expectations. Its shares (WBA) rose about 10% in midday trading on Tuesday, but are still are trading at a 30-year record low.

New England leaf-watching season is in full swing, as people from as far as Florida and Berlin flock to the region for scenic drives, train rides and bus tours to soak in the splendid hues of red, orange and bronze. With quaint towns and covered bridges scattered through swaths of changing forest, the rural Northeast provides an ideal setting to view nature’s annual show.

“Leaf-peeping is one of the most accessible tourism things that you can do,” said Teddy Willey, the general manager of the Frog Rock Tavern in Meredith, New Hampshire. “You don’t have to have the athleticism to be a hiker, you don’t have to have the money to own a boat.”

You just need to be able to jump in a car and head north, he said.

“Once you’re there, you just take it in,” Willey said.

He spoke just after his tavern was flooded with tourists from Indiana who had stepped off a sightseeing bus.

Among them was Vicky Boesch, of Fort Wayne, who had made the trip with her sisters.

“We came out to the Northeast to see the beautiful foliage and the colorful leaves,” she said, adding the she was impressed with Vermont.

“The leaves were very pretty on the mountains because the sun was out yesterday, and so that makes them pop more,” she said.

It wasn’t only the fall colors that provided a contrast with Indiana, she said, but also the region’s distinctive architecture, lakes and towns.

Gordon Cochran, of Lake View, Iowa, said he was in New Hampshire to visit his daughter and had a “beautiful ride” on the slow-moving Winnipesaukee Scenic Railroad.

Weather conditions associated with climate change have disrupted some recent leaf-peeping seasons. One problem is that global warming has brought drought that causes leaves to turn brown and wither before they can reach their colorful peak.

Willey acknowledges that he’s not a leaf guy.

“Personally, no. I grew up here, so I think it loses its luster a little bit,” he said with a chuckle, adding that the season still has its moments.

“I’ll be driving somewhere around the Lakes Region, and all of a sudden, you’re like, ‘You know what, there’s a reason why people come here and there’s a reason I live here. It really is quite beautiful,'” he said, referring to a scenic part of eastern New Hampshire.

—Nick Perry, Michael Casey and Patrick Whittle, Associated Press

A NASA spacecraft rocketed away Monday on a quest to explore Jupiter’s tantalizing moon Europa and reveal whether its vast hidden ocean might hold the keys to life.

It will take Europa Clipper 5 1/2 years to reach Jupiter, where it will slip into orbit around the giant gas planet and sneak close to Europa during dozens of radiation-drenched flybys.

Scientists are almost certain a deep, global ocean exists beneath Europa’s icy crust. And where there is water, there could be life, making the moon one of the most promising places out there to hunt for it.

Europa Clipper won’t look for life; it has no life detectors. Instead, the spacecraft will zero in on the ingredients necessary to sustain life, searching for organic compounds and other clues as it peers beneath the ice for suitable conditions.

SpaceX started Clipper on its 1.8 million-mile (3 billion-kilometer) journey, launching the spacecraft on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. An hour later, the spacecraft separated from the upper stage, floated off and called home.

“Please say goodbye to Clipper on its way to Europa,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s flight director Pranay Mishra announced from Southern California.

“The science on this is really captivating,” NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free told The Associated Press back at the launch site. Scientists are still learning about the depths of our own ocean, “and here we are looking that far out.”

The $5.2 billion mission almost got derailed by transistors.

NASA didn’t learn until spring that Clipper’s transistors might be more vulnerable to Jupiter’s intense radiation field than anticipated. Clipper will endure the equivalent of several million chest X-rays during each of the 49 Europa flybys. The space agency spent months reviewing everything before concluding in September that the mission could proceed as planned.

Hurricane Milton added to the anxiety, delaying the launch by several days.

“What a great day. We’re so excited,” JPL Director Laurie Leshin said after liftoff.

About the size of a basketball court with its solar wings unfurled, Clipper will swing past Mars and then Earth on its way to Jupiter for gravity assists. The nearly 13,000-pound (5,700-kilogram) probe should reach the solar system’s biggest planet in 2030.

Clipper will circle Jupiter every 21 days. One of those days will bring it close to Europa, among 95 known moons at Jupiter and close to our own moon in size.

The spacecraft will skim as low as 16 miles (25 kilometers) above Europa—much closer than the few previous visitors. Onboard radar will attempt to penetrate the moon’s ice sheet, believed to be 10 miles to 15 miles or more (15 kilometers to 24 kilometers) thick. The ocean below could be 80 miles (120 kilometers) or more deep.

The spacecraft holds nine instruments, with its sensitive electronics stored in a vault with dense zinc and aluminum walls for protection against radiation. Exploration will last until 2034.

“Ocean worlds like Europa are not only unique because they might be habitable, but they might be habitable today,” NASA’s Gina DiBraccio said on the eve of launch.

If conditions are found to be favorable for life at Europa, then that opens up the possibility of life at other ocean worlds in our solar system and beyond, according to scientists. With an underground ocean and geysers, Saturn’s moon Enceladus is another top candidate.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

—Marcia Dunn, Associated Press aerospace writer

Following the highly publicized arrest and indictment of rapper Diddy, chronically online internet sleuths and tinfoil hat–wearing conspiracy theorists have been doing what they do best: spreading insane rumors online. 

An old conspiracy theory involving Beyoncé and Sia has been given a new lease of life due to the Diddy charges. A fake photoshopped tweet, edited to seem like it was shared from Sia’s official X account in 2020, read: “Baby, everything your own nice cat eats. Kangaroo is dead, nowhere and purple penguins every day. My egg.” Nonsense right? But circle the first letter of each word and it spells: “Beyonce kidnapped me.”

While there is no evidence to suggest Sia ever posted the statement, last month an X user reposted the meme with the caption, “she was trying to warn us,” in the wake of the sexual abuse allegations against Diddy. In a recent press conference an attorney told reporters that “many powerful people will be exposed” and “many dirty secrets will be revealed” during Diddy’s trial scheduled for May 5, 2025. Not surprisingly, the internet has run wild with that statement. 

Due to Beyoncé and her husband Jay Z’s power in the music industry—and their well-documented relationship with Diddy throughout the years—a conspiracy theory doing the rounds online alleges that when other artists became a threat to Beyoncé, Diddy would have them killed. 

The conspiracy theorists point to clues in the lyrics of rapper J. Cole’s 2013 hit song “She Knows,” which references R&B singers Aaliyah Haughton and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes. Both singers were rising in the music industry around the same time as Beyoncé when they died in freak accidents. 

TikTok users have also pointed as further “proof” to a pattern of major artists often mentioning or thanking Beyoncé during acceptance speeches. Adele famously “broke” her Grammy in half to share with Beyonce in 2017 after describing her as the “artist of my life” in her acceptance speech (turns out the Grammy was broken accidentally). 

Then who can forget the moment Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift during her 2009 acceptance speech at the VMAs to claim, “Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!” Maybe he was a secret Swiftie after all. 

Compilations of these clips have the internet speculating that artists “fear” the singer and the power she wields. TikTokers have jumped on the conspiracy-turned-meme, making a point to thank Beyoncé after just about any occasion lest bad luck befall them.

For months, Delta has been ramping up its play to become a more luxurious, premium-first airline. Today, the company announced it will be redesigning its aircraft interiors “from nose to tail” to match that mission.

According to an announcement released this morning, Delta’s new cabin design will debut on a narrow-body Boeing 757 aircraft later this fall, in advance of the brand’s 2025 centennial anniversary. By the end of 2025, all new aircraft deliveries will feature the new cabin design, and existing aircraft will be retrofitted within the next few years.

The new cabins also will include updated seating materials, a swankier color palette, and mood-setting lighting.

“Premium” brand positioning takes off

The transformation is part of Delta’s larger goal to reposition itself from a mass-market brand to a “premium” one, which has been months in the making.

Last year, 55% of the company’s revenue came from “premium and non-ticket” sales, which are a mix of upgraded seats and other add-ons. Early this year, the company announced plans to open a series of ultra-luxe airport lounges in various U.S. cities, an update that came just months after it attracted widespread ire for making it more difficult to access its existing lounges. The first ultra-luxe Delta lounge opened in New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport this June, complete with a spa, shower suites, a brasserie restaurant, and an outdoor terrace.

Delta’s competitors are getting in on premium-ification, too, in order to attract and retain customers. Southwest recently announced that it will ditch its signature open-seating model in favor of assigned seating with more premium add-ons, such as upgraded seats with extra legroom. Exclusive airport lounges are also on the rise, with United Airlines, Emirates, and Air France all boasting their own private oases in various global locations.

A more “premium” cabin

The premium-ification of Delta’s new cabins starts with seating material changes across its various flight tiers. Seat covers in the Delta One cabin—the brand’s most luxurious seating option for long-haul international flights—will be replaced with a wool-and-nylon blend, which the company says is better at “regulating temperatures.”

“We know through research that sleep is the number-one priority for our Delta One customers, and getting a good night’s sleep is one of the drivers to purchase a seat in that cabin,” says ​​Michael Steinfeld, Delta’s manager of onboard product. “Knowing that, we set out to improve the sleep experience for our Delta One customers, and selected a new material for those seats that is more breathable and more comfortable for a good night’s rest.”

For fliers in Delta Premium Select and First Class, the next two flight tiers, respectively, memory foam cushions will add extra comfort to seats. Delta will also fit its Comfort+ and Main Cabin seats with memory foam cushions in wide-body aircrafts—though on all other aircrafts, the seat materials used for these two tiers will not change. Delta will, however, replace the existing engineered-leather seating covers with ones featuring fresh red accent stripes, which reflect the cabins’ modernized color palette.

Redesigning interiors for “deceleration” mode

“We are moving away from the brighter blue shade that’s been characteristic of Delta’s interiors for many decades and instead leaning into darker, sleeker colors,” Steinfeld says. “Our goal is to create a calming atmosphere with colors and materials that are understated, elegant, and timeless—similar to how a customer might decorate their own home. We’ve used more neutral tones that are offset with pops of red, Delta’s heritage color—all with the goal of creating a moment of deceleration for our customers the second that they step into the aircraft.”

To aid in that “deceleration” process, Delta has also designed a new in-flight lighting experience. Preprogrammed settings include a “warm and inviting” phase for boarding, a hue for mealtimes that’s meant to mimic a “candlelit dinner,” and a sleep-inducing wind-down sequence. “As the lights dim for sleep, we borrow from the sunset and slowly remove blue light while bringing in warm amber tones that are reminiscent of a sunset glow,” Delta’s announcement page reads. “When it’s time to wake up, the cabin slowly brightens into morning and daylight.”

Smaller design details will include new motifs on the aircrafts’ bulkheads, brighter bathrooms, and seat tags to distinguish the various cabins. 

Building a “different” Delta

As fliers become increasingly willing to invest in added perks, Delta wants to meet those interests—whether it’s on the ground in an opulent lounge or in-flight with its newly refurbished cabins. 

“We want to make sure that when we go into this second 100 years, [customers] see ‘premium’ in everything we do, including the environment where they will spend their time with us,” said Ranjan Goswami, Delta’s senior vice president of customer experience design, in today’s announcement video.

“From the moment you walk onboard, you will notice this is a different Delta,” Goswami added.

Indigenous organizations in the Brazilian state of Para said they were not consulted by the government before it signed a deal with multinational companies to sell carbon offset credits to support conservation of the Amazon rainforest in the state.

Amazon.com Inc and other firms agreed last month to buy carbon credits valued at $180 million through the LEAF Coalition conservation initiative, which it helped set up in 2021 with a group of companies and governments, including the United States and United Kingdom.

At the time, Para Governor Helder Barbalho said the deal had the participation of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities.

But on Tuesday, 38 Indigenous and community organizations from Para signed a public letter denouncing his failure to consult them.

“It is unacceptable for the government of Para to take decisions without consulting traditional communities, who are the greatest protectors of the forests while also being the most impacted by the lack of effective climate adaptation policies,” they said in the letter.

“Forest peoples must be heard and consulted. Our territories are not for sale,” they said.

Alessandra Korap Munduruku, a tribal leader who was the letter’s principal author, said the role of U.S.-based companies like Amazon and the Walmart Foundation, Walmart’s philanthropic organization, in the carbon credit purchase was worrying.

“Our priority is the eviction of invaders on our reservation lands that are threatened by miners and a grain railway,” she told Reuters by telephone. “Our leaders were never consulted on the carbon credits. We are being sold like goods.”

The governor’s office did not reply to a request for comment.

Korap Munduruku is an Indigenous teacher turned community leader who won the prestigious Goldman environmental prize in 2023 for her efforts to convince mining companies leave Munduruku lands.

The agreement is LEAF’s first deal in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, which is vital to curbing climate change because of the enormous amount of greenhouse gas its trees absorb.

The deal foresees the purchase of up to 12 million tons of carbon credits generated by reducing deforestation in Para between 2023 and 2026. It was announced on Sept. 24 during New York Climate Week.

Each of the credits represents a reduction of 1 metric ton of carbon emissions and they are jurisdictional, so Para gets paid for reducing deforestation across the state, including on public lands like reservations.

Governor Barbalho said the state would only collect the portion of the sales’ proceeds needed to continue its efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, while the rest would go to Indigenous peoples and traditional communities as well as family farms.

Para will host the UN COP30 climate summit next year, in a move that is the centerpiece of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s bid to restore Brazil’s environmental credentials after years of soaring deforestation.

(This Oct. 9 story has been corrected to say “Walmart Foundation” instead of “Walmart Inc.” in paragraph 7.)

—Anthony Boadle, Reuters

A groundbreaking law that forces companies in Washington State to reduce their carbon emissions while raising billions of dollars for climate programs could be repealed by voters this fall, less than two years after it took effect.

The Climate Commitment Act, one of the most progressive climate policies ever passed by a state legislature, is under fire from conservatives, who say it has ramped up energy and gas costs in Washington, which has long had some of the highest gas prices in the nation. The law aims to slash emissions to almost half of 1990 levels by the year 2030.

It requires businesses producing at least 25,000 metric tons (27,600 U.S. tons) of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent in other greenhouse gases including methane, to pay for the right to do so by buying “allowances.” One allowance equals 1 metric ton (1.1 U.S. tons) of greenhouse gas pollution and each year the number of allowances available for purchase drops, theoretically forcing companies to find ways to cut emissions.

Supporters of the policy say not only would a repeal not guarantee lower costs, but billions of dollars in state revenue for years to come are at stake. Many programs already are or will soon be funded by money from polluting companies, including projects on air quality, fish habitat, wildfire prevention and clean energy.

“The grand policy goal is the higher-level thing of fighting climate change, reducing carbon emission,” said Todd Donovan, a professor of political science at Western Washington University. “But you get down below 30,000 feet to the voters and it’s, ‘How does this effect my gas taxes?'”

The group behind the repeal effort, Let’s Go Washington, says the carbon pricing program has increased consumer gasoline costs by between 43 and 53 cents per gallon, citing the conservative think tank Washington Policy Center.

For months Let’s Go Washington, which is primarily bankrolled by hedge fund executive Brian Heywood, has held more than a dozen events at fuel stations to speak out against what it calls the “hidden gas tax.” Last month at a station in Vancouver, in southwestern Washington, the group lowered gas prices by $1 for two hours by subsidizing the difference to show what reduced prices would look like.

“It’s making everything more expensive, because everything you buy gets delivered to the store or to your door on a truck,” Let’s Go Washington spokesperson Hallie Balch said in a video about the initiative last month.

The average price at the pump for regular gas has gone as high as $5.13 per gallon since the auctions started in February 2023, though it has since fallen and stood at $4.05 this month, according to GasBuddy. The state’s historic high of $5.54 came several months before the auctions began.

Supporters of keeping carbon pricing have showcased the many programs it finances and could disappear if the repeal succeeds, including ones to help Native American tribes respond to climate change.

“We know that the only guarantee of Initiative 2117 is that it would cut investments in combating pollution and air quality, in fish habitat, in preventing wildfires and in transportation,” said Mark Prentice, spokesperson for No on 2117, the group in favor of keeping the climate policy.

Without the program, the Office of Financial Management estimates, $758 million would be lost in state revenue in the next fiscal year and $3.1 billion over the following four years. During this year’s legislative session, state lawmakers approved a budget through fiscal year 2025 with dozens of programs funded by carbon pricing revenue, with belated start dates and stipulations that would not take effect if that disappears.

Washington was the second state to launch this type of program, after California. It started out with aggressive emissions targets of 7% annual decreases, set to ease up from 2031 on. Repealing it would sink plans to link up Washington’s carbon market with others and could be a blow to its efforts to help other states launch similar programs.

A diverse coalition is behind the movement to keep carbon pricing, including most of the federally recognized tribes in Washington, some of its biggest tech giants, national environmental groups TV personality and science advocate Bill Nye of “Bill Nye the Science Guy” and even at least one fossil fuel company. BP America, which was approved to participate in the auctions, contributed more than $2 million to the campaign, saying it supported the measure when it was passed and wants it to stay intact.

The fuel giant’s support is likely due to the fact that keeping the policy in place would provide regulatory certainty that it can plan for, said Aseem Prakash, professor of political science and founding director of the University of Washington’s Center for Environmental Politics.

Supporters of the law have raised more than $16 million, far surpassing the $7 million that Let’s Go Washington has brought in to spend on this and six other initiatives.

The repeal side submitted more than 400,000 signatures to get Initiative 2117 on the November ballot.

—Hallie Golden, Associated Press

The height of the pandemic years saw millions of Americans moving across the country. And those population shifts in the housing market could have a dramatic impact on the political leanings of several states, which might sway the results of the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

A study from Realtor.com finds that nine states could lean more Democratic in the upcoming election, while 22 could swing more conservative. Five of those are swing states.

The report isn’t exactly scientific. Realor.com concedes it made some assumptions based on the county of origin for home shoppers on Realtor.com. To determine if a state became more or less red or blue, it examined the assumed political leanings of out-of-state shoppers as well as the retention rate of local shoppers. The report also cautions that neither people’s locations nor their political views are fixed (meaning just because they voted one way in the past, that’s not a guarantee they will do so again in 2024). Still, it offers a possible glimpse of how the pandemic housing boom could shift the electoral map. 

“As more people move across state lines, their voting habits could have the potential to sway election outcomes, especially in crucial swing states,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, in a statement. “This dynamic raises important questions about how migration trends could influence the future of American politics this year and beyond.”

Which swing states could be affected by new residents?

Swing states Wisconsin and Nevada could shift more to the blue side in 2024, according to the housing market report. (Biden won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes in 2020, a less than 1% margin, and took Nevada by about 33,500 votes, a 2.4% margin.) 

Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina could become deeper red states, according to the report, which is based on geographic home-shopping trends. (Arizona and Georgia both went for Biden in 2020, with less than 15,000 votes separating him and Trump. North Carolina went to Trump.) 

Polling seems to support the data. Harris has a slight lead in Wisconsin and Nevada, per data from Project 538. And Trump is leading in the three red-leaning swing states.

Which swing states are still a toss-up?

The housing market data for two crucial swing states is inconclusive. Both Michigan and Pennsylvania have had mixed-population shifts, which did not signal a clear direction in local voter sentiment. (Harris currently leads Trump in the Project 538 poll in Michigan by the narrowest of margins—47.8% to 47% and in Pennsylvania by just a 0.7% margin.) Biden narrowly won both states in 2020.

Which other states are trending bluer?

Four existing blue populations, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, and District of Columbia, seem set to trend bluer, according to the report. Meanwhile, three red states—Alaska, Florida and Ohio—also are shifting bluer. 

Which other states are trending redder?

Seven states that have previously leaned blue could see a shift to more conservative voting—California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and Washington State. Another dozen, which were already red states, appear to be becoming even more red: Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. 

The shift in red and blue voters is especially noteworthy given how close recent polls have Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. An NBC News poll, released Tuesday, showed the candidates in a dead heat, each with 48% among registered voters.