By DEE-ANN DURBIN, Associated Press

Want a little autumn in your August? You’re in luck.

The seasonal Pumpkin Spice Latte has returned to Starbucks menus in the U.S. and Canada.

The Pumpkin Spice Latte is Starbucks’ most popular seasonal beverage, with hundreds of millions sold since the espresso drink’s 2003 launch. It’s also produced a host of imitations. Dunkin’ introduced pumpkin-flavored drinks in 2007; it beat Starbucks to market this year when its fall menu debuted last week. McDonald’s introduced a pumpkin spice latte in 2013.

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Here’s a look at the Pumpkin Spice Latte by the numbers:

— 100: Number of Starbucks stores that sold the Pumpkin Spice Latte during a test run in Vancouver and Washington in 2003. The following year it launched nationally.

— 79: Number of markets where Starbucks sold the Pumpkin Spice Latte in 2024. At the time, the company had stores in 85 markets around the world. It now operates in 88 markets.

— $36.2 billion: Starbucks’ net revenue in its 2024 fiscal year, which ended last September. Starbucks’ net revenue was $4.1 billion in 2003, when the Pumpkin Spiace Latte first went on sale.

— 33.8%: Increase in mentions of pumpkin spice on U.S. menus between the fall of 2014 and the fall of 2024, according to Technomic.

— 4: Number of spices in McCormick’s Pumpkin Pie Spice. They are cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice.

— 2022: The year Merriam-Webster added “pumpkin spice” to the dictionary. Less common, it said, is the term “pumpkin pie spice.”

— 3: The Pumpkin Spice Latte was the third seasonal beverage introduced by Starbucks, after the Eggnog Latte and the Peppermint Mocha.

— Sept. 8: Date the Pumpkin Spice Latte went on sale in 2015. The on-sale date has edged earlier since then.

— 24%: Amount foot traffic rose at U.S. Starbucks last year on Aug. 22, the day the Pumpkin Spice Latte went on sale, according to Placer.ai. The company compared traffic that Thursday to the previous eight Thursdays.

— 45.5%: Amount foot traffic rose at Starbucks stores in North Dakota on Aug. 22, 2024, the most of any state, according to Placer.ai. Foot traffic in Mississippi rose the least, at 4.8%.

— 42,000: Number of members of the Leaf Rakers Society, a private Facebook group Starbucks created in 2018 to celebrate fall all year long.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 300 million Americans’ Social Security data was put at risk after Department of Government Efficiency officials uploaded sensitive information to a cloud account not subject to oversight, according to a whistleblower disclosure submitted to the special counsel’s office Tuesday.

Whistleblower Charles Borges, who worked as the chief data officer at the Social Security Administration since January, said the potential sensitive information that risks being released includes health diagnoses, income, banking information, familial relationships and personal biographic data.

“Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital healthcare and food benefits, and the government may be responsible for re-issuing every American a new Social Security Number at great cost,” said the complaint.

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The complaint was submitted by the Government Accountability Project and addressed to House and Senate oversight lawmakers. It requests that authorities “take appropriate oversight action.”

The whistleblower report is just the latest complaint against President Donald Trump’s DOGE and the unprecedented access it was given by the Republican administration to the vast troves of personal data across the government under the mandate of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. Labor and retiree groups sued SSA earlier this year for allowing DOGE to access Americans’ sensitive agency data, though a divided appeals panel decided this month that DOGE could access the information.

SSA said in a statement that it takes whistleblower complaints seriously but seemed to downplay Borges’ accusations.

“SSA stores all personal data in secure environments that have robust safeguards in place to protect vital information. The data referenced in the complaint is stored in a long-standing environment used by SSA and walled off from the internet. High-level career SSA officials have administrative access to this system with oversight by SSA’s Information Security team. We are not aware of any compromise to this environment and remain dedicated to protecting sensitive personal data,” the agency wrote.

Borges’ complaint says he disclosed to his superiors that he believed the upload was an abuse of authority and poses a substantial threat to public health and safety, and potentially violates the law.

Andrea Meza, a lawyer representing Borges, said her client released the information “out of a sense of urgency and duty to the American public.”

Major League Baseball still has not announced details for next season’s Field of Dreams Game, but Major League Baseball’s 2026 schedule release at least helped pinpoint a time frame.

Listed in the schedule released on Tuesday, the Twins will play host to the Philadelphia Phillies Aug. 14-16, so the game could potentially be on Friday or Sunday. But, if the league followed the pattern it set for the previous two games set among the cornstalks in at the famed movie site in Dyersville, Iowa, the game would actually be played on Aug. 13, a Thursday, followed by a day off and then the resumption of the series on Saturday in Minneapolis.

The Twins will kick off their 2026 season on March 26 in Baltimore before heading to Kansas City for three games. They’ll then return to town and host the Tampa Bay Rays in their home opener on April 3 at Target Field.

Border state Milwaukee will be in town May 15-17, followed by the Houston Astros in a series that will mark shortstop Carlos Correa’s return to Target Field. The Twins play in Milwaukee Aug. 7-9. They will conclude their season at home against the Texas Rangers Sept. 25-27.

There’s a scheduling quirk during the middle of their trip to Arlington, Texas, in June with a day off during the middle of the series. That’s because a FIFA World Cup group stage match will be taking place that day right next door at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys.

Some other schedule notes:

The Los Angeles Dodgers will come to down June 22-24.

The Twins will not host games on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July or Labor Day.

Their final game against an American League Central opponent will come on Sept. 13.

The Twins do not have the day off after their home opener, which has been customary in case of weather issues.

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Maintenance crews removing the epoxy coating that has peeled from the deck of the St. Croix River bridge south of Stillwater need some more time to complete their work, MnDOT officials said Monday.

Lane closures are expected to continue this week, and then crews will begin flood sealing the bridge deck, said Kent Barnard, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

“It is a fairly fast operation and should take about one lane per day for about a week’s work,” Barnard said.

Crews are scheduled to be working from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. through Thursday.

In addition to the possible lane and ramp closures, there will be a 12-foot width restriction on the bridge, he said.

A different sealer with grit for traction is being applied to the bridge deck; the wear surface is applied to larger, more costly bridges to protect and preserve the bridge deck and driving surface, he said.

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