By CEDAR ATTANASIO

SEATTLE (AP) — For much of the 20th century, a sprawling complex in the desert of southeastern Washington state turned out most of the plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear arsenal, from the first atomic bomb to the arms race that fueled the Cold War.

Related Articles

Fundraiser for family of Michigan church gunman raises more than $275,000

Texas megachurch founder Robert Morris pleads guilty to child sex abuse charges

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs will be sentenced under the Mann Act, a prostitution law from 1910

Excavators find $1 million in gold coins from Spanish shipwreck along Florida’s ‘Treasure Coast’

OpenAI now worth $500 billion, possibly making it the world’s most valuable startup

Now, after decades of planning and billions of dollars of investment, the site is turning liquid nuclear and chemical waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation into a much safer substance: glass.

State regulators on Wednesday issued the final permit Hanford needed for workers to remove more waste from often-leaky underground tanks, mix it in a crucible with additives, and heat it above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The mixture then cools in stainless steel vats and solidifies into glass — still radioactive, but far more stable to keep in storage, and less likely to seep into the soil or the nearby Columbia River.

The long-awaited development is a key step in cleaning up the nation’s most polluted nuclear waste site. Construction on the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant began in 2002.

“We are at the precipice of a really significant moment in Hanford’s history,” said Casey Sixkiller, director of the Washington State Department of Ecology, in a video interview.

Hanford’s secret was a key part of the Manhattan Project

The roughly 600-square-mile reservation is near the confluence of two of the Pacific Northwest’s most significant rivers, the Snake and the Columbia, in an area important to Native American tribes for millennia.

Wartime planners selected the area because it was isolated and had access to cold water and hydroelectric power. In early 1943, the U.S. government seized the land for a secret project, displacing roughly 2,000 residents, including farmers.

Tens of thousands of workers then responded to newspaper ads around the country promising good jobs to support the Allied effort to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan in World War II, and a new company town arose in the desert.

Most of the workers had no idea they were involved in building the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor until the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and President Harry S. Truman announced the existence of the Manhattan Project to the world.

Hanford would grow to include nine nuclear reactors churning out plutonium for the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The last of these was shut down in 1987. Two years later, Washington state, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reached an agreement to clean up the site.

Today, Hanford is focused on clean-up

Seven of the nine reactors have been “cocooned” to prevent contamination from escaping until radiation levels drop enough to allow for dismantling, near the end of the century.

There are also 177 giant underground tanks that hold some 56 million gallons of highly radioactive and chemically hazardous waste. Those tanks are well past their projected lifespan of 25 years. More than one-third have leaked in the past, and three are currently leaking.

During its years producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, Hanford dumped effluent directly into the Columbia River and into ineffective containment ponds, polluting the surrounding groundwater and contaminating the food chain of wildlife that depends on it, according to a 2013 government assessment.

Now Hanford is focused on cleanup, with an annual budget of around $3 billion.

Turning nuclear waste into glass is effective — but expensive

Encasing radioactive waste in glass — called “vitrification” — has been recognized since at least the 1980s as an effective method for neutralizing it. There are plans for two facilities at Hanford: the one now approved to process low-level nuclear waste after repeated delays, and an adjacent facility for the high-level waste that remains under construction.

More than $30 billion has been spent on the plants so far. The U.S. Department of Energy, which oversees Hanford, has faced an Oct. 15 deadline to have turned some of its stored waste into glass, per a cleanup schedule and consent decree involving the EPA and Washington state.

The first waste to be mixed with glass will include pretreated radioactive cesium and strontium, according to a statement from the Department of Energy.

Washington state Democrats question Trump administration’s commitment

The Energy Department fired Roger Jarrell, its main overseer of the Hanford cleanup, earlier this month, prompting concerns about the Trump administration’s commitment. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray said Energy Secretary Chris Wright told her by phone that he was looking to stall the vitrification operations.

That prompted outrage from Washington state officials. Gov. Bob Ferguson, joined at a news conference by tribal leaders and labor representatives, threatened legal action.

But Wright insisted the department had changed nothing, and on Sept. 17, a deputy signed paperwork allowing vitrification to proceed following approvals by state regulators.

“Although there are challenges, we are committed to beginning operations by October 15, 2025,” Wright said in a statement last month. “As always, we are prioritizing the health and safety of both the workforce and the community as we work to meet our nation’s need to safely and efficiently dispose of nuclear waste.”

On Wednesday, with state approval issued, Ferguson urged the Energy Department to follow through.

“Our state has done our part to start up the Waste Treatment Plant,” said Ferguson, in a statement. “Now the federal government needs to live up to its responsibilities and clean up what they left behind.”

In a statement ahead of the government shutdown, Department of Energy said it would be able to continue all of its operations for one to five days. After that, the department’s work will cease unless operations are “related to the safety of human life and the protection of property.”

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) — On the eve of his sentencing, Sean “Diddy” Combs wrote a federal judge Thursday proclaiming himself to be a new man after realizing that he was “broken to my core.”

Related Articles

Fundraiser for family of Michigan church gunman raises more than $275,000

Texas megachurch founder Robert Morris pleads guilty to child sex abuse charges

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs will be sentenced under the Mann Act, a prostitution law from 1910

Excavators find $1 million in gold coins from Spanish shipwreck along Florida’s ‘Treasure Coast’

OpenAI now worth $500 billion, possibly making it the world’s most valuable startup

Combs, 55, told Judge Arun Subramanian that with his mind clear of drugs and alcohol after a year in jail, he can see how rotten he had become before his September 2024 arrest in a case that led to his conviction on two prostitution-related counts. His sentencing hearing is set to begin Friday morning.

“Over the past year there have been so many times that I wanted to give up. There have been some days I thought I would be better off dead. The old me died in jail and a new version of me was reborn. Prison will change you or kill you — I choose to live,” he said.

A jury in July acquitted Combs of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges, but he still faces the possibility of years in jail.

Combs’ lawyers say he should go free this month, arguing his year behind bars has been enough of a penalty, while prosecutors want at least 11 years in prison.

In his letter, Combs wrote that he had “no one to blame for my current reality and situation but myself.”

“In my life, I have made many mistakes, but I am no longer running from them,” he wrote. “I am so sorry for the hurt that I caused, but I understand that the mere words ‘I’m sorry’ will never be good enough as these words alone cannot erase the pain from the past.”

Combs apologizes for attacking girlfriend

Combs apologized for hitting, kicking and dragging then-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016 — an attack captured on security camera.

“The scene and images of me assaulting Cassie play over and over in my head daily,” Combs wrote. “I literally lost my mind. I was dead wrong for putting my hands on the woman that I loved. I’m sorry for that and always will be.”

That footage was shown repeatedly during his two-month trial, which also included testimony from women who said Combs had beaten, threatened, blackmailed or sexually assaulted them.

In her letter to the judge ahead of sentencing, Ventura dismissed Combs’ claims of remorse.

“I know that who he was to me — the manipulator, the aggressor, the abuser, the trafficker — is who he is as a human,” she wrote. “He has no interest in changing or becoming better. He will always be the same cruel, power-hungry, manipulative man that he is.”

Ventura noted that Combs had denied her allegations of assault until the footage of the beating emerged, and she urged the judge to issue a sentence that “reflects the strength it took for victims of Sean Combs to come forward.”

“I hope that your decision considers the many lives that Sean Combs has upended with his abuse and control,” she wrote.

Combs also apologized to a woman who testified under the pseudonym “Jane,” saying that “after hearing her testimony, I realized that I hurt her.”

Jane told the jury Combs had chased her around her home, put her in a chokehold, punched her in the head, kicked her as she lay in a ball on the ground, dragged her by her hair and then pressured her into having sex with a male sex worker.

“I lost my way. I got lost in my journey. Lost in the drugs and the excess,” Combs wrote. “My downfall was rooted in my selfishness.”

Combs asks judge for mercy

In jail, Combs said, he has been reading, writing, going to therapy, working out and teaching a six-week course to other inmates, “Free Game with Diddy,” imparting his business wisdom, as well as lessons learned from his mistakes and failures.

He vowed to never commit a crime again, telling the judge he’s gone through a “spiritual reset.”

Rather than make an example out of him with a lengthy sentence, Combs implored Subramanian to “make me an example of what a person can do if afforded a second chance.”

“If you allow me to go home to my family, I promise I will not let you down and I will make you proud,” he wrote.

By CHRISTINA LARSON and TAMMY WEBBER

In her 91 years, Jane Goodall transformed science and humanity’s understanding of our closest living relatives on the planet — chimpanzees and other great apes. Her patient fieldwork and tireless advocacy for conservation inspired generations of future researchers and activists, especially women and young people, around the world.

Related Articles

Fundraiser for family of Michigan church gunman raises more than $275,000

Texas megachurch founder Robert Morris pleads guilty to child sex abuse charges

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs will be sentenced under the Mann Act, a prostitution law from 1910

Excavators find $1 million in gold coins from Spanish shipwreck along Florida’s ‘Treasure Coast’

OpenAI now worth $500 billion, possibly making it the world’s most valuable startup

Her death on Wednesday set off a torrent of tributes for the famed primate researcher, with many people sharing stories of how Goodall and her work inspired their own careers. The tributes also included pledges to honor Goodall’s memory by redoubling efforts to safeguard a planet that sorely needs it.

Making space in science for animal minds and emotions

“Jane Goodall is an icon – because she was the start of so much,” said Catherine Crockford, a primatologist at the CNRS Institute for Cognitive Sciences in France.

She recalled how many years ago Goodall answered a letter from a young aspiring researcher. “I wrote her a letter asking how to become a primatologist. She sent back a handwritten letter and told me it will be hard, but I should try,” Crockford said. “For me, she gave me my career.”

Goodall was one of three pioneering young women studying great apes in the 1960s and 1970s who began to revolutionize the way people understood just what was — and wasn’t — unique about our own species. Sometimes called the “Tri-mates,” Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas spent years documenting the intimate lives of chimpanzees in Tanzania, mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and orangutans in Indonesia, respectively.

The projects they began have produced some of the long-running studies about animal behavior in the world that are crucial to understanding such long-lived species. “These animals are like us, slow to mature and reproduce, and living for decades. We are still learning new things about them,” said Tara Stoinski, a primatologist and president of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. “Jane and Dian knew each other and learned from each other, and the scientists who continued their work continue to collaborate today.”

Goodall studied chimpanzees — as a species and as individuals. And she named them: David Greybeard, Flo, Fifi, Goliath. That was highly unconventional at the time, but Goodall’s attention to individuals created space for scientists to observe and record differences in individual behaviors, preferences and even emotions.

FILE – Primatologist Jane Goodall kisses Pola, a 14-months-old chimpanzee baby from the Budapest Zoo, that she symbolically adopted in Budapest, Hungary, on Dec. 20, 2004. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky, File)

Catherine Hobaiter, a primatologist at St. Andrews University who was inspired by Goodall, recalled how Goodall carefully combined empathy and objectivity. Goodall liked to use a particular phrase, “If they were human, we would describe them as happy,” or “If they were human, we would describe them as friends –- these two individuals together,” Hobaiter said. Goodall didn’t project precise feelings onto the chimpanzees, but nor did she deny the capacity of animals besides humans to have emotional lives.

Goodall and her frequent collaborator, evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff, had just finished the text of a forthcoming children’s book, called “Every Elephant Has a Name,” which will be published around early 2027.

Inspiring scientists and advocates for nature around the world

From the late 1980s until her death, Goodall spent less time in the field and more time on the road talking to students, teachers, diplomats, park rangers, presidents and many others around the world. She inspired countless others through her books. Her mission was to inspire action to protect the natural world.

In 1991, she founded an organization called Roots & Shoots that grew to include chapters of young people in dozens of countries.

Stuart Pimm, a Duke University ecologist and founder of the nonprofit Saving Nature, recalled when he and Goodall were invited to speak to a congressional hearing about deforestation and extinction. Down the marble halls of the government building, “there was a huge line of teenage girls and their mothers just waiting to get inside the room to hear Jane speak,” Pimm said Thursday. “She was mobbed everywhere she went — she was just this incredible inspiration to people in general, particularly to young women.”

Goodall wanted everyone to find their voice, no matter their age or station, said Zanagee Artis, co-founder of the youth climate movement Zero Hour. “I really appreciated how much Jane valued young people being in the room — she really fostered intergenerational movement building,” said Artis, who now works for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

And she did it around the world. Roots & Shoots has a chapter in China, which Goodall visited multiple times.

“My sense was that Jane Goodall was highly respected in China and that her organization was successful in China because it focused on topics like environmental and conservation education for youth that had broad appeal without touching on political sensitivities,” said Alex Wang, a University of California, Los Angeles expert on China and the environment, who previously worked in Beijing.

What is left now that Goodall is gone is her unending hope, perhaps her greatest legacy.

“She believed hope was not simply a feeling, but a tool,” Rhett Butler, founder of the nonprofit conservation-news site Mongabay, wrote in his Substack newsletter. “Hope, she would tell me, creates agency.”

Carrying forward her legacy

Goodall’s legacy and life’s work will continue through her family, scientists, her institute and legions of young people around the globe who are working to bridge conservation and humanitarian needs in their own communities, her longtime assistant said Thursday.

That includes Goodall’s son and three grandchildren, who are an important part of the work of the Jane Goodall Institute and in their own endeavors, said Mary Lewis, a vice president at the institute who began working with the famed primatologist in 1990.

Goodall’s son, Hugo van Lawick, works on sustainable housing. He is currently in Rwanda. Grandson Merlin and granddaughter Angelo work with the institute, while grandson Nick is a photographer and filmmaker, Lewis said. “She has her own family legacy as well as the legacy through her institutes around the world,” said Lewis.

In addition to her famed research center in Tanzania and chimpanzee sanctuaries in other countries, including the Republic of Congo and South Africa, a new cultural center is expected to open in Tanzania late next year. There also are Jane Goodall Institutes in 26 countries, and communities are leading conservation projects in several countries, including an effort in Senegal to save critically endangered Western chimpanzees.

But it is the institute’s youth-led education program called Roots & Shoots that Goodall regarded as her enduring legacy because it is “empowering new generations,” Lewis said.

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. AP’s 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.

Some federal assistance programs could run out of funding if a government shutdown that started Oct. 1 drags on into next month, Minnesota’s top budget official said on Thursday.

State Budget Director Ahna Minge explains the potential effects of a federal government shutdown on Minnesota during a briefing with Gov. Tim Walz at the state Capitol in St. Paul on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (Alex Derosier / Pioneer Press)

But for now, most of the effects of the shutdown on the state are yet to be seen, including the cost to the state and the number of federal workers who will be furloughed or lose their jobs, according to Minnesota Budget Director Ahna Minge.

“Our current analysis is that the lapse in federal funds will have minimal impact on federally funded state activities in the short term,” she told reporters during a briefing at the state Capitol with Gov. Tim Walz.

“Most state programs have funding remaining from previous funding authorizations,” she continued. “But what we know is that the longer a shutdown lasts, the greater the impact.”

Food benefits

Food assistance benefit programs should have funding through October, Minge said, but if the shutdown extends into November, two major programs could run out of money.

SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which used to be known as food stamps — and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women and Children, also known as WIC, might have funding problems in the event of a protracted shutdown.

Head Start — which provides pre-kindergarten education and other support to children from low-income families — could also see problems if the shutdown persists. Though most Head Start programs are funded annually.

A partial government shutdown in late 2018 and early 2019 lasted 35 days, though food assistance was not interrupted.

Around three weeks into that shutdown, airport security saw disruptions as Transportation Security Administration staff, who were working without pay, started calling in sick and quitting their jobs.

Failure to reach deal

This year’s shutdown comes after President Donald Trump and Democrats failed to reach a deal this week on funding the government.

Congressional Democrats seeking to preserve soon-to-expire health insurance subsidies for millions of Americans declined to support a Republican measure to fund the government through most of November. GOP leaders say keeping the subsidies would cost more than $1 trillion.

Until they can reach an agreement on funding the government, around 750,000 federal employees are set to be temporarily furloughed, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Vital government operations like the U.S. Postal Service, airport security, air traffic control, veterans’ health care and federal law enforcement continue to run. The shutdown has not interrupted Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits — though temporary layoffs could lead to administrative backlog.

Jobs impact still unclear

Minnesota has more than 18,000 federal employees, not including the postal service or members of the military. Most of them work for the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to state and union officials.

Walz said Minnesota’s Department of Management and Budget had a team prepare for about four weeks in anticipation of a shutdown, which entered its second day on Thursday.

“There is a playbook, if you will, on how things start to roll back, what furloughs look like, what the impact is at this early stage,” the governor said.

Walz said a big concern was the closure of the agriculture department’s farm service offices, which can be busiest during the fall harvest season.

The state did not have an estimate Thursday of how many federal employees will be out of work.

Though as a shutdown approached its first month in 2019, around 6,000 federal workers were furloughed or working without pay in Minnesota, the Pioneer Press reported at the time.

‘Burden on state taxpayers’

The American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents federal workers, is still trying to get a sense of how many employees are furloughed or working without pay, according to Ruark Hotopp, National Vice President for District 8, which includes Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.

Workers will get reimbursed for wages when the shutdown ends. During the shutdown, some may file for unemployment benefits with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Around 1,000 federal employees had applied for benefits by around the third week of the 2018-2019 shutdown, DEED said at the time.

“Benefits are being granted through the state, and it’s not even an action of the state that caused the unemployment,” Hotopp said. “This becomes a burden on the state taxpayers.”

Local government disruptions?

There’s little indication so far that the shutdown has affected local government. A Ramsey County spokesman said no services have been interrupted.

The same is the case for the city of St. Paul, which “executed several key grant contracts in the last week” to prevent any gaps in funding, according to Mayor Melvin Carter spokesperson Jennifer Lor.

“Typically grant-funded work continues during a shutdown, and we expect to continue delivering core, essential city services to our residents,” she said in an email.

The same is the case for St. Paul Public Schools, as most K-12 spending is not immediately affected by a government shutdown.

This story contains information from the Associated Press.

Related Articles

DFL, GOP deadlocked in talks for special session on gun violence

Joe Soucheray: Trump had nothing to do with fraud in Minnesota. That’s on the governor.

Gov. Walz: GOP won’t budge on gun control; House speaker calls it ‘mischaracterization’

Former DFL lawmaker Nicole Mitchell sentenced to 6 months in jail for burglary

Why did two firefighters walk from Duluth to St. Paul? This is their story.