By ISABELLA O’MALLEY

Harmful bleaching of the world’s coral has grown to include 84% of the ocean’s reefs in the most intense event of its kind in recorded history, the International Coral Reef Initiative announced Wednesday.

It’s the fourth global bleaching event since 1998, and has now surpassed bleaching from 2014-17 that hit some two-thirds of reefs, said the ICRI, a mix of more than 100 governments, non-governmental organizations and others. And it’s not clear when the current crisis, which began in 2023 and is blamed on warming oceans, will end.

“We may never see the heat stress that causes bleaching dropping below the threshold that triggers a global event,” said Mark Eakin, executive secretary for the International Coral Reef Society and retired coral monitoring chief for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“We’re looking at something that’s completely changing the face of our planet and the ability of our oceans to sustain lives and livelihoods,” Eakin said.

FILE – Bleaching is visible on coral reef off the coast of Nha Trang, Vietnam, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Yannick Peterhans, File)

Last year was Earth’s hottest year on record, and much of that is going into oceans. The average annual sea surface temperature of oceans away from the poles was a record 20.87 degrees Celsius (69.57 degrees Fahrenheit).

That’s deadly to corals, which are key to seafood production, tourism and protecting coastlines from erosion and storms. Coral reefs are sometimes dubbed “rainforests of the sea” because they support high levels of biodiversity — approximately 25% of all marine species can be found in, on and around coral reefs.

Coral get their bright colors from the colorful algae that live inside them and are a food source for the corals. Prolonged warmth causes the algae to release toxic compounds, and the coral eject them. A stark white skeleton is left behind, and the weakened coral is at heightened risk of dying.

The bleaching event has been so severe that NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program has had to add levels to its bleaching alert scale to account for the growing risk of coral death.

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Efforts are underway to conserve and restore coral. One Dutch lab has worked with coral fragments, including some taken from off the coast of the Seychelles, to propagate them in a zoo so that they might be used someday to repopulate wild coral reefs if needed. Other projects, including one off Florida, have worked to rescue corals endangered by high heat and nurse them back to health before returning them to the ocean.

But scientists say it’s essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet, such as carbon dioxide and methane.

“The best way to protect coral reefs is to address the root cause of climate change. And that means reducing the human emissions that are mostly from burning of fossil fuels … everything else is looking more like a Band-Aid rather than a solution,” Eakin said.

“I think people really need to recognize what they’re doing … inaction is the kiss of death for coral reefs,” said Melanie McField, co-chair of the Caribbean Steering Committee for the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, a network of scientists that monitors reefs throughout the world.

The group’s update comes as President Donald Trump has moved aggressively in his second term to boost fossil fuels and roll back clean energy programs, which he says is necessary for economic growth.

“We’ve got a government right now that is working very hard to destroy all of these ecosystems … removing these protections is going to have devastating consequences,” Eakin said.

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.

A St. Paul man has pleaded guilty to attempted murder after shooting at a Ramsey County sheriff’s deputy during a pursuit last year on St. Paul’s East Side.

Trevion Armand Figgs, 21, was a passenger in a Honda Accord and fired at least three bullets from an assault rifle at Deputy Joe Kill, who was struck with shrapnel near his right collar bone in the March 2024 incident. He was transported to Regions Hospital for minor injuries.

A plea agreement Figgs reached with the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office last week includes a 12½-year prison term at sentencing and the dismissal of the remaining charges: first-degree assault of a peace officer and drive-by shooting.

Trevion Armand Figgs (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Figgs remains jailed in lieu of $1.3 million bail ahead of sentencing, which has yet to be scheduled.

According to the criminal complaint, St. Paul police officers saw someone, later identified as a 17-year-old, driving a Honda Accord recklessly at Payne Avenue and Jessamine Street around 10:45 p.m. March 1, 2024. The officers tried to pull him over, but he sped away.

A short time later, Kill saw the Accord and noticed that two people were in it. When the teen blew through a red light at Payne Avenue and Seventh Street, Kill turned on his emergency lights and siren and began pursuit.

As the Accord headed east on Euclid Street, the front-seat passenger, who wore a face mask and was later identified as Figgs, leaned out of the car, sat on the door frame and fired a tan-colored assault rifle at the deputy, who was 25 to 30 yards behind.

Kill swerved his squad to the left, stopped in the 900 block of Euclid Street and took cover under the driver compartment. Kill thought three shots were fired at him.

Two bullet fragments were recovered from the front floor of the deputy’s squad car. His ballistic vest showed a scuff mark on its upper right consistent with being struck by an object.

Surveillance video audio from the neighborhood recorded approximately “three to five gunshot-like noises,” the complaint says. Officers found two .223-caliber rifle casings in the middle of Euclid Street.

Officers searched the area and found the Accord unoccupied and parked in an alley in the 1000 block of Pacific Street. Surveillance video showed the car in the alley around 10:50 p.m., then two people running east.

A search of the car turned up two more spent .223-caliber rifle casings. Paperwork showed the teen driver was in the process of buying the car.

Further investigation showed a close relationship between the teen and Figgs, whose house is in the area where the car was found.

Investigators then received information from Figgs’ Snapchat account. It showed that an account associated with the teen sent Figgs a photo of Figgs wearing a black face mask and holding a tan assault rifle consistent with the one described by the deputy.

Officers executed a search warrant at Figgs’ home and arrested him. In an upper bedroom, officers recovered a tan AR-style rifle stock, a Polymer 80 handgun, a debit card in the teen’s name and loose .223- and 9mm-caliber ammunition.

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Three days before the case was filed against Figgs, prosecutors charged him by a sealed complaint with attempted murder stemming from a June 2023 shooting on the city’s East Side. Prosecutors say Figgs fired nearly 30 rounds at an SUV, one of which struck a 19-year-old man in the back. The case is pending.

In December, the teen driver was adjudicated delinquent — the juvenile version of being found guilty — of aiding and abetting first-degree assault of a peace officer. He was placed on extended jurisdiction juvenile prosecution under the condition that he complete a long-term treatment program at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Red Wing. An adult sentence of just over seven years was stayed pending completion of the juvenile term, which ends when he turns 21.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The height of tax season was the height of turmoil at the IRS.

The agency shuffled through three acting directors over the course of a week. It’s preparing to lose tens of thousands of workers to layoffs and voluntary retirements. And President Donald Trump is weighing in on which nonprofits should lose their tax-exempt status, an incursion into the agency’s typically apolitical stance that threatens to further erode trust in federal institutions and weaponize enforcement efforts.

Just three months into Trump’s second term, the government’s fly-under-the-radar tax collector has become the latest platform for the Republican administration’s vision to cut and control the federal bureaucracy. Tax policy experts fear that taxpayer services and collection efforts will face prolonged delays as a result of the rapid changes.

The quick turnover in leadership and other changes are likely to dampen employee morale at the IRS and hurt the agency’s ability to serve taxpayers in a timely manner, says Janet Holtzblatt, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

“Leadership sets the tone, particularly in this environment,” she said.

Already, she notes, the agency has lost decades of institutional knowledge from nonpartisan career civil servants who have left over policy disagreements and layoffs.

Chaos embroils agency amid leadership turnover

The upheaval unfolded as Americans dutifully filed their taxes ahead of the April 15 deadline and as a legion of IRS employees undertook work to process returns and dole out refunds. The latest filing season data shows the agency accepted more than 117 million returns this tax season and issued $228.7 billion in refunds.

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“We’re committed to improving the efficiency of the Internal Revenue Service,” said the agency’s newest acting commissioner, Michael Faulkender. “For the last 35 years, we’ve been five years away from the IRS being modernized. Under the direct leadership of Treasury, the modernization will be done in two years at a fraction of the cost.”

Meanwhile, the IRS, like other federal agencies, is hemorrhaging employees over cuts spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency, all while the agency churns through acting leaders as it awaits the installation of a permanent leader.

Douglas O’Donnell, the Trump administration’s first acting IRS commissioner, announced his retirement in February as furor spread over DOGE gaining access to IRS taxpayer data. Melanie Krause, the second acting commissioner, resigned early this month over a deal between the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Gary Shapley, an IRS whistleblower who testified publicly about investigations into Hunter Biden’s taxes, was acting commissioner for a matter of days before being replaced by Faulkender, who was elevated just last week. The New York Times reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had complained to Trump that Shapley had been installed without his knowledge and at the behest of Trump adviser Elon Musk.

Trump’s nominee for IRS commissioner, former U.S. Rep. Billy Long of Missouri, is still waiting for a confirmation hearing but faces controversies of his own. Most recently, Senate Democrats have called for a criminal investigation into Long’s connections to alleged tax credit loopholes. The lawmakers allege that firms connected to Long duped investors into spending millions of dollars to purchase fake tax credits. Long did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

Punishing enemies and rewarding friends

Among other concerns at the agency are fears that Trump will weaponize the IRS against his enemies — and reward his friends.

Some of the Democratic Party’s core political institutions, including fundraising platform ActBlue and the protest group Indivisible, are preparing for the possibility that the federal government may soon launch criminal investigations against them.

Trump said last week at the White House that the administration is looking at the tax-exempt status of Harvard University, which has defied the government’s attempts to limit activism on campus, and environmental groups. He also mentioned the ethics watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“It’s supposed to be a charitable organization,” Trump said of CREW. “The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump. So we’re looking at that. We’re looking at a lot of things.”

Jonathan S. Masur, an administrative law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, said it’s unlawful for the president to unilaterally take away organizations’ tax-exempt status.

“It’s illegal for starters. The Supreme Court has established that that step is not allowed,” he said, adding that he anticipates that the court system will “very quickly block” any such move from the president.

The Trump administration is also watching out for allies of the president.

Treasury official David Eisner sent an email in March to a top IRS official regarding Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow and one of the chief proponents of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

“The ‘My Pillow guy’ and a high-profile friend of the President recently received an audit letter, from what I understand, his second in two years,” Eisner wrote in the email, which was viewed by the AP. The president “is concerned that he may have been inappropriately targeted,” Eisner wrote.

Bringing immigration enforcement to the IRS

Among other changes in recent weeks are concerns about the IRS’ engagement with the Department of Homeland Security over enforcing a new data-sharing agreement signed earlier this month by Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The agreement will allow ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.

That agreement is being litigated in federal court.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich will soon decide whether to refuse or grant a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by nonprofit groups. The groups argue that immigrants in the country illegally who pay taxes are entitled to the same privacy protections as U.S. citizens and immigrants who are legally in the country.

The Treasury Department says the agreement will help carry out Trump’s agenda to secure U.S. borders and is part of his larger nationwide immigration crackdown, which has resulted in deportations, workplace raids and the use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants.

Holtzblatt said the agreement is indicative of the turmoil at the IRS.

“There’s an emphasis on improving technology and sharing information,” but it’s unclear for what reason, she said.

By MATT O’BRIEN, Associated Press Technology Writer

Former employees of OpenAI are asking the top law enforcement officers in California and Delaware to stop the company from shifting control of its artificial intelligence technology from a nonprofit charity to a for-profit business.

They’re concerned about what happens if the ChatGPT maker fulfills its ambition to build AI that outperforms humans, but is no longer accountable to its public mission to safeguard that technology from causing grievous harms.

“Ultimately, I’m worried about who owns and controls this technology once it’s created,” said Page Hedley, a former policy and ethics adviser at OpenAI, in an interview with The Associated Press.

Backed by three Nobel Prize winners and other advocates and experts, Hedley and nine other ex-OpenAI workers sent a letter this week to the two state attorneys general.

The coalition is asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, both Democrats, to use their authority to protect OpenAI’s charitable purpose and block its planned restructuring. OpenAI is incorporated in Delaware and operates out of San Francisco.

OpenAI said in response that “any changes to our existing structure would be in service of ensuring the broader public can benefit from AI.” It said its for-profit will be a public benefit corporation, similar to other AI labs like Anthropic and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s xAI, except that OpenAI will still preserve a nonprofit arm.

“This structure will continue to ensure that as the for-profit succeeds and grows, so too does the nonprofit, enabling us to achieve the mission,” the company said in a statement.

The letter is the second petition to state officials this month. The last came from a group of labor leaders and nonprofits focused on protecting OpenAI’s billions of dollars of charitable assets.

Jennings said last fall she would “review any such transaction to ensure that the public’s interests are adequately protected.” Bonta’s office sought more information from OpenAI late last year but has said it can’t comment, even to confirm or deny if it is investigating.

OpenAI’s co-founders, including current CEO Sam Altman and Musk, originally started it as a nonprofit research laboratory on a mission to safely build what’s known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI, for humanity’s benefit. Nearly a decade later, OpenAI has reported its market value as $300 billion and counts 400 million weekly users of ChatGPT, its flagship product.

OpenAI already has a for-profit subsidiary but faces a number of challenges in converting its core governance structure. One is a lawsuit from Musk, who accuses the company and Altman of betraying the founding principles that led the Tesla CEO to invest in the charity.

While some of the signatories of this week’s letter support Musk’s lawsuit, Hedley said others are “understandably cynical” because Musk also runs his own rival AI company.

The signatories include two Nobel-winning economists, Oliver Hart and Joseph Stiglitz, as well as AI pioneers and computer scientists Geoffrey Hinton, who won last year’s Nobel Prize in physics, and Stuart Russell.

“I like OpenAI’s mission to ‘ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,’ and I would like them to execute that mission instead of enriching their investors,” Hinton said in a statement Wednesday. “I’m happy there is an effort to hold OpenAI to its mission that does not involve Elon Musk.”

Conflicts over OpenAI’s purpose have long simmered at the San Francisco institute, contributing to Musk quitting in 2018, Altman’s short-lived ouster in 2023 and other high-profile departures.

Hedley, a lawyer by training, worked for OpenAI in 2017 and 2018, a time when the nonprofit was still navigating the best ways to steward the technology it wanted to build. As recently as 2023, Altman said advanced AI held promise but also warned of extraordinary risks, from drastic accidents to societal disruptions.

In recent years, however, Hedley said he watched with concern as OpenAI, buoyed by the success of ChatGPT, was increasingly cutting corners on safety testing and rushing out new products to get ahead of business competitors.

“The costs of those decisions will continue to go up as the technology becomes more powerful,” he said. “I think that in the new structure that OpenAI wants, the incentives to rush to make those decisions will go up and there will no longer be anybody really who can tell them not to, tell them this is not OK.”

Software engineer Anish Tondwalkar, a former member of OpenAI’s technical team until last year, said an important assurance in OpenAI’s nonprofit charter is a “stop-and-assist clause” that directs OpenAI to stand down and help if another organization is nearing the achievement of better-than-human AI.

“If OpenAI is allowed to become a for-profit, these safeguards, and OpenAI’s duty to the public can vanish overnight,” Tondwalkar said in a statement Wednesday.

Another former worker who signed the letter puts it more bluntly.

“OpenAI may one day build technology that could get us all killed,” said Nisan Stiennon, an AI engineer who worked at OpenAI from 2018 to 2020. “It is to OpenAI’s credit that it’s controlled by a nonprofit with a duty to humanity. This duty precludes giving up that control.”

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.