Pantera didn’t headline Minneapolis’ Target Center on Thursday night, but a reasonable facsimile of the groove metal pioneers did.

Lead singer Phil Anselmo was the first to admit it, announcing to the crowd early on that “everything we do is for Dimebag and Vinnie,” a reference to the late Abbott brothers, who founded the group under their stage names Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul. Because, really, those two were the heart of Pantera, who broke up in 2003 amid ongoing problems between the brothers and Anselmo. (Dimebag was murdered onstage in 2004 by an unstable fan, while Vinnie died of heart failure in 2018.)

In 2022, Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown announced they were reuniting with the help of two high-profile metal veterans who also happened to be close to the Abbotts: Zakk Wylde, who is best known as Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist, and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante.

Thursday marked Pantera’s first local arena headlining gig in two dozen years. (The foursome opened for Metallica last year at U.S. Bank Stadium and also played a last-minute show at First Avenue.) While, again, it wasn’t the “real” Pantera, the band still turned in a fierce and fiery 90-minute performance that kept the crowd of about 10,000 glowing.

Anselmo’s Rob Halford-inspired vocals sounded as strong and heavy as ever, as if the 57-year-old hadn’t aged a day since Pantera’s heyday in the ’90s. He fondly remembered first playing the area in 1990 and said Minneapolis was one of the first cities to embrace the band. And in addition to his impressive vocal stamina, Anselmo also found time to knock out a meaty guitar solo during “Goddamn Electric.”

Wylde and Benante proved to be perfect additions to the band, which wasn’t too surprising given they’re two of the most talented players in the genre. Benante in particular impressed the crowd with his muscular, yet precise, drumming. (Two dudes sitting next to me were raving about him all night.)

The bulk of the songs in the set list came from Pantera’s two biggest albums, “Vulgar Display of Power” and “Far Beyond Driven,” but the other three core records each got at least one track aired. The fans ate them all up, from “Hellbound” to “Mouth for War” to “I’m Broken” to “Walk.”

The spirit of Osbourne, who died last month at age 76, was palpable throughout the entire show, which included opening sets from Amon Amarth and King Parrot. The Prince of Darkness got shout-outs from all three acts, which wasn’t too surprising given that Pantera postponed a pair of shows after his death to allow time for grieving. I’m guessing Ozzy would have approved.

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By MELINA WALLING

An iconic Argentinian glacier, long thought one of the few on Earth to be relatively stable, is now undergoing its “most substantial retreat in the past century,” according to new research.

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The Perito Moreno Glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field for decades has been wedged securely in a valley. But it’s started losing contact with the bedrock below, causing it to shed more ice as it inches backward. It’s a change, illustrated in dramatic timelapse photos since 2020, that highlights “the fragile balance of one of the most well-known glaciers worldwide,” write the authors of the study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

They expect it to retreat several more kilometers in the next few years.

“We believe that the retreat that we are seeing now, and why it is so extreme in terms of values that we can observe, is because it hasn’t been climatically stable for a while now, for over a decade,” said Moritz Koch, a doctoral student at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and one of the study authors. “Now we see this very delayed response to climate change as it is slowly but surely detaching from this physical pinning point in the central part of the glacier.”

Koch and his team did extensive field work to get the data for their calculations. To measure ice thickness, they flew over the glacier in a helicopter with a radar device suspended beneath. They also used sonar on the lake and satellite information from above.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit Glaciar Perito Moreno, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. It’s a site known to “calve” ice chunks that fall into Lake Argentino below.

FILE – Tourists walk on the Perito Moreno Glacier at Los Glaciares National Park, near El Calafate, Argentina, Nov. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)

The basic physics of climate change and glaciers are intuitive: heat melts ice, and global warming means more and faster glacial melting, said Richard Alley, an ice scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the study. But much like a dropped coffee mug, it’s harder to predict when and exactly how they’re going to break apart.

He said people who deny climate change frequently point to anomalies like Perito Moreno, which for a long time wasn’t retreating when most other glaciers were.

Even without climate change, glaciers fluctuate a bit. But if the climate were stable, ordinary accumulation of snow and ice would offset the melting and movement, said Erin Pettit, a glaciologist at Oregon State University who was also not involved in the study.

Glacial melting, especially at the poles, matters because it could cause catastrophic sea level rise, harming and displacing people living in coastal and island areas. While the changes can be locally spectacular in places like Patagonia, Alley said the bigger concern is using studies like this one to understand “what might happen to the big guys” in Antarctica.

But even smaller glaciers have a powerful presence in communities, Pettit said. Ice has carved out many of the landscapes people love today, and they are intimately tied to many cultures around the world. Glaciers can be a source of drinking water or, when they collapse, a destructive force leaving mudslides in their wake.

“We are losing these little bits of ice everywhere,” Pettit said. “Hopefully we’re slowly gaining more respect for the ice that was here, even if it’s not always there.”

Follow Melina Walling on X @MelinaWalling and Bluesky @melinawalling.bsky.social.

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 ED WHITE

DETROIT (AP) — A judge has stopped government contractors in five states from sending hazardous waste to a Michigan landfill after a year of legal challenges by Detroit-area communities concerned about possible environmental impacts.

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Wayne County Judge Kevin Cox said the risk was “substantial and compelling” and outweighed the financial harm to Wayne Disposal, a suburban Detroit landfill operated by trash giant Republic Services.

Cox’s injunction, signed Tuesday, bars Wayne Disposal from accepting waste from Luckey, Ohio; Middletown, Iowa; Deepwater, New Jersey; Lewiston, New York; and St. Louis.

Those cleanup sites are managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its contractors. The waste includes materials that were produced for weapons, early atomic energy and other uses before and after World War II.

Shipments “have been halted and we are working closely with our contractors to determine the next steps,” Jenn Miller, a spokesperson in the Army Corps environmental division, said Thursday.

Tainted soil in Lewiston is a legacy of the Manhattan Project, the secret government effort to develop atomic bombs during World War II.

While the lawsuit in Michigan was pending, officials recently decided to send Lewiston soil to a Texas landfill to keep the project moving, Miller said.

Wayne Disposal in Van Buren Township, 25 miles (40.2 kilometers) west of Detroit, is one of the few landfills in the U.S. that can handle certain hazardous waste.

Republic Services has repeatedly said the landfill meets or exceeds rules to safely manage hazardous materials. The company said the court order was “overly broad.”

“Responsible management and disposal of these waste streams is an essential need, and Wayne Disposal, Inc. is designed and permitted to safely manage this material,” the company said.

But critics say there are too many homes, schools and waterways near the landfill, making any leak at the site possibly dangerous.

“We stood strong with our community allies speaking collectively with one voice that we do not want this type of waste in our community,” said Kevin McNamara, the elected supervisor in Van Buren Township.

By MEG KINNARD

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump recognized nearly 100 recipients of the Purple Heart at the White House on Thursday, including three service members who gave him their own medals after an attempt on his life at a Pennsylvania campaign rally.

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Trump opened the event marking National Purple Heart Day by noting that dozens of the award’s recipients were at the ceremony in the East Room. The Republican president offered “everlasting thanks to you and your unbelievable families.”

But he had special words for the trio of veterans who sent Trump their medals after the 2024 shooting in Butler. Trump said the trio, “showed me the same unbelievable gesture of kindness.”

“What a great honor to get those Purple Hearts. I guess, in a certain way, it wasn’t that easy for me either, when you think of it,” Trump said of the attempt on his life. “But you went through a lot more than I did, and I appreciate it very much.”

After a shooter’s bullet pierced the upper part of Trump’s right ear in Butler just days before the 2024 Republican National Convention, the then-Republican presidential candidate was gifted medals from some Purple Heart recipients. The medals were presented to him at campaign events during the race’s closing months.

According to the White House, some of those Purple Heart recipients were brought to Trump’s campaign stops so that he could return their medals to them.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also attended, along with Chris LaCivita, Trump’s former campaign co-manager and a Marine veteran who is also a Purple Heart recipient.

National Purple Heart Day is marked annually on Aug. 7.

The Purple Heart, the oldest military award still in use and is awarded to service members who are killed or wounded while engaging in enemy action or resulting from acts of terrorism. According to the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor, more than 1.8 million medals have been presented since the award’s inception in 1782.

Trump also highlighted the stories of valor of other Purple Heart recipients, including Army Spc. Kevin Jensen whose Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2008. Jensen pulled fellow Purple Heart recipient, Capt. Sam Brown, from the flames.

“He flew 10 feet up in the air, exploded in flames. The whole place was in flames, including, unfortunately, Kevin,” Trump said of Jansen. “He suffered deep, third-degree burns all over his body. He was in trouble, big trouble. Despite the agony, he selflessly ran to the aid of his platoon leader.”

Trump also used the ceremony to gloat about having authorized a 2020 U.S. drone strike, during his first term, that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Trump derided Soleimani on Thursday as “father of the roadside bomb.”

“Where is he? Where is he?” Trump scoffed to attendee laughter. “Where is Soleimani?”

Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP. Associated Press writer Will Weissert contributed reporting.