By ISABELLA O’MALLEY

Meteorologists say that water rapidly freezing in the soil amid bitterly cold temperatures can make a startling noise and even cause small vibrations.

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These noises are known as frost quakes or cryoseisms, a cold-weather phenomenon that occurs when rain or melted snow in the ground quickly freezes, expanding as it solidifies, when temperatures rapidly fall below freezing. As the ice expands, pressure builds around the surrounding soil, causing it to crack and make booming sounds and light shaking.

Evan Webb, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Louisville, Kentucky, said the office has received reports of “loud booms” that are associated with cryoseisms during bitter cold weather.

“I think some people initially wonder if it’s an exploding tree or something,” he said.

Webb said frost quakes are “relatively rare, especially in Kentucky … we don’t get quite cold enough very often to have saturated soil in the winter time to be able to freeze that quickly.”

Webb said frost quakes are “mostly harmless” and single-digit temperatures with a wind chill are a bigger concern.

The weather service office notes in a social media post that the noises can be startling, especially when they happen at night, but they’re generally not a cause for concern.

“Those loud booms aren’t paranormal—they’re cryoseisms (Frost Quakes)!” the post reads.

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By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO, AP Retail Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon said it’s closing all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh locations, as the online behemoth focuses on its grocery delivery, Whole Foods Market and a new “supersized” store concept.

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The Seattle-based online retailer said Tuesday in a blog post that it plans to convert some of those soon-to-be shuttered locations into Whole Foods Market stores. The company operates 57 Amazon Fresh stores and 15 Amazon Go stores.

“While we’ve seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion,” the company said in the post.

Amazon noted that customers can continue to shop Amazon Fresh online in available areas for “fast and convenient delivery.”

The last day of operation for Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores is Feb. 1, with the exception of its California locations, which will remain open longer to comply with state requirements, Amazon said.

Since Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods Market in 2017, it’s seen more than 40% sales growth and expansion to more than 550 locations, it said. It now plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods Market stores over the next few years.

At the same time, shoppers are turning to online delivery for everyday essentials and fresh food, Amazon said.

The online retailer is now delivering groceries to 5,000 U.S. cities and towns, including thousands served by same-day delivery where customers can shop produce and other perishables along with staples. Based on strong customer feedback, it said it plans to expand its same-day delivery service of fresh groceries to more areas this year.

Still, Amazon pledges to continue to experiment with new physical store formats.

The company revealed on Tuesday its plans to open a “new supercenter” physical retail concept designed for customers to shop Amazon’s broad selection across fresh groceries, household essentials, and general merchandise. The company didn’t provide any other details including the timing of the opening.

Amazon also is testing a new in-store format called Amazon Grocery, which it launched alongside Whole Foods Market in Chicago. This concept at Whole Foods Market in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, lets customer also shop for groceries and household essentials from Amazon

Amazon opened its first Amazon Go concept in 2018 in Seattle, letting shoppers take milk, potato chips or ready-to-eat salads off its shelves and just walk out. Amazon’s technology charges customers after they leave.

It said that it’s gathered valuable insights along the way.

For example, its Amazon Go locations served as “innovation hubs” where it developed “just walk out” technology—now a checkout solution operating in more than 360 third-party locations across five countries.

Amazon said it expanding its “just walk out” technology to Amazon’s own operations, with more than 40 North American fulfillment centers using it in breakrooms today, and more planned for 2026, helping employees grab meals without checkout delays.

Amazon introduced its first Amazon Fresh physical store in 2020. The stores features an assortment of national brands and produce, meat and seafood.

By ERIC TUCKER and BEN FINLEY

WASHINGTON (AP) — Families of two Trinidadian nationals killed in a Trump administration boat strike last October sued the federal government on Tuesday, calling the attack a war crime and part of an “unprecedented and manifestly unlawful U.S. military campaign.”

The lawsuit is thought to be the first wrongful death case arising from the three dozen strikes that the administration has launched since September on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The complaint will test the legal justification of the Trump administration attacks; government officials have defended them as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the United States but many legal experts say they amount to a brazen violation of the laws of armed conflict.

The complaint echoes many of the frequently articulated concerns about the boat strikes, noting for instance that they have been carried out without congressional authorization and at a time when there is no military conflict between the United States and drug cartels that under the laws of war could justify the lethal attacks.

“These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification. Thus, they were simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government and obeyed by military officers in the chain of command,” the lawsuit says.

The Defense Department said in an email that it does not comment on ongoing litigation.

The lawsuit was filed by the mother of Chad Joseph and the sister of Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian nationals who were among six people killed in an October 14 missile strike on a boat traveling from Venezuela to Trinidad. The men were not members of any drug cartel, the lawsuit says, but had instead been fishing in the waters off the Venezuelan coast and were returning to their homes in Trinidad and Tobago.

The two had caught a ride home to Las Cuervas, a fishing community where they were from, on a small boat targeted in a strike announced on Truth Social by President Donald Trump. All six people aboard the boat were killed.

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“These killings were wrongful because they took place outside of armed conflict and in circumstances in which Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo were not engaged in activities that presented a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury, and where there were means other than lethal force that could have reasonably been employed to neutralize any such threat,” the lawsuit says.

The death toll from the boat strikes is now up to at least 126 people, with the inclusion of those presumed dead after being lost at sea, the U.S. military confirmed Monday. The figure includes 116 people who were killed immediately in at least 36 attacks carried out since early September, with 10 others believed dead because searchers did not locate them following a strike.

The lawsuit is the first to challenge the legality of the boat strikes in court, according to Jen Nessel, a spokesperson for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts on behalf of the families, along with the ACLU and others.

Nessel said in an email that the center also has a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the release of the legal justification for the strikes.

NEW YORK (AP) — Pinterest plans to lay off under 15% of its workforce, as part of broader restructuring that arrives as the image-sharing platform pivots more of its money to artificial intelligence.

In a Tuesday securities filing, San Francisco-based Pinterest said it was making these cuts to support “transformation initiatives” — which include reallocating the company’s resources to AI-focused roles and prioritizing AI-powered products. It said it was also working to reshape its “sales and go-to-market approach.”

Beyond the coming layoffs, Pinterest said it will reduce office space. The company expects to complete its restructuring plan by the end of September, incurring pretax charges of $35 million to $45 million.

Pinterest’s job cuts are expected to impact hundreds of workers. As of the end of last year, Pinterest had a total headcount of about 5,200 employees, the company confirmed to The Associated Press.

Like other tech and social media companies, Pinterest has accelerated its integration of AI recently, particularly in consumer-facing offerings. In October, the company introduced AI-powered updates to users’ in-platform “boards” and unveiled Pinterest Assistant, which is also powered by AI and gives users shopping recommendations.

Pinterest isn’t the first company to turn to job cuts while pivoting spending to AI. Last fall, Amazon, for example, said it would cut about 14,000 corporate jobs (close to 4% of its workforce) as it ramped up AI investments while trimming costs elsewhere.

Shares of Pinterest fell more than 9% as of midday trading Tuesday.

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