By EDDIE PELLS (AP National Writer)

Olympic gymnastics all-around champion Suni Lee revealed that at the height of dealing with a kidney disease last year, she retained 45 pounds in water weight that made her question whether a return to top form was even possible.

“My motivation started to fall,” Lee said this week at the Team USA media summit.

“I could not bend my legs the slightest, I couldn’t squeeze my fingers, my face was swollen,” Lee said. “I looked like a completely different person. It was very, very miserable.”

She said she lived with constant pain, nausea and lightheadedness.

“We have it under control now,” she said. “We know what to do and the right medication to take.”

The then-18-year-old Lee was thrust into the spotlight at the Tokyo Games when teammate and reigning Olympic champion Simone Biles unexpectedly dropped out in the middle of the team final, citing her mental health. Lee hadn’t been in the original lineup for the U.S. team’s floor exercise but scored a team-best 13.666 to help the Americans claim a silver medal.

A few days later, Lee became the fifth straight American woman to win the Olympic all-around title, using a dazzling set on uneven bars — her signature event — to edge Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade in a tight final that turned Lee into a star.

On to Auburn University she went, but she left the Tigers upon falling ill after her sophomore season last year. She was never a sure thing to come back for Paris, but now she’s expected to make the U.S. team, along with Biles, who is coming back as well.

“Initially I decided I wanted to come back because I really was only getting better and I love gymnastics,” Lee said. “I was not ready to be done and I wanted to prove to myself that I could be better than I was at the last Olympics.”

Lee is working on a new bars move that, if she pulls it off in an international competition, could be named after her in the sport’s Code of Points.

She said she had a strong support system back home in Minneapolis, which helped her get back on the road to the Olympics.

“I was learning my new skill and I was still able to catch it even at less than 100%,” she said. “It made me realize how much better I was than I thought.”

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By TERRY TANG and LINLEY SANDERS (Associated Press)

Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the United States are more likely than the overall adult population to believe in human-caused climate change, according to a new poll. It also suggests that partisanship may not have as much of an impact on this group’s environmental views, compared to Americans overall.

A recent poll from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 84% of AAPI adults agree climate change exists. In comparison, 74% of U.S. adults hold the same sentiment. And three-quarters of AAPI adults who accept climate change is real attribute it entirely or mostly to human activity. Among the general U.S. adult population surveyed in an AP-NORC poll in September, only 61% say humans are causing it.

The poll is part of an ongoing project exploring the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, whose views can usually not be highlighted in other surveys because of small sample sizes and lack of linguistic representation.

Scientists overwhelmingly agree that heat-trapping gases released from the combustion of fossil fuels are pushing up global temperatures, upending weather patterns and endangering animal species. Many scientific organizations have made public statements on the issue.

In terms of partisanship, the percentage of AAPI Democrats, 84%, who acknowledge climate change falls exactly in line with the share of Democrats overall in the September poll. The share of AAPI Republicans who believe there is a climate crisis is lower, but they somewhat outnumber Republicans in general, 68% versus 49%.

Adrian Wong, 22, of Whippany, New Jersey, is registered as unaffiliated but leans Republican. A biology major in college, the Chinese American says the science behind climate change is indisputable.

“I’ve probably done more or looked more into it than the average person has,” Wong said. “It’s to me clear that it’s changing due to human activity, not natural shifts.”

There has been growing conflict within the Republican Party between those who insist climate change is a progressive-generated hoax and those — mostly younger generations — who say the issue cannot be ignored. GOP lawmakers, in general, refuse to consider measures like mandated lowering of carbon emissions. However, some consider that an untenable position long-term. American Conservation Coalition, the largest conservative environmental group in the nation, has said Republicans running for office cannot risk alienating people who care about climate change.

Wong is not surprised that AAPI conservatives like himself recognize that the climate is changing. He thinks they are more highly educated and more likely to be exposed to science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if they were more likely to have studied more and actually more likely to have studied in science and STEM-related fields rather than, say like, finance or something,” Wong said.

While climate change is an afterthought to her parents, Analisa Harangozo, 35, of Alameda, California, worries a great deal about it. She has noticed a rise in “crazy heatwaves and droughts and just like crazy weather in general” in the San Francisco Bay Area. She and her husband are teaching their sons — ages 7 and 4 — to take small steps to reduce their carbon footprint like composting, growing food and eating less meat. They’re also trying to minimize their accumulation of household items.

“I always second-guess myself, ‘Do I really need this?’” Harangozo said. “Stuff will eventually end up in the landfill. So, we’re really mindful with the products we buy, and whether or not they can be recycled or they’re made from materials that are natural, like wood or what-not.”

A registered independent with Democratic leanings, Harangozo is open to proposals from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state lawmakers to slash greenhouse gas emissions and invest in renewable energy.

“I’m not knowledgeable enough to know what an attainable goal is,” she said. “But, whatever it takes to actually make a difference, I’m all for it. I fully support.”

Karthick Ramakrishnan, a public policy professor at the University of California, Riverside, and founder of AAPI Data, said the richness and detail of the data shows environmental groups need to consider reaching out to AAPI populations. They make up a relatively small share of the U.S. population — around 7%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2021 census data — but their numbers are growing quickly.

“Asian American and Pacific Islander voters are environmental voters,” Ramakrishnan said. “Many of us still have an image in our minds of a particular kind of person maybe of a particular race, gender or age group. What we see here is across the board Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders care about the environment.”

Asian American and Pacific Islanders may also have more of a stake in climate change because of connections to relatives abroad. China, considered one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases alongside the U.S., vowed last year to reduce emissions. More Chinese companies are considering selling wind and solar power equipment in other countries. Around this time last year, Japan was preparing for another sweltering summer and risks of floods and landslides. That country has also pledged to curb emissions.

Heavy rains swept across Pakistan last month, causing landslides and leaving over 36 people dead and dozens of others injured. In 2022, unprecedented rainfall and flooding in that country killed more than 1,700. In India, farmers are grappling with frequent cyclones and extreme heat. In southern India, the city of Bengaluru is seeing water levels running desperately low after an unusually hot February and March.

“There’s a fairly high level concern of what climate change means to low-income countries,” Ramakrishnan said. “That sensitivity is either because people still have friends or family back in their home country or at least have some concern about what climate change does to other countries.”

The poll of 1,005 U.S. adults who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders was conducted from March 4-11, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel, designed to be representative of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

By EDITH M. LEDERER (Associated Press)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations appealed for $2.8 billion on Tuesday to provide desperately needed aid to 3 million Palestinians, stressing that tackling looming famine in war-torn Gaza requires not only food but sanitation, water and health facilities.

Andrea De Domenico, the head of the U.N. humanitarian office for Gaza and the West Bank, told reporters that “massive operations” are required to restore those services and meet minimum standards — and this can’t be done during military operations.

He pointed to the destruction of hospitals, water and sanitation facilities, homes, roads and schools, adding that “there is not a single university that is standing in Gaza.”

De Domenico said Israel’s recently-ended second major military operation at Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, was so destructive the facility has been forced to shut down. As an example, he questioned what the military objective was in shooting an MRI scanner that examines parts of the body and can detect cancers.

He said his team has been dealing with “a scene of terror” at the hospital, with U.N. and Palestinian colleagues helping people try to recognize family members from shoes or clothes on “the remnants of corpses.”

Israel promised to open more border crossings into Gaza and increase the flow of aid into Gaza after its drone strikes killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen who were delivering food into the territory on April 1.

The killings were condemned by Israel’s closest allies and heightened criticism of Israel’s conduct in the 6-month-old war with Hamas, sparked by the extremist group’s surprise attack in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and led some 250 others to be taken hostage. The Israeli offensive in Gaza aimed at destroying Hamas has caused widespread devastation and killed over 33,800 people, according to local health officials.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

De Domenico said there are signs of Israel’s “good intention” to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza, citing the opening of a crossing to the north, which faces the most serious threat of famine, and the opening of bakeries there.

But the U.N. keeps pushing Israel to do more, he said.

De Domenico pointed to Israeli denials and delays on U.N. requests for aid convoys to enter Gaza.

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He said 41% of U.N. requests that required going through Israeli checkpoints were denied during the week from April 6-12, and last week a convoy from the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the U.N. World Food Program was caught in crossfire in an area that was supposed to be safe.

De Domenico said convoys often spend hours at checkpoints and are only cleared in the afternoon, too late to make deliveries and return safely in daylight hours. He said the Israelis know this is how the U.N. operates, and delays allow them to say “we’re not blindly denying you” while controlling what happens.

“We continue to engage with them and our objective is really to solve the issue and deliver aid,” he said.

According to the international community’s authority on determining the severity of hunger crises, famine is imminent in northern Gaza where 70% of people are experiencing catastrophic hunger. And its recent report warned that escalating the war could push half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people to the brink of starvation.

De Domenico said the U.N. appeal was scaled back from $4 billion because of difficulties in getting aid into Gaza — and most importantly getting it to the people who need it most.

He said 90% of the $2.8 billion being sought for the rest of the year is for Gaza and 10% is for the West Bank, which has seen an upsurge in violence and settler attacks.