A new wooded outdoor habitat modeled after the Himalayan foothills is slated to open at the Minnesota Zoo this weekend and will feature red pandas, cranes and a deer, zoo official said.

The Red Panda Forest Habitat, on the Northern Trail at the zoo, will open Saturday, May 31. It will contain two red panda brothers named Cedar and Spruce. In addition, there will be a western tufted deer and two red-crowned crane sisters.

“These three animals depend on the unique mix of bamboo forests, mountainsides, wetlands and river valleys,” zoo officials said.

The new habitat gives the three species a natural environment to explore that includes climbing structures crafted from a repurposed oak tree that fell on the zoo campus. It also includes nesting boxes and feeders constructed of bamboo.

“The habitat was designed with each species’ well-being in mind — while also prioritizing the Zoo’s commitment to sustainability and our planet,” according to the zoo.

Red pandas, an endangered species, are skilled climbers in the moss-covered treetops of the forest, zoo officials said. Their ruddy-colored coat acts as camouflage in the Himalayan forest because it matches the moss on the canopy of trees where they live.

These two pandas were born in August 2024 at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo in Nebraska with their sister, Juniper. Red panda triplets are extremely rare, zoo officials said. The triplets represent 25% of all red pandas born in North American zoos last year.

Male western tufted deer are noted for their fang-like canine teeth that they use for defense, dominance battles and mating displays, zoo officials said. The Minnesota Zoo deer, named Douglas, came from Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in Ohio. His favorite food is sweet potato and he expresses curiosity with a ‘click’ sound. “Western tufted deer can also bark, whistle and whine,” zoo officials said.

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The red-crowned crane is one of the rarest cranes in the world. There will be two 9-month-old sisters at the Red Panda Forest, arriving from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Their distinctive red heads and snowy white feathers will develop at 2 years old, the zoo said.

Panda-themed activities will take place on the plaza throughout the opening weekend of the new habitat.

Zoo officials said the public can sponsor a red panda, which supports the animals at the zoo “while forming a deeper connection with wildlife.” Each red panda sponsorship includes four exclusive updates, along with a certificate of sponsorship.

For more information, visit mnzoo.org/redpandaforest/.

If you’ve been wanting to pose with the Walter Cup since the founding of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, now is your chance.

The Frost will celebrate their (second) PWHL championship at the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul at 6 p.m. on Wednesday and the public is invited.

Here are some things to know:

The championship

On Monday, the Minnesota Frost beat the Ottawa Charge, 2-1, in overtime at the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul to win the Professional Women’s Hockey League Championship for the second year in a row.

Thus, that Walter Cup is staying in St. Paul.

Pre-party procession

The Minnesota Frost tell us that players, coaches and staff will walk with the Walter Cup (weather permitting) from the Tria Rink at 400 Wabasha St. N. to the Xcel Energy Center, located at the corner of West Seventh Street and Kellogg Boulevard, departing at 5:30 p.m.

From the Tria Rink, the Walter Cup procession will travel through Seventh Place, Rice Park, past the Herb Brooks statue and into Xcel Energy Center.

Who will be there?

The celebration on the arena floor will begin at 6 p.m. with General Manager Melissa Caruso, Head Coach Ken Klee and selected players addressing the crowd.

This event will be hosted by Kirsten Krull of the Bardown Beauties podcast.

The celebration

At the celebration, which lasts until 8 p.m., there will be photo opportunities with the Walter Cup, a live DJ, concessions, interactive games and merchandise sales.

It’s free

The event is free and open to the public with entrance provided at Gate One of the Xcel Energy Center. Doors at Gate One will open at 5:30 p.m.

Information

Get more info about the event at thepwhl.com/en/teams/minnesota-frost.

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By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Get ready for several years of even more record-breaking heat that pushes Earth to more deadly, fiery and uncomfortable extremes, two of the world’s top weather agencies forecast.

There’s an 80% chance the world will break another annual temperature record in the next five years, and it’s even more probable that the world will again exceed the international temperature threshold set 10 years ago, according to a five-year forecast released Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.K. Meteorological Office.

“Higher global mean temperatures may sound abstract, but it translates in real life to a higher chance of extreme weather: stronger hurricanes, stronger precipitation, droughts,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the calculations but said they made sense. “So higher global mean temperatures translates to more lives lost.”

With every tenth of a degree the world warms from human-caused climate change “we will experience higher frequency and more extreme events (particularly heat waves but also droughts, floods, fires and human-reinforced hurricanes/typhoons),” emailed Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He was not part of the research.

And for the first time there’s a chance — albeit slight — that before the end of the decade, the world’s annual temperature will shoot past the Paris climate accord goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and hit a more alarming 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of heating since the mid-1800s, the two agencies said.

There’s an 86% chance that one of the next five years will pass 1.5 degrees and a 70% chance that the five years as a whole will average more than that global milestone, they figured.

The projections come from more than 200 forecasts using computer simulations run by 10 global centers of scientists.

Ten years ago, the same teams figured there was a similar remote chance — about 1% — that one of the upcoming years would exceed that critical 1.5 degree threshold and then it happened last year. This year, a 2-degree Celsius above pre-industrial year enters the equation in a similar manner, something UK Met Office longer term predictions chief Adam Scaife and science scientist Leon Hermanson called “shocking.”

“It’s not something anyone wants to see, but that’s what the science is telling us,” Hermanson said. Two degrees of warming is the secondary threshold, the one considered less likely to break, set by the 2015 Paris agreement.

Technically, even though 2024 was 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times, the Paris climate agreement’s threshold is for a 20-year time period, so it has not been exceeded. Factoring in the past 10 years and forecasting the next 10 years, the world is now probably about 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter since the mid 1800s, World Meteorological Organization climate services director Chris Hewitt estimated.

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“With the next five years forecast to be more than 1.5C warmer than preindustrial levels on average, this will put more people than ever at risk of severe heat waves, bringing more deaths and severe health impacts unless people can be better protected from the effects of heat. Also we can expect more severe wildfires as the hotter atmosphere dries out the landscape,” said Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the UK Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter.

Ice in the Arctic — which will continue to warm 3.5 times faster than the rest of the world — will melt and seas will rise faster, Hewitt said.

What tends to happen is that global temperatures rise like riding on an escalator, with temporary and natural El Nino weather cycles acting like jumps up or down on that escalator, scientists said. But lately, after each jump from an El Nino, which adds warming to the globe, the planet doesn’t go back down much, if at all.

“Record temperatures immediately become the new normal,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson.

Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears

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.

Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has refused to throw out a lawsuit that accuses billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency of illegally accessing government data systems, canceling government contracts and firing federal employees.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled Tuesday that 14 states can proceed with their claims against Musk and DOGE. The states, through their attorneys general, sued in February over the defendants’ alleged constitutional violations.

The states had asked Chutkan to temporarily block DOGE from accessing any data systems or terminating any federal employees. But the judge denied that request on Feb. 18. She found that there were legitimate questions about Musk’s authority but said there weren’t grounds to justify a temporary restraining order.

Chutkan agreed Tuesday to dismiss President Donald Trump as a defendant in the lawsuit, but she refused to dismiss the claims against Musk and DOGE.

FILE – Elon Musk speaks at a town hall March 30, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps, File)

The plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that Musk’s actions, including those carried out at his direction by DOGE personnel, are unconstitutional because he hasn’t been legally appointed.

Chutkan wrote: “The Constitution does not permit the Executive to commandeer the entire appointments power by unilaterally creating a federal agency pursuant to Executive Order and insulating its principal officer from the Constitution as an ‘advisor’ in name only. This is precisely what Plaintiffs claim the Executive has done.”

The Trump administration has maintained that layoffs are coming from agency heads and insisted that Musk hasn’t been running DOGE’s day-to-day operations.

Chutkan, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, previously oversaw the now-dismissed criminal election interference case against Trump in Washington.