WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A zoo in Florida has two reasons to celebrate — the first birth of a koala and a newly renovated habitat for the cuddly creatures is opening to the public on Saturday.
“For the zoo and for us here, it’s the very big deal,” said Amarylis Celestina, who oversees carnivores and koalas at the Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society in West Palm Beach, Florida. "We are trying the best that we can to help with a lot of the genetic diversity within the population that we have here in the United States. So that’s why it’s important that we do have a joey and that we were successful this year.”
The joey, born to Ellin and Sydney last fall, remains in its mother's pouch and has just recently started to become visible to zoo officials.
They continue to monitor Ellin's weight, and are providing extra food as she cares for the baby.
Meanwhile, the koala population is enjoying a renovated habitat, which include more greenery, new perching for exercising, and solar tubes to bring in more natural light. The changes bring a bit of the Australian outback to the zoo for koalas, which are an endangered species. They are able to move between their climate-controlled indoor exhibit and the expanded outdoor area.
“This new habitat is a milestone for our koalas,” Margo McKnight, the zoo's CEO and president said in a news release. “The deliberate design supports the voluntary, cooperative care our zoologists and koalas have developed together.”
Koalas in the U.S. are on loan from the Australian federal government to help with conservation practices.
Koalas are generally peaceful, have a calm nature and enjoy a “slow” lifestyle. They like to climb and hop between the trees in the habitat. The renovations are designed to help koalas express their natural behaviors, zoo officials said.
Frisaro reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
A koala named Ellin sits inside a habitat at Palm Beach Zoo Conservation Society in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday, April 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Cody Jackson)
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Thousands of Puerto Ricans are struggling with water shortages so severe that the governor of the U.S. territory has activated the National Guard and emergency responders are fielding calls every day.
Officials have not publicly pinpointed the cause, with shortages largely affecting some areas in the island's most populated cities, including the capital San Juan. The island's utilities company extracts water from rivers, reservoirs and underground aquifers that have in the past provided sufficient supply for the island's 3.2 million people.
Residents are being forced to buy potable water, spend money at laundromats and haul heavy buckets up several flights of stairs to wash dishes, flush toilets and take showers. The elderly and disabled struggle the most, with community leaders noting that some have been hospitalized as water shortages persist.
Jorge Figueroa, a community leader for several impoverished San Juan neighborhoods, stood by his car one recent morning fielding questions from residents wondering when the next water truck would swing by.
“They are playing with people's health and lives,” Figueroa said.
Some customers in San Juan began reporting intermittent service more than a year ago, with the governor acknowledging the infrastructure has lacked investment and maintenance for decades.
The water outages have grown so severe that Mayor Miguel Romero sued Puerto Rico’s Water and Sewer Authority in late May.
People like Jeannette Mercado Rodríguez have spent up to two weeks without water as Puerto Rico's searing summer starts and meteorologists are already issuing heat advisories.
“This is really exhausting; it’s maddening,” she said.
The 52-year-old is among the lucky ones: a water truck is stationed near her public housing complex, Las Margaritas. But she still has to haul five buckets and 10 2-liter (half-gallon) bottles up to her third-floor apartment every day. She recently injured her shoulder doing so.
“We can’t take it sometimes,” Mercado said, confiding that she has broken down and cried. “There are older people here, bedridden people.”
Nearly 40,000 customers were hit with water outages on the first weekend of June. That prompted Gov. Jenniffer González to activate the National Guard, which began distributing water via four trucks with a capacity of 2,000 gallons (7,570 liters) each.
Puerto Rico’s Tourism Company brought in additional water trucks with a capacity of 12,800 gallons (48,453 liters) to help serve hotels and short-term rentals.
The need for water is so great that even Puerto Rico’s Department of Agriculture sanitized two large trucks that transport milk and instead used them to deliver potable water.
Despite those measures, water remains scarce for many in San Juan and beyond. At least one stationary tanker in an impoverished community sat empty for a couple of days, with residents cheering the water truck when it arrived, calling municipal workers “heroes.” Other residents also complain that the government doesn't inform them when a water truck will stop by, with those at work missing out.
“This has been a disaster,” said Luz Laborde, president of a neighborhood association in Santurce, a working-class community in San Juan. “This is inhuman … It’s destroying the emotional state of a people.”
Dozens of Puerto Ricans young and old crowded into a courtroom on a recent morning, eager to hear a ruling on the lawsuit that San Juan's mayor filed against the island's water and sewer company as they questioned when their water would return.
“We are exhausted,” said Marcia Soler París, a 61-year-old community leader. “We shouldn’t be living this way. We don’t deserve this.”
Every day at dawn, phones ping as people in San Juan and elsewhere share whether they have water, just a trickle or nothing at all.
Soler calls the emergency management office every other day to request a water truck for her and her neighbors. She lives with her daughter, who has three boys ages 13, 10 and 4, and they play soccer every day. Like many, they don't have a cistern.
“I don’t know what it is to see a stream of water,” said Soler, who recently spent $40 at a laundromat and was forced to buy plastic cups and plates for her family.
The extra costs are straining the budgets of many on the island of 3.2 million people where more than 40% live below the poverty line.
Soler said some of her neighbors bedridden and caregivers are forced to use towels and wet wipes to clean them. Another neighbor is blind, so people ferry water up to her apartment.
For years, chronic power outages have been a big frustration for many Puerto Ricans. Water woes also are at the top of the list now.
At Villa Kennedy, a nearby public housing complex, Elizabeth Sánchez, 79, explained how she injured her waist carrying buckets of water. Her husband can no longer help because he injured his back for the same reason.
“What we are going through is horrible,” she said as she began to cry.
In February 2025, Puerto Rico's governor appointed Luis González Delgado as executive president of the island's Water and Sewer Authority.
Months later, former regional director Roberto Martínez Toledo was replaced. But Martínez was recently appointed to a new committee ordered by a judge to work with the agency to investigate and solve the chronic water shortages.
The mayor of San Juan, who is a member of the governor's party, said that if Martínez hadn't been removed from his position, “we wouldn't be here talking about this issue.”
The new head of the water and sewer agency blamed Martínez for some of the problems.
“(The crisis) could have been avoided if Roberto Martínez had answered the phone the first day I called him,” González told reporters this week, adding that he is willing to work with him.
Some Puerto Ricans are demanding González resign as they clamor for Martínez to return to his old job, while a growing number are blaming the governor for the situation. On Wednesday night, the governor announced that all projects aimed at fixing water-related infrastructure have started with an investment of $217 million.
Those without water say they are still being billed for it.
“That's another outrage,” said Laborde, the community leader. “You lose no matter what.”
Municipal worker José Luiz López Obrero walks back to a water truck after he finishes up filling a cistern at the Villa Kennedy public housing complex in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, June 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Danica Coto)
Juan Lugo, a driver with San Juan's special projects department, delivers free, non-potable water to residents in the Villa Kennedy public housing complex in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, June 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Danica Coto)
Bryan Pérez hauls a five-gallon water jug to his apartment in the Villa Kennedy public housing complex in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, June 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Danica Coto)
