By ALEXA ST. JOHN (Associated Press)

Coral reefs around the world are experiencing global bleaching for the fourth time, top reef scientists declared Monday, a result of warming ocean waters amid human-caused climate change.

Coral reef bleaching across at least 53 countries, territories or local economies has been confirmed from February 2023 to now, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and International Coral Reef Initiative said. It happens when stressed coral expel the algae that are their food source and give them their color. If the bleaching is severe and long-lasting, the coral can die.

Coral reefs are important ecosystems that sustain underwater life, protect biodiversity and slow erosion. They also support local economies through tourism.

Bleaching has been happening in various regions for some time. In the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, bleaching affected 90% of the coral assessed in 2022. The Florida Coral Reef, the third-largest, experienced significant bleaching last year.

But in order for bleaching to be declared on a global scale, significant bleaching had to be documented within each of the major ocean basins, including the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Monday’s news marks the second worldwide bleaching event in the last 10 years. The last one ended in May 2017. Brought on by a powerful El Nino climate pattern that heated the world’s oceans, it lasted three years and was determined to be worse than the prior two bleaching events in 2010 and 1998.

This year’s bleaching follows the declaration that 2023 was the hottest year on record.

“As the world’s oceans continue to warm, coral bleaching is becoming more frequent and severe,” Derek Manzello, NOAA Coral Reef Watch coordinator, said in a statement.

Selina Stead, a marine biologist and chief executive of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, called climate change “the biggest threat to coral reefs worldwide.” She said scientists are working to learn more about how coral responds to heat and to identify naturally heat-tolerant corals, but said it is “critical the world works to reduce carbon emissions.”

One reef that fared better than others last year was the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, which was afforded some protection by its location in deeper water in the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles off the Texas coast. Sanctuary officials didn’t immediately respond to messages Monday seeking the latest on the health of the sanctuary’s corals.

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Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

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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 MICHAEL R. SISAK and MICHAEL BALSAMO (Associated Press)

The federal Bureau of Prisons said Monday it is planning to close a women’s prison in California known as the “rape club” despite attempts to reform the troubled facility after an Associated Press investigation exposed rampant staff-on-inmate sexual abuse.

Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters said in a statement to the AP that the agency had “taken unprecedented steps and provided a tremendous amount of resources to address culture, recruitment and retention, aging infrastructure – and most critical – employee misconduct.”

“Despite these steps and resources, we have determined that FCI Dublin is not meeting expected standards and that the best course of action is to close the facility,” Peters said. “This decision is being made after ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of those unprecedented steps and additional resources.”

FCI Dublin, about 21 miles (34 kilometers) east of Oakland, is one of six women-only federal prisons, and the only one west of the Rocky Mountains. It currently has 605 inmates — 504 inmates in its main prison and another 101 at an adjacent minimum-security camp. That’s down from a total of 760 prisoners in February 2022. The women currently housed at the prison will be transferred to other facilities and no employees will lose their jobs, Peters said.

Advocates have called for inmates to be freed from FCI Dublin, which they say is not only plagued by sexual abuse, but also has hazardous mold, asbestos and inadequate health care.

Last month, the FBI again searched the prison and the Bureau of Prisons again shook up its leadership after a warden sent to help rehabilitate the facility was accused of retaliating against a whistleblower inmate. Days later, a federal judge overseeing lawsuits against the prison, said she would appoint a special master to oversee the facility’s operations.

An AP investigation in 2021 found a culture of abuse and cover-ups that had persisted for years at the prison. That reporting led to increased scrutiny from Congress and pledges from the Bureau of Prisons that it would fix problems and change the culture at the prison.

Since 2021, at least eight FCI Dublin employees have been charged with sexually abusing inmates. Five have pleaded guilty. Two were convicted at trial, including the former warden, Ray Garcia. Another case is pending.

Last August, eight FCI Dublin inmates sued the Bureau of Prisons, alleging the agency had failed to root out sexual abuse. Amaris Montes, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said inmates continued to face retaliation for reporting abuse, including being put in solitary confinement and having belongings confiscated.

All sexual activity between a prison worker and an inmate is illegal. Correctional employees have substantial power over inmates, controlling every aspect of their lives from mealtime to lights out, and there is no scenario in which an inmate can give consent.

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By JOSH BOAK and JILL COLVIN (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tax Day reveals a major split in how Joe Biden and Donald Trump would govern: The presidential candidates have conflicting ideas about how much to reveal about their own finances and the best ways to boost the economy through tax policy.

Biden, the sitting Democratic president, plans to release his income tax returns on Monday, the IRS filing deadline. And on Tuesday, he is scheduled to deliver a speech in Scranton, Pennsylvania, about why the wealthy should pay more in taxes to reduce the federal deficit and help fund programs for the poor and middle class.

Biden is proud to say that he was largely without money for much of his decades-long career in public service, unlike Trump, who inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from his father and used his billionaire status to launch a TV show and later a presidential campaign.

“For 36 years, I was listed as the poorest man in Congress,” Biden told donors in California in February. “Not a joke.”

In 2015, Trump declared as part of his candidacy, “I’m really rich.”

The Republican former president has argued that voters have no need to see his tax data and that past financial disclosures are more than sufficient. He maintains that keeping taxes low for the wealthy will supercharge investment and lead to more jobs, while tax hikes would crush an economy still recovering from inflation that hit a four-decade peak in 2022.

“Biden wants to give the IRS even more cash by proposing the largest tax hike on the American people in history when they are already being robbed by his record-high inflation crisis,” said Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the Trump campaign.

The split goes beyond an ideological difference to a very real challenge for whoever triumphs in the November election. At the end of 2025, many of the tax cuts that Trump signed into law in 2017 will expire — setting up an avalanche of choices about how much people across the income spectrum should pay as the national debt is expected to climb to unprecedented levels.

Including interest costs, extending all the tax breaks could add another $3.8 trillion to the national debt through 2033, according to an analysis last year by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Biden would like to keep the majority of the tax breaks, based on his pledge that no one earning less than $400,000 will have to pay more. But he released a budget proposal this year with tax increases on the wealthy and corporations that would raise $4.9 trillion in revenues and trim forecasted deficits by $3.2 trillion over 10 years.

Still, he’s telling voters that he’s all for letting the Trump-era tax cuts lapse.

“Does anyone here think the tax code is fair? Raise your hand,” Biden said Tuesday at a speech in Washington’s Union Station to a crowd predisposed to dislike Trump’s broad tax cuts that helped many in the middle class but disproportionately favored wealthier households.

“It added more to the national debt than any presidential term in history,” Biden continued. “And it’s due to expire next year. And guess what? I hope to be president because it expires — it’s going to stay expired.”

Trump has called for higher tariffs on foreign-made goods, which are taxes that could hit consumers in the form of higher prices. But his campaign is committed to tax cuts while promising that a Trump presidency would reduce a national debt that has risen for decades, including during his Oval Office tenure.

“When President Trump is back in the White House, he will advocate for more tax cuts for all Americans and reinvigorate America’s energy industry to bring down inflation, lower the cost of living, and pay down our debt,” Leavitt said.

Most economists say Trump’s tax cuts could not generate enough growth to pay down the national debt. An analysis released Friday by Oxford Economics found that a “full-blown Trump” policy with tax cuts, higher tariffs and blocking immigration would slow growth and increase inflation.

Among Biden’s proposals is a “billionaire minimum income tax” that would apply a minimum rate of 25% on households with a net worth of at least $100 million.

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The tax would directly target billionaires such as Trump, who refused to release his personal taxes as presidents have traditionally done. But six years of his tax returns were released in 2022 by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.

In 2018, Trump earned more than $24 million and paid about 4% of that in federal income taxes. The congressional panel also found that the IRS delayed legally mandated audits of Trump during his presidency, with the panel concluding the audit process was ” dormant, at best.”

Biden has publicly released more than two decades of his tax returns. In 2022, he and his wife, Jill, made $579,514 and paid nearly 24% of that in federal income taxes, more than double the rate paid by Trump.

Trump has maintained that his tax records are complicated because of his use of various tax credits and past business losses, which in some cases have allowed him to avoid taxes. He also previously declined to release his tax returns under the claim that the IRS was auditing him for pre-presidential filings.

His finances recently received a boost from the stock market debut of Trump Media, which controls Trump’s preferred social media outlet, Truth Social. Share prices initially surged, adding billions of dollars to Trump’s net worth, but investors have since soured on the company and shares by Friday were down more than 50% from their peak.

The former president is also on the hook for $542 million due to legal judgments in a civil fraud case and penalties owed to the writer E. Jean Carroll because of statements made by Trump that damaged her reputation after she accused him of sexual assault.

In the civil fraud case, New York Judge Arthur Engoron looked at the financial records of the Trump Organization and concluded after looking at the inflated assets that “the frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience.”

Colvin reported from Palm Beach, Florida.

Out in West Texas, a pair of aspiring novelists and enterprising small-town newspaper owners, Barbara Brannon and Kay Ellington, were dismayed by the number of publications that were dropping book sections, cutting critics, and otherwise decimating literary coverage, especially in the Lone Star State. By the 2010s, “93 percent of the state’s newspapers offer no regular books coverage of any kind,” they told the Writers’ League of Texas.

Both newswomen worried that Texas authors in particular just weren’t getting enough attention—though plenty deserved it.

Out of that gaping hole emerged, fittingly on Groundhog’s Day 2015, a new literary venture: Lone Star Literary Life, an online newsletter aimed at Texas readers, writers, and librarians.

“Texas is second only in population to California, Florida is third and New York is fourth. We should be the 800-pound gorilla of literature,” Ellington said of their effort in a 2017 panel discussion.

Initially, it was only a side project for Brannon and Ellington, a dynamic duo who have now published several novels (a series all about The Paragraph Ranch) while still stubbornly championing small-town papers too. (Their company, Paragraph Ranch LLC, now owns three around Lubbock: the Texas Spur, in Spur; the Caprock Courier in Silverton; and the Floyd County Hesperian-Beacon.)

Over the next nine years, Lone Star Literary Life grew, creating a network of 6,000 loyal subscribers, including Texas librarians, indie booksellers, publicists, and authors. 

In 2018, school librarian Kristine Hall took over and Lone Star Lit coasted through the pandemic when many Texans were home reading—and writing. But the upstart venture nearly died in April 2024, a victim perhaps of its own business model of providing substantive but low-cost (or free) services to readers and authors across Texas. It had become popular but not profitable enough to sustain a team of employees large enough to support it without burning out. 

Here’s the saga of how independent women business owners and book lovers in Texas founded that small company, expanded it, and now aim to save it. 

From its beginnings, Lone Star Lit was ambitious. The Texas-centric newsletter offered announcements on book events, a statewide bookstore directory, and coverage of Texas authors’ latest work, whether from big publishers, boutique operations like Dallas’ literary powerhouse Deep Ellum, academic presses, and even self-published work. 

Early on, Hall, who already ran a blog she called Hall Ways, joined the operation. Hall formed a network of bloggers who agreed to help cover the book launches of Texas authors in what was dubbed Book Blog Tours, for which authors paid small but affordable fees meant to support the company’s operations.

She and other contributors at Lone Star Lit also helped boost book tourism by expanding their statewide directory to 300 bookstores and publishing an annual list of the Top Texas Bookish Destinations. That list has included predictable big-city entries like Austin and Houston, as well as Abilene, home to the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature, and the Lower Rio Grande Valley, which hosts both the McAllen Book Festival and the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival. 

When Hall first joined Lone Star Lit, she still worked as a long-term substitute school librarian for Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, which hadn’t yet become the center of Texas’ war on books. She immediately embraced her role as a book promoter.

By December 2018,  Ellington and Brannon, both “newspaper people” at heart, decided to sell their newsletter and Hall took over as the owner, manager, publisher, and frequent contributor.

“When our team took over the Texas Spur in 2018, it was with full expectation we could manage both projects, but community newspapering turned out to be much more demanding than [we] anticipated—in a good way,” Brannon told the Observer. “We were fortunate—as is the community of Texas book lovers—that Kristine was eager to step up. We’ve continued to cheer her on since then!”

For the next six years, Hall continued to grow Lone Star Lit, though as a part-time librarian and mother of five (and later grandmother of two) she sometimes struggled to find a work-life balance. 

As efforts to ban books escalated in school districts near Hall’s home and beyond, the controversies seemed only to galvanize Lone Star Lit readers, who wanted to know what they could do. “With the banning of the books, I think people are looking for a way to support the Texas literary community. People want to be able to do something, but they don’t always know what to do,” Hall said.

Over the nine years of Lone Star Lit’s life, more independent booksellers and literary festivals popped up in unexpected places. The massive Texas Book Festival and the San Antonio Book Festival remained the biggest—drawing national and Texas talent—while the Hill Country town of Boerne built a beautiful new library, and librarians there turned their lovely town square into a festival venue. The town of Winnsboro in East Texas created a book festival too, and a brand new one just popped up in the Austin suburbs called “Bees and Books.”

Hall considered herself a book booster, an amplifier. “I hear about stuff and I share it. I hear about bookish job opportunities and I share them,” she said in an interview this month. “I subscribe to a ton of newsletters.”

But at times, Hall told the Observer, there seemed to be an overwhelming amount of interest in Lone Star Lit. Sometimes it was too much. “I am Texan and I always had a passion for books,” she said. “I’m still very passionate about it. I’m just tired.”

By early 2024, Hall announced that she was ready to retire. Suddenly, the lights of Lone Star Lit seemed ready to go out. 

But readers responded (as they often do) to Hall’s posts with detailed comments and long emails. To her surprise, some of those emails contained offers to buy the business that she figured no one else would be crazy enough to want to run.

By late March, she’d whittled down the list to four finalists, finally selecting Amy Kelly, a former middle school teacher and Lone Star Lit fan who had for years been writing about YA books on her own blog. “I feel like all of my experience so far has led to this because I am so passionate about the freedom to read and the fact that stories save lives,” Kelly told the Observer.

By May 1, Lone Star Lit will be under new ownership. At least for now, all of the standard features—the book calendar, the list of indie bookstores, the book blog tours, and newsletters—won’t change, Kelly told Hall in their April handover meeting. 

Kelly said she wants to “continue and carry the torch to highlight indie bookstores and Texas authors and librarians.  

Back in Lubbock, Brannon, the original Lone Star Lit co-founder who remains a loyal reader, was busy putting out her newspapers this week when she got a call from the Observer sharing the news that Lone Star Lit would go on.

 “You know something I don’t know,” she said. “And I’m glad.”

Disclosure: Lise Olsen, a Texas author herself, has been featured in Lone Star Literary Life.