The Arctic continues to deteriorate from global warming, not setting as many records this year as in the past, but still changing so rapidly that federal scientists call it alarming in their annual Arctic report card.

The 16th straight health check for the northern polar region spotlighted the first ever rainfall at Greenland summit station, record warm temperatures between October and December 2020, and the new problem of expansion of beavers in the Arctic.

Navigating her boat toward a wooden platform floating in an idyllic New Hampshire lake where "On Golden Pond" was filmed, biologist Tiffany Grade spotted what she had feared.

An olive brown loon's egg with black speckles was sitting on an nest, abandoned by its parents and with no chance to hatch. Gently scooping it up with gloved hands, Grade placed the egg in a zip lock bag and packed it into a cooler.

Stocks are opening lower again on Wall Street Tuesday as traders took in the latest sign that inflation is still running high. The S&P 500 index gave up 0.5% in the early going. Technology companies had some of the biggest losses, which helped pull the Nasdaq down 0.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was little changed. Treasury yields rose after the latest report on inflation, which showed that wholesale prices jumped a record 9.6% in November from a year earlier, more than expected. Federal Reserve policymakers began a two-day meeting Tuesday at which they're expected to speed up the withdrawal of economic stimulus measures.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story follows below.

Newcastle's Saudi ownership can start signing up sponsors from the kingdom after new English Premier League rules were introduced to end the brief ban on clubs bringing in such deals to potentially inflate income.

After the Saudi state's sovereign wealth fund took control of Newcastle, a freeze on any clubs signing commercial deals with companies linked to their investors was rushed through temporarily by rivals in October to prevent them being used unfairly to comply with financial regulations.

Calling him a "clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman," Time magazine has named Tesla CEO Elon Musk as its Person of the Year for 2021.

Musk, who is also the founder and CEO space exploration company SpaceX, recently passed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the world's wealthiest person as the rising price of Tesla pushed his net worth to around $300 billion. He owns about 17% of Tesla's stock, which sold for almost $1,000 each on Monday.

Workers, volunteers and members of the National Guard fanned out in areas of Kentucky slammed by a series of tornadoes to begin the long process of recovery, including replacing thousands of damaged utility poles, delivering bottles of drinking water and continuing to search for the dead.

The tornado outbreak Friday that killed at least 88 people in five states — 74 of them in Kentucky — cut a path of devastation that stretched from Arkansas, where a nursing home was destroyed, to Illinois, where an Amazon distribution center was heavily damaged.

Pfizer said Tuesday that its experimental pill to treat COVID-19 appears effective against the omicron variant.

The company also said full results of its 2,250-person study confirmed the pill's promising early results against the virus: The drug reduced combined hospitalizations and deaths by about 89% among high-risk adults when taken shortly after initial COVID-19 symptoms.

The omicron variant appears to cause less severe disease than previous versions of the coronavirus, and the Pfizer vaccine seems to offer less defense against infection from it but still good protection from hospitalization, according to an analysis of data from South Africa, where the new variant is driving a surge in infections.

While the findings released Tuesday are preliminary and have not been peer-reviewed — the gold standard in scientific research — they line up with other early data about omicron's behavior, including that it seems to be more easily transmitted.

A person who was on Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's flight back from the United Arab Emirates has tested positive for COVID-19, the prime minister's office said Tuesday.

Bennett returned to Israel on Monday from a historic two-day trip to the Gulf Arab state, the first by an Israeli leader to the country, which recently normalized ties with Israel.

Israel's intelligence minister said Tuesday that Syria cannot be allowed to obtain chemical weapons, after a report emerged that Israel targeted the country's chemical weapons facilities.

In an interview with Israeli Army Radio, Elazar Stern would not directly comment on the report in the Washington Post that said that Israel struck Syria on two occasions — once this year and once last year — in a bid to block attempts to rebuild its chemical weapons stockpile. But Stern, a retired military general, hinted that Israel could not accept such weapons in the hands of its enemy to the north.