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TAIPEI, Taiwan — China launched a spacecraft that promises to return samples from an asteroid near Mars and yield “groundbreaking discoveries and expand humanity’s knowledge of the cosmos,” the country’s space agency said.

The Tianwen-2 probe launched early Thursday from southern China aboard the workhorse Long March 3-B rocket. The probe will collect samples from the asteroid 2016HO3 and explore the main-belt comet 311P, which lies even further from the Earth than Mars, according to the China National Space Administration.

Shan Zhongde, head of the CNSA, was quoted as saying the Tianwen-2 mission represents a ”significant step in China’s new journey of interplanetary exploration” and over its decade-long mission will “yield groundbreaking discoveries and expand humanity’s knowledge of the cosmos.”

Samples from 2016HO3 are due to be returned in about two years. The asteroids, chosen for their relatively stable orbits, hopefully will offer clues into the formation of earth, such as the origins of water.

China earlier returned rock samples from the moon’s far side back to Earth in a historic mission and has welcomed international cooperation. However, any cooperation with the U.S. hinges on removing an American law banning direct bilateral cooperation with NASA.

The near side of the moon is seen from Earth and the far side faces outer space. The far side also is known to have mountains and impact craters and is much more difficult to reach.

China also operates the three person-crewed Tiangong, or “Heavenly Palace,” space station, making the country a major player in a new era of space exploration and the use of permanent stations to conduct experiments in space, especially since the station was entirely Chinese-built after the country was excluded from the International Space Station over U.S. national security concerns.

China’s space program is controlled by the People’s Liberation Army, the military branch of the ruling Communist Party.

The country’s space program has grown rapidly in the more than 20 years since it first put a man in space, only the third country to do so under its own speed. The space agency has landed an unmanned explorer on Mars and a rover on the far side of the moon. It aims to put a person on the moon before 2030.

A future Tianwen-4 Jupiter mission will explore Jupiter, although details haven’t been released.

If your current video doorbell is starting to age, Amazon is offering a very tempting reason to consider switching to something new. The online retailer is running a flash sale with a swathe of devices now slashed in price, including the very latest Ring. It’s an eye-catching offer with a whopping 40 percent off for a limited time.

With the cost cut applied, things drop from £99.99 down to just £59.99. Along with it now being a whole lot cheaper to own, there are some other reasons to consider switching things up. This latest Ring, which was announced last year comes packed with upgrades which makes it better at watching over the front of your home.

There’s full HD video recording for pin-sharp footage and Colour Night Vision for improved visuals when the sun goes down.

YOU CAN SEE THE RING DEAL HERE

The latest design makes it easier to fit to your front door, and it quickly snaps and releases to its dock for a faster way to refill the battery.

This Ring also gets Head-To-Toe recording, so you can see everything happening on the driveway. Other neat upgrades include Quick Replies – which play a selection of pre-recorded messages when the bell is pressed – and Privacy Zones which stops the Ring recording certain areas outside of your home.

Along with slashing the cost, Amazon is also offering a 30-day free trial of Ring Home. This subscription service offers up to 180 days of Video Event History and improved alerts.

A basic Ring Home plan costs £4.99 per month – Amazon also offers a Standard plan as well which costs £7.99 per month and comes with some added features such as Alarm Cellular Backup.

YOU CAN SEE THE RING DEAL HERE

If you don’t fancy shopping at Amazon, it’s worth noting that other retailers, including Argos, are also selling the latest Ring for the same discounted price.

It’s also worth remembering that there are plenty of alternatives to Ring, including models made by Swann, Yale and Arlo.

Another popular choice is Google Nest, although these cameras are out of stock at many retailers. Google’s own store does have the Nest with device featuring a simple way to install along with long battery life intelligent alerts and pin-sharp video recording.

SEE THE CAMERA HERE

Anyone with an email account – or those who use online services such as Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram – needs to be on high alert. It’s just been confirmed that a massive data breach has recently taken place, which appears to have exposed a staggering 180 million unique login credentials. Details that have been leaked include email, social media and gaming passwords, with it thought that Meta, Google and Microsoft accounts may have been exposed in the shock breach.

The issue was discovered by cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowlerwho says he found an unsecured database containing over 184 million unique login credentials. It’s unclear who else has seen the data, but now is not a time to be complacent.

“The publicly exposed database was not password-protected or encrypted,” explained Fowler.

“It contained 184,162,718 unique logins and passwords, totalling a massive 47.42 GB of raw credential data. In a limited sampling of the exposed documents, I saw thousands of files that included emails, usernames, passwords, and the URL links to the login or authorisation for the accounts.

“The database contained login and password credentials for a wide range of services, applications, and accounts, including email providers, Microsoft products, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Roblox, and many more.”

Although the database has since been removed from public view, it’s now vital that everyone checks their passwords and considers making some urgent changes.

If a cyber crook gains both the username and password, it’s easy for them to start hacking accounts and stealing personal data. Switching things up will instantly make accounts much harder to crack.

It’s also a good time to think about setting up two-factor authentication on accounts, which means nobody can log in without getting a passcode sent to a separate device.

Speaking about the latest breach, the team at Malwarebytes said: “There is no way to tell whether anyone else found the exposed database before it was removed from public access. However, the exposure of such a massive dataset should serve as a wake-up call.”

Advice from these security experts has also been issued and you’d be wise to follow these 5 top tips.

• Change your passwords regularly, and don’t reuse them across multiple accounts. Use unique, complex passwords for every service.

• Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) wherever possible. This makes it harder for criminals to take over your account.

• Regularly audit and clean your email inbox of sensitive documents and old passwords. Jeremiah pointed out that “people unknowingly treat their email accounts like free cloud storage and keep years’ worth of sensitive documents, such as tax forms, medical records, contracts, and passwords without considering how sensitive they are.”

• Use an up-to-date and active anti-malware solution that can detect and remove infostealer malware.

• Be careful about what you download and educate yourself on recognizing phishing emails, as these remain the most common infection vectors.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2025 (January, February, and March), according to the second estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter of 2024, real GDP increased 2.4 percent.

The decrease in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an increase in imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, and a decrease in government spending. These movements were partly offset by increases in investment, consumer spending, and exports.

Real GDP was revised up 0.1 percentage point from the advance estimate, reflecting an upward revision to investment that was partly offset by a downward revision to consumer spending. For more information, refer to the “Technical Notes” below.

Compared to the fourth quarter, the downturn in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an upturn in imports, a deceleration in consumer spending, and a downturn in government spending that were partly offset by upturns in investment and exports.

Real final sales to private domestic purchasersthe sum of consumer spending and gross private fixed investment, increased 2.5 percent in the first quarter, revised down 0.5 percentage point from the previous estimate.

The price index for gross domestic purchases increased 3.3 percent in the first quarter, revised down 0.1 percentage point from the previous estimate. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index increased 3.6 percent, the same as previously estimated. Excluding food and energy prices, the PCE price index increased 3.4 percent, revised down 0.1 percentage point from the previous estimate.

Real gross domestic income (GDI) decreased 0.2 percent in the first quarter, in contrast to an increase of 5.2 percent in the fourth quarter.

Profits from current production (corporate profits with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments) decreased $118.1 billion in the first quarter, in contrast to an increase of $204.7 billion in the fourth quarter.

Next release:
June 26, 2025, at 8:30 a.m. EDT
Gross Domestic Product (Third Estimate)
Corporate Profits (Revised Estimate)
Gross Domestic Product by Industry
1st Quarter 2025

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Technical Notes

Sources of revisions to real GDP in the second estimate

Real GDP decreased at an annual rate of 0.2 percent (less than 0.1 percent at a quarterly rate¹), an upward revision of 0.1 percentage point from the previous estimate, primarily reflecting an upward revision to investment that was partly offset by a downward revision to consumer spending.

• Within investment, an upward revision to private inventory investment primarily reflected an updated BEA adjustment to Census Bureau book value data to account for notable increases in imports. Updated and newly available information on the industries impacted the adjustment and led to an upward revision to nondurable goods manufacturing (specifically, chemical manufacturing) that was largely offset by a downward revision to nondurable goods wholesale trade (drugs and sundries). Private inventory investment in other industries (mainly, information) was also revised up, based on new Census Bureau Quarterly Financial Report data.
• The downward revision to consumer spending reflected downward revisions to services and goods.
  • Within services, the downward revision was led by health care, recreation services, and financial services and insurance, based primarily on new data from the Census Bureau Quarterly Services Survey.
  • Within goods, the downward revision was led by food and beverages and by recreational goods and vehicles, based on revised Census Bureau Monthly Retail Trade Survey data.

More information on the source data and BEA assumptions that underlie the first-quarter estimate is shown in the key source data and assumptions table.

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¹ Percent changes in quarterly seasonally adjusted series are displayed at annual rates, unless otherwise specified. For more information, refer to the FAQ “Why does BEA publish percent changes in quarterly series at annual rates?”.

NEW YORK — The typical compensation package for chief executives who run companies in the S&P 500 jumped nearly 10% in 2024 as the stock market enjoyed another banner year and corporate profits rose sharply.

Many companies have heeded calls from shareholders to tie CEO compensation more closely to performance. As a result, a large proportion of pay packages consist of stock awards, which the CEO often can’t cash in for years, if at all, unless the company meets certain targets, typically a higher stock price or market value or improved operating profits.

The Associated Press’ CEO compensation survey, which uses data analyzed for The AP by Equilarincluded pay data for 344 executives at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full consecutive fiscal years at their companies, which filed proxy statements between Jan. 1 and April 30.

Here are the key takeaways from the survey:

The median pay package for CEOs rose to $17.1 million, up 9.7%. Meanwhile, the median employee at companies in the survey earned $85,419, reflecting a 1.7% increase year over year.

CEOs had to navigate sticky inflation and relatively high interest rates last year, as well as declining consumer confidence. But the economy also provided some tail winds: Consumers kept spending despite their misgivings about the economy; inflation did subside somewhat; the Fed lowered interest rates; and the job market stayed strong.

The stock market’s main benchmark, the S&P 500, rose more than 23% last year. Profits for companies in the index rose more than 9%.

“2024 was expected to be a strong year, so the (nearly) 10% increases are commensurate with the timing of the pay decisions,” said Dan Laddin, a partner at Compensation Advisory Partners.

Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies, said there have been some recent “long-overdue” increases in worker pay, especially for those at the bottom of the wage scale. But she said too many workers in the world’s richest countries still struggle to pay their bills.

Rick Smith, the founder and CEO of Axon Enterprises, topped the survey with a pay package valued at $164.5 million. Axon, which makes Taser stun guns and body cameras, saw revenue grow more than 30% for three straight years and posted record annual net income of $377 million in 2024. Axon’s shares more than doubled last year after rising more than 50% in 2023.

Almost all of Smith’s pay package consists of stock awards, which he can only receive if the company meets targets tied to its stock price and operations for the period from 2024 to 2030. Companies are required to assign a value to the stock awards when they are granted.

Other top earners in the survey include Lawrence Culp, CEO of what is now GE Aerospac e ($ 87.4 million), Tim Cook at Apple ($74.6 million), David Gitlin at Carrier Global ($65.6 million) and Ted Sarandos at Netflix ($61.9 million). The bulk of those pay packages consisted of stock or options awards.

The median stock award rose almost 15% last year compared to a 4% increase in base salaries, according to Equilar.

“For CEOs, target long-term incentives consistently increase more each year than salaries or bonuses,” said Melissa Burek, also a partner at Compensation Advisory Partners. “Given the significant role that long-term incentives play in executive pay, this trend makes sense.”

Jackie Cook at Morningstar Sustainalytics said the benefit of tying CEO pay to performance is “that share-based pay appears to provide a clear market signal that most shareholders care about.” But she notes that the greater use of share-based pay has led to a “phenomenal rise” in CEO compensation “tracking recent years’ market performance,” which has “widened the pay gap within workplaces.”

Some well-known billionaire CEOs are low in the AP survey. Warren Buffett’s compensation was valued at $405,000, about five times what a worker at Berkshire Hathaway makes. According to Tesla’s proxy, Elon Musk received no compensation for 2024, but in 2018 he was awarded a multiyear package that has been valued at $56 billion and is the subject of a court battle.

Other notable CEOs didn’t meet the criteria for inclusion the survey. Starbucks’ Brian Niccol received a pay package valued at $95.8 million, but he only took over as CEO on Sept. 9. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang saw his compensation grow to $49.9 million, but the company filed its proxy after April 30.

At half the companies in AP’s annual pay survey, it would take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale 192 years to make what the CEO did in one. Companies have been required to disclose this so-called pay ratio since 2018.

The pay ratio tends to be highest at companies in industries where wages are typically low. For instance, at cruise line company Carnival Corp., its CEO earned nearly 1,300 times the median pay of $16,900 for its workers. McDonald’s CEO makes about 1,000 times what a worker making the company’s median pay does. Both companies have operations that span numerous countries.

Overall, wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers in the U.S. rose 3.6% through 2024, according to the Labor Department. The average worker in the U.S. makes $65,460 a year. That figure rises to $92,000 when benefits such as health care and other insurance are included.

“With CEO pay continuing to climb, we still have an enormous problem with excessive pay gaps,” Anderson said. “These huge disparities are not only unfair to lower-level workers who are making significant contributions to company value – they also undercut enterprise effectiveness by lowering employee morale and boosting turnover rates.”

For the 27 women who made the AP survey — the highest number dating back to 2014 — median pay rose 10.7% to $20 million. That compares to a 9.7% increase to $16.8 million for their male counterparts.

The highest earner among female CEOs was Judith Marks of Otis Worldwide, with a pay package valued at $42.1 million. The company, known for its elevators and escalators, has had operating profit above $2 billion for four straight years. About $35 million of Marks’ compensations was in the form of stock awards.

Other top earners among female CEOs were Jane Fraser of Citigroup ($31.1 million), Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices ($31 million), Mary Barra at General Motors ($29.5 million) and Laura Alber at Williams-Sonoma ($27.7 million).

Christy Glass, a professor of sociology at Utah State University who studies equity, inclusion and leadership, said while there may be a few more women on the top paid CEO list, overall equity trends are stagnating, particularly as companies cut back on DEI programs.

“There are maybe a couple more names on the list, but we’re really not moving the needle significantly,” she said.

Equilar found that a larger number of companies are offering security perquisites as part of executive compensation packages, possibly in reaction to the December shooting of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson.

Equilar said an analysis of 208 companies in the S&P 500 that filed proxy statements by April 2 showed that the median spending on security rose to $94,276 last year from $69,180 in 2023.

Among the companies that increased their security perks were Centene, which provides health care services to Medicare and Medicaid, and the chipmaker Intel.

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Reporters Matt Ott and Chris Rugaber in Washington contributed.

CAXIUANA NATIONAL FOREST, Brazil — 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.

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, Endecaflor — 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 studythe 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.

To mimic stress from drought, the project, located in the Caxiuana National Forestassembled about 6,000 transparent plastic rectangular panels across one hectare (2.5 acres), diverting around 50% of the rainfall from the forest floor. They were set 1 meter above ground (3.3 ft) on the sides to 4 meters (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.

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 (meters) 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 fourt focused on plant physiology.

“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.

CAXIUANA NATIONAL FOREST, Brazil — 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.

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, Endecaflor — 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 studythe 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.

To mimic stress from drought, the project, located in the Caxiuana National Forestassembled about 6,000 transparent plastic rectangular panels across one hectare (2.5 acres), diverting around 50% of the rainfall from the forest floor. They were set 1 meter above ground (3.3 ft) on the sides to 4 meters (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.

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 (meters) 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 fourt focused on plant physiology.

“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.

CAXIUANA NATIONAL FOREST, Brazil — 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.

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, Endecaflor — 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 studythe 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.

To mimic stress from drought, the project, located in the Caxiuana National Forestassembled about 6,000 transparent plastic rectangular panels across one hectare (2.5 acres), diverting around 50% of the rainfall from the forest floor. They were set 1 meter above ground (3.3 ft) on the sides to 4 meters (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.

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 (meters) 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 fourt focused on plant physiology.

“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.

Google will return to federal court Friday to fend off the U.S. Justice Department’s attempt to topple its internet empire at the same time it’s navigating a pivotal shift to artificial intelligence that could undercut its power.

The legal and technological threats facing Google are among the key issues that will be dissected during the closing arguments of a legal proceeding that will determine the changes imposed upon the company in the wake of its dominant search engine being declared as an illegal monopoly by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta last year.

Brandishing evidence presented during a recent three-week stretch of hearingsJustice Department lawyers will attempt to persuade Mehta to order a radical shake-up that includes a ban on Google paying to lock its search engine in as the default on smart devices and an order requiring the company to sell its Chrome browser.

Google lawyers are expected to assert only minor concessions are needed, especially as the upheaval triggered by advances in artificial intelligence already are reshaping the search landscape, as alternative, conversational search options are rolling out from AI startups that are hoping to use the Department of Justice’s four-and-half-year-old case to gain the upper hand in the next technological frontier.

“Over weeks of testimony, we heard from a series of well-funded companies eager to gain access to Google’s technology so they don’t have to innovate themselves,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post earlier this month. “What we didn’t hear was how DOJ’s extreme proposals would benefit consumers.”

After the day-long closing arguments, Mehta will spend much of the summer mulling a decision that he plans to issue before Labor Day. Google has already vowed to appeal the ruling that branded its search engine as a monopoly, a step it can’t take until the judge orders a remedy.

While both sides of this showdown agree that AI is an inflection point for the industry’s future, they have disparate views on how the shift will affect Google.

The Justice Department contends that AI technology by itself won’t rein in Google’s power, arguing additional legal restraints must be slapped on a search engine that’s the main reason its parent company, Alphabet Inc., is valued at $2 trillion.

Google has already been deploying AI to transform its search engine i nto an answer engine, an effort that has so far helped maintain its perch as the internet’s main gateway despite inroads being made by alternatives from the likes of OpenAI and Perplexity.

The Justice Department contends a divestiture of the Chrome browser that Google CEO Sundar Pichai helped build nearly 20 years ago would be among the most effective countermeasures against Google continuing to amass massive volumes of browser traffic and personal data that could be leveraged to retain its dominance in the AI era. Executives from both OpenAi and Perplexity testified last month that they would be eager bidders for the Chrome browser if Mehta orders its sale.

The debate over Google’s fate also has pulled in opinions from Apple, mobile app developers, legal scholars and startups.

Apple, which collects more than $20 billion annually to make Google the default search engine on the iPhone and its other devices, filed briefs arguing against the Justice Department’s proposed 10-year ban on such lucrative lock-in agreements. Apple told the judge that prohibiting the contracts would deprive the company of money that it funnels into its own research, and that the ban might even make Google even more powerful because the company would be able to hold onto its money while consumers would end up choosing its search engine anyway. The Cupertino, California, company also told the judge a ban wouldn’t compel it to build its own search engine to compete against Google.

In other filings, a group of legal scholars said the Justice Department’s proposed divestiture of Chrome would be an improper penalty that would inject unwarranted government interference in a company’s business. Meanwhile, former Federal Trade Commission officials James Cooper and Andrew Stivers warned that another proposal that would require Google to share its data with rival search engines “does not account for the expectations users have developed over time regarding the privacy, security, and stewardship” of their personal information.

The App Association, a group that represents mostly small software developers, also advised Mehta not to adopt the Justice Department’s proposed changes because of the ripple effects they would have across the tech industry.

Hobbling Google in the way the Justice Department envisions would make it more difficult for startups to realize their goal of being acquired, the App Association wrote. “Developers will be overcome by uncertainty” if Google is torn apart, the group argues.

Buy Y Combinator, an incubator that has helped create hundreds of startups collectively worth about $800 billion filed documents pushing for the dramatic overhaul of Google, whose immense power has discouraged venture capitalists from investing in areas that are considered to be part of the company’s “kill zone.”

Startups “also need to be able to get their products into the hands of users, free from restrictive dealing and self-preferencing that locks up important distribution channels. As things stand, Google has locked up the most critical distribution channels, freezing the general search and search text advertising markets into static competition for more than a decade,” Y Combinator told Mehta.

Google will return to federal court Friday to fend off the U.S. Justice Department’s attempt to topple its internet empire at the same time it’s navigating a pivotal shift to artificial intelligence that could undercut its power.

The legal and technological threats facing Google are among the key issues that will be dissected during the closing arguments of a legal proceeding that will determine the changes imposed upon the company in the wake of its dominant search engine being declared as an illegal monopoly by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta last year.

Brandishing evidence presented during a recent three-week stretch of hearingsJustice Department lawyers will attempt to persuade Mehta to order a radical shake-up that includes a ban on Google paying to lock its search engine in as the default on smart devices and an order requiring the company to sell its Chrome browser.

Google lawyers are expected to assert only minor concessions are needed, especially as the upheaval triggered by advances in artificial intelligence already are reshaping the search landscape, as alternative, conversational search options are rolling out from AI startups that are hoping to use the Department of Justice’s four-and-half-year-old case to gain the upper hand in the next technological frontier.

“Over weeks of testimony, we heard from a series of well-funded companies eager to gain access to Google’s technology so they don’t have to innovate themselves,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post earlier this month. “What we didn’t hear was how DOJ’s extreme proposals would benefit consumers.”

After the day-long closing arguments, Mehta will spend much of the summer mulling a decision that he plans to issue before Labor Day. Google has already vowed to appeal the ruling that branded its search engine as a monopoly, a step it can’t take until the judge orders a remedy.

While both sides of this showdown agree that AI is an inflection point for the industry’s future, they have disparate views on how the shift will affect Google.

The Justice Department contends that AI technology by itself won’t rein in Google’s power, arguing additional legal restraints must be slapped on a search engine that’s the main reason its parent company, Alphabet Inc., is valued at $2 trillion.

Google has already been deploying AI to transform its search engine i nto an answer engine, an effort that has so far helped maintain its perch as the internet’s main gateway despite inroads being made by alternatives from the likes of OpenAI and Perplexity.

The Justice Department contends a divestiture of the Chrome browser that Google CEO Sundar Pichai helped build nearly 20 years ago would be among the most effective countermeasures against Google continuing to amass massive volumes of browser traffic and personal data that could be leveraged to retain its dominance in the AI era. Executives from both OpenAi and Perplexity testified last month that they would be eager bidders for the Chrome browser if Mehta orders its sale.

The debate over Google’s fate also has pulled in opinions from Apple, mobile app developers, legal scholars and startups.

Apple, which collects more than $20 billion annually to make Google the default search engine on the iPhone and its other devices, filed briefs arguing against the Justice Department’s proposed 10-year ban on such lucrative lock-in agreements. Apple told the judge that prohibiting the contracts would deprive the company of money that it funnels into its own research, and that the ban might even make Google even more powerful because the company would be able to hold onto its money while consumers would end up choosing its search engine anyway. The Cupertino, California, company also told the judge a ban wouldn’t compel it to build its own search engine to compete against Google.

In other filings, a group of legal scholars said the Justice Department’s proposed divestiture of Chrome would be an improper penalty that would inject unwarranted government interference in a company’s business. Meanwhile, former Federal Trade Commission officials James Cooper and Andrew Stivers warned that another proposal that would require Google to share its data with rival search engines “does not account for the expectations users have developed over time regarding the privacy, security, and stewardship” of their personal information.

The App Association, a group that represents mostly small software developers, also advised Mehta not to adopt the Justice Department’s proposed changes because of the ripple effects they would have across the tech industry.

Hobbling Google in the way the Justice Department envisions would make it more difficult for startups to realize their goal of being acquired, the App Association wrote. “Developers will be overcome by uncertainty” if Google is torn apart, the group argues.

Buy Y Combinator, an incubator that has helped create hundreds of startups collectively worth about $800 billion filed documents pushing for the dramatic overhaul of Google, whose immense power has discouraged venture capitalists from investing in areas that are considered to be part of the company’s “kill zone.”

Startups “also need to be able to get their products into the hands of users, free from restrictive dealing and self-preferencing that locks up important distribution channels. As things stand, Google has locked up the most critical distribution channels, freezing the general search and search text advertising markets into static competition for more than a decade,” Y Combinator told Mehta.