By EDITH M. LEDERER

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Behind the scenes at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, key countries and regional organizations have been coordinating efforts to try to end the horrific war in Sudan, which has created the most devastating humanitarian and displacement crisis in the world.

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Alan Boswell, the International Crisis Group’s project director for the Horn of Africa, said this year’s high-level General Assembly meeting, which ends Monday, could be “make-or-break” for stopping the conflict.

“For the first time since the war broke out more than two years ago, Sudan’s most influential outside powers agreed this month on a roadmap to end the war,” he said in a statement. “Now comes the huge task of trying to convince Sudan’s warring parties to stop fighting.”

Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its rival military and paramilitary commanders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to western Darfur and much of the rest of the country.

At least 40,000 people have been killed, nearly 13 million displaced and many pushed to the brink of famine with over 24 million acutely food insecure, U.N. agencies say.

Diplomats seek a humanitarian truce and ceasefire

In a key development after a summer of discussions, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates issued a joint statement on Sept. 12 calling for a humanitarian truce for an initial three months to deliver desperately needed aid throughout Sudan followed by a permanent ceasefire.

Then, the four countries said, “an inclusive and transparent transition process should be launched and concluded within nine months to meet the aspirations of the Sudanese people towards smoothly establishing an independent, civilian-led government with broad-based legitimacy and accountability.”

The group, calling themselves the Quad, met Wednesday on the sidelines of the assembly to discuss implementation of their roadmap.

Another meeting also focused on de-escalating the war was convened Wednesday by the African Union, the European Union and the foreign ministers of Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Representatives of the Quad, a dozen other countries, the Arab League, the United Nations and the east Africa regional group IGAD also attended.

A statement issued by the AU, EU, France, Germany, UK, Denmark, Norway and Canada after the meeting urged the warring government and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces to resume direct negotiations to achieve a permanent ceasefire.

It welcomed the Sept. 12 statement by the Quad, and expressed support for efforts by the AU and the EU “to coordinate international and bilateral efforts to pressure all Sudanese parties towards a ceasefire, humanitarian action and political dialogue.”

The statement strongly condemned the military involvement of unnamed foreign countries and “non-state actors” and urged them to stop fueling the conflict.

RSF accused of crimes against civilians

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his “State of the World” speech at the opening of the global gathering Tuesday, made a similar appeal to all parties, including unnamed countries in the vast assembly chamber: “End the external support that is fueling this bloodshed. Push to protect civilians.”

“In Sudan, civilians are being slaughtered, starved, and silenced,” Guterres said. “Women and girls face unspeakable violence.”

The deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said in July that the tribunal believes war crimes and crimes against humanity are taking place in Darfur, where the RSF controls all regional capitals except el-Fasher in North Darfur.

The RSF and their allies announced in late June they had formed a parallel government in areas the group controls. The U.N. Security Council rejected the plan, warning that a rival government threatens the country’s territorial integrity and risks further exacerbating the ongoing civil war.

Sudan’s Transitional Prime Minister Kamil El-Tayeb Idris accused the RSF of “systematic killing and torture and looting and rape and humiliation and the savage destruction of all the components of life,” part of its effort “to control Sudan, to plunder its wealth and to change the demographics of its population.”

Speaking to the assembly Thursday, he stressed the country’s sovereignty and said the government is committed to a Sudanese-developed roadmap including a ceasefire, “accompanied by the withdrawal of the terrorist Rapid Support militia from the areas and cities it occupies” including el-Fasher.

El-Tayeb said the civilian government he formed will engage in a national dialogue “that includes all political and societal forces to lay the groundwork for elections that are free and fair, and to engage positively with regional and international communities.”

Chad’s Prime Minister Allah Maye Halina told the General Assembly on Thursday that his country, which borders Darfur, is hosting over 2 million refugees from Sudan, 1.5 million of whom arrived since April 2023. He appealed to the international community to help support the refugees, saying more keep arriving.

“We are convinced that the current crisis in Sudan cannot be resolved through weapons, but rather through peaceful means, through inclusive inter-Sudanese dialogue,” he said, stressing that Chad is strictly neutral in the conflict and is available to contribute to any initiative to end the war.

By JONEL ALECCIA, AP Health Writer

Federal health officials are warning consumers not to eat certain heat-and-eat beef meatball pasta meals sold at Walmart stores because they may be contaminated with listeria bacteria previously linked to a deadly outbreak.

The U.S. Agriculture Department issued a public health alert late Thursday for Marketside Linguine with Beef Meatballs & Marinara Sauce sold in refrigerated 12-ounce clear plastic trays. The products have best-by dates of Sept. 22 through Oct. 1 and may still be in consumer’s refrigerators.

The affected meals contain the establishment numbers “EST. 50784” and “EST. 47718” inside the USDA mark of inspection on the label. They were sent to Walmart stores nationwide.

No recall has been issued, but FreshRealm, a large food producer that distributed the products, said they advised Walmart this week to pull the meals from store shelves. Additional products may be identified, according to USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.

The meals may be contaminated with the same strain of listeria that caused an outbreak tied to chicken fettuccine Alfredo sold at Walmart and Kroger stores. Three people were killed and at least 17 were sickened in that outbreak, which led to a large recall this summer.

FreshRealm conducted tests that detected the listeria in linguine used in the meatball dish, company officials said. The strain matched the listeria identified in the chicken fettuccine Alfredo outbreak, the company said.

“We have long maintained that the source of the listeria was likely an ingredient supplied by a third party,” the company said in a statement.

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The pasta came from Nate’s Fine Foods of Roseville, California. The company did not immediately respond to questions.

Listeria infections can cause serious illness, particularly in older adults, people with weakened immune systems and those who are pregnant or their newborns. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance and convulsions.

About 1,600 people get sick each year from listeria infections and about 260 die, the CDC says. Federal officials in December said they were revamping protocols to prevent listeria infections after several high-profile outbreaks, including one linked to Boar’s Head deli meats that led to 10 deaths and more than 60 illnesses last year.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By AARON MORRISON and TERRY TANG, Associated Press

After a Ukrainian woman who fled war in her home country was stabbed to death on a commuter train in North Carolina, the alarming act of violence ignited bitter racial and political rhetoric about crime victims and perpetrators in America.

The fatal attack last month, in which the alleged perpetrator was identified as a Black man, evoked such visceral reactions partly because it was caught on surveillance video that went viral online. On Tuesday, North Carolina’s Legislature passed a criminal justice package named after the victim to limit defendants’ eligibility for bail and to encourage them to undergo mental health evaluations.

Rhetoric about the attack, including claims about “Black-on-white-crime,” has spread from social media and broadcast airwaves to the halls of Congress and the White House. Some of it leverages cherry-picked cases and ill-framed crime statistics to reproduce age-old harmful narratives about Black criminality and threats to white populations.

It comes at a time when Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have been hyping the rhetoric as part of a focus on urban cities with reputations of violence. But despite the rhetoric, the data shows that in most U.S. communities, victims of violence and offenders are usually the same race or ethnicity.

Violent incidents where the offenders and the victims are of different races “is extremely uncommon,” said Charis Kubrin, a criminology professor at the University of California Irvine. It is “the exception rather than the rule.”

People are more likely to be victimized by people they know and interact with regularly in their social sphere, she added.

The most recent breakdown of federal crime statistics bears that out. Black offenders were involved in about 15% of violent victimizations of white people between 2017 and 2021, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which publishes multiyear crime trend reports every few years. White offenders were involved in over half of violence against other white people, the statistics show.

The report showed similar trends when it came to violent crimes committed against Black victims. White offenders were involved in about 12% those crimes against Black people, while Black offenders were involved in 60% of violence against other Black people.

What happened in Charlotte and the rhetoric around it

The Aug. 22 killing of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska became a flashpoint in online discussions about crime victims and race after surveillance video of the attack in Charlotte, North Carolina, circulated widely online.

Zarutska was knifed to death on the city’s Lynx Blue Line light rail. Footage showed the alleged attacker pacing through the train and spreading the woman’s blood on the floors of the train car.

Decarlos Brown Jr., a Black man, has been charged with first-degree murder and faces federal charges of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system.

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Conservative activists, including Trump political ally Charlie Kirk, were quick to call out what they decried as a double-standard in reporting on such crimes by the mainstream media. Kirk once said on his popular podcast, “prowling Blacks go around for fun to target white people.”

Speaking about the Charlotte attack, Kirk said: “If a random white person on a subway took out a knife and stabbed a Black girl senselessly to death, there would be massive media coverage.”

“There would be policy changes. … We saw this in George Floyd,” the 31-year-old said on his podcast a day before he was killed on a Utah university campus.

North Carolina Republicans also weighed in, some blaming what they called Democrats’ “woke policies” on crime, including cashless bail, as the reason presumably dangerous people like Zarutska’s alleged attacker were roaming free to pose threats to the public.

The North Carolina chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group that primarily advocates against anti-Muslim sentiments, said: “We also condemn those using this crime to resurrect racist talking points about the Black community.”

“This selective outrage is dangerous, hypocritical, and racially motivated, especially given that white supremacists fall silent about other stabbings, mass shootings, hate crimes, financial crimes, rapes and various other misconduct committed by people of all races and backgrounds,” the group said in a statement.

Comparing Black-on-white crime to white-on-Black crime

Some criminologists caution against relying on raw count crime numbers as it relates to the race of victims and offenders because population size matters. Non-Hispanic Black people made up roughly 13% of the U.S. population in 2024, according census estimates. Non-Hispanic White people make up the largest racial group in the U.S. — an estimated 56% of the total population in 2024 — so “there are just more white people that could be potential offenders,” Kubrin said.

Black-on-white and white-on-Black violence are both extremely rare, she added.

The National Criminal Victimization Survey conducted in 2023 by the Justice Department gathered data on nearly 6 million violent incidents reported by law enforcement. Their findings show over 3.5 million involved a white victim; white offenders were involved in more than half of those crimes, while only one-tenth involved Black offenders.

When a killing or violent interaction between people of different races grabs the headlines and social media — especially if there is video — it is tempting to use that as confirmation of preconceived notions that Black-on-white crime or vice-versa are suddenly spiking, Kubrin said. But in reality, they make up a small share of hundreds of thousands of violent crimes mostly involving people of the same race, she said.

Brett Tolman, executive director of Right on Crime, a conservative criminal justice group, thinks people should not focus on race but rather where violent crimes are happening the most. Even if data shows crime has been on a downward trend, that can be of little comfort if people constantly feel unsafe, he said.

“Let’s start making it about communities that want to feel safe,” Tolman said. “I hear from just as many that are living in inner cities, regardless of their politics, that they want safety and security.”

Examining Black-on-Black crime

Black-on-Black crime is a flawed premise, according to criminologists, because people of all racial groups experience crime due to their social networks and proximity to each other.

But in discussions about systemic racism in policing and the criminal justice system, it’s frequently argued that Black-on-Black crime should be the chief concern of Black communities — more than police brutality or racial profiling — because homicide has been a leading cause of death among Black men.

Even as crime rates have fallen dramatically for white and Black populations over time, misinformed rhetoric around crime and violence perpetuates racialized narratives on the issues, said Trymaine Lee, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who recently published a book about gun violence, “A Thousand Ways to Die.”

“When you have a nation so bound by violence as the United States, it’s only a matter of time that that binding snaps and lashes at us all,” he said, adding that violence “isn’t the domain of Black Americans alone.”

“Even though the politics of the moment might suggest differently, this is a stark reminder that no American is out of reach of American violence.”

By ALLEN G. BREED and BRITTANY PETERSON

OLD FORT, N.C. (AP) — Morning mist is still burning off the surrounding mountains when they appear: Small groups of helmeted riders on one-wheeled, skateboard-like contraptions, navigating the pitched streets, past the 30-foot granite Arrowhead Monument on the town square.

They are among the 400 or so people converging on this Blue Ridge foothills town for FloatLife Fest, which bills itself as “the ORIGINAL and LONGEST RUNNING” gathering dedicated to motorized Onewheel boards. Swelling Old Fort’s normal population by half, the mid-September festival is injecting much needed money and hope into a town still recovering a year after it was inundated by the remnants of Hurricane Helene.

“We should definitely come back again,” says Jess Jones, a 34-year-old marine biologist from Edinburgh, Scotland. “The vibe and the welcome that we got there was really nice.”

That the festival occurred at all is a tribute to the area’s natural beauty, and the resilience of its people.

Signs of progress are mixed with still-visible scars from Helene in this town about 24 miles (39 kilometers) east of Asheville. Most of Old Fort’s shops have reopened, even as workers continue clawing away at a debris pile downtown and some homes remain unlivable.

Like other businesspeople in this tourist-dependent mountain region, bike shop owner Chad Schoenauer has been banking on a strong fall leaf-peeping season to help get him back on track after Helene. But many seem to assume Old Fort is still a wasteland.

“‘Oh, I didn’t know that you were open,’” he says is a typical reaction.

Helene’s floods and landslides interrupt outdoor tourism makeover

When Helene swept through, Old Fort was well on its way to remaking itself as an outdoor destination, especially after furniture manufacturer Ethan Allen laid off 325 workers when it converted its factory there into a distribution center in 2019.

“When the Ethan Allen layoff happened, local leaders started coming together and saying, `How do we use these beautiful natural assets that we have to diversify the manufacturing economy?’” says Kim Effler, president and CEO of the McDowell Chamber of Commerce.

Named for a Revolutionary War-era stockade, the town decided to become a world-class destination for hiking, running, horseback riding and, most notably, mountain biking.

“We have a red clay that makes some of the best trails in the country,” FloatLife founder Justyn Thompson says. “The trails are epic.”

In 2021, the G5 Trail Collective — a program led by the nonprofit Camp Grier outdoors complex — got the U.S. Forest Service to agree to 42 miles (68 kilometers) of new multi-purpose trails. The effort began paying dividends almost immediately.

“For every trail that we were able to open, we saw a new business open up in town,” says Jason McDougald, the camp’s executive director.

The collective had just completed the 21st mile (34th kilometer) of trail when Helene, in Schoenauer’s words, hit “the reset button” by washing away trails and damaging businesses.

When the storm blew through on Sept. 27, 2024, the Catawba River converged with the normally placid Mill Creek, leaving much of downtown under several feet of muddy water.

Schoenauer, who opened his Old Fort Bike Shop in 2021, says it took two days before he could make it to town to assess damage to the business housed in a refurbished 1901 former general store.

“I was numb coming all the way here,” he says. “And as soon as I got off the exit, I started crying.”

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The water rose more than 3 feet (1 meter) inside the shop, leaving behind a 10-inch (25-centimeter) layer of reddish-brown mud. The beautiful heart pine floors buckled.

Schoenauer says he suffered about $150,000 in uninsured losses.

At the Foothills Watershed mountain biking complex along the Catawba, the storm took 48 large shade trees and an 18,000-square-foot (1,672-square-meter) track built with banks and jumps.

“We had a septic field, a brand-new constructed septic field for the business that was destroyed,” says Casey McKissick, who spent the last three years developing the bike park. “Never been used; not even turned on yet. And it all went right down the river.”

McKissick says the business didn’t have flood insurance because it was too costly, and the threat of a catastrophic event seemed too remote.

The damage amounted to $150,000. Worse yet was the loss of eight months of business, including last year’s foliage season.

“We lost that really critical fourth quarter of the year, which is a beautiful fall,” McKissick says.

Part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, damaged in Hurricane Helene, is under construction near Ferrin Knob Tunnel in Candler, N.C., June 2025. (National Parks Service via AP)

Blue Ridge Parkway closure slows visitors’ return

Gov. Josh Stein recently announced that travelers had spent a record $36.7 billion in the state last year. But that boom eluded the counties worst hit by Helene.

Visitor spending in Buncombe County — home to Asheville — was down nearly 11% last year compared to 2023, according to the state Department of Commerce.

In McDowell, tourist spending dropped nearly 3% in that same period. Effler says this June and July, foot traffic at the county’s largest visitor center was down 50% from last year.

She blames much of that on damage to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is consistently one of the most-visited of the national parks. About 35 miles (56 kilometers) of the North Carolina route — including long stretches in McDowell County — aren’t slated to reopen until fall 2026.

McDougald says nearly every trail in the Old Fort complex was damaged, with landslides taking out “300-foot sections of trail at a time.”

They’ve managed to reopen about 30 miles (48 kilometers) of trail, but he says about that many miles remain closed.

Schoenauer reopened his shop in December, but traffic was down by about two-thirds this summer.

“My business, revenue-wise, has shifted more to the repair side,” he says. “People trying to still recreate, but use the bike that they have just to keep it going and have some fun.”

The Watershed complex opened in June, but without the planned riverfront gazebo and performance stage. And they’ve moved the bike jumps to higher ground.

“It’s changed our way of looking at the floodplain, for sure,” McKissick says.

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment