LOS ANGELES (AP) — D’Angelo, the Grammy-winning R&B singer recognized by his raspy yet smooth voice and for garnering mainstream attention with the shirtless “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” music video, has died. He was 51.

The singer, whose real name was Michael Eugene Archer, died Tuesday, according to a statement from the family.

The singer’s family confirmed in a statement Tuesday that he died after battle with cancer. His family called him a “shining star of our family and has dimmed his light for us in this life.”

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By PATRICK WHITTLE and MICHAEL CASEY

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Leaf-peeping season has arrived in the Northeast and beyond, but weeks of drought have muted this year’s autumn colors, and sent leaves fluttering to the ground earlier than usual.

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Soaking in the fall foliage is an annual tradition in the New England states as well as areas such as the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina and Upper Peninsula of Michigan. As the days shorten and temperatures drop, chlorophyll in leaves breaks down, and they turn to the autumn tones of yellow, orange and red.

But dry weather in summer and fall can change all that because the lack of water causes leaves to brown and fall more quickly. And that’s happening this year, as more than 40% of the country was considered to be in a drought in early October, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

That’s more than twice the average, said Brad Rippey, a U.S. Department of Agriculture meteorologist and an author of the drought monitor, which is a partnership between the federal government and University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Drought has hit the Northeast and western U.S. especially hard, he said.

Morning mist hovers over a field as leaves turn to fall foliage colors at sunrise along a country road, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Auburn, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

It all adds up to fewer leaves to peep.

“I think it might be a little bit of a short and less colorful season, for the most part,” Rippey said. “The color is just not going to be there this year for some hillsides.”

Fewer leaves, but many peepers

Despite the gloomy forecast, autumn enthusiasts said it’s still a great year to get out and enjoy nature’s fireworks display. There is still a lot of color in New England’s trees, said Andy Finton, senior conservation ecologist with The Nature Conservancy in Massachusetts.

The view from Artists Bluff, a popular destination for fall foliage in Franconia Notch State Park in Franconia, N.H., Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Holly Ramer)

Climate change is stressing forests with severe weather and heat waves, but autumn in New England remains a beautiful time of year to experience the wonderment of forest ecosystems firsthand, he said.

“Our trees and our forests have an inherent resilience,” Finton said. “They are still very resilient, and I am constantly surprised at how wonderful the fall season is despite these stresses.”

Watch an AP livestream of fall foliage around the Northeast on Tuesday.

The tourism business built around leaf peeping has also proven resilient. At the Mills Falls Resort Collection at the Lake in Meredith, New Hampshire, general manager Barbara Beckwith said business is good at the four inns that have 170 rooms. The number of Canadian tourists is down, Beckwith acknowledged, but she said that has been made up with domestic leaf peepers, mostly from New England.

Beckwith said her properties were booked solid on weekends through mid-October and had been for weeks.

“This year is actually going to be better than last year,” Beckwith said. “Last year was an election and that put a lot of trepidation in people. Now, they are traveling. The uncertainty of the election is over. We all know who’s president now and we are traveling.”

A couple, wearing protective high-visibility clothing due to hunting season, take a walk at dawn, as trees of in the distance turn to fall foliage colors, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Chester, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Chris Proulx, executive director of the Mount Washington Valley Chamber of Commerce, said the decline in Canadian tourists by as much as 80% seen this summer has continued into the fall. But the region is faring better, he said, thanks to an uptick in travelers from other countries and its reputation for having one of the country’s best leaf peeping seasons.

“This is the one season where people make plans in advance to come in addition to travelers from all of the country and all over the world,” Proulx said.

Muted show in the Rocky Mountains

Leaf peeping was so popular in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains this year that one town temporarily closed its highway offramp to alleviate gridlock. The area put on a display of yellow aspen trees dotting the mountains between evergreens, their delicate leaves vibrating in the wind.

But there were signs of a dry spring in the central part of the state, which was more severe the farther west you travel, said Colorado State Forest Service entomologist Dan West, who spends many fall days in a plane looking at how insect infestations are affecting tree health.

A motorcyclist rolls past trees with the changing colors of Autumn leaves, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025, in New London, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Crispy edges, muted colors, and dropping leaves before they can take on a red or purple hue are all signs of drought stress, West said.

“The tree is shutting down processes early and we basically just see this muted kind of a show for the fall,” he said.

In Denver, arborist Michael Sundberg also said he’s seeing less vibrant color than usual, and autumn feels like it arrived earlier than usual this year. It’s still a beautiful time of year, but there might be less of it to enjoy, he said.

“It’s weird to have color peaking this early in the mountains and then for Denver to be peaking at the same time,” he said. “Usually we’re later in October before we really go off.”

Casey reported from Boston. Associated Press journalist Brittany Peterson contributed reporting from Denver.

By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Federal officials rejected a company’s bid to acquire 167 million tons of coal on public lands in Montana for less than a penny per ton, in what would have been the biggest U.S. government coal sale in more than a decade.

The failed sale underscores a continued low appetite for coal among utilities that are turning to cheaper natural gas and renewables such as wind and solar to generate electricity. Emissions from burning coal are a leading driver of climate change, which scientists say is raising sea levels and making weather more extreme.

President Donald Trump has made reviving the coal industry a centerpiece of his agenda to increase U.S. energy production. But economists say Trump’s attempts to boost coal are unlikely to reverse its yearslong decline.

(AP Graphic)

The Department of Interior said in a Tuesday statement that last week’s $186,000 bid from the Navajo Transitional Energy Co. (NTEC) did not meet the requirements of the Mineral Leasing Act.

Agency representatives did not provide further details, and it’s unclear if they will attempt to hold the sale again.

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The leasing act requires bids to be at or above fair market value. At the last successful government lease sale in the region, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy paid $793 million, or $1.10 per ton, for 721 million tons of coal in Wyoming.

President Joe Biden’s administration sought to end coal sales in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, citing climate change.

A second proposed lease sale under Trump — 440 million tons of coal near an NTEC mine in central Wyoming — was postponed last week following the low bid received in the Montana sale. Interior Department officials have not said when the Wyoming sale will be rescheduled.

NTEC is owned by the Navajo Nation of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

In documents submitted in the run-up to the Montana sale, NTEC indicated the coal had little value because of declining demand for the fuel. The Associated Press emailed a company representative regarding the rejected bid.

Most power plants using fuel from NTEC’s Spring Creek mine in Montana and Antelope mine in Wyoming are scheduled to stop burning coal in the next decade, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

Spring Creek also ships coal overseas to customers in Asia. Increasing those shipments could help it offset lessening domestic demand, but a shortage of port capacity has hobbled prior industry aspirations to boost coal exports.

By MAE ANDERSON, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Cabinet dealers, interior designers and remodeling contractors in the U.S. hope new tariffs on imported kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and upholstered wooden furniture that kicked in Tuesday will create more business for them and eventually boost domestic production of those products.

But several small business owners in the home improvement industry say they expect some short-term pains from the import taxes: Clients with projects already on the books might balk at having to pay more for the budget-priced cabinets they selected. Potential customers may postpone kitchen and bathroom renovations until costs — and the economy — seem more stable.

“I think the volatility around pricing is damaging to the remodeling industry,” said Allison Harlow, an interior designer in Michigan whose company, Curio Design Studio, creates and builds custom bathrooms and kitchens. “Most people will hear the headline of ‘Kitchen cabinets will go up 50%’ and might just opt out of even reaching out to our company.”

Despite high mortgage rates having depressed sales of existing homes in recent years, a forecast of remodeling activity by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies predicts that homeowner spending on improvements and maintenance will remain steady into the middle of 2026.

Trump calls cheap imports a national security threat

A proclamation that President Donald Trump signed on Sept. 29 cited national security and foreign trade practices as grounds for imposing the tariffs on certain finished wood products and product components.

Of them, imported vanities and kitchen cabinets incurred the steepest tax rates: 25% until the end of the year and 50% starting on New Year’s Day.

Upholstered chairs, seats and sofas also are subject to a 25% worldwide tariff effective Tuesday, with the rate scheduled to increase to 30% on Jan. 1. In addition, the presidential proclamation put a 10% import tax on softwood timber and lumber, which comes from evergreen trees like pine and cedars.

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Softwoods often are used to make furniture and in wood frame construction. Canada is the source of about 85% of the softwood lumber the U.S. imports, or nearly one-quarter of the national supply, according to the National Association of Homebuilders.

Some U.S. trading partners are receiving more favorable treatment when it comes to the furniture and cabinetry tariffs. The tax on U.K. exports was capped at 10%, while the rate for wood products from the European Union and Japan was capped at 15%.

The American Kitchen Cabinet Alliance and other trade and advocacy groups lobbied for tariffs to help offset what they described as a flood of cheap cabinets from countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, China and elsewhere in the decades since more U.S. furniture manufacturing moved offshore.

U.S.-made products tend to cost more but often are of better quality.

A higher bottom line for renovators on a budget

John Lovallo, an analyst at UBS bank, estimates the tariffs on imported cabinets and vanities could add roughly $280 to the average cost of building a single-family home, not enough to sink a project that often carries an overall price tag more than 1,000 times larger than that.

Some business owners say they plan to cover any tariff-related costs for now instead of raising customer prices.

John Dean, founder of Dean Cabinetry in Connecticut, sells cabinets that run the gamut from lower-priced imports to custom models made in his shop. Imported products account for about a third of his sales, but Dean said he does not expect much fallout from the tariffs.

Two of his vendors that he buys imported cabinets from, in China and Vietnam, said they would raise prices by 10% to recoup some of the duty costs.

Dean said he would not charge customers more for now. Since a kitchen remodel is a big ticket item to begin with, and with the costs of building lumber and labor going up, raising cabinet prices might hurt demand, he said.

“My personal perspective is most small- and medium-sized businesses are trying to absorb those costs,” he said.

The wood product tariffs are likely to have a bigger effect on selection than on prices as importers scale back their orders to focus on bestsellers and products with the highest profit margins, according to Jason Miller, a supply chain management professor at Michigan State University.

“It will make importers more selective in the varieties they bring in,” Miller said: “So I think the bigger impact is going to be on the product variety side: Consumers should expect less variety.”

What cabinet companies are expecting

Although the White House said the tariffs were intended to boost domestic production and protect U.S. businesses from predatory trade practices, some cabinet makers say that will be difficult because their supply chains are multinational.

Linq Kitchen, a Los Angeles-area company that designs, builds and installs modern-style kitchen cabinets, uses plywood and melamine panels from Asia and Europe in its projects, co-founder Josh Qian said. A suitable domestic alternative does not exist, he said.

“The kitchen cabinet industry is highly globalized, and even U.S.-based manufacturers depend on imported materials, hardware, and finishes,” Qian said. “These tariffs may sound protective, but in reality, they often raise costs across the entire supply chain.”

At the same time, cabinet companies that don’t sell foreign products or rely on imported components look forward to capturing more business. One is ACO Denver Custom Cabinetry in Denver, Colorado, which enlists Amish, Mennonite, and New German Baptist shops in the Midwest to handcraft custom cabinets.

Andrea Mulkey, the company’s president and co-founder, said her main concern is whether interest in American-made cabinets will grow too quickly.

“It’s hard to predict how much new business might come our way as competitors are affected,” Mulkey said. “We simply couldn’t serve everyone if demand suddenly surged. The real challenge is similar to what we saw post-COVID, when everyone got busy at once, and access to raw materials became strained.”

The Curio Design Studio has its custom cabinets made in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but Harlow worries about the tariffs costing her customers.

“I think it will decrease consumer confidence and create a narrative that the work is going to get inherently more expensive,” Harlow said. “I think we will have to work harder to attract potential clients with messaging of how this blanket statement, ‘Kitchen cabinets will go up 50%,’ does not impact our particular business model.”