 |
|
|
|||||
As nasty tornadoes popped up from Kansas to Kentucky, a depleted National Weather Service was in scramble mode.The agency’s office in Jackson, Kentucky, had begun closing nightly as deep cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency began hitting. But the weather service kept staffers on overtime Friday night to stay on top of the deadly storms, which killed nearly 20 people in the Jackson office’s forecast area.It’s a scenario likely to be repeated as the U.S. is on track to see more tornadoes this year than in 2024, which was the second-busiest tornado year on record. Forecasters said there was at least a 10% risk of tornadoes Tuesday for 10.6 million people in parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Weather service veterans expressed concern about the agency’s ability to keep up in the face of the cuts.Rich Thompson, lead operations forecaster at the NWS Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said the job is getting done. But he acknowledged that staffing cuts have “made it harder on us.”“It has made it hard on the local offices just to make sure that we have all of our important duties covered. But, I mean, most of the people take those important duties seriously, so we’re going to do what it takes to cover it,” Thompson said. “I hope we’re not in the same staffing situation long term. . . . It would be hard to sustain this for months or years.”NWS spokesperson Erica Grow Cei said the Jackson office “remained fully staffed through the duration of the event using surge staffing” and had support from neighboring offices. A leaner weather service is seeing more extreme weather The Storm Prediction Center had tallied 883 local tornado reports this year as of Monday, which was 35% higher than average for this time of year.Many former weather service employees, especially those fired by the Trump administration, remain connected to the agency’s inner workings. They describe an agency that’s somehow getting forecasts and warnings out in time, but is also near the breaking point.“They’ll continue to answer the bell as long as they can, but you can only ask people to work 80 hours or 120 hours a week, you know for so long,” said Elbert “Joe” Friday, a former weather service director. “They may be so bleary-eyed, they can’t identify what’s going on on the radar.”Tom DiLiberto, a weather service meteorologist and spokesman who was fired in earlier rounds of the job cuts, said the situation is like a boat with leaks “and you have a certain amount of pieces of duct tape and you keep moving duct tape to different holes. At some point, you can’t.”As of March, some of the weather service offices issuing tornado warnings Friday and Sunday were above the 20% vacancy levels that outside experts have said is a critical threshold. Those include Jackson, with a 25% vacancy rate, Louisville, Kentucky, with a 29% vacancy rate, and Wichita, Kansas, with a 32% vacancy rate, according to data compiled by weather service employees and obtained by the AP.Technologies used to predict tornadoes have significantly improved, but radar can’t replace a well-rested staff that has to figure out how nasty or long-lasting storms will be and how to get information to the public, said Karen Kosiba, managing director of the Flexible Array of Mesonets and Radars (FARM) facility, a network of weather equipment used for research.“There really are not enough people to handle everything,” said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Howard Bluestein, who chased six tornadoes Sunday. “If the station is understaffed, that could affect the quality of forecasts.” Cuts hit in different ways Former weather service Director Louis Uccellini said budget cuts have drastically reduced the number of weather balloon launches, which provide critical information for forecasts. And weather service workers aren’t being allowed to travel to help train local disaster officials for what to do when they get dangerous weather warnings, he said.Though the number of tornadoes is nearly at a record pace, Thompson and other experts said the tornado outbreak of the last few days is mostly normal for this time of year.For tornadoes to form, the atmosphere needs a collision of warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and storm systems chugging through via the jet stream, the river of air that brings weather fronts from west to east, said Thompson, Bluestein and Harold Brooks of the weather service’s National Severe Storm Laboratory.“The moisture that we’re getting from the Gulf of Mexico is a lot more than we used to get,” said Bluestein. “That makes the likelihood that we’re getting a stronger storm higher and that’s pretty unusual.”Temperatures in the Gulf are a couple of degrees warmer than usual for this time of year, according to the weather service.The connection between climate change and tornadoes is not as well understood as the links between other types of extreme weather such as heavy rainfall and heat waves, experts say.“Under the climate change scenario, we’re kind of supercharging the atmosphere on some days and then actually reducing the favorability on others,” said Ohio State University atmospheric sciences professor Jana Houser.Scientists are also seeing more tornadoes in January, February, March, and other times when it used to be too cold for twisters to form, especially in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee, she said.More people are also living in harm’s way, Brooks said. That’s why Uccellini and others see increasing risks to people and property.“When you have this kind of threat and you’re understaffed at some point, something’s going to slip through the cracks,” Uccellini said. “I can’t tell you when it’s going to happen.” Associated Press reporter Isabella O’Malley contributed from Philadelphia. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
Right-leaning comedy podcasts are a gateway to conspiracy theories and misogynistic content, a new study has found. While these podcasts may seem harmless at firstoften discussing sports like the NFL and MMA and featuring guests such as Ben Affleck and David Gogginsa new report reveals that engaging with their content online can open a Pandora’s box of aliens and Andrew Tate, the former professional kickboxer who built his platform by promoting misogynistic ideas. In a study published this week, the nonprofit Media Matters for America examined five comedy shows that platformed Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election while claiming to be nonpolitical: Full Send, The Joe Rogan Experience, Impaulsive With Logan Paul, This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, and Flagrant. Using a brand-new TikTok account created solely for research, Media Matters interacted with accounts affiliated with these shows or their hosts. (In the case of Rogan, who does not have an official TikTok, a fan account exclusively posting show clips was used.) After Media Matters watched and liked the 10 most recent videos from each account, TikToks algorithm began delivering a stream of content that included conspiracy theories, toxic masculinity, misinformation, doomsday prepping, racism, right-wing media, and transphobia. Among the first 425 videos shown on the Media Matters accounts For You page, 28% contained conspiracy theories and 16% promoted toxic masculinity. These included claims that recent plane crashes were orchestrated to make sure people wont leave. Other videos featured phrases like get rich and disappear, set to montages of luxury watches, boats, cars, and planesmany soundtracked by Tate. TikToks recommendation algorithm fed our account with misogynistic content and fringe conspiracy theory videos that can lead users down a right-wing rabbit hole of misinformation and more extreme content, which has the potential to radicalize them, Media Matters senior investigative researcher Olivia Little tells Fast Company. The concern grows when considering the reach of these shows. Right-leaning podcasts far surpass their left-leaning counterparts in audience size. According to a Media Matters report published in March, 9 of the 10 most-followed online shows across all platforms are right-leaning, with a combined total following of more than 197 million. These shows extend their influence through social media, where they post full streams, short clips, and links. While left-leaning online shows have a collective following of 48 million across platforms, right-leaning shows have amassed more than 225 million followers. TikTok is so popular because of its focus on hyper-tailoring a users recommendation feed to their content preferences, which has the potential to throw users down hard-to-escape rabbit holes, Little says. Engaging with right-wing or right-wing-adjacent content appears to signal to the recommendation algorithm that youre interested in that content and your feed will quickly reflect that.
Category:
E-Commerce
Countless Rite Aid customers and employees are still waiting to learn the fate of their local pharmacies as the bankrupt drugstore chain sells off its assets and winds down operations. Now, at least three Rite Aid landlords are asking for more transparency into the process. Last week, Rite Aid announced that it has reached agreements to sell its prescription files for most of its 1,200 retail pharmacies, with successful bidders including CVS, Walgreens, and Albertsons, among others. Perhaps most notably, CVS agreed to buy prescription files for 625 of those pharmacies, even as it said it would only take over 64 physical Rite Aid locations in three states: Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. However, neither Rite Aid nor CVS has said which pharmacy locations were involved in the bid. Now three landlordsHVP2 LLC, New Hartford Holdings LLC, and Gallashea Properties LLChave filed a limited objection to the asset sales on the grounds that they have no idea if their own leases were included, according to a court filing earlier this week. “Conspicuously absent from the notice is any particular and critical information regarding who bought what and for how much?” the filing states. Privacy concerns as prescription data changes hands The landlords say they are not seeking the disclosure of sensitive customer data, which carries special privacy and regulatory considerations when prescription files are transferred from one company to another. Rather, they just want to know which Rite Aid locations were successfully bid upon, saying a more transparent process might allow them to secure better deals for their leases. Reached for comment by Fast Company, a spokesperson for CVS said store specific information has not yet been released but offered no timeline for when that might happenother than to say more details will be released following a hearing on the sale. The company did not respond to a question about the landlords’ objection. “Were working closely with Rite Aid on plans to ensure that the transition will be seamless for patients and customers and access to pharmacy care is not interrupted,” the spokesperson said. CVS is already the country’s largest pharmacy chain, with its pharmacy unit generating $124.5 billion in revenue and filling 1.7 billion prescriptions last year. A Rite Aid spokesperson told Fast Company that the sale of its assets to CVS and other pharmacies “will be implemented on a rolling basis and will take some time.” The spokesperson emphasized that Rite Aid pharmacies will remain open during this process, but court documents show the company is already planning to close more than 200 locations, as Fast Company previously reported. Plenty of anxiety to go around All Rite Aid locations will eventually either close or be sold to other companies. An auction for the bankrupt company’s remaining assets is planned for June. In the meantime, landlords aren’t the only one impacted by the uncertainty. On Reddit and other online forums, Rite Aid employees have expressed no shortage of frustration about not knowing the fate of their local stores. The CVS spokesperson told Fast Company that once the sale is finalized, “we look forward to welcoming Rite Aid colleagues who are interested in applying to join the CVS team.” For their part, the landlords have asked as part of their objection that Rite Aid disclose the “specific identities” of companies that successfully bid on its assets, along with which specific assets they won and how much they paid. Fast Company has reached out to the landlords’ lawyer for an update. The sale of Rite Aid’s assets is still subject to court approval, with a hearing scheduled for today.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||