By THOMAS ADAMSON

PARIS (AP) — When Olivier Baroin moved into an apartment in Montmartre about 15 years ago, it felt like he was living in a village in the heart of Paris. Not anymore.

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Stores for residents are disappearing, along with the friendly atmosphere, he says. In their place are hordes of people taking selfies, shops selling tourist trinkets, and cafés whose seating spills into the narrow, cobbled streets as overtourism takes its toll.

Baroin has had enough. He put his apartment up for sale after local streets were designated pedestrian-only while accommodating the growing number of visitors.

“I told myself that I had no other choice but to leave since, as I have a disability, it’s even more complicated when you can no longer take your car, when you have to call a taxi from morning to night,” he told The Associated Press.

Overtourism in European cities

From Venice to Barcelona to Amsterdam, European cities are struggling to absorb surging numbers of tourists.

A banner reading “Montmartre under threat. Are residents being forgotten?” hangs at windows in the Montmartre district in Paris, France, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

Some residents in one of Paris’ most popular tourist neighborhoods are now pushing back. A black banner strung between two balconies in Montmartre reads, in English: “Behind the postcard: locals mistreated by the Mayor.” Another, in French, says: “Montmartre residents resisting.”

Atop the hill where the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur crowns the city’s skyline, residents lament what they call the “Disneyfication” of the once-bohemian slice of Paris. The basilica says it now attracts up to 11 million people a year — even more than the Eiffel Tower — while daily life in the neighborhood has been overtaken by tuk-tuks, tour groups, photo queues and short-term rentals.

“Now, there are no more shops at all, there are no more food shops, so everything must be delivered,” said 56-year-old Baroin, a member of a residents’ protest group called Vivre a Montmartre, or Living in Montmartre.

Tourists stroll in the Montmartre district in Paris, France, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

The unrest echoes tensions across town at the Louvre Museum, where staff in June staged a brief wildcat strike over chronic overcrowding, understaffing and deteriorating conditions. The Louvre logged 8.7 million visitors in 2024, more than double what its infrastructure was designed to handle.

A postcard under pressure

Paris, a city of just over 2 million residents if you count its sprawling suburbs, welcomed 48.7 million tourists in 2024, a 2% increase from the previous year.

Sacré-Cœur, the most visited monument in France in 2024, and the surrounding Montmartre neighborhood have turned into what some locals call an open-air theme park.

Local staples like butchers, bakeries and grocers are vanishing, replaced by ice-cream stalls, bubble-tea vendors and souvenir T-shirt stands.

Paris authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Visitors seemed largely to be enjoying the packed streets on a sunny Tuesday this week.

Tourists stroll in the Montmartre district in Paris, France, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

“For the most part, all of Paris has been pretty busy, but full of life, for sure,” said American tourist Adam Davidson. “Coming from Washington, D.C., which is a lively city as well, I would say this is definitely full of life to a different degree for sure.”

Europe’s breaking point

In Barcelona, thousands have taken to the streets this year, some wielding water pistols, demanding limits on cruise ships and short-term tourist rentals. Venice now charges an entry fee for day-trippers and caps visitor numbers. And in Athens, authorities are imposing a daily limit on visitors to the Acropolis, to protect the ancient monument from record-breaking tourist crowds.

Urban planners warn that historic neighborhoods risk becoming what some critics call “zombie cities” — picturesque but lifeless, their residents displaced by short-term visitors.

A banner reading “The City Hall despises us” hangs from a balcony in the Montmartre district in Paris, France, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

Paris is trying to mitigate the problems by cracking down on short-term rentals and unlicensed properties.

But tourism pressures are growing. By 2050, the world’s population is projected to reach nearly 10 billion, according to United Nations estimates. With the global middle class expanding, low-cost flights booming and digital platforms guiding travelers to the same viral landmarks, many more visitors are expected in iconic cities like Paris.

The question now, residents say, is whether any space is left for those who call it home.

By KEN MORITSUGU and NG HAN GUAN

TALATAN, China (AP) — High on the Tibetan plateau, Chinese government officials last month showed off what they say will be the world’s largest solar farm when completed — 235 square miles, the size of the American city of Chicago.

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China has been installing solar panels at a blistering pace, far faster than anywhere else in the world, and the investment is starting to pay off. A study released Thursday found that the country’s carbon emissions edged down 1% in the first six months of the year compared to a year earlier, extending a trend that began in March 2024.

The good news is China’s carbon emissions may have peaked well ahead of a government target of doing so before 2030. But China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, will need to bring them down much more sharply to play its part in slowing global climate change.

For China to reach its declared goal of carbon neutrality by 2060, emissions would need to fall 3% on average over the next 35 years, said Lauri Myllyvirta, the Finland-based author of the study and lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

“China needs to get to that 3% territory as soon as possible,” he said.

China’s emissions have fallen even as it uses more electricity

China’s emissions have fallen before during economic slowdowns. What’s different this time is electricity demand is growing — up 3.7% in the first half of this year — but the increase in power from solar, wind and nuclear has easily outpaced that, according to Myllyvirta, who analyzes the most recent data in a study published on the U.K.-based Carbon Brief website.

A solar farm is visible in Hainan prefecture of western China’s Qinghai province on Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

“We’re talking really for the first time about a structural declining trend in China’s emissions,” he said.

China installed 212 gigawatts of solar capacity in the first six months of the year, more than America’s entire capacity of 178 gigawatts as of the end of 2024, the study said. Electricity from solar has overtaken hydropower in China and is poised to surpass wind this year to become the country’s largest source of clean energy. Some 51 gigawatts of wind power was added from January to June.

Li Shuo, the director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington, described the plateauing of China’s carbon emissions as a turning point in the effort to combat climate change.

“This is a moment of global significance, offering a rare glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak climate landscape,” he wrote in an email response. It also shows that a country can cut emissions while still growing economically, he said.

But Li cautioned that China’s heavy reliance on coal remains a serious threat to progress on climate and said the economy needs to shift to less resource-intensive sectors. “There’s still a long road ahead,” he said.

One solar farm can power 5 million households

A seemingly endless expanse of solar panels stretches toward the horizon on the Tibetan plateau. White two-story buildings rise above them at regular intervals. Sheep graze on the scrubby vegetation that grows under them.

Tibetan sheep graze at a solar farm in Hainan prefecture of western China’s Qinghai province on Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Solar panels have been installed on about two-thirds of the land. When completed, it will have more than 7 million panels and be capable of generating enough power for 5 million households.

Like many of China’s solar and wind farms, it was built in the relatively sparsely populated west. A major challenge is getting electricity to the population centers and factories in China’s east.

“The distribution of green energy resources is perfectly misaligned with the current industrial distribution of our country,” Zhang Jinming, the vice governor of Qinghai province, told journalists on a government-organized tour.

Part of the solution is building transmission lines traversing the country. One connects Qinghai to Henan province. Two more are planned, including one to Guangdong province in the southeast, almost at the opposite corner of the country.

Making full use of the power is hindered by the relatively inflexible way that China’s electricity grid is managed, tailored to the steady output of coal plants rather than more variable and less predictable wind and solar, Myllyvirta said.

“This is an issue that the policymakers have recognized and are trying to manage, but it does require big changes to the way coal-fired power plants operate and big changes to the way the transmission network operates,” he said. “So it’s no small task.”

Moritsugu reported from Beijing. Associated Press video producer Wayne Zhang contributed.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

In a stunning move, the Vikings have agreed to trade veteran defensive tackle Harrison Phillips to the New York Jets, a source confirmed to the Pioneer Press.

In exchange, the Vikings will get a 2026 sixth-round pick and a 2027 seventh-round pick. To complete the deal the Vikings will also flip a 2027 seventh-round pick to the Jets and have reportedly agreed to pay half of the salary Phillips is owed.

As surprising of a deal as it is on the surface, it starts to make a little bit more sense when considering the Vikings have a gluttony of talent in the trenches on defense.

They signed veteran defensive tackle Jonathan Allen and veteran defensive tackle Javon Hargrave in free agency. They have also seen young defensive tackle Jalen Redmond and rookie defensive tackle Tyrion Ingram Dawkins continue to emerge in training camp.

That played a role in making Phillips expendable.

The loss of Phillips will be felt on and off the field.

Not only has he been a mainstay on the defensive line ever since signing with the Vikings, he’s been an active philanthropist across Minnesota.

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APPLETON, Minn. — The Prairie Correctional Facility in western Minnesota could become a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.

That’s according to new reporting from the Washington Post outlining the agency’s plans to double the number of people in detention.

The Trump administration is adding new detention facilities across the country to hold the growing number of immigrants it has arrested and accused of being in the country illegally. ICE centers were holding more than 56,000 immigrants in June, the most since 2019.

The Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton has a capacity of 1,600 people, which would make it one of the nation’s largest immigration detention facilities.

Minnesota’s only private prison, it was shuttered in 2010 but has been a subject of debate for years. In 2023, the Minnesota House passed a bill that would ban private prisons in the state. That bill did not make it through the Senate.

More recently, two Republican legislators from western Minnesota have proposed using the Appleton prison to house inmates displaced from the planned closing of the Stillwater state penitentiary.

State leaders in May agreed to a phased closing of Stillwater, citing safety and costly maintenance concerns at the 1914 facility in Bayport. Plans call for the prison to be shuttered by July 2029.

However, the Minnesota Department of Corrections rejected the idea of using the Appleton prison, saying that the purchase and operation of the long-vacant facility “is not regarded as an effective or efficient use of state resources.”

Appleton and ICE planning

A Jan. 5, 2010, photo, shows the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minn. Republicans pushed legislation though a committee on Tuesday, March 22, 2016, to re-open a privately run prison in western Minnesota despite repeated interruptions from protesters who briefly halted debate as they pushed lawmakers to instead consider ways to decrease the state’s prison population. GOP lawmakers have targeted the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, as a way to ease Minnesota’s overcrowded prisons. (Mark Steil/Minnesota Public Radio via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

ICE confirmed planning documents obtained by the newspaper were real, but said they were not final plans, said Washington Post reporter Douglas MacMillan.

Many local governments told the Post they did not have contracts with ICE — but that doesn’t mean new facilities couldn’t quickly develop.

“In some cases, it seems like this road map is aspirational,” MacMillan told MPR News. “What we have seen in the past six months is that this agency, under Trump, is willing to move into an area very quickly and try to fill it with migrants in a matter of weeks or months.”

Appleton City Administrator John Olinger told MPR News the city is not in communication with ICE and does not have a contract, but that Prairie Correctional owner CoreCivic is “aggressively pursuing” a contract with ICE.

In a statement, CoreCivic said of the Appleton facility, “We continue to explore opportunities with our government partners for which this site could be a viable solution.”

Elsewhere

Meanwhile, Nebraska announced plans Tuesday for an immigration detention center in the remote southwest corner of the state.

The facility will be dubbed the “Cornhusker Clink,” a play on Nebraska’s nickname of the Cornhusker State and an old slang term for jail. The alliterative name follows in the vein of the previously announced “Alligator Alcatraz” and “Deportation Depot” detention centers in Florida and the “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana.

Republican Gov. Jim Pillen said he and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had agreed to use an existing minimum security prison work camp in McCook — a remote city of about 7,000 people in the middle of the wide-open prairies between Denver and Omaha — to house people awaiting deportation and being held for other immigration proceedings. It’s expected to be a Midwest hub for detainees from several states.

Opposition

The “Alligator Alcatraz” facility in Florida has also been the subject of legal challenges by attorneys who allege violations of due process there, including the rights of detainees to meet with their attorneys, limited access to immigration courts and poor living conditions. Critics have been trying to stop further construction and operations until it comes into compliance with federal environmental laws. It’s designed to hold up to 3,000 detainees in temporary tent structures.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced last week that his administration is preparing to open a second facility, dubbed “Deportation Depot,” at a state prison in north Florida. It’s expected to have 1,300 immigration beds, though that capacity could be expanded to 2,000, state officials said.

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Also last week, officials in the rural Tennessee town of Mason voted to approve agreements to turn a former prison into an immigration detention facility operated by a private company, despite loud objections from residents and activists during a contentious public meeting.

And the Trump administration announced plans earlier this month for a 1,000-bed detention center in Indiana that would be dubbed “Speedway Slammer,” prompting a backlash in the Midwestern state that hosts the Indianapolis 500 auto race.

This report includes reporting from the Pioneer Press and the Associated Press.