One by one, a series of residents and community advocates connected to St. Paul’s Midway took a seat before the city’s legislative hearing officer on Tuesday morning to plead, in no uncertain terms, that City Hall order the demolition of what they described as the neighborhood’s most eyesore property — the shuttered CVS pharmacy store at Snelling and University avenues.

The building, erected between 2005 and 2007, has drawn loiterers, break-ins, litter and other signs of vagrancy and neglect since CVS permanently closed the location in April 2022. With a rooftop HVAC unit stripped bare by vandals and the exterior fenced and boarded, the site has become an unfortunate anchor to what was once one of St. Paul’s most prominent business corridors, said speaker after speaker, and a disincentive to move to or invest in the surrounding community.

“This is one of the oldest St. Paul intersections. This is on every Minnesota map,” said Nicole Brown, who can trace her family history in St. Paul back to 1895. Every summer, “2.5 million, at least, attend the Fair, and they see this. They talk about this. I work at the Fair.”

In addition to being surrounded by storefronts and housing, the site borders the Green Line light rail station and the A Line bus stops along Snelling, key transit connections that were once expected to inspire commerce. Instead, “my children have now taken opioid overdose classes and know when to call 911 instead of stepping around (prone loiterers) at this specific building,” Brown added.

Marcia Moermond, the city’s legislative hearing officer, said an order to abate nuisance building conditions was mailed to the property owner of record on Aug. 5, and it spelled out the need for a $5,000 performance deposit in advance of site improvements. Since then, after “almost two months, and no action on it,” Moermond said. “I don’t see movement right now.”

Uncertain ownership

An attorney representing CVS indicated the national pharmacy chain leases the site from a property owner, with whom CVS has had no recent contact. He indicated the company, which has had dealings with employees of the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections in the past, hopes to find another lessee for the site, which was fenced off within the past year. He said he had no other immediate information to share.

Property records show the site is owned by a limited liability corporation of ambiguous title (“Scp 2005 C21 045 Llc”) with a post office box in Spokane, Wash. The address, shared by dozens of companies, appears to be a “virtual post office box” — a service that allows companies to view scanned images of their mail or have their mail forwarded along to yet another address, further concealing their actual whereabouts.

“I’m not clear as to the actual relationship between CVS as the lessee and Scp 2005 C21 045 Llc in Spokane, Washington,” said Moermond, eliciting some wry chuckles from the audience.

Several speakers said they longed for the site to fall into local ownership and serve a community-driven purpose, such as affordable housing, a free clinic, grocery or some combination of all of the above. Even before CVS opened at the site, community groups like the now-defunct University United expressed concern that an out-of-state corporate retail chain building one story of commerce with faux upper levels would not serve as the highest and best use of the property.

“You get the community you plan for,” said Lily Eggers, who is active with the Hamline-Midway Street Corps, a working group of the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America. “You get the community you build for.”

In community meetings, some skeptics have said the area already hosts an overconcentration of charitable efforts such as the new emergency overnight shelter at Central Baptist Church and housing for the recently homeless provided by Beacon Interfaith on Snelling Avenue.

Dr. Bill McGuire — owner of the Minnesota United soccer team, and a key player in development plans around Allianz Field — has said the CVS site needs to become market-rate housing or another tony use, which could help provide tax base for the city and customers for the surrounding businesses of Little Africa.

Key vote on Nov. 5

The St. Paul City Council is scheduled to consider the abatement order on Nov. 5, and Moermond said it was her immediate inclination to recommend at that time that the council order the property owner to remove the site rather than repair it. If approved by the council, the owner would then have 15 days to demolish the building, or it would fall to the city to put demolition out to bid and follow through with a hazardous materials inspection and utility disconnections, a process that could take several weeks.

If the city demolishes the building, the costs will be assessed to the property owner. If the owner were to simply walk away from the site, it will lapse into tax forfeiture and be transferred to Ramsey County. The city’s demolition costs would eventually be recouped through a land sale, which the county would oversee.

Pointing to tall grass and litter collecting in nearby vacant lots, some residents expressed concern that if the property owner simply sits on the lot without selling it, it would remain a dirt lot for the foreseeable future.

It’s also possible, said Moermond, that CVS or the property owner comes forward with formal plans to abate nuisance conditions at the site before the council convenes on Nov. 5. She said she planned to review any comments or plans submitted to the city on Oct. 28.

“The public record is still open and we could get a pile of paperwork from anybody on this,” said Moermond, noting any new information submitted to the city could impact her recommendation.

In addition to the $5,000 performance deposit, Moermond said the property owner will need to provide a complete abatement plan laying out future lighting, cameras, bids for trade labor improvements in particular parts of the building and other evidence of a detailed scope of work.

“I don’t have any of these things right now,” she said.

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By STEVEN GRATTAN, Associated Press

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Droughts have withered crops in Peru, fires have scorched the Amazon and hydroelectric dams in Ecuador have struggled to keep the lights on as rivers dry up. Scientists say the cause may lie high above the rainforest, where invisible “flying rivers” carry rain from the Atlantic Ocean across South America.

New analysis warns that relentless deforestation is disrupting that water flow and suggests that continuing tree loss will worsen droughts in the southwestern Amazon and could eventually trigger those regions to shift from rainforest to drier savanna — grassland with far fewer trees.

“These are the forces that actually create and sustain the Amazon rainforest,” said Matt Finer, a senior researcher with Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), which tracks deforestation and climate threats across the basin and carried out the analysis.

“If you break that pump by cutting down too much forest, the rains stop reaching where they need to go.”

What are flying rivers and how do they work?

Most of the Amazon’s rainfall starts over the Atlantic Ocean. Moist air is pushed inland by steady winds that blow west along the equator, known as the trade winds. The forest then acts like a pump, effectively relaying the water thousands of miles westward as the trees absorb water, then release it back into the air.

Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre was among the early researchers who calculated how much of the water vapor from the Atlantic would move through and eventually out of the Amazon basin. He and colleagues coined the “flying rivers” term at a 2006 scientific meeting, and interest grew as scientists warned that a weakening of the rivers could push the Amazon into a tipping point where rainforest would turn to savanna.

That’s important because the Amazon rainforest is a vast storehouse for the carbon dioxide that largely drives the world’s warming. Such a shift would devastate wildlife and Indigenous communities and threaten farming, water supplies and weather stability far beyond the region.

Warning signs in Peru and Bolivia

The analysis by Finer’s group found that southern Peru and northern Bolivia are especially vulnerable. During the dry season, flying rivers sweep across southern Brazil before reaching the Andes — precisely where deforestation is most intense. The loss of trees means less water vapor is carried westward, raising the risk of drought in iconic protected areas such as Peru’s Manu National Park.

“Peru can do everything right to protect a place like Manu,” Finer said. “But if deforestation keeps cutting into the pump in Brazil, the rains that sustain it may never arrive.”

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Nobre said as much as 50% of rainfall in the western Amazon near the Andes depends on the flying rivers.

Corine Vriesendorp, director of science at Conservacion Amazonica, based in Cusco, Peru, said the changes are already visible.

“The last two years have brought the driest conditions the Amazon has ever seen,” Vriesendorp said. “Ecological calendars that Indigenous communities use — when to plant, when to fish, when animals reproduce — are increasingly out of sync. Having less and more unpredictable rain will have an even bigger impact on their lives than climate change is already having.”

Farmers face failed harvests, Indigenous families struggle with disrupted fishing and hunting seasons and cities that rely on hydroelectric power see outages as the rivers that provide the power dry up.

Forest makes a fragile pump

MAAP researchers found that rainfall patterns depend on when and where the flying rivers cross the basin. In the wet season, their northern route flows mostly over intact forests in Guyana, Suriname and northern Brazil, keeping the system strong.

But in the dry season — when forests are already stressed by heat — the aerial rivers cut across southern Brazil, where deforestation fronts spread along highways and farms and there simply are fewer trees to help move the moisture along.

“It’s during the dry months, when the forest most needs water, that the flying rivers are most disrupted,” Finer said.

Finer pointed to roads that can accelerate deforestation, noting that the controversial BR-319 highway in Brazil — a project to pave a road through one of the last intact parts of the southern Amazon — could create an entirely new deforestation front.

The tipping point debate

For years, scientists have warned about the Amazon tipping toward savannah. Finer said the new study complicates that picture.

“It’s not a single, all-at-once collapse,” he said. “Certain areas, like the southwest Amazon, are more vulnerable and will feel the impacts first. And we’re already seeing early signs of rainfall reduction downwind of deforested areas.”

Nobre said the risks are stark. Amazon forests have already lost about 17% of their cover, mostly to cattle and soy. Those ecosystems recycle far less water.

“The dry season is now five weeks longer than it was 45 years ago, with 20 to 30% less rainfall,” he said. “If deforestation exceeds 20 to 25% and warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius, there’s no way to prevent the Amazon from reaching the tipping point.”

What can be done?

Protecting intact forests, supporting Indigenous land rights and restoring deforested areas are the clearest paths forward, researchers say.

“To avoid collapse we need zero deforestation, degradation and fires — immediately,” Nobre said. “And we must begin large-scale forest restoration, not less than half a million square kilometers. If we do that, and keep global warming below 2 degrees, we can still save the Amazon.”

Finer said governments should consider new conservation categories specifically designed to protect flying rivers — safeguarding not just land but the atmospheric flows that make the rainforest possible.

For Vriesendorp, that means regional cooperation. She praised Peru for creating vast parks and Indigenous reserves in the southeast, including Manu National Park. But, she said, “this can’t be solved by one country alone. Peru depends on Brazil, and Brazil depends on its neighbors. We need basin-wide solutions.”

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.

By GARY D. ROBERTSON, Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A pair of northeastern North Carolina legislative districts can remain intact, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, rejecting Black voters’ claims that state Republicans illegally manipulated the boundaries to prevent them from electing their favored candidates.

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Ruling after a trial held nearly eight months ago, U.S. District Judge James Dever sided with GOP legislative leaders who were sued in November 2023 over two state Senate districts in a statewide map the General Assembly approved weeks earlier.

The two plaintiffs — one of them now a Democratic state House member — argued that the lines violated Section 2 of the U.S. Voting Rights Act through race-based discrimination, and that the lawmakers should have created a majority-Black district instead.

The lines cover close to 20 counties that include a region known as the “Black Belt,” where the African American population is significant — reaching a majority in some counties — and politically cohesive. Last November, white Republicans were elected to the two district seats.

The partisan makeup of the Senate is critical for the prospects of both parties. Republicans currently hold 30 of the 50 seats — the minimum required for a veto-proof majority. Senate Democrats could uphold Gov. Josh Stein’s vetoes with one more seat.

In a 126-page order, Dever wrote that plaintiffs Moses Matthews and Rep. Rodney Pierce lacked standing to challenge one Senate district because neither lived in that district. Otherwise, he said, they failed to provide enough evidence to prove that the lines diluted Black voting power.

Dever said that Republican lawmakers did not have access to racial data in their mapping computers in part because North Carolina redistricting litigation during the 2010s determined that racially polarized voting in the state was not legally significant.

He noted that 2024 elections based on statewide House and Senate maps approved in 2023 resulted in African American candidates winning 38 of the 170 seats — a proportion in line with the state’s Black population, he wrote.

“This case does not involve the General Assembly engaging in race-based districting or the odious practice of sorting voters based on race,” Dever wrote, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling. He said the case record demonstrates northeastern North Carolina communities include Black voting blocs that form coalitions with other racial and ethnic groups to elect their favored candidates.

“Black voters in northeast North Carolina and throughout North Carolina have elected candidates of their choice (both white and black) with remarkable frequency and success for decades,” wrote Dever, who was nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush. ”Plaintiffs ignore the progress that North Carolina has made over the past 60 years and seek to use Section 2 to sort voters by race in order to squeeze one more Democratic Senate district into the map.”

An attorney for Pierce and Matthews didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to an email seeking comment on the ruling, which could be appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2024, both Dever and a 4th District panel declined to block the use of the two districts while the case went to trial.

Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger said on X that the court on Tuesday confirmed that the General Assembly “was right not to use race in its redistricting process” and that the Voting Rights Act “can’t be weaponized to make up for the shortcomings of the Democratic Party.”

The northeastern North Carolina Senate districts also are being challenged within a broader redistricting case that remains before a panel of three federal judges. The trial, which involved two lawsuits alleging racial gerrymandering in a handful of U.S. House and state Senate districts, concluded in July. No ruling has yet been entered. Candidate filing begins in December for General Assembly primary elections scheduled in March.

By JACK BROOK

The Utah college where conservative leader Charlie Kirk was assassinated lacked several key public safety measures and practices that have become standard safeguards for security at events around the country, an Associated Press review has found.

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Utah Valley University’s outdoor courtyard, where Kirk showed up on Sept. 10 to debate students, was surrounded by several tall buildings, leaving Kirk vulnerable. That was made all the more potent because campus police didn’t fly a drone to monitor rooftops or coordinate with local law enforcement to secure the event. It deployed only six officers from a force that was already small for a campus its size. There were no bag checks or metal detectors.

A sniper took position on a nearby roof and killed Kirk with a single shot about 20 minutes after the event began, escaping notice from campus police.

Security at Utah Valley University will come into sharper focus in the coming months as lawmakers and the public seek answers about what could have been done differently.

“Absolutely there were security failures; it left him exposed,” said Greg Shaffer, who oversaw Kirk’s security from 2015 to 2022. “It was egregious enough that someone was able to take advantage and kill him.”

In an interview, the AP asked the university president, Astrid Tuminez, if there was a security failure on campus surrounding the Kirk assassination. “Somebody was killed and that’s a tragedy, I think that’s what I would say right now,” she responded. Tuminez declined to answer more detailed questions about campus security, citing a pending external review. A university spokesperson also declined to answer questions about staffing, equipment, security planning and budgets.

No drones monitoring rooftops

The day Kirk spoke at UVU, it was clear and sunny — the perfect weather for a drone to have had a clear view of the roofs of the surrounding buildings, including where the assassin fired a deadly shot from a bolt action rifle at Kirk from about 400 feet away.

But no drone had been deployed, though security experts said rooftop sniper attacks were a clear threat. That was evident as recently as last year when a rooftop gunman in Butler, Pennsylvania, fired shots at a rally held by President Donald Trump during his campaign, killing one, injuring two and wounding Trump.

Ty Richmond, president of event services for security firm Allied Universal, said the attempted assassination Trump exposed the risk of failing to secure elevated areas. He said drones, which cost as little as $2,000, and video surveillance should be part of the tools used to assess and address threats at any outdoor event.

“It was either not done comprehensively or not done at all, because that should have been a natural ability to identify and detect any high ground risk and exposures that you would have in a situation like that,” Richmond said.

The UVU campus had numerous cameras, including at least one overlooking the buildings around the courtyard. A university spokesperson declined to say whether someone was actively monitoring it or if it was operating.

A smaller than average police force

UVU has an enrollment of 48,000 students, though Tuminez said that includes 16,000 students who are in high school and don’t take classes on campuses.

The university has 23 police officers, or one for every 1,400 on-campus students, according to a 2024 UVU report. The average public university has around one officer for every 500 students, according to a 2024 U.S. Department of Justice study.

“There is not a campus police department in this country that could provide the level of security necessary for a large scale outdoor event with 3,000 people,” said S. Daniel Carter, a campus safety consultant. “They would need help, typically from a local law enforcement agency.”

UVU had six campus police officers present at the event along with Kirk’s personal security detail, campus police Chief Jeffrey Long said after the shooting. Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray said during a news conference that a UVU police officer had been watching the crowd from an “elevated position.”

Officials at the Utah County Sheriff’s Office and Orem Police Department, both of which have drones, said they were not involved in security for the event.

A UVU spokesperson said unlike other schools with larger security staffs, they don’t have dormitories to secure. However, other Utah schools of similar size with largely commuter populations have higher ratios of officers to students.

Weber State University, a mostly commuter public school with more than 33,000 students, about half of whom are also enrolled in high school, has a public safety drone and 41 full and part-time police officers. And the University of Utah, with 36,000 primarily commuter students, has 46 officers.

Overall spending on public safety varied at those universities in 2025 — $2.3 million at Weber State and $16.2 million at the University of Utah where a 2018 murder of a student led to more spending on security. UVU officials declined to share a current budget for their department, but a legislative audit showed $1.6 million was earmarked for public safety in 2020 out of a nearly $250 million campus budget.

Safety resources didn’t match school’s growth

UVU, located between Salt Lake City suburbs and Brigham Young University in Provo, grew from a community college of less than 9,000 in the early 1990s to roughly 48,000 this year thanks to the addition of four-year degrees and campus expansions. But public safety failed to keep up, said two former campus public safety leaders. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions.

Val Peterson, UVU’s vice president for administration & strategic relations, rejected pleas for more safety resources, including hiring more officers and offering higher salaries to keep skilled personnel, the former public safety leaders said. Peterson, who is also a Republican state lawmaker leading state appropriations, oversees UVU’s public safety and has been with the university for more than 30 years.

Both former campus public safety officials each recalled Peterson telling them multiple times in meetings related to public safety funding about a decade ago that because a shooting had not occurred on campus in decades, it would not happen in the future. Peterson believed the sleepy campus was safe from harm, they said. UVU’s president declined to comment on Peterson’s alleged remarks.

Former UVU police Sgt. Bryan Cunningham also recalled those comments and, he said, officers warned the administration in budget discussions related to public safety that the campus could be the scene of an “active shooter nightmare” due to its layout and understaffed police department.

Peterson did not respond to requests for comment sent by phone and email to his private and public offices.

A sub-par emergency response system

At the time of the shooting, the university was without a fire marshal to help plan for safety at large events. And as recently as 2023, two of the university’s three emergency radio channels did not meet state standards for signal strength, according to an internal review shared with the AP. The review did not include information about the third channel.

FILE – Charlie Kirk hands out hats before speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tess Crowley/The Deseret News via AP, File)

Patchy reception was a serious problem that could hamper public safety personnel from coordinating during emergencies, one of the former campus public safety officials noted.

The university boosted the signal at one building in the past year, Utah Communications Authority Executive Director Tina Mathieu said. She was not aware of any other improvements.

A university spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about campus emergency radio signal strength.

Campus safety assessments removed from proposed state law

Utah lawmakers pushed to improve public school security after the deadly 2022 elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, by creating a task force, appointing a state security chief and requiring an “armed guardian” be present at every public school. They also mandated all K-12 schools conduct rigorous safety assessments.

Rep. Ryan Wilcox, a Republican who chairs the task force, introduced legislation this year to require public universities to conduct the same assessments, but the provision was removed by the state senate.

“I don’t believe the provision in the bill would have changed the outcome of the current situation,” said Republican Sen. Ann Millner, who co-chairs the task force. She said that public universities should be entrusted to implement their own public safety practices “aligned with institutional realities” and that any assessments would likely have taken a long time to complete.

But Wilcox said the lack of mandatory security assessments can allow for vulnerabilities to go unnoticed: “Because those assessments haven’t been done, I don’t know what I don’t know about how prepared we are.”

“We’re going to learn everything we can possibly learn from that,” he said of Kirk’s death. “It’s a complete disaster.”

Associated Press reporter Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed to this report. Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.