By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP Science Writer)

LISLE, Illinois (AP) — With their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough. But some of them really are sex-crazed zombies on speed, hijacked by a super-sized fungus.

West Virginia University mycology professor Matt Kasson, his 9-year-old son Oliver, and graduate student Angie Macias are tracking the nasty fungus, called Massospora cicadina. It is the only one on Earth that makes amphetamine — the drug called speed — in a critter when it takes over. And yes, the fungus takes control over the cicada, makes them hypersexual, looking to spread the parasite as a sexually transmitted disease.

“They’re zombies, completely at the mercy of the fungus,” said University of Connecticut cicada researcher John Cooley.

This particular fungus has the largest known genome of any fungus. It has about 1.5 billion base pairs, about 30 times longer than many of the more common fungi we know, Kasson said. And when these periodical cicadas live underground for 17 years (or 13 years in the U.S. South), the spores generally stay down there with them.

“This was a mycological oddity for a long time,” Kasson said. “It’s got the biggest genome. It produces wild compounds. It keeps the host active — all these quirks to it.”

Kasson decided to ask people from around the country to send in infected cicadas this year. And despite an injured leg, Kasson, his son and Macias travelled from West Virginia to the Morton Arboretum outside Chicago, where others have reported the fungus that takes over a cicada’s nether parts, dumping the genitalia and replacing it with a white, gummy yet flaky plug that’s pretty noticeable. The spores then fall out like salt from a shaker.

Infected cicadas are supposed to be hard to find.

Ten seconds after she hops off the golf cart, Macias is in the trees, looking. She emerges victorious, hand in the air with a cicada, yelling “I got one.”

“That was just lucky,” Oliver whines.

“Luck, huh? Let’s see you get one,” Macias replies.

Ten seconds later at a neighboring bush, Oliver finds another. And just a bit after that a photographer finds a third.

Kasson and his small team collected 36 infected cicadas in his brief Chicago area jaunt with people sending him another 200 or so from all over. He’s still waiting for an RNA analysis of the fungus.

Some cicada experts have estimated maybe one in 1,000 of the periodical cicadas are infected with this fungus, but it’s not much more than a guess. Mount St. Joseph University’s Gene Kritsky, a biologist who wrote the book on this year’s unique dual emergence, said it might be skewed because the healthy cicadas stay higher up in the trees.

This year “the fungus is about how it always is,” Cooley said in an email. “It’s not super common.”

There’s debate among scientists if the fungus infects more cicadas deep in the soil coming out of the ground after 13 or 17 years or if it infects the newly hatched nymphs on the way underground for more than a decade.

This fungus isn’t the type of parasite that kills its host, but instead it needs to keep it alive, Kasson said. Then the infected cicadas attempt to mate with others, spreading the spores to its mate/victim. The males even pretend in their hypersexualized state to be females to entice and infect other males, he said.

The cousin to this fungus which infects annual cicadas out west also makes a psychoactive compound in the cicadas but it is more akin to psychedelics like magic mushrooms, Kasson said. So sometimes people, even experts, mix up the amphetamine that the infected 17- and 13-year cicadas produce with the more trippy compounds of the annual bugs, he said.

Either way, don’t try it at home. Even though cicadas themselves are edible, not so much the infected ones.

In the interest of science, Kasson tried one during this emergence, making sure they were from the inside of a female so more antiseptic.

“Man, it was so bitter,” Kasson said, explaining that he immediately rinsed his mouth out. “It tasted like something you would consider poisonous.”

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Around Galveston, Sam Collins III is better known as Professor Juneteenth. 

For the past 20 years, Collins, 54, has devoted his life to educating the public about Juneteenth—the commemoration of June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger and his troops landed on the island. More than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Texas was then the last bastion of legal slavery. Granger read the orders freeing 250,000 enslaved Texans across Galveston, before traveling inland to proclaim freedom and the promise of “absolute equality”at plantations across Texas. 

Today, Galveston is an open classroom for Juneteenth’s legacy, largely due to Collins’ efforts. He’s organized community members to get Juneteenth-related historical markers, murals, statutes, and public exhibits established. Collins worked together with Fort Worth’s Opal Lee to make Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021. But he says that his work, as well as the promise of Juneteenth, is unfinished. He’s now trying to expand the story of Juneteenth’s legacy and bring it back home to Galveston with plans for an International Museum of Juneteenth in the port city. (A museum is also in the works up in Cowtown.)

“The Juneteenth story is much more than one day, or one city. But this is where it started,” Collins said. 

I had the opportunity to join Collins as he hosted Miss Juneteenth USA, Sunshine Higgins, and Miss Juneteenth Texas, Madison Swain, on his “Freedom Walk Tour,” which highlights the sites where the orders of freedom were read. Higgins and Swain are both college students who won scholarships through Juneteenth-themed pageant programs. As we walked around Galveston, I learned about Collins’ own history, work, and plans to continue promoting Juneteenth’s legacy in his hometown. 

We started at the Nia Cultural Center, a gallery dedicated to promoting the history and legacy of Juneteenth as well as the work of Black artists. Collins explained its exhibits to Higgins and Swain. Credit: Josephine Lee

In front of the Middle Passage historical marker on the Galveston Historic Seaport building, Collins explained the role that Galveston played in the slave trade. “For a period of time, along the Middle Passage routes, 90 percent of the transatlantic slave trade went to South America and the Caribbean islands. Only 6 percent came into what is now considered the United States. Of that, 80 percent came through Galveston, and from there, enslaved people would walk into Texas or were brought over by wagons.” Credit: Josephine Lee

Inside the Nia Cultural Center, photos display the Roof Garden wedding venue across the street, a space that one of Galveston’s many cotton commission and slave auction houses once occupied. Credit: Josephine Lee

“This is an example of a sale that was made in 1837 of 36 enslaved people to the Bynum Plantation. David and Robert Mills were the largest enslavers in the state of Texas. The reason I am bringing it up is to show that children younger than 10 years old stayed with their mother. At ten, they could be sold individually,” Collins said. Credit: Josephine Lee

At the Reedy Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Collins, Swain, and Higgins stand with Diane Henderson-Moore, the church’s steward. Henderson said the church’s congregation was founded in 1848 by enslaved African Americans who first met in an open outdoor space until a building was constructed there in 1863. Following June 19, 1865, the church ran a school for the Black community, and in 1866 the church was organized as Texas’s first African Methodist Episcopal congregation. Credit: Josephine Lee

A statue of General Gordon Granger stands in front of Ashton Villa where his five orders were also read to citizens on June 19, 1865. The third of these orders freed enslaved Texans. Credit: Josephine Lee

With the Juneteenth Legacy Project, Collins spearheaded the creation of the “Absolute Equality” mural on the east side of the Nia Cultural Center. The mural was painted by artists Samson Adenugba, Cherry Meekins, Joshua Bennett, Reginald Adams, KaDavien Baylor, and Dantrel Boone. Visitors can use the Uncover Everything App to see videos about the depicted subjects. Credit: Josephine Lee

At the Galveston Historical Foundation’s African American Heritage Committee’s Juneteenth Exhibit, “And Still We Rise,” Collins points to sites along his Freedom Walk Tour. In addition to oral histories, the exhibit features interactive visuals about Juneteenth. Credit: Josephine Lee

Collins wears many hats around Galveston. He’s a father of four, an associate minister at his church, and a financial consultant. But he’s best known as a public historian, who regularly lectures on Black history and also sits on the board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

His own family’s history in Texas dates back seven generations to 1837, when his oldest documented ancestor Joseph Thompson was brought to Brazoria County as an enslaved child. Other family members hailed from San Felipe and Sealy. Like many other Black families who fled to the bigger cities of Houston and Galveston in the decades after 1865, Collins’ family sought better opportunities on the island in 1925. But every Juneteenth, they made their way back home to celebrate the holiday with extended family members. 

“It was important for people to make the connection from the cities to where their families had roots. Most enslaved people had worked in the southeast region of Texas, close to the coast. So people would go back home … and celebrate it with their families. It’s been a tradition since 1865,” Collins said.

As a child, Collins attended parades and festivals in Galveston and nearby in his smaller hometown of Hitchcock. Celebrations were about family and community, but it wasn’t until he was older that Collins started learning more about the holiday’s history. In 2006, he gathered what he found and hosted his own Juneteenth celebration at the Stringfellow estate in Hitchcock, a former plantation that Collins had purchased and repurposed as a family home and space to present Black history. Six-hundred people attended that celebration. 

That same year, Ronald Meyers, a Mississippi doctor who had since 1999 been championing a federal Juneteenth holiday, reached out to Collins for help. Through the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, Meyers worked with Opal Lee, who became the foremost representative of the national campaign, and Collins. Meyers died in 2018, before he saw his work realized. “He drove all across the country and sacrificed a lot of his personal resources, but his role in the movement has been forgotten,” Collins said. 

It’s why Collins makes sure to mention Meyers and others who have fought for Juneteenth recognition. As early as 1879, Robert Evans, a Black state legislator from Navasota tried to get Juneteenth recognized as a state holiday. But that was two years after the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction and, along with it, the promises to protect the rights of Black Americans. It wouldn’t be until about a hundred years later, following the civil rights movement,  that calls to fulfill the promise of “absolute equality” would be collectively renewed. Juneteenth finally became a Texas holiday in 1980.

Despite the work of Meyers, Lee, and Collins, among others, it would be the 2020 mass protests against racist police brutality that spread following the murder of George Floyd that would push the federal government to recognize Juneteenth. “That started a social movement, an uprising and awakening of consciousness. The National Juneteenth Observance Foundation had been trying to get recognition for 26 years, but no one was paying attention, until after what happened to George Floyd,” Collins said. After more than 150 years, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth bill in June 2021. 

Collins’ work didn’t end there. Later that year, he worked with the Juneteenth Legacy Project and artists to create a public art mural at the site of where Granger first read his orders. The goal was to expand the narrative of Juneteenth to include a continuous struggle for “the absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves,” as proclaimed by Granger’s order. From Harriet Tubman to the Black troops who enforced the order throughout Texas to those who fought for federal recognition of Juneteenth, Collins said Black Americans are “still traveling that road.” 

On the stoop of Reedy Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Collins told me that he’s now trying to bring the story of Juneteenth back to Galveston. It makes sense as the port of Galveston served as the beginning and end of slavery: the site where enslaved people once entered into the country to be sold in the city’s auction’s houses, where cotton was traded and shipped out, and where the last stand to hold on to this brutal system took place before the final group of African Americans were freed. It’s a history that some Galveston officials have been hesitant to reckon with, according to Collins. 

“Some don’t want to paint Galveston in a negative light centered around slavery, since it’s seen as a tropical vacation spot,” Collins said. “‘Slavery wasn’t that bad, we always got along, there were never any racial problems’—that’s another version of that history seen through the eyes of a privileged few.” 

But Collins believes Galveston still has a greater role to play in presenting Juneteenth’s legacy and the city’s history as it relates to the country’s. He’s been organizing supporters for a Galveston International Juneteenth Museum and has already engaged the Prairie View architectural school to come up with designs. Those designs were then shared and voted on by community members. Collins said that while they have the concept, they still don’t have a location. The selected design now hangs in the Nia Cultural Center, near the site where Granger first read the orders to free enslaved people in Texas. 

Quoting Frederick Douglas, Collins said that it’s an ongoing struggle to achieve “absolute equality,” just as it’s an ongoing struggle for Americans to reckon with their past. “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without plowing the ground,” Douglas said at a speech in Canandaigua, New York, in 1857. “They want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.” 

By LOLITA C. BALDOR and JON GAMBRELL (Associated Press)

ABOARD THE USS DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER IN THE RED SEA (AP) — The combat markings emblazoned on the F/A-18 fighter jet tell the story: 15 missiles and six drones, painted in black just below the cockpit windshield.

As the jet sits on the deck of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the Red Sea, its markings illuminate the enemy targets that it’s destroyed in recent months and underscore the intensity of the fight to protect commercial shipping from persistent missile and drone attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

But they also hint at the fatigue setting in, as the carrier, its strike group and about 7,000 sailors close in on their ninth month waging the most intense running sea battle since World War II. That raises difficult questions about what comes next as U.S. military and defense leaders wrangle over how they will replicate the carrier’s combat power if the ship returns home to Norfolk, Virginia.

Already, the carrier’s deployment has been extended twice, and sailors post dark memes around the ship about only getting one short break during their steadily growing tour. Some worry they could be ordered to stay out even longer as the campaign drags on to protect global trade in the vital Red Sea corridor.

At the Pentagon, leaders are wrestling with what has become a thorny but familiar debate. Do they bow to Navy pressure to bring the Eisenhower and the other three warships in its strike group home or heed U.S. Central Command’s plea to keep them there longer? And if they bring them home — what can replace them?

U.S. officials say that they’re weighing all options and that a decision is expected in the coming weeks.

U.S. commanders in the Middle East have long argued that they need an aircraft carrier in the volatile region. They say that it’s an effective deterrent to keep Iran in check and that the ship gives them critical and unique war-fighting capabilities against the Houthis, who say their attacks are aimed at bringing an end to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

The massive ship is a flexible, floating flight line that can launch fighter jets on a moment’s notice, without any of the limits that host nations in the Middle East can place on Air Force aircraft taking off from bases on their soil. And those carrier-based jets can get within striking distance of Houthi weapon systems quickly without crossing borders.

“What the carrier brings is an offensive platform that’s mobile, agile and doesn’t have any access, basing or overflight restrictions,” said retired Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who headed U.S. Central Command for three years, ending in 2022. “It’s sovereign U.S. territory. You can do as you want with those airplanes on that carrier. So that gives you enormous flexibility when you consider response options across the region.”

Rear Adm. Marc Miguez — who commands Carrier Strike Group Two, which includes the Eisenhower and supporting ships — agrees that the aircraft carrier is crucial to America’s military.

“Every time that there’s a crisis on the globe, what’s the first thing the president asks? ‘Where are the U.S. aircraft carriers?’” Miguez told The Associated Press during a visit to the Eisenhower and the USS Laboon, one of the guided-missile destroyers accompanying it.

On any given day, Navy F/A-18s roar off the Eisenhower and take out Houthi missiles or drones preparing to launch. The U.S. warships have fired volleys of Tomahawk missiles into Yemen to destroy warehouses of weapons, communications facilities and other targets.

Pentagon leaders worry that without the Eisenhower, they will need to tap more Air Force fighter jets based in surrounding countries, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

But many Arab nations place flight or other restrictions on the types of offensive strikes the U.S. can do from their land because of regional sensitivities. Others worry about triggering another war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen or inflaming tensions with Iran.

U.S. military leaders say the U.S. can adapt and get forces where they need to be. But that can require longer fighter jet flights from distant bases, requiring refueling capabilities and presenting other hurdles.

Extending the Eisenhower’s deployment again is an option — but for many, it’s the least desirable.

Navy leaders worry about the sailors, who actually have been able to see incoming Houthi-launched missiles seconds before they are destroyed by the ship’s defensive strikes. And officials in the Pentagon are talking about how to care for the sailors when they return home, including counseling and treatment for possible post-traumatic stress.

Miguez also notes the strain on the ships themselves.

“We are constantly reminding the Department of Defense that we’re going to need to take a respite and a break, to try and get back to maintenance,” he said. “These ships are floating around in seawater. They’re steel, and they require a lot of maintenance. And when you run them past red lines, when you run them past scheduled maintenance activities, you have to pay those off somewhere down the line.”

A third option would be sending other ships — perhaps another carrier — to take the Eisenhower’s place. But the massive ships are relatively rare. The U.S. operates 11, which is about 40% of the total number worldwide. Other countries have only one or two.

The U.S. could turn to France or the United Kingdom, which each have one, for at least a temporary stint in the Red Sea. U.S. officials have insisted that protecting the sea lanes is a multinational effort and having an ally take a turn could reinforce that message. It could give the U.S. enough breathing room to get another American carrier there, perhaps late this year.

Of the 11 U.S. carriers, four are deployed, three are in training and preparing to deploy, and four are in routine maintenance and repair, which usually lasts about a year or more.

The USS John C. Stennis, however, is undergoing its major, mid-life overhaul, which can last about four years and calls for the replacement and upgrading of the ship’s nuclear propulsion system and other critical radar, communications, electronics and combat components. A carrier’s lifespan is about 50 years.

One carrier is always based in Japan and does regional patrols and exercises, and another is generally deployed to the Asia-Pacific. That focus on Asia reflects the long-stated belief that China is America’s top strategic challenge, and 60% of U.S. naval forces are based in the Pacific. The rest are Atlantic-based.

A third carrier is off South America’s west coast, heading toward Japan, leaving the Eisenhower as the only one in the Middle East or Europe.

Lacking a carrier, another option would be to deploy the USS Wasp, a large amphibious assault ship now in Europe that carries F-35 fighter jets. Those jets do short takeoffs and vertical landings, so they can do strike missions off smaller ships.

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Baldor reported from Washington.

KYIV, Ukraine — As evening falls, the streets are mostly dark in Ukraine’s capital. Russia has been systematically destroying the country’s national power grid as Western allies have dawdled over providing promised air defense systems. The whir of generators has become the new night music for the restaurants, hotels, and homes that can afford to hold back the gloom.

The damage caused by the six-month congressional holdup of U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine is raised in every conversation I have had — the lives lost and morale lowered, all while allowing Russia to go on the offensive. In the wee hours of last Wednesday, five air raid warnings for Kyiv lit up my cell phone on the country’s Air Alert app. Dozens of alerts buzzed for other cities that have much less protection.

The good news: New Western supplies of missile interceptors have finally arrived. On Wednesday, they shot down the entire barrage of Russian missiles and killer drones over Kyiv, and nearly all of those unleashed on other parts of the country.

But what has cheered me up early in my trip — and bolstered my faith in Ukraine’s future — is that the civilian volunteers who rose up after Russia invaded are still actively involved, helping other Ukrainians escape the fighting or getting them medical care after terrible wounds.

They are not waiting for U.S. government aid to act.

I have been covering world conflicts for decades, and I have never witnessed such strong civic activism in any other country besides the United States. These grassroots movements define the difference between democratic Ukraine and authoritarian, top-down, follow-orders-or-be-killed Russia. They will be critical to any future recovery if the West helps Ukraine drive the Russians out.

A typical example: In Odesa, I visited a small metal factory where the workers were actors and stage designers in the city’s famous opera and theater house. Now, they are welding military vehicles and prototype drones.

Dimitro Bogachenko began the factory several years ago with a colleague to produce sets and metal stage curtains.

“I was an actor for 15 years in musical comedy, and then stage director at the opera,” he told me. “Now I can’t remember any of the sets I designed, only the specifications for the work that we do for the army.”

During the first week of the war, he and his friends began producing flak jackets with metal plates with money they raised on the Telegram app. They then armored 40 trucks and gave them to Ukrainian forces.

Their work caught the eye of National Guard Lt. Col. Sergei Sudets, who commands mobile units that patrol 157 miles of southern coastline to protect against drones. He shaped the volunteers into an innovative unit that repairs and repurposes old equipment to meet new needs.

“The Russian drones are flying higher now,” Sudets told me, referring to Shahed drones bought from Iran, as welders’ sparks flew on the factory floor. They are taking old Soviet machine guns from 1943, mounting them on truck beds, and modernizing them so they can strike up to three miles high, Sudets said.

As we spoke, a tall former ballet dancer in a work-stained jumpsuit passed by.

These innovative artists have put together a new model of a flying attack drone, a weapon that has become crucial to compensating for Ukraine’s lack of ammunition. “Hitting drones with a range of 40 kilometers would push (Russian) artillery out of range,” said Bogachenko. “We have the people to produce them, but we lack the financing.”

They have submitted their prototype to be considered for testing and government financing, but in the meantime, the workers are still pitching in their own money. Bogachenko said his wife would be horrified if she knew how much of his salary had gone into the projects.

There is still a desperate need in Ukraine’s defense system for a more organized way to scale up and fund the promising drone prototypes designed by Ukrainian civilians — a critical need if Russia is to be pushed back.

The help volunteers provide army units by raising funds from their own salaries, on the Telegram app, or from family, friends, businesses, or foundations — to deliver everything from drones to used cars to night vision goggles — may not match the impact of missiles, but it is essential for morale and survival.

Equally impressive are volunteer organizations focused on aiding civilians, like Helping to Leave, a project launched by cognitive neuroscientist-turned-social worker Dina Urich to help Ukrainians escape from occupied territory, which amounts to nearly 20% of the country.

“It breaks our hearts because these people have no basic rights and are treated like slaves,” she said. The sole routes to escape require obtaining a Russian passport from Russian occupation officials, then traveling through Russia and surviving terrifying checkpoints. Many would-be escapees are too old or too frightened to try.

Urich, a young woman who overcame personal health issues to take up this campaign, has to raise all the costs for extracting escapees and finding them shelter when they arrive in free Ukraine. She has 150 volunteers, often people who have been evacuated and want to give back.

“Of course, a lot of volunteers stop because they have to work, or they lose faith,” she said. Indeed, I am hearing that many contributors to volunteer efforts feel tapped out after two years of donations. But most are in it for the long haul.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Urich said. Ukrainians know they are involved in an existential struggle to retain their independence and freedom.

They are people like the volunteers I’ve met with Ukraine TrustChain, who are rebuilding roofs of Russian-destroyed village homes, and risking their lives to rescue villagers displaced by Russia’s recent rampage through villages near Kharkiv. And so many other people spend every spare moment raising funds to help war amputees or feed families displaced by fighting.

They give the lie to Russian propaganda — too often echoed by know-nothing MAGA media in the U.S. — that Ukraine is an authoritarian, or, absurdly, a Nazi, state.

These volunteers illustrate what kind of European democracy Ukraine could be if the United States and its allies finally decided to give Kyiv the weapons it needs now — to push Russia back before it’s too late.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. Her email address is trubin@phillynews.com.

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