PITTSBURGH, Pa. — At first glance, the row house at 418 Rochelle St. looks ordinary. Backed against a hillside in Pittsburgh’s Knoxville neighborhood, its porch is messy, but that’s hardly unusual.

But if one were to walk up the front steps and peer through the window on a clear day, the view would be of the sky. Both stories have fallen into the basement.

The story of how the structurally sound, owner-occupied home of a middle-class Pittsburgh resident became a heap of rubble threatening adjacent structures is also the story of how a city that has shrunk in population by more than 50 percent since 1950 finds itself so short of affordable housing.

“I think we have a system that for too long has allowed houses that aren’t paying taxes to languish, and people aren’t living in them or taking care of them,” said Bill Shimko, executive director of the Hilltop Alliance.

Pittsburgh has more than 20,000 vacant housing units, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. That number represents about 15 percent of the city’s total stock. Thousands are unlivable or so-called “dead-end” properties, for which the owner died or departed without making arrangements to transfer ownership and left a “tangled title.”

“Because (the city is) not foreclosing — we’re not intervening — these properties are simply inaccessible to the average person,” said Sally Stadelman, acting executive director of the Pittsburgh Land Bank, an agency tasked with acquiring tax-delinquent properties and getting them back on the market.

Nicole Green was living at 418 Rochelle St. in 2005, when a series of injuries she suffered on the job as a correctional officer at the Allegheny County Jail caused her to fall behind on her mortgage. She received a letter like many Americans did in the mid-2000s, in which her mortgage servicer told her it was foreclosing.

She couldn’t follow the payment plan the bank laid out to prevent foreclosure. So, she left and moved in with her mother elsewhere in Pittsburgh.

“I didn’t want to be put out by the sheriff,” Green said this past fall. “I didn’t want to embarrass my brother; he’s a deputy sheriff. I vacated the property myself.”

So, it came as a surprise to Green this past spring when the city took her to court over code violations at her long-ago home. The city wanted the owner of the collapsed home to clean up the mess.

While court records show the bank filed to foreclose in 2005, it never followed through. The house stayed in Green’s name without her knowledge, as utility and tax debt piled up and the floors went down.

“If I knew that I owned it, I would have done more, and it would still be in good condition,” Green said. “I’m in a different position now than I was then. Everything would have been OK.”

Aimee Mangham, manager of outreach and services at the Hilltop Alliance, said she sits weekly in the magistrate’s court in Carrick, where cases like Green’s are adjudicated. She said Green’s situation is not uncommon.

“At least once a week you hear the story that ‘I didn’t even know I owned the property,’” Mangham said, because owners left when threatened with foreclosure.

The judge at a Dec. 11 hearing delayed ruling on Green’s case, allowing a few months to try to engineer a solution. The city may front the cost of demolition and place a lien against the property to reclaim the tens of thousands of dollars, though that would make it virtually impossible for Green to sell the property.

Dave Green, the director of the city’s Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections, said city code requires the city to order property owners to demolish unsafe structures before it intervenes. If the owner doesn’t act, the structure can go on a list of properties for city-funded demolition, ranked in order of the danger they pose to the community. He said there are about 200 structures on that list currently, though there are far more that are condemned.

Shimko said what happened to Nicole Green is a flaw in the mortgage system.

“Unless (homeowners) are able to track the foreclosure litigation and have an understanding of it — and without the help of an attorney that isn’t easy — it puts them in a situation where they believe they lost their house and they take action to keep a roof over their heads,” Shimko said.

Green said if the bank had notified her they would put a lien on her house instead of foreclosing, she could have stayed and chipped away at the lien over time.

“My kids and my grandkids could be there,” she said.

The collapsed home on Rochelle is causing problems beyond its own footprint.

Michelle Hoyle lives two doors down and fears her home is developing structural problems as a result.

“The foundation has been messed up,” Hoyle said. “I can tell there’s some cracking, different things that I didn’t notice before,” and the issues seem to be “traveling” toward her house.

Hoyle, 48, said she grew up in the home, stayed in Knoxville almost all her life and moved back in when her mother became ill.

Her mother died two years ago, and she worries she may soon have to leave the home they shared.

“It’s happening more rapidly,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going to stay here long. I believe this home is going to leave me before I leave it.”

She said she can no longer exit through the rear of her house since 418’s porch collapsed, leaving debris all over.

Further down the row, there’s a gap between two homes where one was demolished about five years ago (satellite images show it was cleared between late 2019 and late 2020). Shimko said that demolition turned out to be a “hack job” and left an abutting neighbor with thousands of dollars in repair needs.

That neighbor, 93-year-old Elaine Stevenson, said she pursued help from city officials for years before a contractor came by and patched it up in recent weeks.

In the past, when the city had a row house demolished and a neighbor’s wall was damaged, it was up to the neighbor to get it repaired. Rob Columbus, manager of the city’s demolition program, said that in recent years the city shifted that burden to the city’s demolition contractors — good for the neighbor, but more expensive for his department.

He said demolishing a row home typically comes with problems.

“It’s almost like pulling a tooth,” Columbus said. “They borrow stability from one another. Once you pull one, they tend to shift. Those interior walls are not meant to be exterior walls.”

Beyond structural concerns, Mangham said the proliferation of decaying structures throughout Knoxville is bad for the neighborhood’s spirit.

“It brings the community down,” Mangham said. “You walk outside and it’s a part of the unspoken culture that you have to look at something so horrible every single day.

“It’s disheartening to see. It’s a wonderful community, I believe. There’s just some pockets that … you’ll see porches have fallen on the street and they’re just sitting there.”

Hoyle said the rapidly decaying state of her building has her considering whether it makes sense to have the deed transferred from her late parents’ name to her own.

“Now I have to think about if I should just walk away,” Hoyle said, noting that the abutting units’ condition would make it impossible for her to sell.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published by Pittsburgh’s Public Source and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

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MOUNT VERNON, Va. — After two years of renovations, the first and second floors of George and Martha Washington‘s mansion at Mount Vernon have reopened to visitors.

The $40 million preservation project at the first president’s home included designing and installing a new HVAC system, performing major infrastructure repairs, and improving drainage in and around the mansion’s cellar as well as Washington’s newly restored bedroom.

While the work won’t be fully completed until October 2026, visitors will finally get a chance to see rooms that have been closed off on a rotating schedule.

“We have moved steadily to restore the mansion to its glory, restored the exterior, fixed all the windows, repaired the piazza,” Doug Bradburn, president of George Washington‘s Mount Vernon, said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this month.

“We restored the 18th century carpentry and masonry to its original structural integrity, designed the state-of-the-art air and moisture management system to ensure the long-term health improvements of the restoration, and brought the best research techniques in architectural history, preservation, archaeology, history, curatorial techniques to restore the interior of the mansion to the most accurate depiction of the world the Washingtons knew,” Bradburn continued.

Different portions of the founding father’s mansion have been undergoing restoration and maintenance work since 2019, when exterior touch-ups began on the building’s west side.

Launched in 2023, the current preservation project focuses on the mansion’s interior and reinforcement of the original structure. In addition to installing a new HVAC system, crews are restoring the cellar to its appearance at the time of Washington’s death in 1799. The cellar will remain off-limits to visitors through fall 2026.

More than 400 subcontractors worked on the project, said Tom Whitmore, vice president of historic preservation at the Christman Co. Its work, including the replacement of much of the timber framing below the mansion, will wrap by July 4, 2026.

“There was intensive termite damage, and like you see in old crawl spaces and basements, things have been added over time to support things that really weren’t structurally sound anymore,” Whitmore said. “All of that, like 200 years of structural intervention, was all taken out and put back so that it cannot only be structurally sound, but so that the cellar can be interpreted, because nobody really goes into the cellar since it was full of ductwork.”

The white oak used for the timber framing was sourced from the grounds at Mount Vernon.

Washington’s bedchamber was restored with a new bed, wall plaster, and 1790s reproduction wallpaper from New York-based Adelphi Paper Hangings.

During the restoration, archaeologists also found 35 18th century glass bottles in five storage pits; nine of the bottles contained perfectly preserved cherries, gooseberries and currants. The team also found an 18th century fork hidden behind a wall in Martha Washington’s closet.

Amy McCauley, the restoration manager at the estate, said there will be a gala in October 2026 for the grand opening of the cellar.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published by FFXnow and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

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CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — The Olympians who have signed up to stay in Cortina d’Ampezzo‘s Athletes Village should not expect luxury accommodations or a cozy fire to snuggle up next to after a long day on the mountain.

The temporary facility that will house up to 1,400 athletes and other team members during the upcoming Milan Cortina Games consists of 377 rented mobile homes arranged near one another on a humid valley floor.

The Associated Press was given an early look at the facility, which is in an unpopulated area about a 10-minute drive north of downtown Cortina.

The rooms are simple and spartan. In exchange for amenities, though, comes proximity to the Dolomites.

“It’s located in a very quiet area of Cortina, where you have the opportunity to hear the sound of the mountains, isolate yourself if you wish, concentrate if you desire, or go out for a pleasant workout,” said Fabio Saldini, the Italian government commissioner overseeing infrastructure for the event, which will take place Feb. 6-22.

“The beauty of a village like this lies in the fact that everything will be removed afterward,” Saldini added. “Nothing is permanent; the environment will not return to its previous state but will be improved. This is a temporary village, but of high design.”

Providing lodging for athletes is one of the most important responsibilities for Olympic organizers. It’s particularly challenging for the geographically dispersed Milan Cortina Games. Cortina’s trailer park is one of the two main Olympic villages — the other is in Milan.

Winter sports powerhouse Norway has chosen to house its skiers in hotels rather than in the official Olympic villages, according to Norwegian news agency NTB.

Many other nations like the U.S. and Germany, plus host Italy, said their athletes will stay in the villages, though it’s unlikely Alpine superstars Lindsey Vonn or Mikaela Shiffrin will stay in the mobile home park in Cortina.

Cortina will host women’s Alpine skiing, curling, bobsled, luge and skeleton during the games. The Athletes Village will also be essential for the Paralympics, which will take place March 6-15.

“Most of the nations will use the village — both for the living part and above all for the common areas like the gym,” Saldini said. “Even those staying outside the village will come here.”

Each trailer is divided into two rooms, with up to two people in each room. Every room has its own bathroom and shower. But outside the trailer door, athletes could be met with a biting wind each morning — or they might be treated to unforgettable images of the sun reflecting off jagged mountain peaks.

Warm boots — not slippers — might be the best attire for the walk to the big cafeteria for breakfast. Anyone staying in trailers near the outskirts of the nearly mile-long Athletes Village will have a 10-minute walk to the common areas — which also include a gym, game room, offices, relaxation areas and a laundromat.

A snowstorm produced blizzard-like conditions during AP’s visit in late November, without any permanent buildings to block the wind. February, though, will bring more hours of sunlight to the area.

The altitude here is 4,239 feet — slightly higher than in downtown Cortina.

“There’s just the forest here,” said Paride Casagrande, the Athletes Village’s construction manager. “The wind is an element. But it doesn’t blow all day long every day. It depends on the day. There could be very cold days and there could be very comfortable days. But the fact remains that we’re in a natural area where it’s cold.”

When organizers of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics announced that they would not provide air conditioners in the Athletes Village, the U.S. and other teams brought their own machines — undercutting plans to cut carbon emissions.

Nobody should have to bring their own climate-controlling machines this time. Every room in the Cortina Village has its own heating controls. A thermostat regulates a heating unit mounted on the wall and the ceiling has an infrared panel that helps maintain the temperature — both run on electricity.

“Without much power, the temperature can be brought up to (77-79 degrees Fahrenheit), which should be all that’s necessary,” Casagrande said. “But it’s all subjective, considering that I’ve been seeing athletes (in town for a test event) walking around outside in their underwear even though it’s snowing out. The choice is up to the athletes.”

Every mobile home sits on at least two wheels; they are used only for positioning, not transport, Casagrande said.

All rooms are about 200 square feet, with one of the two rooms in each mobile home slightly larger than the other to accommodate Paralympians.

The total cost for the village is $44 million.

While the mobile homes are being rented, it would cost up to $93,000 to buy one.

After the Olympics and the Paralympics, most of the mobile homes will be reused at camping sites around Italy, while some already destined for a hockey club in nearby Brunico.

The bigger buildings — also temporary — for the cafeteria, gym and other common areas are already being heated by a thermal (natural gas) power plant that also warms the water supply. Air handling units placed atop the buildings regulate the air.

Trees were cut down to accommodate the Athletes Village, drawing some protests from climate activists.

“Most of (the trees) were already dead,” Casagrande said. “But we’ve also brought in new plants and (trees). … This is a natural park and we’re going to leave it just as we found it.”

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SANTIAGO, Chile — The Atacama Desert, one of the darkest spots on Earth, is a crown jewel for astronomers. They flock to this inhospitable place along the Pacific coast to study the rest of the universe.

A rare confluence of factors makes the Atacama an ideal home for some of the world’s biggest ground-based astronomical developments — dry climate, high altitude and, crucially, isolation from the light pollution of civilization.

“It’s a perfect cocktail for astronomy,” said Daniela González, executive director of the Skies of Chile Foundation, a nonprofit that defends the quality of the country’s night skies.

But that may not be the case for much longer, a group of leading scientists warned in an open letter to Chile’s government released recently.

A private company is pressing ahead with plans to construct a giant renewable energy complex in sight of one of Earth’s most productive astronomical facilities — the Paranal Observatory, operated by an international consortium known as the European Southern Observatory, or ESO.

In the letter, 30 renowned international astronomers, including Reinhard Genzel, a 2020 Nobel laureate in astrophysics who conducted much of his prize-winning research on black holes with the ESO-operated telescopes in the Atacama Desert, describe the project as “an imminent threat” to humanity’s ability to study the cosmos, and unlock more of its unknowns.

“The damage would extend beyond Chile’s borders, affecting a worldwide scientific community that relies on observations made at Paranal to study everything from the formation of planets to the early universe,” the letter reads.

“We are convinced that economic development and scientific progress can and must coexist to the benefit of all people in Chile, but not at the irreversible expense of one of Earth’s unique and irreplaceable windows to the universe.”

The scientists join a chorus of voices that have been urging the Chilean government to relocate the hydrogen-based fuel production plant since the plan was unveiled a year ago by AES Andes, an offshoot of the American-based multinational AES Corp.

In response to a request for comment, AES Corp. stated that its own technical studies showed the project would be fully compatible with astronomical observations and compliant with the Chilean government’s strict regulations on light pollution.

“We encourage trust in the country’s institutional strength, which for decades has guaranteed certainty and environmental protection for multiple productive sectors,” the company stated.

The plan, which is still under environmental review, calls for 7,400 acres of wind and solar energy farms, a desalination plant and a new port.

That means not only a major increase in light pollution but also new dust, ground vibrations and heightened atmospheric turbulence that blurs stars and makes them twinkle. All of that — just 1.9 miles from the Paranal Observatory’s high-powered telescopes — will mess up views of key astronomical targets and could obstruct scientific advances, experts say.

“At the best sites in the world for astronomy, stars don’t twinkle; they are very stable, and even the smallest artificial turbulence would destroy these characteristics,” said Andreas Kaufer, the director of operations at ESO, which assesses that the AES project would increase light pollution by 35 percent.

“If the sky is becoming brighter from artificial light around us, we cannot do these observations anymore,” he said. “They’re lost. And, since we have the biggest and most sensitive telescopes at the best spot in the world, if they’re lost for us, they’re lost for everyone.”

Although this controversy might be specific to Chile, home to 40 percent of the world’s astronomy infrastructure, the project reflects the wider tension between natural darkness and industrialization tearing at countless countries as light pollution makes the night sky about 10 percent brighter each year.

“Major observatories have been chased out to remote locations, and essentially now they’re chased out to some of the last remaining dark sky locations on Earth, like the Atacama Desert, the mountain peaks of Hawaii, areas around Tucson, Arizona,” said Ruskin Hartley, the executive director of DarkSky International, a Tucson-based nonprofit founded by astronomers.

“All of them are now at risk from encroaching development and mining. It’s happening everywhere.”

Editor’s note: DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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MAYETTA, Kan. — The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, whose ancestors were uprooted by the U.S. from the Great Lakes region in the 1830s, are facing outrage from fellow Native Americans over plans to profit from another forced removal: President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

In October, a newly established tribal business entity quietly signed a nearly $30 million federal contract to come up with an early design for immigrant detention centers across the U.S. Amid the backlash, the tribe says it’s trying to get out of it.

Tribal leaders and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security haven’t responded to detailed questions about why the firm was selected for such a big contract without having to compete for the work as federal contracting normally requires. A former naval officer — who markets himself as the “go-to” adviser for tribes and affiliated companies seeking to land federal contracts — established the affiliate, KPB Services LLC, in April.

The criticism has been so intense that the 4,500-member tribe said it fired the economic development leaders who brokered the deal.

“We are known across the nation now as traitors and treasonous to another race of people,” said Ray Rice, 74, who added that he and other tribal members were blindsided. “We are brown and they’re brown.”

Tribal Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick promised “full transparency” about what he described as an “evolving situation.” In a video message to tribal members on Friday, he said the tribe is talking with legal counsel about ways to end the contract.

He alluded to the time when federal agents forcibly removed hundreds of Prairie Band Potawatomi families from their homes and ultimately corralled them onto a reservation slightly north of Topeka.

“We know our Indian reservations were the government’s first attempts at detention centers,” Rupnick said in the video message. “We were placed here because we were prisoners of war. So, we must ask ourselves why we would ever participate in something that mirrors the harm and the trauma once done to our people.”

In September, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for federal agents to conduct sweeping immigration raids and use apparent ethnicity as a relevant factor for a stop. With some Native Americans being swept up and detained in recent raids, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s overtures to tribes and even longstanding deals are generating extra scrutiny.

A limited liability company owned by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama also has a multimillion-dollar contract with ICE to provide financial and administrative services. Meanwhile, some shareholders of an Alaska Native corporation say their values don’t align with the corporation’s federal contracting division, Akima, to provide security at several ICE detention facilities.

“I’m shocked that there is any tribal nation that’s willing to assist the U.S. government in that,” said Brittany McKane, a 29-year-old Muscogee Nation citizen who attends the tribe’s college in Oklahoma.

Some tribal nations have advised their citizens to carry tribal IDs.

Last month, actor Elaine Miles said she was stopped by ICE agents who alleged her ID from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon was fake.

Tribes’ economic arms, which can be run by non-Natives, are under increasing pressure to generate revenue because of decreased federal funding, high inflation and competition from online gambling, said Gabe Galanda, an Indigenous rights attorney based in Seattle.

But the economic opportunities presented to tribes don’t always align with their values, said Galanda, a member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in northern California.

The Prairie Band Potawatomi has a range of businesses that provide health care management staffing, general contracting and even interior design.

KPB Services LLC was established in Holton, Kansas, and is not listed on the tribe’s website. It previously qualified along with dozens of other companies to provide logistical support to the U.S. Navy although, to date, it hasn’t performed any work for the federal government.

The ICE contract initially was awarded in October for $19 million for unspecified “due diligence and concept designs” for processing centers and detention centers throughout the U.S., according to a one-sentence description of the work on the federal government’s real-time contracting database. It was modified a month later to increase the payout ceiling to $29.9 million. Sole-source contracts above $30 million require additional justification under federal contracting rules.

The contract raises several questions and seems to go against the Trump administration’s stated goal of cleaning up waste, fraud and abuse, said Attorney Joshua Schnell, who specializes in federal contracting law.

“The public’s trust in the federal procurement system depends on transparency and competition,” said Schnell. “Although there is a role within this system for multimillion-dollar sole-source contracts, these contracts are an exception to statutory competition requirements, and taxpayers are entitled to know how the government is spending their money.”

It’s unclear what the Tribal Council knew about the contract. A Tribal Council spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests from the AP for details, including who was terminated.

What is known is that KPB Services was registered by Ernest C. Woodward Jr., a retired U.S. naval officer with degrees in engineering and business who is a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, according to a website for his one-time consulting firm, Burton Woodward Partners LLC.

The website describes Woodward as a serial entrepreneur and tribal adviser on mergers and acquisitions, accessing capital and landing federal contracts. The consulting firm was registered to an office park in Sarasota, Florida, in 2017 but was delisted two years later after it failed to file an annual report.

The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation stated in a 2017 news release that Woodward’s firm advised it on its acquisition of another government contractor, Mill Creek LLC, which specializes in outfitting federal buildings and the military with office furniture and medical equipment.

Woodward also is listed as the chief operating officer of the Florida branch of Prairie Band Construction Inc., which was registered in September.

Attempts to locate Woodward were unsuccessful. The phone number listed on the Burton Woodward Partners website was disconnected, and he did not respond to an email sent to another consulting firm he’s affiliated with — Virginia-based Chinkapin Partners LLC.

Carole Cadue-Blackwood, who has Prairie Band Potawatomi ancestry and is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, hopes the contract dies. She has fought the effort to open an ICE detention center in Leavenworth, Kansas, and works for a social service agency for Native Americans.

“I’m in just utter disbelief that this has happened,” she said.

Editor’s note: Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas, and Goodman from Miami. Graham Lee Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma, and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.

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LAS VEGAS — The Athletics are on track to open their approximately $2 billion Las Vegas stadium on time, officials said Dec. 4 during a Las Vegas Stadium Authority meeting.

The A’s, who are scheduled to move to Las Vegas before the 2028 Major League Baseball season, met their year-end goals of beginning the concrete phase, having cranes in place and putting in the first buttress and concrete column.

A’s President Marc Badain also was instrumental in getting Allegiant Stadium built in time for the start of the NFL season in 2020, when he was the Raiders’ president. Mortenson-McCarthy, a joint venture, built Allegiant and is the contractor for the Athletics’ new venue.

“I feel great about (the progress),” Badain said. “Obviously, we know the workforce. We know the construction firm, and the (supervisor) is the same super that delivered on Allegiant. When he tells me things are good, I don’t worry.”

A ceremonial ground-breaking event for the 33,000-person capacity, domed stadium located on the Las Vegas Strip occurred June 23. The A’s Ballpark Experience Center opened last week in Las Vegas to give fans a chance to view the stadium in detail and take part in other immersive experiences.

The price tag has gone up considerably twice, from $1.5 billion to $1.75 billion and now to the current estimate. A’s vice chairman Sandy Dean indicated he didn’t expect the cost to increase much more.

“I think we’re through a lot of the processes and design that were contributing to escalation,” Dean said. “Our strong goal is to keep it to that.”

Nevada and Clark County have approved up to $380 million in public funds for the ballpark, and the A’s have said they will cover the remaining expenses. Owner John Fisher has been seeking investors, but Dean said he didn’t have an update on that effort.

“I think the most important thing is that starting in December of 2024, we were able to describe the financing for the stadium as being complete,” Dean said. “We have the ability to bring in some investors. We thought, in particular, if we have Las Vegas investors, that will be a positive.”

Steve Hill, CEO and president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said A’s officials have not yet asked for their share of public assistance.

“It will probably be sometime next year,” Hill said.

Last week’s Las Vegas Stadium Authority meeting occurred one day short of the one-year anniversary of when it approved lease, non-relocation and development documents — the last major hurdles before construction. The lease and non-relocation agreements each cover 30 years.

Catherine Aker, vice president of communications and community, told the group the A’s already are heavily involved in Las Vegas, and in the past three years the club has supported every youth baseball and softball team in the area. Las Vegas’ Little League representative won the United States championship before losing to Taiwan in the international title game.

This year, the A’s played the first of at least three seasons at a minor league ballpark in West Sacramento, California. They played their previous 57 seasons in Oakland, California.

A’s management has been constructing a roster to be competitive when the club arrives in Las Vegas. Several young players, including Nick Kurtz and Jacob Wilson, who finished 1-2 in the AL Rookie of the Year voting, are under contract through at least 2028. Kurtz was the unanimous choice.

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LOS ANGELES — Frank Gehry, who designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96.

Gehry died Friday in his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners LLP.

Gehry’s fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of distinctive, striking buildings. Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the DZ Bank Building in Berlin.

He also designed an expansion of Facebook’s Northern California headquarters at the insistence of the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

Gehry was awarded every major prize architecture has to offer, including the field’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize, for what has been described as “refreshingly original and totally American” work.

Other honors include the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award, and his native country’s highest honor, the Companion of the Order of Canada.

After earning a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954 and serving in the Army, Gehry studied urban planning at Harvard University.

But his career got off to a slow start. He struggled for years to make ends meet, designing public housing projects, shopping centers and even driving a delivery truck for a time.

Eventually, he got the chance to design a modern shopping mall overlooking the Santa Monica Pier. He was determined to play it safe and came up with drawings for an enclosed shopping mall that looked like others in the United States in the 1980s.

To celebrate its completion, the mall’s developer dropped by Gehry’s house and was stunned by what he saw: The architect had transformed a modest 1920s-era bungalow into an inventive abode by remodeling it with chain-link fencing, exposed wood and corrugated metal.

Asked why he hadn’t proposed something similar for the mall, Gehry replied, “Because I have to make a living.”

If he really wanted to make a statement as an architect, he was told, he should drop that attitude and follow his creative vision.

Gehry would do just that for the rest of his life, working into his 90s to create buildings that doubled as stunning works of art.

As the acclaim grew, Gehry Partners LLP, the architectural firm he founded in 1962, grew with it, expanding to include more than 130 employees at one point. But as big as the firm got, Gehry insisted on personally overseeing every project it took on.

The headquarters of the InterActiveCorp, known as the IAC Building, took the shape of a shimmering beehive when it was completed in New York City’s Chelsea district in 2007. The 76-story New York by Gehry building (now known as 8 Spruce), once one of the world’s tallest residential structures, was a stunning addition to the lower Manhattan skyline when it opened in 2011.

That same year, Gehry joined the faculty of his alma mater, the University of Southern California, as a professor of architecture. He also taught at Yale and Columbia University.

Not everyone was a fan of Gehry’s work. Some naysayers dismissed it as not much more than gigantic, lopsided reincarnations of the little scrap-wood cities he said he spent hours building when he was growing up in the mining town of Timmins, Ontario.

Princeton art critic Hal Foster dismissed many of his later efforts as “oppressive,” arguing they were designed primarily to be tourist attractions. Some denounced the Walt Disney Concert Hall as looking like a collection of cardboard boxes that had been left out in the rain.

Still other critics included Dwight D. Eisenhower’s family, who objected to Gehry’s bold proposal for a memorial to honor the nation’s 34th president. Although the family said it wanted a simple memorial and not the one Gehry had proposed, with its multiple statues and billowing metal tapestries depicting Eisenhower’s life, the architect declined to change his design significantly.

If the words of his critics annoyed Gehry, he rarely let on. Indeed, he even sometimes played along. He appeared as himself in a 2005 episode of “The Simpsons” in which he agreed to design a concert hall that was later converted into a prison.

He came up with the idea for the design, which looked a lot like the Walt Disney Concert Hall, after crumpling Marge Simpson’s letter to him and throwing it on the ground. After looking at it, he declared, “Frank Gehry, you’ve done it again!”

“Some people think I actually do that,” he later told the AP.

Ephraim Owen Goldberg was born in Toronto on Feb. 28, 1929, and moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1947, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen. As an adult, he changed his name at the suggestion of his first wife, who told him antisemitism might be holding back his career.

Although he had enjoyed drawing and building model cities as a child, Gehry said it wasn’t until he was 20 that he pondered the possibility of pursuing a career in architecture, after a college ceramics teacher recognized his talent.

“It was like the first thing in my life that I’d done well in,” he said.

Gehry steadfastly denied being an artist though.

“Yes, architects in the past have been both sculptors and architects,” he declared in a 2006 interview with The Associated Press. “But I still think I’m doing buildings, and it’s different from what they do.”

His words reflected both a lifelong shyness and an insecurity that stayed with Gehry long after he’d been declared the greatest architect of his time.

“I’m totally flabbergasted that I got to where I’ve gotten,” he told the AP in 2001. “Now it seems inevitable, but at the time it seemed very problematic.”

The Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi, first proposed in 2006, is expected to finally be completed in 2026 after a series of construction delays and sporadic work. The 30,000-square-foot structure will be the world’s largest Guggenheim building.

His survivors include his wife, Berta; daughter, Brina; and sons Alejandro and Samuel. Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.

Editor’s note: Rogers, the principal writer of this obituary, retired from The Associated Press in 2021. Reporter Jaimie Ding contributed from Los Angeles.

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By CHRISTOS MAKRIDIS
The Conversation

Do your office, inbox and calendar feel like a ghost town on Friday afternoons? You’re not alone.

I’m a labor economist who studies how technology and organizational change affect productivity and well-being. In a study published in an August 2025 working paper, I found that the way people allocate their time to work has changed profoundly since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

For example, among professionals in occupations that can be done remotely, 35% to 40% worked remotely on Thursdays and Fridays in 2024, compared with only 15% in 2019. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, nearly 30% worked remotely, versus 10% to 15% five years earlier.

And white-collar employees have also become more likely to log off from work early on Fridays. They’re starting the weekend sooner than before the pandemic, whether while working at an office or remotely as the workweek comes to a close. Why is that happening? I suspect that remote work has diluted the barrier between the workweek and the weekend — especially when employees aren’t working at the office.

The changing rhythm of work

The American Time Use Survey, which the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts annually, asks thousands of Americans to recount how they spent the previous day, minute by minute. It tracks how long they spend working, commuting, doing housework and caregiving.

Because these diaries cover both weekdays and weekends, and include information about whether respondents could work remotely, this survey offers the most detailed picture available of how the rhythms of work and life are changing. This data also allows me to see where people conduct each activity, making it possible to estimate the share of time American professionals spend working from home.

When I examined how the typical workday changed between 2019 and 2024, I saw dramatic shifts in where, when and how people worked throughout that period.

Millions of professionals who had never worked remotely suddenly did so full time at the height of the pandemic. Hybrid arrangements have since become common; many employees spend two or three days a week at home and the rest in the office.

I found another change: From 2019 to 2024, the average number of minutes worked on Fridays fell by about 90 minutes in jobs that can be done from home. That change accounts for other factors, such as a professional’s age, education and occupation.

The decline for employees with jobs that are harder to do remotely was much smaller.

Even if you just look at the raw data, U.S. employees with the potential to work remotely were working about 7½ hours per weekday on average in 2024, down about 13 minutes from 2019. These averages mask substantial variation between those with jobs that can more easily be done remotely and those who must report to the office most of the time.

For example, among workers in the more remote-intensive jobs, they spent 7 hours, 6 minutes working on Fridays in 2024, but 8 hours, 24 minutes in 2019.

That means I found, looking at the raw data, that Americans were working 78 fewer minutes on Fridays in 2024 than five years earlier. And controlling for other factors (e.g., demographics), this is actually an even larger 90-minute difference for employees who can do their jobs remotely.

In contrast, those employees were working longer hours on Wednesdays. They worked 8 hours, 24 minutes on Wednesdays in 2024, half an hour more than the 7 hours, 54 minutes logged on that day of the week in 2019. Clearly, there’s a shift from some Friday hours, with employees making up the bulk of the difference on other weekdays.

Fridays have long been a little different

Although employees are shifting some of this skipped work time to other days of the week, most of the reduction — whether at the office or at home — has gone to leisure.

To be sure, Fridays have always been a little different than other weekdays. Many bosses allowed their staff to dress more casually on Fridays and permitted people to depart early, long before the pandemic began. But the ability to work remotely has evidently amplified that tendency.

This informal easing into the weekend, once confined to office norms, can be a morale booster. But as it has expanded, it’s become more individualized through remote and hybrid arrangements.

Those workers in remote-intensive occupations who are single, young or male reduced their working hours across the board the most, relative to 2019, although their time on the job increased a bit in 2024.

The benefits and limits of flexibility

There are a few causal studies on the effects of remote work on productivity and well-being in the workplace, including some in which I participated. A general takeaway is that people tend to spend less time collaborating and more time on independent tasks when they work remotely.

That’s fine for some professions, but in roles that depend on frequent coordination, that pattern can complicate communication or weaken team cohesion. Colocation — being physically present with your colleagues — does matter for some types of tasks.

But even if productivity doesn’t necessarily suffer, every hour of unscheduled, independent work can be an hour not spent in coordinated effort with colleagues. That means what happens when people clock out or log off early on a Friday — whether at home or at their office — depends on the nature of their work.

In occupations that require continuous handoffs — such as journalism, health care or customer service — staggered schedules can actually improve efficiency by spreading coverage across more hours in the day.

But for employees in project-based or collaborative roles that depend on overlapping hours for brainstorming, review or decision-making, uneven schedules can create friction. When colleagues are rarely online at the same time, small delays can compound and slow collective progress.

The problem arises when flexible work becomes so individualized that it erodes shared rhythms altogether. The time-use data I analyzed suggests that remote-capable employees now spread their work more unevenly across the week, with less overlap in real time.

Eventually, that can make it harder to sustain the informal interactions and team cohesion that once happened organically when everyone left the office together at the end of the week. As some of my other research has shown, that also can reduce job satisfaction and increase turnover in jobs requiring greater coordination.

The future of work

To be sure, allowing employees to do remote work and have some scheduling flexibility on any day of the week isn’t necessarily bad for business.

The benefits — in terms of work-life balance, autonomy, recruitment and reducing turnover — can be very real.

Flexible and remote arrangements expand the pool of potential applicants by freeing employers from strict geographic limits. A company based in Chicago can now hire a software engineer in Boise or a designer in Atlanta without requiring relocation.

This wider reach increases the supply of qualified candidates. It can — particularly in jobs requiring more coordination — also improve retention by allowing employees to adjust their work schedules around family or personal needs rather than having to choose between relocating or quitting.

What’s more, many women who might have had to exit the labor force altogether when they became parents have been able to remain employed, at least on a part-time basis.

But in my view, the erosion of Fridays may go beyond what began as an informal tradition — leaving the office early before the weekend begins. It is part of a broader shift toward individualized schedules that expand autonomy but reduce shared time for coordination.

Christos Makridis is an associate research professor of information systems at Arizona State University’s Institute for Humane Studies.

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HONG KONG — Hong Kong officials said Monday that their investigation into a deadly blaze that killed at least 151 people has revealed some of the netting that covered scaffolding used in renovations was not up to fire-safety codes, as a wave of public sympathy and support was met by government moves to stifle criticism.

The blaze, which started on Nov. 26 and took two days to fully extinguish, started on the lower-level netting covering bamboo scaffolding around one building in the Wang Fuk Court group of high-rises. It then swept inside as foam panels placed over windows caught fire and blew out the glass. Winds carried flames from building to building, all covered in scaffolding and netting, until seven of eight were ablaze.

Initial tests of the netting showed it was up to code, but subsequently investigators collected 20 samples from all areas, including higher floors, and found seven failed safety standards. Results suggest contractors skimped to make greater profits, said Eric Chan, Hong Kong’s Chief Secretary.

“They just wanted to make money at the expense of people’s lives,” he told reporters.

Donations for survivors of the fire had reached 900 million Hong Kong dollars ($115 million) as of Monday, authorities said, as a steady stream of people placed flowers, cards and other tributes at a makeshift memorial near the burned-out block of buildings.

“When something happens, we come out to help each other,” said Loretta Loh, after paying her regards at the site. “I have a heavy heart.”

Some 4,600 people lived in the Wang Fuk Court complex in the suburb of Tai Po.

Hong Kong police Disaster Victim Identification Unit staff had searched five of the burned buildings but only made partial progress through the remaining two, said Tsang Shuk-yin, head of the police casualty enquiry unit. Teams were assessing the safety of the other buildings, including the one that caught fire first and suffered the worst damage.

On Monday they recovered eight more bodies, including three that firefighters found earlier but could not retrieve. Dozens of people remain unaccounted for, but some are likely among the 39 bodies not yet identified, Tsang said.

“We will have to wait until we get through all seven blocks before we can make a final report,” she said.

Private donations and 300 million Hong Kong dollars ($38.5 million) in start-up capital from the government will be used to help victims rebuild their homes and provide long-term support, local officials said. The government has also given survivors cash subsidies to help with expenses, including funerals, and is working to find them housing.

By Monday, 683 residents had found lodging in local hotels and hostels, and 1,144 more had moved into transitional housing units. Two emergency shelters remained open for others, authorities said.

Residents had complained for almost a year about the construction netting, Hong Kong’s Labor Department said. It confirmed officials had carried out 16 inspections of the renovation project since July 2024 and had warned contractors multiple times in writing that they had to meet fire safety requirements. The latest inspection was just a week before the fire.

Hong Kong’s anti-corruption authorities and police have arrested 14 people, including the directors and a construction company’s engineering consultant, according to Chris Tang, the secretary for security.

People have increasingly questioned whether government officials should also be held responsible.

“People are angry and think that the HK (Hong Kong) government should be accountable,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a local political scientist and senior research fellow at Paris’ Asia Centre think tank.

But the leeway for dissent is limited in the former British colony, which came under Chinese control in 1997 and has moved to quiet public criticism on national security grounds.

“There are rumors being spread by bad people giving fake news about the firefighters not employing the correct tactics to fight the fire, or victims being charged 8,000 Hong Kong dollars a night to stay in hotels – these are all false,” Tang said.

“We will arrest these rumormongers.”

On Saturday, the Office for Safeguarding National Security blasted what it called “evil schemes” that had ”the ulterior motives of using the disaster to create trouble and disrupt Hong Kong.” It did not give specifics.

Also Saturday, a man who helped organize an online petition calling for government accountability was arrested on suspicion of sedition, local media including HK01 and Sing Tao Daily reported. On Sunday, authorities arrested two others, including a volunteer who offered help in Tai Po after the fire broke out, the same outlets reported.

Hong Kong officials were operating like authorities in mainland China, forestalling protests before they might develop, Cabestan said.

Tang would not give specific details of the three arrests but said that police “must take action” against those who try to “endanger national security,” saying broadly that some people have been “taking advantage of the saddening moment … and attempting to incite hatred against the government.”

Dissent in the city has been muzzled since hundreds of thousands took to the streets in 2019 to oppose government plans to allow extradition to mainland China. Hong Kong now virtually bans mass protests and bars opposition political figures from running in legislature elections.

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As America’s aging roads fall further behind on much-needed repairs, cities and states are turning to artificial intelligence to spot the worst hazards and decide which fixes should come first.

Hawaii officials, for example, are giving away 1,000 dashboard cameras as they try to reverse a recent spike in traffic fatalities. The cameras will use AI to automate inspections of guardrails, road signs and pavement markings, instantly discerning between minor problems and emergencies that warrant dispatching a maintenance crew.

“This is not something where it’s looked at once a month and then they sit down and figure out where they’re going to put their vans,” said Richard Browning, chief commercial officer at Nextbase, which developed the dashcams and imagery platform for Hawaii.

After the city of San Jose started mounting cameras on street sweepers, staffers confirmed the system correctly identified potholes 97 percent of the time. Now they’re adding cameras to parking enforcement vehicles.

Texas, where there are more roadway lane miles than the next two states combined, is less than a year into a massive AI plan that uses cameras as well as cellphone data from drivers who enroll to improve safety.

Other states use the technology to inspect street signs or build annual reports about road congestion.

Hawaii drivers over the next few weeks will be able to sign up for a free dashcam valued at $499 under the “Eyes on the Road” campaign, which was piloted on service vehicles in 2021 before being paused due to wildfires.

Roger Chen, a University of Hawaii associate professor of engineering who is helping facilitate the program, said the state faces unique challenges in maintaining its outdated roadway infrastructure.

“Equipment has to be shipped to the island,” Chen said. “There’s a space constraint and a topography constraint they have to deal with, so it’s not an easy problem.”

Although things such as street debris and faded paint on lane lines are also monitored, the companies behind the technology particularly tout the program’s ability to detect damaged guardrails.

“They’re analyzing all guardrails in their state, every single day,” said Mark Pittman, CEO of Blyncsy, which combines the dashboard feeds with mapping software to analyze road conditions.

Hawaii transportation officials are aware of the risks that can stem from broken guardrails. Last year, the state reached a $3.9 million settlement with the family of a driver who was killed in 2020 after slamming into a guardrail that had been damaged in a crash 18 months earlier but never repaired.

In October, Hawaii recorded its 106th traffic fatality of 2025 — more than the total in 2024. It’s unclear how many of the deaths were related to road problems, but Chen said the grim trend underscores the timeliness of the dashboard program.

San Jose has reported strong early success in identifying potholes and road debris just by mounting cameras on a few street sweepers and parking enforcement vehicles.

But Mayor Matt Mahan, a Democrat who founded two tech startups before entering politics, said the effort will be much more effective if cities contribute their images to a shared AI database. The system can recognize a road problem that it has seen before — even if it happened somewhere else, Mahan said.

“It sees, ‘Oh, that actually is a cardboard box wedged between those two parked vehicles, and that counts as debris on a roadway,’” Mahan said. “We could wait five years for that to happen here, or maybe we have it at our fingertips.”

San Jose officials helped establish the GovAI Coalition, which went public in March 2024 for governments to share best practices and eventually data. Other local governments in California, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas and Washington, as well as the state of Colorado, are members.

Not all AI approaches to improving road safety require cameras.

Massachusetts-based Cambridge Mobile Telematics launched a system called StreetVision that uses cellphone data to identify risky driving behavior. The company works with state transportation departments to pinpoint where specific road conditions are fueling those dangers.

Ryan McMahon, the company’s senior vice president of strategy & corporate development, was attending a conference in Washington, D.C., when he noticed the StreetVision software was showing a massive number of vehicles braking aggressively on a nearby road.

The reason: a bush was obstructing a stop sign, which drivers weren’t seeing until the last second.

“What we’re looking at is the accumulation of events,” McMahon said. “That brought me to an infrastructure problem, and the solution to the infrastructure problem was a pair of garden shears.”

Texas officials have been using StreetVision and various other AI tools to address safety concerns. The approach was particularly helpful recently when they scanned 250,000 lane miles to identify old street signs long overdue for replacement.

“If something was installed 10 or 15 years ago and the work order was on paper, God help you trying to find that in the digits somewhere,” said Jim Markham, who deals with crash data for the Texas Department of Transportation. “Having AI that can go through and screen for that is a force multiplier that basically allows us to look wider and further much faster than we could just driving stuff around.”

Experts in AI-based road safety techniques say what’s being done now is largely just a stepping stone for a time when a large proportion of vehicles on the road will be driverless.

Pittman, the Blyncsy CEO who has worked on the Hawaii dashcam program, predicts that within eight years almost every new vehicle — with or without a driver — will come with a camera.

“How do we see our roadways today from the perspective of Grandma in a Buick but also Elon and his Tesla?” Pittman said. “This is (a) really important nuance for departments of transportation and city agencies. They’re now building infrastructure for humans and automated drivers alike, and they need to start bridging that divide.”

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