HONOLULU (AP) — Kilauea volcano began shooting lava into the air once again Wednesday on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Kilauea, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, has been erupting on and off for nearly two months since it burst to life on Dec. 23. The eruption has been taking place at the volcano’s summit crater inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. No residential areas have been threatened by lava.

The latest release of molten rock began 8:22 p.m. Fountains of lava reaching 300 to 400 feet (91 to 122 meters) have spurted out of the volcano’s north vent.

This is the 10th episode of eruptive activity since Dec. 23, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said. Earlier episodes have lasted 13 hours to eight days, with pauses in between. Episode nine ended on the morning of Feb. 12.

People have been flocking to overlook sites inside the national park for views of the eruption.

Kilauea is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Honolulu.

NEW YORK (AP) — Small business owners that rely on eggs for their products are facing sticker shock because the usually reliable staple is in short supply.

Avian flu is forcing farmers to slaughter millions of chickens a month, causing U.S. egg prices to skyrocket. The average price of a dozen Grade A eggs in U.S. cities reached $4.95 in January, eclipsing the previous record of $4.82 set two years earlier and more than double the low of $2.04 that was recorded in August 2023. The Agriculture Department predicts prices will soar another 20% this year.

Most owners are taking the increase in stride, looking at it as just one of many hurdles they constantly face. But if the problem persists, they could be forced to raise prices or adjust their products.

Liz Berman is the owner and sole proprietor of The Sleepy Baker in Natick, Massachusetts. She specializes in custom, from-scratch cakes but also sells cupcakes, cookies, pies and other baked goods.

Eggs are just one of the baking ingredients experiencing price shocks. Items such as cocoa powder and butter have gone up as well. And price isn’t the only issue.

“It’s not just the cost of eggs, right? It’s also just the availability,” she said. She prefers to buy medium-sized white shelled eggs, buying a box with 18 dozen eggs, but two weeks ago those were unavailable, so she had to buy brown eggs in individual cartons of 12.

“It sounds kind of silly, but when I I’m the sole proprietor and I have a huge volume of work, to have to take a dozen of eggs out of my walk-in at a time as opposed to a flat of eggs, it’s just it’s a pain,” she said.

She doesn’t think prices will ease anytime soon. Cocoa powder prices have been elevated for years.

“I think ultimately I’m going to have to increase my prices, which is hard because that’s going to mean that there’s a category of customer that won’t order from me anymore,” she said.

In Princeton, New Jersey, John Nachlinger, owner of the Bad Cookie Company, is imposing a temporary 25 cent per cookie surcharge to help mitigate added costs.

“As cookies are already a tight-margin food, these increases have really hurt our bottom line,” Nachlinger said. He said he doesn’t want to permanently raise prices or adjust the size of his cookies since he hopes the egg situation is temporary. “We want to bring value to our customers,” he said.

At Daisies, a pasta restaurant in Chicago, chef/partner Joe Frillman and chef/partner Leigh Omilinsky haven’t raised prices but are thinking of adjusting menu items.

Omilinsky said she is thinking of adding more vegan and egg-free deserts to the menu and has been working more with flax seeds. She said the shortage has made her more conscious of the ingredients she is using and wasting less.

“You know, if we need egg yolks we are absolutely saving those whites,” she said.

Meanwhile, Frillman said the restaurant has shifted to making pastas that use less eggs.

“We’ve just changed the shape of the noodle,” he said. “We use an extruder which is a piece of equipment that allows us to basically extrude pasta without eggs.”

Depending on how long the egg shortage lasts, they could adjust menu items too, he said.

“We have a pappardelle on our menu that’s been on since day one,” he said. “If this gets to the point where it’s just cost prohibitive, it’s very egg yolk heavy, we would then transfer to something like a spaghetti or a fettuccine that is a similar noodle that we can make without eggs.”

Meanwhile, Stephanie Maynard, co-owner of Ox Hollow Farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, faces a different issue: skyrocketing demand.

The farm she owns with her husband produces beef, pork, poultry, eggs and vegetables. They have 950 laying hens, with 300 more coming in March. The winter is generally a quieter time as the farm prepares for busy spring and summer months, increasing the inventory on hand until it is ready to sell. But this year, they’re rushing to increase egg production for customers at greenmarkets.

People who might normally buy eggs at supermarkets are turning to greenmarkets due to the shortages, and regular customers are increasing their orders just to make sure they have eggs, she said.

“We have developed a rapport with our customers. I know a lot of them by name and face,” she said. “And now you’re seeing people that you’ve never seen attend a market before. So I’m drawing a lot of new customers in to get eggs at the market.”

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis’ respiratory infection is presenting a “complex clinical picture” that will require further hospitalization, the Vatican said Monday, as concerns grew about the increasingly frail health of the 88-year-old pontiff.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the results of tests conducted in recent days and Monday indicate the pope is suffering from a polymicrobial respiratory tract infection that has necessitated a second change in his drug therapy since being hospitalized Friday. Scientists say polymicrobial diseases are caused by a mix of viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites.

There was no timeframe given for his hospitalization, which at Day 4 has already sidelined Francis for longer than a 2023 hospitalization for pneumonia. Bruni said the complexity of his symptoms “will require an appropriate hospital stay.”

In a late update Monday, Bruni said Francis’ condition was “stationary,” and that he had resumed some work activities and reading.

Francis had part of one lung removed after a pulmonary infection as a young man and is prone to bouts of bronchitis in winter. He was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital in a “fair” condition on Friday after a weeklong bout of bronchitis worsened. Doctors confirmed a respiratory tract infection and prescribed “absolute rest” alongside unspecified drug therapies. Subsequent updates said his slight fever had gone away and that he was in “stationary” condition.

Bruni said Francis ate breakfast, read the newspapers and received the Eucharist on Monday after a third peaceful night. And in a sign Francis was still keeping up with some of the essentials of his routine, the parish priest of the Catholic Church in Gaza, the Rev. Gabriel Romanelli, reported that Francis had maintained his daily video call to the church on Friday and Saturday night. He sent a text message on Sunday.

“We heard his voice. It’s true, it was more tired,” Romanelli told Vatican News. “But we heard his voice clearly and he listened to us,” said the Argentine priest, whom Francis has phoned every day of the Gaza war.

What is bronchitis?

Bronchitis, or an inflammation of the airwaves, can be relatively mild in a healthy person but can become much more severe in someone who is older or has existing lung problems, especially when they are unable to cough up and expel the accumulating mucus. Bacteria and other organisms can colonize, leading to further infection that may be harder to treat.

Dr. Maor Sauler, who specializes in adult pulmonary medicine and critical care at Yale School of Medicine, said it’s not uncommon for people suffering from bronchitis to develop an infection with more than one organism in their lungs. The concern, however, is that antibiotics and other drug therapies don’t work in isolation and require the body to respond, which given Francis’ other problems may make recovery more challenging.

“Being older, wheelchair-bound, all those are risk factors for a situation in which we can’t treat it despite our best efforts,” said Sauler, who is not involved in Francis’ care.

As people get older, their immune systems don’t work as well, making doctors especially concerned when elderly patients develop multiple problems. A decline in lung function and muscle strength can also impair the body’s ability to effectively clear respiratory secretions, increasing susceptibility to infections like pneumonia, a deeper and far more serious infection of the lungs’ air sacs.

“It’s in the public record that he’s had chest problems in the past, he’s been admitted to hospital with pneumonia (in 2023), he’s had part of one lung removed,” noted Dr. Nick Hopkinson, medical director of the Asthma + Lung UK foundation, who is not involved in Francis’ treatment. “All of that makes him a little bit more vulnerable potentially, but we just have to wait and see.”

He said that after doctors have identified clinically what is wrong, they can start treating the underlying infection with the correct therapies.

Pope’s frail health

The Argentine pope is a known workaholic who keeps up a grueling pace despite his increasingly precarious health.

In addition to his frequent bouts of respiratory infections in winter, he uses a wheelchair, walker or cane because of bad knees and suffers from sciatica nerve pain. In 2021 he had 33 centimeters (13 inches) of his colon removed because of a narrowing, and then had a further surgery in 2023 to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair an abdominal hernia.

When he had a bad case of pneumonia in 2023, he left the hospital after three days and only acknowledged after the fact that he had been admitted urgently after feeling faint and having a sharp pain in his chest. This time around, Francis insisted on finishing his morning audiences Friday before leaving the Vatican, even though he was having trouble speaking at length because he was so short of breath.

Some appearances have been scrapped

Francis’ continued hospitalization has already forced the cancellation of some events connected to the Vatican’s Holy Year and put others in question. The official Vatican calendar online has no more papal appointments or activities for February, and picks up only on March 5, Ash Wednesday. This week’s weekly general audience was canceled.

Outside the Gemelli hospital, people were praying for the pope, including Nigerian nuns in front of a giant statue of St. John Paul II. He had so many hospitalizations at Gemelli that the main entry way is decorated with a permanent photo exhibition of his ailments over the course of his quarter-century pontificate.

Sister Mary Beatrice Nnenji said prayers were necessary “because no one is strong enough on their own.”

“With age also you feel your health and especially with his workload and all the efforts he makes,” she said. “So if God wants he will go on. Let’s hope in God, we cannot go against it, whatever comes.”