By Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN Business

(CNN) — A dozen roses at Kroger stores usually costs around $10. During the Valentine’s Day stretch, they go for double.

Why are flowers so expensive around Valentine’s Day? The rush for flowers creates international logistics bottlenecks and elevated transportation costs for a limited supply of perishable flowers.

“It’s an old economic adage. Supply and demand,” said Charles Hall, professor of horticulture at Texas A&M University. “It’s really expensive just to get them to the market.”

Refrigerated trucks

Flower shops around the country have been preparing for Valentine’s Day, the industry’s busiest day, for months.

Kroger, the country’s largest florist, started getting ready for Valentine’s Day last spring with growers in Colombia and Ecuador. The two countries were the biggest flower exporters to the United States during last year’s Valentine’s season, according to US Customs and Border Protection.

“It’s pretty complicated,” said Jennifer Lien, Kroger’s director of floral merchandising. “We have to keep a cold chain going. We have to make sure that the products keep the quality going from Colombia to Miami and then throughout the country.”

Kroger’s floral team first estimated how many roses the company would need at its thousands of stores around the country. More than 250 million roses are produced for Valentine’s Day, according to estimates from the trade group Society of American Florists.

The grocery store also had to prepare its supply chain to preserve fresh stems along the journey from South America.

Flowers are fragile and have a short shelf life. Any mistake along the route could spoil them. Although improvements in cooling technology and preservatives in recent years have helped growers and retailers keep flowers fresh for longer, it’s a high-stakes trip to stores.

Chris Drummond, who owns Penney’s by Plaza Flowers in Philadelphia, said the temperature in refrigerated trucks is set to 34 to 35 degrees. “It keeps the flowers from getting moldy,” he said. “We want to keep the flowers really cold.”

Drummond buys flowers for his two stores from growers overseas and through wholesalers in the United States. He also buys from farms in the Netherlands, a top exporter of flowers to the United States.

Companies in Holland use an auction system to sell flowers. Drummond retains a broker who sits in on auctions and bids for flowers. “It’s got to be the most efficient auction in the world,” he said.

Kroger placed its orders for Valentine’s Day roses around three months ago. Farmers in South America cut the roses at greenhouses and boxed them up in coolers before sending them to the airport. They fly in cold planes and land at Miami International Airport, the busiest airport in the country for flowers.

During last year’s Valentine’s season, US Customs and Border Protection in Miami processed around 1.3 billion stems, or more than 90% of the total imported flowers to the United States.

After clearing inspection for bugs and bacteria, roses hit cold trucks headed for Kroger’s distribution centers. Then it’s straight to fridges at stores.

Higher costs

In the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, every flower retailer and wholesaler in America scrambles to get planes full of boxed flowers off the ground in Bogota, Colombia, and Quito, Ecuador.

Demand for flowers dropped off during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, but it’s picked up in recent years.

That’s forced companies to hire extra workers in both South America and the United States to help with logistics during the rush.

While Kroger is able to use its size and scale to keep costs down, smaller players like Drummond say they’re feeling the effects of higher transportation and labor costs in a tight jobs market.

“At every link in the chain, there’s an increase in costs,” he said. “The biggest thing I’ve noticed this year is the difficulty finding labor. Go try to find temporary help that wants to work in a 34-degree cooler.”

High costs and razor-thin profit margins have pushed thousands of local florists shops out of business in recent years. The number of private florists has dropped 45% since 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Profit margins have eroded over time for the floral industry,” said Texas A&M’s Hall.

So when Valentine’s Day rolls around, florists have a chance to recoup some of the money they lose during slow months.

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On Monday, Harish Natarajan, a grand finalist in 2016’s World Debating Championships, faced off against IBM’s Project Debater — a computer touted by the company as the first artificial-intelligence system built to meaningfully debate humans. Natarajan won, but the computer demonstrated the increasingly complex arguments that AI is starting to make.

Project Debater, which has been in the works since 2012, is designed to come up with coherent, convincing speeches of its own, while taking in the arguments of a human opponent and creating its own rebuttal. It even formulates its own closing argument. To generate its arguments and rebuttals, Project Debater uses newspaper and magazine articles from its own database, and also takes in the nuances of the human opponent’s arguments. It is not connected to the internet and cannot crib arguments from sites like Wikipedia.

Monday’s debate, which was organized by nonprofit debate-hosting company Intelligence Squared US, was held in front of an audience in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The topic of the debate — whether or not preschool should be subsidized — wasn’t revealed to the AI system or Natarajan until 15 minutes before they took to the stage. Project Debater argued in favor of subsidized preschool.

It followed traditional debate style. Each side gave a 4-minute opening speech, then they each came up with a 4-minute rebuttal to the other party. At the end, they gave a 2-minute closing argument. The audience was asked to vote for one side or the other at the start of the debate, and again at the end.

“Greetings, Harish,” Project Debater began, speaking in a mainly monotonous, female voice. It argued, among other things, that subsidized preschool can help break the poverty cycle. It spoke in complete sentences, and drew from a range of studies (including by the US Centers for Disease Control).

Natarajan followed, arguing against the resolution, saying subsidies would consume resources that middle-class families could use for other things. He also argued that subsidizing preschool doesn’t mean that all children will be able to attend.

“There will still be individuals who will be priced out because of the realities of the market,” he said.

The rebuttal segment of the debate was where some of the big differences between human and computer (beyond looks and vocal capabilities) were laid bare. Natarajan addressed specific parts of Project Debater’s arguments and rebuffed them — such as saying it’s unrealistic to expect a government has an unrestricted budget to put toward helpful programs.

Project Debater’s rebuttal, while eloquently phrased, seemed more like a continuation of its initial argument than a true rebuttal of Natarajan’s points. It saved its best counter arguments for its closing statement. While out of order, the elements of a proper debate all seemed present.

While waiting for the final vote, Natarajan said it was interesting that Project Debater could contextualize information and pull details from research. Combining its skills with those of a human, he said, “could be incredibly powerful.”

Before the debate, 79 percent of the audience agreed that preschool should be subsidized and 13 percent disagreed. By the end, 62 percent of the crowd agreed and 30 percent disagreed. Because this style of debate is scored by which side gains the most percentage points, Natarajan took the win.

Project Debater shows how AI systems have become increasingly flexible in recent years. The AI we’re used to seeing — like digital assistants built into smart speakers — can only be used in very narrow ways, such as answering specific questions. But IBM’s system shows how the technology may also be used to explore problems that don’t necessarily have a single answer. This might help people find new ways to work with computers, and to use AI to help us come up with more solutions to problems.

“It’s really pushing the boundaries [of the] kinds of AI systems that are more interactive with us and can understand us better,” IBM Research director Dario Gil said Monday on CNN’s First Move.

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(CNN) — Turns out, the mythical African black leopard really does exist.

Biologists shot rare footage of the sleek big cat walking majestically in Kenya — the first time the animal has been photographed in Africa since 1909, said Nick Pilfold, a global conservation scientist at the San Diego Zoo.

Pilfold said they captured the footage after months of watching and waiting. His team of biologists had placed remote cameras to track the leopard population near a conservancy area in Laikipia County last year when they heard reports of a possible black leopard sighting.

“We intensified our camera placement in the area the reports were being made,” he said Tuesday night. “Within a few months, we were rewarded with multiple observations on our cameras.”

The female leopard’s coat color is pitch black as a result of melanism, a gene mutation that results in an over-production of pigment, Pilfold said. It’s the opposite of albinism — and although the leopard’s coat appears black during the day, its rosette patterns are visible in nighttime infrared imagery.

Other sightings reported but without as much footage

While there have been reports of sightings of black leopards — also known as black panthers — the last confirmed observation with photographic evidence was in Ethiopia more than a century ago, he said.

“It is likely that black leopards have been living in Kenya all along, it is only that high quality imagery to confirm it has been missing until now,” Pilfold said.

Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper said Tuesday that its photographer, Phoebe Okall, shot an image of a black leopard in 2013 in the same region. It’s unclear whether that image was publicized at the time.

The footage shot by Pilfold’s team includes a slew of photos and video footage of the agile animal moving in darkness, its eyes glittering in the night like two shiny marbles.

While there may be reported sightings in Kenya, black leopards are still considered rare in the continent, Pilfold said.

“Melanism occurs in about 11% of leopards globally, but most of these leopards live in South East Asia,” Pilfold said. “Black leopards in Africa are extremely rare, and prior to the observations in our published paper, the last confirmed observation was 1909 in Ethiopia.”

The black leopard’s sighting was published in the African Journal of Ecology.

A longtime dream to photograph the black panther

Will Burrard-Lucas, who shot the images of the black leopard, described his longtime dream to photograph the big cat.

“For me, no animal is shrouded in more mystery, no animal more elusive, and no animal more beautiful,” he posted on his blog. “For many years, they remained the stuff of dreams and of farfetched stories told around the campfire at night. Nobody I knew had ever seen one in the wild and I never thought that I would either.”

Burrard-Lucas said he shot the images at Laikipia Wilderness Camp using a Camtraptions Camera, which focuses on wildlife photography and footage. The cameras were placed near animal trails, and water sources such as pools and natural springs. They were left on 24 hours a day in most places but were only turned on at night in public places, according to the African Journal of Ecology.

Leopards are described as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.

The total extent of the animal’s population decline is still unknown, San Diego Zoo said in a statement. But several factors have sharply reduced their numbers, including hunting, habitat loss, competition for prey, and conflict with livestock and farmers.

Pilfold is part of a team from the San Diego Zoo working with local partners, including the Kenya Wildlife Service, to monitor leopard populations in the area and help preserve the species.

He marveled at the coincidence of the location of an animal that’s also called the black panther, the title of one of last year’s biggest movies.

“Coincidentally, our observations are very close to where the fantasy Marvel comic country of Wakanda is suggested to be located,” he said.

Black panthers refer broadly to any melanistic leopard, jaguars and other big cats.

It started in the local community

Ambrose Letuai, a local leopard conservationist who was part of the project, said it started after residents complained about leopards. He said the black leopards are famous for killing livestock in the region, where they refer to them as “calf killers.”

“I first heard about the black leopard when I was growing up from the stories of elders, but I didn’t believe it at all until I saw it myself,” he told CNN. “As a local, people have always been talking about the black leopard.”

Kenyan conservationist Paula Kahumbu said there have been many unconfirmed sightings of black leopards, but this is the first time one has been proven.

“I’ve spoken to a couple of safari guides who have seen black leopards in the Aberdares, one of them in the late 80s,” she said. “Despite many challenges in the sector, Kenya’s wildlife continues to awe and inspire the world. … I hope that this rare find persuades the authorities that we must balance conservation with development to protect our spectacular and mysterious species.”

Kahumbu congratulated Letuai for helping spearhead the international project. “I … hope it inspires a new generation of Kenyan wildlife scientists,” she said.

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Major travel websites including Trivago, Expedia, Agoda and Booking.com have agreed to change the way they do business after a UK investigation found some of them were deceiving users about hotel room prices and search results.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority on Wednesday announced the results of its probe, which focused on issues such as pressure selling, misleading discount claims and hidden charges.

The regulator said that some buyers were warned that other users were looking at the same hotel, giving them a “false impression” of a room’s popularity. In other cases, the full cost of the room was not displayed.

While not all of the platforms engaged in each of the unfair practices, they have now agreed to follow a common set of guidelines.

The companies have pledged to display all charges including taxes and refrain from pressure selling. They will be clearer about discounts and only promote deals that are really available at that time.

The changes must be made by September 1.

Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Competition and Markets Authority, said in a statement that the regulator will now do “whatever it can to ensure that the rest of the sector meets the same standards.”

The booking industry

Expedia Group, which owns Hotels.com and ebookers, said the regulator’s announcement “mischaracterizes the collaborative and good faith approach” it took in helping to establish industry standards.

“We gave commitments to the CMA on a voluntary basis and the CMA in turn closed its investigation in respect of the Expedia Group with no admission or finding of liability,” a spokesperson said.

“We continue to believe our practices did not breach any consumer laws,” the spokesperson added.

Trivago said it saw a “broad applicability of the guidelines to all UK online travel companies as a positive development for us and the industry,” and said it would “follow them to the extent they are applicable to us.”

A representative of Booking.com said it was pleased the regulator did not find an “admission of infringement.”

The changes are likely to be applied selectively.

The new standards will only apply to Expedia sites registered in the United Kingdom, the company said. The other sites did not immediately respond to questions regarding whether the changes will be instituted world wide.

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