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.”

Related Articles

Trump administration opens more land for coal mining, offers $625M to boost coal-fired power plants

Ticks are migrating, raising disease risks if they can’t be tracked quickly enough

Hurricane Helene hit the reset button on one town’s goal of becoming an outdoor tourism mecca

On North Carolina’s rivers and streams, the cleanup of Helene’s fury seems never-ending

Xcel Energy will pay $640M to settle claims from Denver-area wildfire that burned 1,000 structures

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.

Related Articles

Judge finds Trump administration unconstitutionally targeted noncitizens over Gaza war protests

Pfizer agrees to lower prescription drug costs for Medicaid in a deal with Trump

Here are some effects of a government shutdown if Congress, Trump don’t reach a deal

Groups press for release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s classified documents case

A weakened and isolated Hamas faces pressure to accept Trump’s peace plan for Gaza

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.

Related Articles

Kentucky has kicked people off food benefits using data that doesn’t tell the full story

Here are 5 things parents can do to protect their children online

She thought she was talking to her favorite celebrity. It cost her everything

FBI boss Kash Patel gave New Zealand officials 3D-printed guns illegal to possess under local laws

Lawsuit against Brown University sparks debate on campus police secrecy at private colleges

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.

By SAMY MAGDY and MELANIE LIDMAN

CAIRO (AP) — Israeli forces killed at least 31 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, local hospitals said, as questions churned about U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan aimed at ending the nearly two-year war in Gaza.

Related Articles

A weakened and isolated Hamas faces pressure to accept Trump’s peace plan for Gaza

What to know about the Gaza peace plan agreed to by Trump and Netanyahu

Trump and Netanyahu say they’ve agreed on a plan to end the Gaza war. Hamas is now reviewing it

UN adds 68 companies to blacklist for alleged complicity in rights violations in Israeli settlements

Facing global isolation at UN, a defiant Netanyahu says Israel ‘must finish the job’ against Hamas

Hamas announced it would review the proposal with group members and other Palestinian factions before reaching a decision.

But Qatar, a key mediator with Hamas, said further talks were needed to work out the details of the proposal. It was a sign further negotiations could be ahead, even as Trump told reporters Tuesday that Hamas has “three or four days” to respond.

Arab mediators, along with Turkish officials, are scheduled to meet with Hamas representatives Tuesday in the Qatari capital Doha to discuss the plan, said the spokesman for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, Majed Al Ansari.

While the proposal offers an end to the fighting, guarantees the flow of humanitarian aid and promises reconstruction, the Palestinian group will have to disarm, something it has rejected in the past. Also, Gaza and its more than 2 million Palestinians would be put under international governance for the foreseeable future.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backs the plan, and several leaders of Arab countries have applauded it.

Palestinians are skeptical

Many Palestinians in the decimated coastal enclave are wary of the proposal. Notably, the plan sets no path to Palestinian statehood and brings a so-called “Board of Peace,” headed by Trump and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to supervise the administration of Gaza.

To some, that smacked of the colonial British Mandate over Palestine from 1920 to 1948, when the British ran the area.

“They want to impose their own peace,” Umm Mohammed, a history teacher who sheltered with her family in Gaza City, told The Associated Press. “In fact, this is not a peace plan. It’s a surrender plan. It returns us to times of colonialism.”

Mahmoud Abu Baker, a displaced Palestinian from Rafah, said the proposal favors Israel and implements all its demands without giving concessions.

“(The proposal) tells that we, as Palestinians, as Arabs, are not qualified to rule ourselves and that they, the white people, will rule us,” he said.

Israelis bank on Trump despite doubt

With the peace proposal, families of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas were torn between heightened hopes and a realism that past signs of progress have fallen apart. Hamas is thought to be holding 48 hostages, 20 of whom are believed by Israel to be alive – and under the plan, they would be freed within 72 hours of both sides’ accepting the deal.

“For two years now, I have been waiting for Elkana, my husband, in endless pain,” said Rivka Bohbot, wife of hostage Elkana Bohbot, in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

“Now I demand that these impressive words be turned into even greater and more impressive actions — actions that bring the hostages home,” she said of Trump and Netanyahu’s announcement.

Israelis visiting a memorial for the music festival where 364 people were killed during the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, expressed skepticism that the proposal will end the war.

Amit Zander, whose daughter, Noa Zander, was killed at the festival, said Trump was the only one with enough power to make a deal happen.

“Everyone pins their hopes on (Trump) … it’s up to Hamas. Israel wants it, and beyond that, it’s no longer in our hands,” he said.

Qatar says more discussion needed

While Arab countries back the plan, Arab officials told The Associated Press that the 20-point text released by the White House on Monday included changes to the draft that they had previously discussed with Trump, making the proposal more favorable to Israel.

They pointed to the vague terms about the withdrawal of Israel’s troops, the lack of a timeframe for allowing the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza and the lack of a clear pathway to a state. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the behind-the-scenes talks.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the issue of the Israeli troop withdrawal “requires clarification, and this must be discussed.”

“What was presented yesterday are principles in the plan that require detailed discussion and how to work through them,” he told the Qatar-based TV network Al Jazeera.

More than 30 Palestinians killed

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops opened fire, killing 17 Palestinians and wounding 33 others while they were attempting to access humanitarian aid in central Gaza, according to nearby Al-Awda Hospital, where the casualties were taken.

Israeli strikes in central and southern Gaza killed 14 others, according to local hospitals.

One of the strikes hit a tent housing a family that had fled Gaza City earlier this month, killing seven people, including four women and a child. Another killed a man, his 7-months-pregnant wife and their young child, Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis said.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the shooting or strikes. It said in a statement that over the past 24 hours, its troops killed several armed fighters and struck more than 160 targets of Hamas infrastructure, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts.

Hospitals overwhelmed as Palestinians flee Gaza City

Meanwhile, hospitals in southern Gaza are gearing up for a flood of displaced wounded and sick Palestinians, as tens of thousands are forced to flee Gaza City in the face of Israel’s stepped-up offensive there.

Over 450,000 people have been displaced from the north since mid-August, mostly from Gaza City, according to the United Nations. Hundreds of thousands are believed to remain in the city, where a famine has been declared.

“We don’t have enough material. We don’t have enough medications. The number of people, particularly the people coming down from Gaza … is starting to overwhelm the facilities which were already too full from before,” said Dr. Paul Ransom, an emergency doctor volunteering at UK-Med, a British aid charity which runs one of the main field hospitals in southern Gaza.

He said over the past weeks, thousands of wounded arrived from the north, many with dirty open wounds because of long road journeys. Others showed severe signs of malnutrition, he said.

The UK-Med-operated field hospital is expanding its 90-bed capacity field hospital to include over 110 beds, he said. Nasser Hospital, the main general medical facility in southern Gaza, is already overwhelmed and is trying to expand its 300-bed capacity.

At Nasser, there were often 150 wounded in just one hour over the past three months, he added.

“It is like a conveyor belt of death and injury that we are seeing coming through the bigger hospital here in Nasser,” he said.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 170,000 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and fighters in its toll, but has said women and children make up around half the dead.

Its campaign was triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which fighters killed some 1,200 people and abducted 250 others. Most of the hostages have been freed under previous ceasefire deals.

Lidman reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.