ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — With her purple-and-pink hair swaying, Reneé Colón stands on a stepladder in the rented corner of a warehouse, pouring Brazilian coffee beans into her groaning old roasting machine.

The beans are precious because they survived severe drought in a year when environmental conditions depressed coffee production globally, doubling the price of raw beans in just months.

“Unfortunately, coffee is going to become more scarce,” said Colón, founder and roaster at Fuego Coffee Roasters. “Seeing that dramatic loss of the Brazilian crop is a perfect example.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is a collaboration between Rochester Institute of Technology and The Associated Press.

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Losses from heat and drought have cut production forecasts in Brazil and Vietnam, the world’s largest coffee growers. Global production is still expected to increase, but not as much as commodity market investors had expected. That’s sent coffee prices up, largely because of continued high demand in Europe, the U.S., and China.

Prices peaked in February but have remained high, forcing roasters like Colón to weigh how much of that cost to absorb and how much to pass on to consumers.

The beans Colón was roasting cost her $5.50 per pound in early March, more than double what they cost in September. And that was for mixed, midrange beans. Specialty coffees — grown in delicate climates to slow growth and add flavor — can cost even more.

President Donald Trump’s current 10% tariffs cover most coffee-producing countries, including Brazil, Ethiopia and Colombia, and are expected to drive up costs for Americans. Amid his chaotic tariff pronouncements — at one point he threatened 46% tariffs on Vietnam imports and 32% on Indonesia imports before pausing them — American coffee roasters are rethinking their supply chains.

“With all these changes in coffee maybe we should open our own damn farm,” Colón muses.

Rural New York isn’t an option, of course. The world’s best coffee thrives near the equator, where seasons are long, and in high altitudes, where slow growing allows beans to gather flavor. But Puerto Rico, where Colón and her husband have roots, isn’t a serious option, either — labor costs are too high and she worries about the increasing risk of crop-damaging hurricanes.

She shrugs off buying coffee from Hawaii and California, which she says is either poor quality, overpriced or both.

In February, global coffee green exports were down 14.2% from a year earlier, according to the International Coffee Organization’s market report. The shortage led to the highest price ever for raw coffee in February, breaking the record set in 1977 when severe frost wiped out 70% of Brazil’s coffee plants.

Climate isn’t the only thing driving up prices, said Daria Whalen, a buyer for San Francisco-based Ritual Coffee Roasters. Inflation is driving up the cost of labor, fertilizers, and borrowing, she said.

She described being in Mexico in April seeking to finalize contracts between Trump’s fits and starts on tariffs. It reminded her of being in Colombia a month earlier as Trump threatened and then backed away from tariffs that would have affected coffee prices.

“It was kind of like roller coaster day, because at the end of the day it didn’t exist,” Whalen said.

Some of the recent rise in coffee prices may be from importers buying extra in anticipation of the tariffs. Colón believes prices will go still higher as import taxes begin being paid. And with consumer confidence hitting a 12-year low, Colón could see a decrease in demand for her premium coffee.

“It is tough on our end because it drives the price up, tough on the consumer end because they have to pay more and tough on the farmers’ end because they may be experiencing really significant losses,” Colón said.

Yet she’s committed to expanding.

In December, she and her husband took out a $50,000 loan to buy a custom coffee roaster from Turkey that will triple capacity. They’re trying to increase sales by adding new wholesale clients like coffee shops, and selling directly to homes via a beans-of-the-month-style subscription service.

The Colóns have raised the wholesale price on a pound of roasted beans by 25 cents. They’re considering doing the same for pour-overs and espresso drinks at their two retail locations.

At one of those, called Melo, one couple said they don’t look at the coffee’s price on the receipt. For them, it’s a treat.

“We know we could go find coffee cheaper somewhere else,” said Rob Newell, a high school biology teacher, as he held a cooing infant daughter alongside his wife, who is also a teacher. “Maybe it’s just because we’re new parents, but you get, like, cabin fever staying in the house all day.”

Colón is also seeking to cut costs.

The warehouse where she roasts has some extra space, so she’s weighing stacking up more bags of raw beans there to save as much as $500 on monthly storage costs in port cities.

She’s tried to cultivate relationships with farmers to minimize price spikes and control bean quality. She described working with a farmer in Colombia as coffee prices were spiking in February to lock in a one-year contract that avoided the worst of the increase.

And like many small business owners, she’s had to get used to the complexity of tariffs.

In January, she turned down a pitch from a Montreal coffee importer who suggested the U.S. dollar’s strength in Canada would allow her to save money by importing through their warehouse. She feared that tariffs on Canada could increase prices. Plus, the coffee would have to cross an extra border, risking delays. And the value of the dollar has been up and down.

“I want things to be less complicated instead of more,” she said.

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) — Members of the LGBTQ+ community on Tuesday modeled creations inspired by Lady Gaga’s iconic style at a fashion show in Brazil featuring outfits made either by the models themselves or by the sustainable fashion house “Escola de Divines.”

The fashion show took place at Rio de Janeiro’s Central train station and aimed to publicize the special train schedule for Lady Gaga’s Saturday concert on Copacabana Beach.

It also served as an awareness campaign guiding the LGBTQ+ population on how to stay safe and what to do in cases of violence, as well as tips to preserve sexual health.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Vietnam War greatly impacted U.S. society from the passage of the War Powers Resolution that restricts the president’s ability to send troops into extended combat without congressional approval to the cementing of college campuses as centers of student activism.

Millions of U.S. troops fought in Vietnam. For some Americans, the war that effectively ended with the fall of Saigon 50 years ago Wednesday on April 30, 1975, continues to shape their lives.

They include: A woman dedicated to recovering her father’s remains after the bomber he piloted disappeared over Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin. A Vietnam veteran who was heckled like scores of other troops when he returned home and now assists fellow veterans in rural Alaska. And an anti-war movement stalwart who has spent decades advocating for free speech after her brother was wounded when Ohio National Guard troops fired into a crowd of protesters at Kent State University.

Here are their stories.

Still waiting for dad to return home

Fifty years after the fall of Saigon, Jeanie Jacobs Huffman has not lost hope of bringing her father home.

Huffman was only five months old when her father, Navy Cdr. Edward J. Jacobs Jr., was reported missing in action after the plane he was piloting to photograph enemy targets vanished in 1967 over the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam.

Huffman has dedicated her life to finding the plane and recovering his remains and those of his two crew members. She also serves on the board of directors of Mission: POW-MIA, a nonprofit group dedicated to finding unaccounted Americans from past conflicts.

“It’s a lot of missing, you know, a huge void in my life,” she said, breaking into tears.

A professional photographer, Huffman has made a poster featuring the faces of the 1,573 missing service members from Vietnam.

“After this many years, we should never leave anyone behind,” she said.

A year ago, she visited the Gulf of Tonkin through a trip with the United States Institute of Peace, a nonprofit that promotes education and research on conflicts to prevent future wars. The group’s translator, who was from North Vietnam and also lost family members in the war, walked with Huffman into the water. Holding hands, they both cried, sharing their grief.

“So that was the closest I’ve been to him in 58 years,” Huffman said of her father.

She’s pushing for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to conduct an underwater search operation next year in hopes of recovering the plane. The U.S. Department of Defense agency is responsible for recovering and identifying service members listed as missing in action or prisoners of war.

“He deserves to be brought back home,” she said. “Even if it’s just a bone or a dog tag. Even the tangible things, like a dog tag or a piece of his plane, mean a lot to me because I don’t have anything else.”

Finding salvation after so many decades

For George Bennett, the road to sobriety and mental health continued long after flying home through San Francisco in 1968, where “sneering” protesters met returning soldiers in the terminal.

Someone yelled out, “baby killer.” Another spit at them. He and his fellow soldiers were turned away from one airport restaurant.

Only later did he realize how much Vietnam had changed him because the war went against the strict sense of values and Indigenous practices instilled by his parents.

A member of Alaska’s Tlingit tribe, Bennett said, “I would go get my beer and come home … just drink beer and do nothing.”

“I think part of it was the fact that I was ashamed and guilty because I was part of the atrocity that occurred in Vietnam. I feel that I violated the value and some of our cultural norms, and it made me want to run.”

And he did, from bar to bar and job to job.

Finally, he wound up receiving help for alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder.

It’s taken him 30 years to feel better, largely because of the support of Mary, his wife of 55 years. She insisted they move to the southeast Alaska city of Sitka, where he has integrated back into his native Tlingit culture.

He’s now Alaska’s sole rural veteran liaison, helping veterans secure benefits in the military’s health care system.

“I really had to find my spiritual way again,” he said. “It took me a while to get there, but here I am.”

Kent State University protester sees lessons for today

Chic Canfora still becomes emotional when she talks about the fall of Saigon.

Canfora was part of an anti-war protest at Kent State University in 1970 when Ohio National Guard troops fired into the crowd, killing four fellow students and wounding nine others, including her brother. The bullets sent Canfora diving for cover.

She believes the protest helped galvanize public opinion that would hasten the withdrawal of U.S. troops and ultimately lead to the fall of Saigon and the war’s demise.

A decade ago, Canfora visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington and was overcome at seeing how the number of names of the fallen dwindled after 1970.

“That was the first time it really hit me the impact of the anti-war movement and, so it’s particularly meaningful for me this year,” she said, choking up.

Canfora, who teaches journalism at Kent State, has spent her life sharing what she experienced. She said the lessons learned are more relevant than ever amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on student protesters, fears of deportation for international students and what critics describe as unprecedented attacks on campus speech.

She said she sees echoes of the past when then Ohio Gov. James Rhodes, who sent in the National Guard, called the Kent State demonstrators “the worst type of people that we harbor in America.”

“I was too young and too naive to recognize the danger of such inflammatory rhetoric because, in essence, all of these leaders in our country were putting targets on the backs of American college students who have historically served as the conscience of America,” Canfora said.

“I think students today are going through that same metamorphosis of awareness that I did in 1970.”

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Watson reported from San Diego.