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Behind the remains of a town scorched by fire, the foothills are lush with new green and filled with birdsong.Wildlife is returning to the Eaton Fire burn area and scientists are closely tracking it four months after the Los Angeles area wildfires tore through the Angeles National Forest and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses in Altadena.Trail cameras installed by a group of volunteers documented the first mountain lion back in the area March 26. It was seen again as recently as two nights ago.“My first inclination was to share that to people who have lost so much during this fire and our community in Altadena, because it’s a sign of hope that nature’s returning, that nature’s resilient,” said Kristen Ochoa, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, medical school leading the effort.Ochoa, a long-time resident of Southern California, first began documenting the plants and animals that live in the area known as the Chaney Trail Corridor in July 2024. She founded the Chaney Trail Corridor Project and began uploading observations on iNaturalist, a volunteer-driven network of naturalists and citizen scientists that maps and shares documentation of biodiversity across the globe.Located right behind Altadena, with a trailhead only a mile (1.6 kilometers) up the road from neighborhoods that were decimated during the fires, the privately owned area adjacent to Angeles National Forest land was slated for sale and development into a sports complex. Ochoa and other volunteers set up a network of trail cameras to showcase the biodiversity of the area and take “inventory of everything that was valuable.”Much of the land was charred and barren after the fires, and the group also lost all of its cameras, watching as photos of the flames were transmitted before they went dark. But less than two months after the start of the fires, Ochoa was able to go back out and install new ones to start documenting the landscape’s recovery.“The thing I really remember is coming here right after the firethere was so much birdsong,” Ochoa said.Many volunteers with the group are local residents who lost their homes and have told Ochoa that witnessing nature’s recovery in the area has brought hope to them as well.While the fires burned aggressively, they also burned unevenly, leaving patches of trees and a small oasis of greenery surrounding a stream untouched. Animals were able to seek refuge there while the rest of their home burned.They have not come across any deceased animals, she said, but there were reports of an injured bear and deer.The heavy rain that came in the weeks after the fires have helped with a quick recovery.On a recent Wednesday morning, Ochoa pointed out several charred San Gabriel oak treesonly found in Southern Californiathat had rampant green growth around their base.The “crown sprouting” comes from having deep and developed root systems that have helped the trees survive for hundreds of years, Ochoa said.An aggressive bloom of yellow mustard flowers, an invasive species, have also taken root on the hillsides, potentially crowding out native plants like the California sage brush and wild cucumbera source of food for ground squirrels.The group is partnering with local scientists at UCLA to do research on how bats and birds have fared after the fires as well.As she installed a newly donated trail camera, she pointed out bobcat scat and fresh deer tracks on a ridge that had burned just months before.Two red-tailed hawks circled each other in a mating ritual high above in the sky, a sign of spring. Jaimie Ding, Associated Press
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Google’s profits soared 50% in this year’s opening quarter, overcoming the competitive and legal threats that its internet empire is facing amid an economy roiled by a global trade war.The numbers released Thursday by Google parent Alphabet Inc. indicated the company is rising to the challenge so far, but investors are likely to remain concerned about the turbulent times ahead.The Mountain View, California, company earned $34.5 billion, or $2.81 per share, during the January-March period, up from $23.7 billion, or $1.89 per share, at the same time last year. Revenue rose 12% from last year to $90.2 billion. The results easily exceeded analysts’ projections, according to FactSet Research.“We continued to see healthy growth and momentum across the business,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts Thursday during a conference call. Alphabet’s stock gained more than 4% in extended trading after the numbers came out. The shares had fallen by 16% since the end of last year.Google’s first-quarter performance illustrated the continuing power of its long-dominant search engine in a sea of uncertainty. While grappling with competitive threats emerging as artificial intelligence reshapes technology, Google is also battling court decisions condemning its search engine and digital ad network as illegal monopolies.The AI-driven upheaval has opened new opportunities for people to find helpful advice, insights and information through more conversational search options from the likes of OpenAI and Perplexity.Google’s long-dominant search engine is countering the new competition with a feature called AI Overviews that appear above web links in its results. It is also testing a conversational tool called AI Mode that would usher in an even more radical change to its business model.“The company delivered a sound response to those questioning the solidity of the search business amid ever-increasing AI demand,” Investing.com analyst Thomas Monteiro said.But Google is trying to keep its business intact as by the U.S. Justice Department attempts to break up the company and impose other restraints after a federal judge last year branded its search engine an illegal monopoly. To make matters worse, its digital ad network also was found to be illegally abusing its power earlier this month in another case brought by the Justice Department.President Donald Trump’s trade war has injected more uncertainty into the mix by rattling the financial markets amid fears the tariffs will reignite inflation while dragging the economy into a recession. Although Google’s digital services aren’t directly impacted by the tariffs, a recession would likely curtail the spending on ads that generate most of Alphabet’s revenue.But there were few signs of a slowdown in the past quarter. Google’s ad revenue during the period totaled $66.9 billion, an 8% increase from the same time a year ago.Although Google’s executives are mostly upbeat during Thursday’s call, they also acknowledged conditions should the trade war trigger a recession.“We are obviously not immune to the macro environment,” said Philipp Schindler, Alphabet’s chief business officer.The past quarter’s steady growth emboldened Alphabet to stand firm on plans to invest $75 billion on AI and other technologies this year while also pursuing approval of a $32 billion deal to buy cybersecurity firm Wiz.This story has been corrected to reflect Alphabet’s first-quarter profit increased 50% from the same time last year, or $2.81 per share, and that its revenue for the January-March period totaled $90.2 billion. The story also has been corrected to reflect Google’s ad revenue for the first quarter totaled $66.9 billion, an 8% increase from a year ago. An earlier version reported the incorrect dollar amounts and percentage change. Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer
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President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow enforcement of a ban on transgender people in the military, while legal challenges proceed.Without an order from the nation’s highest court, the ban could not take effect for many months, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote, “a period far too long for the military to be forced to maintain a policy that it has determined, in its professional judgment, to be contrary to military readiness and the nation’s interests.”The high court filing follows a brief order from a federal appeals court that kept in place a court order blocking the policy nationwide.At the least, Sauer wrote, the court should allow the ban to take effect nationwide, except for the seven service members and one aspiring member of the military who sued.The court gave lawyers for the service members challenging the ban a week to respond.Just after beginning his second term in January, Trump moved aggressively to roll back the rights of transgender people. Among the Republican president’s actions was an executive order that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness.In response, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a policy that presumptively disqualifies transgender people from military service.But in March, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma, Washington, ruled for several long-serving transgender military members who say that the ban is insulting and discriminatory and that their firing would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations.The Trump administration offered no explanation as to why transgender troops, who have been able to serve openly over the past four years with no evidence of problems, should suddenly be banned, Settle wrote. The judge is an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush and is a former captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps.In 2016, during Barack Obama’s presidency, a Defense Department policy permitted transgender people to serve openly in the military. During Trump’s first term in the White House, the Republican issued a directive to ban transgender service members, with an exception for some of those who had already started transitioning under more lenient rules that were in effect during Obama’s Democratic administration.The Supreme Court allowed that ban to take effect. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, scrapped it when he took office.The rules the Defense Department wants to enforce contain no exceptions.Sauer said the policy during Trump’s first term and the one that has been blocked are “materially indistinguishable.”Thousands of transgender people serve in the military, but they represent less than 1% of the total number of active-duty service members.The policy also has been blocked by a federal judge in the nation’s capital, but that ruling has been temporarily halted by a federal appeals court, which heard arguments on Tuesday. The three-judge panel, which includes two judges appointed by Trump during his first term, appeared to be in favor of the administration’s position.In a more limited ruling, a judge in New Jersey also has barred the Air Force from removing two transgender men, saying they showed their separation would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations that no monetary settlement could repair. Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report. Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court. Mark Sherman, Associated Press
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