 |
|
|
|||||
Officials in the Western U.S. who warn the public about avalanches are sounding a different type of alarm. They say they’re worried that the Trump administration firing hundreds of meteorologists and other environmental scientists could hinder life-saving forecasts that skiers and mountain drivers rely on. The forecasting work is crucial for skiers and climbers who flirt with danger when they travel through mountain gullies that are prone to slide. Recovery efforts for three victims of a large avalanche near Anchorage, Alaska, were ongoing Thursday, two days after the accident in mountains where forecasters had warned it would be easy to trigger a slide that day because of a weak layer in the deep snow. The forecasts also are used to protect the general public. Transportation officials use them to gauge the risk on well-traveled roads like one in Colorado where a vehicle got pushed off the highway by a slide earlier this month. We save lives and there are people alive today because of the work we do,” said Doug Chabot, who directed the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center in Montana for almost 24 years. “To take funding and to just randomly cut programs, it will affect our ability to save lives. There’s a lot of pieces that will fall apart’ Avalanches kill about two dozen people annually in the U.S. Predicting their likelihood, potential severity and location depends heavily on information provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The information comes in two forms: data-driven models and conversations between avalanche forecasters and National Weather Service meteorologists who can help assess the data. We have our own numerical model, but we cant run that without the work that NOAA is doing, said Ethan Greene, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, which publishes avalanche forecasts. Without that work, theres a lot of pieces that will fall apart. So far this winter 18 people had been killed by avalanches, most of them in remote areas in Western states. Weather models from NOAA are used by 14 avalanche centers run by the U.S. Forest Service. The Colorado center is largely state funded. Chabot said employees at the federal avalanche centers have so far been exempt from cuts, but officials worry that could change. Shrinking the federal workforce The Trump administration has not disclosed what positions are being lost at NOAA. Former leaders of the agency have said the firings will have wide-ranging negative impacts on flight safety, shipping safety and warning networks for tornados and hurricanes. NOAA has about 13,000 employees. The firings come as billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency shrink a federal workforce that President Donald Trump has called bloated and sloppy. A NOAA spokesperson declined to answer questions from The Associated Press about the potential for the cuts to degrade avalanche forecasting quality. We are not discussing internal personnel and management matters, spokesperson Susan Buchanan wrote in an email. We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission. Greene and Chabot said they dont anticipate immediate effects. But if NOAA’s data is weaker, Greene said his center’s forecasts will be more uncertain. We will probably look at the same things that were looking at and see that theyre not working as well as they were, he said. Dangerous layers of snow On a mountainside near Leadville, Colorado, this week, Greene dug a pit into the snow and scooped out snow crystals that he scattered across a plastic blue card. It’s so beautiful, he said, referring to a layer of snow turned to ice crystals, which under certain conditions can create weak layers prone to avalanche. Such surveys are an essential part of forecasting and so is data on weather, which impacts snow and helps drive avalanche risk. In nearby Frisco, Colorado, light snow fell in the parking lot at the Mayflower Gulch trailhead, where college students Joseph Burgoyne and his friend Michael Otenbaker from Michigan donned snow shoes and strapped skis to a backpack before heading up a mountain trail. Burgoyne said its scary to see headlines on social media sites about skiers who were carried and buried by avalanches Its serious terrain, and those reports, they can save lives,” Burgyone said of the avalanche forecasts. “Everybody just wants to have a good time. Going fast is fun. Finding deep snow is fun, but theres serious dangers behind that. Brittany Peterson and Matthew Brown, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
WASHINGTON (AP) A federal judge ruled Thursday that President Donald Trump acted illegally when he fired a member of an independent labor agency, and the judge ordered that she be allowed to remain on the job. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., found Trump did not have the authority to remove Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board. An American president is not a kingnot even an elected oneand his power to remove federal officers and honest civil servants like plaintiff is not absolute, Howell wrote. She acknowledged the administrations argument that the Supreme Court may be inclined to overturn a 90-year-old decision restricting the presidents power to remove members of independent agencies. But the judge said that until and unless the high court acts, current law clearly supports keeping Wilcox in her role. Wilcox sued Trump after he fired her and the agencys general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, on Jan. 27. Wilcox’s attorneys said no president previously had tried to remove an NLRB member. They argued that board members can only be fired for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office and only after giving notice and holding a hearing. Trump’s only path to victory in Wilcox’s case would be to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt a new, more aggressive vision of presidential power that would effectively abolish independent agencies in the U.S., her lawyers wrote. During a hearing Wednesday, Howell jokingly referred to herself as a speed bump for the case on its way to the Supreme Court. Government attorneys argued that NLRB members should be removable at will to ensure democratic accountability. Reinstating Wilcox to the board would be an extraordinary intrusion on the executive branch, they added. The President cannot be compelled to retain the services of a principal officer whom the President no longer believes should be entrusted with the exercise of executive power, Justice Department lawyers wrote. Wilcox was the first Black woman to serve on the five-member board in its 90-year history. The Senate confirmed Wilcox for a second five-year term in September 2023. Congress created the board in 1935. Its primary purpose is to resolve disputes over unfair labor practices. It adjudicated hundreds of cases in the last fiscal year. Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this story.
Category:
E-Commerce
Much like all the upheaval shaking the world, the huge swings rocking Wall Street may feel far from normal. But, for investing at least, all this is typical. Sharp moves for the U.S. stock market, like its recent 6% drop in just a couple of weeks, happen regularly. Stomaching them is the price investors have to pay for the bigger returns that stocks can offer over other investments in the long term. This time doesn’t look much different, experts say. Here’s a glimpse at what’s behind the market’s wild moves and what experts are advising investors young and old to consider: The market is bad, right? It has certainly struggled. The stock market’s main benchmark, the S&P 500, has been dropping since setting an all-time high last month, largely because of worries about President Donald Trump‘s tariffs and signals that the U.S. economy is running less powerfully than economists expected. Any kind of uncertainty around the economy will give Wall Street pause. These tariffs have had a particularly jostling effect because no one knows how long Trump will go through with them. When worries are high, stocks sink sharply. When Wall Street goes back to thinking Trump is using tariffs as just a negotiating tactic, stocks have bounced back, such as on Wednesday. Stocks do this often? Yes. The S&P 500 has regularly seen declines bigger than this recent one, of 10% or more, every year or so. Often, experts view them as a culling of optimism that can otherwise run overboard, driving stock prices too high. Before this recent stumble, many critics were already saying the U.S. stock market was too expensive after prices rose faster than corporate profits. They also pointed to how only a handful of companies was driving so much of the market’s returns. A group of just seven Big Tech companies accounted for more than half of the S&P 500’s total return last year, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. Should I sell and get out? Anytime an investor sees theyre losing money, it feels bad. This recent run feels particularly unnerving because of how incredibly calm the market had previously been. The S&P 500 is coming off a second straight year where it shot up by more than 20%, the first time that’s happened since baggy pants were last in style before the millennium. Selling may offer some feeling of relief. But it also locks in losses and prevents the chance of making the money back over time. Historically, the S&P 500 has come back from every one of its downturns to eventually make investors whole again. That includes after the Great Depression, the dot-com bust and the 2020 COVID crash. Some recoveries take longer than others, but experts often recommend not putting money into stocks that you can’t afford to lose for several years, up to 10. Data has shown, historically, that no one can time the market, said Odysseas Papadimitriou, CEO of WalletHub. No one can consistently figure out the best time to buy and sell. Put another way: Keep on keeping on, suggests Chris Fasciano, vice president, investment management and research, and chief market strategist at Commonwealth Financial Network. Should I change anything with my investments? Even as the overall U.S. stock market has dropped, some corners outside the Magnificent Seven have done much better, Fasciano said. So have stocks outside the United States. It could all be a reminder that investors often do best when they have a mixed set of investments rather than going all-in on just a few. And investors may no longer be as diversified as they thought after years of sheer dominance by the Magnificent Seven over the U.S. stock market and by Wall Street over global markets. Nows the time to revisit some of the old tried-and-true of portfolio construction, like diversification, Fasciano said. I just started investing in stocks. What should I do? The proliferation of online trading platforms and the ease of smartphones has helped create a new generation of investors who may not be used to such volatility. But the good news is younger investors often have the gift of time. With decades to go until retirement, they can afford to ride the waves and let their stock portfolios hopefully recover before compounding and eventually growing even bigger. We would advise younger investors to not worry about this at all, said Phil Battin, CEO of Ambassador Wealth Management. “Its just background noise. If you have 30 to 50 years until you need the money, the economy has survived world wars, oil embargoes, presidential assassinations, Y2K, and a global pandemic. It will survive the Trump tariffs as well. What about crypto? This is a little trickier. In theory, part of the appeal of crypto is that its supposed to be a hedge investment that isnt correlated with the stock market or the fiat-currency economy, said Sam Taube, lead investing writer for NerdWallet. But in reality, at least recently, crypto has often gone down in price when stocks have gone down, instead of offering that hoped-for protection during Wall Street’s sell-offs. “So, young investors may need to rethink the idea that cryptos value is completely independent of the stock market and broader economy, Taube said. What if I’m near retirement? Older investors have less time than younger ones to allow their investments to bounce back. But even in retirement, some people will need their investments to last 30 years or more, said Niladri Neel Mukherjee, chief investment officer of TIAA Wealth Management. People who have already retired may want to cut back on spending and withdrawals after sharp market downturns, because bigger withdrawals will remove more potential compounding ability in the future. But even retirees, at least in the early part of retirement, should still be invested in stocks to prepare for the possibility of decades of spending ahead. You may want to slow that down and pick that back up once the market recovers, Mukherjee said, but it all comes down to having that conversaion with your adviser and your portfolio manager. How long will this last? No one knows, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Stan Choe and Cora Lewis, AP business writers
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||