Four current and retired St. Paul firefighters pinned badges Thursday on their sons who are newly-minted firefighters — and Frank Todd did the honors twice.

Both his sons joined him in the ranks of the St. Paul Fire Department as they graduated from the department’s academy.

Todd, a St. Paul firefighter for 27 years, said he was feeling as proud as his wedding day and the days his two children were born.

The graduation ceremony for 21 new St. Paul firefighters was in the Minnesota History Center’s auditorium and Blaze and Brex Todd set at least recent history: In Fire Chief Butch Inks’ 31 years in the St. Paul department, he doesn’t remember another time that siblings graduated from the academy at the same time. The closest he could recall were brothers who graduated 11 months apart.

All the new firefighters went through 14 weeks of intense training in the department’s fire academy.

“I know that we have two firefighters in our graduating class who are siblings, but let me tell you, we have 21 who are brothers and sisters,” Mayor Melvin Carter said of the close-knit academy class. “And you join as brothers and sisters in a large department of people who literally must have each other’s backs in order for anything to work.”

Dad told them: ‘Best job in the world’

Blaze Todd, 23, and Brex Todd, 21, both said they were inspired by their father to become firefighters.

Their names were influenced by Frank Todd’s work. When wife Shannon Todd was pregnant with their older son, they were at church and Frank Todd pointed out a reference in scripture to a “blaze of fire.”

“I went, ‘Yup, that’s it,’” she said Thursday of deciding on the name Blaze.

Blaze Todd said he’s become accustomed to people telling him, “You were bound to be a firefighter with a name like that.”

For their younger son’s name, Frank Todd was listing off equipment on a firetruck and got to “axe,” which led to them to think of the name Brex.

As a kid, Brex Todd remembers visiting his dad at his fire station, and hearing his stories. “He always told us it’s the best job in the world,” he said.

St. Paul Firefighter Frank Todd, second from right, and his wife Shannon, second from right, poses for a photo with their sons and newly minted St. Paul Firefighters Brex, second from from left, and Blaze following a ceremony at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul on Thursday, May 29, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

St. Paul was their goal

Both Blaze and Brex Todd did EMT and fire training at Chippewa Valley Technical College in Eau Claire, near where their family lives in rural Wisconsin. They got experience at an ambulance service and a volunteer fire department.

Related Articles

Rosemount: Public invited to tour new $58M Police and Public Works campus

Cops, service providers increasing presence on St. Paul’s University Ave., Green Line

Bayport couple found dead in home; natural causes determined

Group calls for Target to apologize, St. Paul PD to look at false reporting after 2 men accused of being armed

Wildfire evacuation orders lifted in northern Minnesota

They both wanted to become St. Paul firefighters and went through the testing process, though they and their parents never expected they’d be selected to join the department at the same time.

“I really just didn’t think in a million years that they would ever be in the same academy class,” said Shannon Todd. “We thought it would be amazing if they eventually did work for St Paul, but it’s hard to even get to the point of being in the class.”

Inks, speaking during the graduation ceremony, said he jokingly thought during the hiring process of the brothers: “Well, how can we only hire one? What would Christmas be like if we did that?”

“Thank you!” Shannon Todd shouted from the audience.

Pride and nerves

Shannon Todd said she knows she’ll worry about her sons, as she used to about Frank when he became a firefighter.

“Over the years, you just kind of get used to it,” she said of settling into Frank’s work. She hopes the worry will also ease up this time around, “although it’s different with your kids,” she added.

Frank Todd, 57, works at Station 19 in the Highland Park neighborhood.

“I’m going to stay a little longer now because I want to work with them,” he said. He and his sons will all work the same shift, though new St. Paul firefighters move around to various stations.

Blaze Todd said he felt proud and nervous on Thursday.

“I just hope that we can carry on the name that our dad has put out there,” he said.

Finding firefighters in new ways

Olivia Weinberger, center, takes the firefighter oath during the graduation ceremony for the 2025-A Fire Academy class at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul on Thursday, May 29, 2025. Weinberger was one of 21 new firefighters/EMT-paramedics who completed a 14-week training academy. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Seven of St. Paul’s new firefighters came from pathways programs aimed for people who might not otherwise consider a career as a firefighter or have the educational opportunities. The programs are the department’s EMS Academy, where they earn their emergency medical technician certification, and the department’s Basic Life Support ambulance unit.

New firefighter Manuel Fortoso, 21, said after he graduated from St. Paul’s Central High School, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, “but I wanted to do something that I felt like I had purpose in.”

Fortoso found the fire department’s EMS Academy, which he went through, and later worked for the Basic Life Support unit.

St. Paul Firefighter Academy class 2025A graduate Manuel Fortoso has his badge pinned onto his shirt by his father Felix Fortoso. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

His father also pinned his new badge on him Thursday.

Four of Thursday’s graduates are women, and they took part in Twin Cities Female Firefighter Fitness — it’s run by women to connect with and prepare women who are looking into becoming firefighters.

Since Inks took over as fire chief in 2018, Thursday’s class was the 11th academy to graduate and it marked 208 firefighters hired, which is nearly half of the department’s firefighters.

The new firefighters bring the department’s ranks to 19 above authorized strength, which allows them to be fully staffed as people retire or otherwise leave the department, Inks said.

By JAKE OFFENHARTZ and PHILIP MARCELO

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City police are investigating two detectives who worked security at an upscale Manhattan townhouse where a man says he was kidnapped and tortured for weeks by two crypto investors who wanted to steal his Bitcoin, a city official said Thursday.

Related Articles

How to watch tonight’s Scripps National Spelling Bee

Foundations donate $1.5M to help restore historic Black church in Memphis gutted by arson

What to know about onetime Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover, whose federal sentence Trump commuted

National Spelling Bee runners-up rarely go on to win. But Faizan Zaki hopes to defy the odds

Smokey Robinson sues former housekeepers for defamation over rape allegations

One of the detectives serves on Mayor Eric Adams’ security detail and is believed to have picked up the victim from a local airport and brought him to the townhouse, the official said. It’s not immediately clear if the other detective, who is a narcotics officer, has any connection to the incident.

The detectives have been placed on modified leave pending the outcome of the inquiry, according to the official, who was briefed on the case and spoke anonymously to The Associated Press because they are not authorized to discuss the internal investigation.

It is not uncommon for members of the NYPD to do private security work outside of their city jobs but they need to receive prior approval. At this point, the official said, the department is looking into whether the officers received that approval.

Adams’ office confirmed one of the detectives provides security detail for the Democrat, but said the mayor has no knowledge of what the officer does on his personal time.

“Every city employee is expected to follow the law, including our officers, both on and off duty,” the mayor’s office said in an emailed statement. “We are disturbed by these allegations.”

In response to an emailed inquiry, an NYPD spokesperson confirmed two members were placed on modified duty Wednesday.

A spokesperson for the labor union representing NYPD detectives didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Thursday.

Wayne Gosnell, center, attorney for John Woeltz, cryptocurrency investor charged for kidnapping and false imprisonment, exits a courtroom, Wednesday, May 28, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Crypto investors John Woeltz and William Duplessie have been charged in the case. Their lawyers have declined to comment.

Authorities allege that on May 6, the two men lured the victim, who they knew personally, to a posh townhouse in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood by threatening to kill his family.

The man, a 28-year-old Italian national who has not been named by officials, said he was then held captive for 17 days, as the two investors tormented him with electrical wires, forced him to smoke from a crack pipe and at one point dangled him from a staircase five stories high.

He eventually agreed to hand over his computer password Friday morning, then managed to flee the home as his captors went to retrieve the device.

The investigation into the officers began, incidentally, on the same day Adams headlined a crypto convention in Las Vegas, where he described New York as the Bitcoin capital of the country.

By TAMMY WEBBER

The landslide that buried most of a Swiss village this week is focusing renewed attention on the role of global warming in glacier collapses around the world and the increasing dangers.

Related Articles

Wrongful death lawsuit says Big Oil contributed to heat wave and woman’s death

The world’s longest living pygmy hippo in captivity is a California resident

Looking to keep wildlife out of the ‘emergency room,’ states expand managers’ role

Oil and gas have boomed in New Mexico. Its schools are contending with pollution’s effects

Trump’s push to save coal faces a new hurdle: his own trade war

How glaciers collapse — from the Alps and Andes to the Himalayas and Antarctica — can differ, scientists say. But in almost every instance, climate change is playing a role.

In Switzerland, the mountainside gave way Wednesday near the village of Blatten, in the southern Lötschental valley, because the rock face above the Birch Glacier had become unstable when mountain permafrost melted, causing debris to fall and cover the glacier in recent years, said Martin Truffer, a physics professor at the University of Alaska who studies how glaciers move.

While the debris insulated the glacier and slowed melting, its weight caused the ice to begin moving — which accelerated dramatically a few weeks ago. Authorities ordered the evacuation of about 300 people, as well as all livestock, from the village in recent days, “when it became clear that there’s a whole mountainside that’s about to collapse,” said Truffer, who grew up in Switzerland.

Glacial lakes pose threat

Lakes that form at the base of glaciers as they melt and retreat also sometimes burst, often with catastrophic results. Water can even lift an entire glacier, allowing it to drain, said Truffer, adding that Alaska’s capital of Juneau has flooded in recent years because a lake forms every year on a rapidly retreating glacier and eventually bursts.

This combo shows the village of Blatten photographed on Friday, May 23, 2025 at the top and the village of Blatten one day after a massive avalanche, triggered by the collapse of the Birch Glacier, at the bottom, showing the destruction it caused as it swept down to the valley floor and demolished the village of Blatten, Switzerland, Thursday, May 29, 2025. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)

In 2022, an apartment building-sized chunk of the Marmolada glacier in Italy’s Dolomite mountains detached during a summer heat wave, sending an avalanche of debris down the popular summer hiking destination, killing 11.

A glacier in Tibet’s Aru mountain range suddenly collapsed in 2016, killing nine people and their livestock, followed a few months later by the collapse of another glacier.

There also have been collapses in Peru, including one in 2006 that caused a mini tsunami; most recently, a glacial lagoon overflowed in April, triggering a landslide that killed two.

“It’s amazing sometimes how rapidly they can collapse,” said Lonnie Thompson, a glacier expert at the Ohio State University. “The instability of these glaciers is a real and growing problem, and there are thousands and thousands of people that are at risk.”

Scientists say melting glaciers will raise sea levels for decades, but the loss of inland glaciers also acutely affects those living nearby who rely on them for water for drinking water and agriculture.

No way to stop the melting

Scientists say greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal have already locked in enough global warming to doom many of the world’s glaciers — which already have retreated significantly.

For example, glaciers in the Alps have lost 50% of their area since 1950, and the rate at which ice is being lost has been accelerating, with “projections … that all the glaciers in the Alps could be gone in this century,” Thompson said.

Switzerland, which has the most glaciers of any country in Europe, saw 4% of its total glacier volume disappear in 2023, the second-biggest decline in a single year after a 6% drop in 2022.

A massive debris avalanche, with the village of Kippel in the foreground, is seen on Thursday, May 29, 2025, one day after the collapse of the Birch Glacier causing the demolishing of the village of Blatten in Switzerland. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)

A 2023 study found that Peru has lost more than half of its glacier surface in the last six decades, and 175 glaciers disappeared due to climate change between 2016 and 2020, mostly due to the increase in the average global temperature.

A study published Thursday in Science said that even if global temperatures stabilized at their current level, 40% of the world’s glaciers still would be lost. But if warming were limited to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit — the long-term warming limit since the late 1800s called for by the 2015 Paris climate agreement — twice as much glacier ice could be preserved than would be otherwise.

Even so, many areas will become ice-free no matter what, Truffer, the University of Alaska expert.

“There’s places in Alaska where we’ve shown that it doesn’t take any more global warming,” for them to disappear, Truffer said. “The reason some … (still) exist is simply because it takes a certain amount of time for them to melt. But the climate is already such that they’re screwed.”

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 FABIANO MAISONNAVE

CAXIUANA NATIONAL FOREST, Brazil (AP) — A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest.

Related Articles

Wrongful death lawsuit says Big Oil contributed to heat wave and woman’s death

The world’s longest living pygmy hippo in captivity is a California resident

Looking to keep wildlife out of the ‘emergency room,’ states expand managers’ role

Oil and gas have boomed in New Mexico. Its schools are contending with pollution’s effects

Trump’s push to save coal faces a new hurdle: his own trade war

But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese— set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is the longest-running project of its kind in the world, and has become a source for dozens of academic articles in fields ranging from meteorology to ecology and physiology.

Understanding how drought can affect the Amazon, an area twice the size of India that crosses into several South American nations, has implications far beyond the region. The rainforest stores a massive amount of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is the main driver of climate change. According to one study, the Amazon stores the equivalent of two years of global carbon emissions, which mainly come from the burning of coal, oil and gasoline. When trees are cut, or wither and die from drought, they release into the atmosphere the carbon they were storing, which accelerates global warming.

Creating drought conditions and observing the results

To mimic stress from drought, the project, located in the Caxiuana National Forest, assembled about 6,000 transparent plastic rectangular panels across 2.5 acres, diverting around 50% of the rainfall from the forest floor. They were set 3.3 ft above ground  on the sides to 13.1 ft above ground in the center. The water was funneled into gutters and channeled through trenches dug around the plot’s perimeter.

Next to it, an identical plot was left untouched to serve as a control. In both areas, instruments were attached to trees, placed on the ground and buried to measure soil moisture, air temperature, tree growth, sap flow and root development, among other data. Two metal towers sit above each plot.

In each tower, NASA radars measure how much water is in the plants, which helps researchers understand overall forest stress. The data is sent to the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where it is processed.

“The forest initially appeared to be resistant to the drought,” said Lucy Rowland, an ecology professor at the University of Exeter.

That began to change about 8 years in, however. “We saw a really big decline in biomass, big losses and mortality of the largest trees,” said Rowland.

This resulted in the loss of approximately 40% of the total weight of the vegetation and the carbon stored within it from the plot. The main findings were detailed in a study published in May in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. It shows that during the years of vegetation loss, the rainforest shifted from a carbon sink, that is, a storer of carbon dioxide, to a carbon emitter, before eventually stabilizing.

There was one piece of good news: the decades-long drought didn’t turn the rainforest into a savanna, or large grassy plain, as earlier model-based studies had predicted.

Next steps include measuring forest recovery

In November, most of the 6,000 transparent plastic covers were removed, and now scientists are observing how the forest changes. There is currently no end date for the project.

“The forest has already adapted. Now we want to understand what happens next,” said meteorologist João de Athaydes, vice coordinator of Esecaflor, a professor at the Federal University of Para and coauthor of the Nature study. “The idea is to see whether the forest can regenerate and return to the baseline from when we started the project.”

During a visit in April, Athaydes guided Associated Press journalists through the site, which had many researchers. The area was so remote that most researchers had endured a full-day boat trip from the city of Belem, which will host the next annual U.N. climate talks later this year. During the days in the field, the scientists stayed at the Ferreira Penna Scientific Base of the Emilio Goeldi Museum, a few hundred yards from the plots.

Four teams were at work. One collected soil samples to measure root growth in the top layer. Another gathered weather data and tracking soil temperature and moisture. A third was measured vegetation moisture and sap flow. The fourth focused on plant physiology.

A white tree that is dead stands within a section of the Caxiuana National Forest that is used as a control plot for an experiment on drought run by the Esecaflor project in Para state, Brazil, Saturday, March 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz)

“We know very little about how drought influences soil processes,” said ecologist Rachel Selman, researcher at the University of Edinburgh and one of the co-authors of the Nature study, during a break.

Esecaflor’s drought simulation draws some parallels with the past two years, when much of the Amazon rainforest, under the influence of El Nino and the impact of climate change, endured its most severe dry spells on record. The devastating consequences ranged from the death of dozens of river dolphins due to warming and receding waters to vast wildfires in old-growth areas.

Rowland explained that the recent El Nino brought short-term, intense impacts to the Amazon, not just through reduced rainfall but also with spikes in temperature and vapor pressure deficit, a measure of how dry the air is. In contrast, the Esecaflor experiment focused only on manipulating soil moisture to study the effects of long-term shifts in rainfall.

“But in both cases, we’re seeing a loss of the forest’s ability to absorb carbon,” she said. “Instead, carbon is being released back into the atmosphere, along with the loss of forest cover.”

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.