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  • Fact check: Biden makes false and misleading claims in economic speech | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Biden makes false and misleading claims in economic speech | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden delivered a Thursday speech to hail economic progress during his administration and to attack congressional Republicans for their proposals on the economy and the social safety net.

    Some of Biden’s claims in the speech were false, misleading or lacking critical context, though others were correct. Here’s a breakdown of the 14 claims CNN fact-checked.

    Touting the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed in 2021, Biden said, “Last year, we funded 700,000 major construction projects – 700,000 all across America. From highways to airports to bridges to tunnels to broadband.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “700,000” figure is wildly inaccurate; it adds an extra two zeros to the correct figure Biden used in a speech last week and the White House has also used before: 7,000 projects. The White House acknowledged his misstatement later on Thursday by correcting the official transcript to say 7,000 rather than 700,000.

    Biden said, “Well, here’s the deal: I put a – we put a cap, and it’s now in effect – now in effect, as of January 1 – of $2,000 a year on prescription drug costs for seniors.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims that this cap is now in effect and that it came into effect on January 1 are false. The $2,000 annual cap contained in the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed last year – on Medicare Part D enrollees’ out-of-pocket spending on covered prescription drugs – takes effect in 2025. The maximum may be higher than $2,000 in subsequent years, since it is tied to Medicare Part D’s per capita costs.

    Asked for comment, a White House official noted that other Inflation Reduction Act health care provisions that will save Americans money did indeed come into effect on January 1, 2023.

    – CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this item.

    Criticizing former President Donald Trump over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden said, “Back then, only 3.5 million people had been – even had their first vaccination, because the other guy and the other team didn’t think it mattered a whole lot.”

    Facts First: Biden is free to criticize Trump’s vaccine rollout, but his “only 3.5 million” figure is misleading at best. As of the day Trump left office in January 2021, about 19 million people had received a first shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The “3.5 million” figure Biden cited is, in reality, the number of people at the time who had received two shots to complete their primary vaccination series.

    Someone could perhaps try to argue that completing a primary series is what Biden meant by “had their first vaccination” – but he used a different term, “fully vaccinated,” to refer to the roughly 230 million people in that very same group today. His contrasting language made it sound like there are 230 million people with at least two shots today versus 3.5 million people with just one shot when he took office. That isn’t true.

    Biden said Republicans want to cut taxes for billionaires, “who pay virtually only 3% of their income now – 3%, they pay.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “3%” claim is incorrect. For the second time in less than a week, Biden inaccurately described a 2021 finding from economists in his administration that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families paid an average of 8.2% of their income in federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018; after CNN inquired about Biden’s “3%” claim on Thursday, the White House published a corrected official transcript that uses “8%” instead. Also, it’s important to note that even that 8% number is contested, since it is an alternative calculation that includes unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.

    “Biden’s numbers are way too low,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute think tank, though Gleckman also said we don’t know precisely what tax rates billionaires do pay. Gleckman wrote in an email: “In 2019, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabe Zucman estimated the top 400 households paid an average effective tax rate of about 23 percent in 2018. They got a lot of attention at the time because that rate was lower than the average rate of 24 percent for the bottom half of the income distribution. But it still was way more than 2 or 3, or even 8 percent.”

    Biden has cited the 8% statistic in various other speeches, but unlike the administration economists who came up with it, he tends not to explain that it doesn’t describe tax rates in a conventional way. And regardless, he said “3%” in this speech and “2%” in a speech last week.

    Biden cited a 2021 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy think tank that found that 55 of the country’s largest corporations had made $40 billion in profit in their previous fiscal year but not paid any federal corporate income taxes. Before touting the 15% alternative corporate minimum tax he signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, Biden said, “The days are over when corporations are paying zero in federal taxes.”

    Facts First: Biden exaggerated. The new minimum tax will reduce the number of companies that don’t pay any federal taxes, but it’s not true that the days of companies paying zero are “over.” That’s because the minimum tax, on the “book income” companies report to investors, only applies to companies with at least $1 billion in average annual income. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, only 14 of the companies on its 2021 list of 55 non-payers reported having US pre-tax income of at least $1 billion.

    In other words, there will clearly still be some large and profitable corporations paying no federal income tax even after the minimum tax takes effect this year. The exact number is not yet known.

    Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told CNN in the fall that the new tax is “an important step forward from the status quo” and that it will raise substantial revenue, but he also said: “I wouldn’t want to assert that the minimum tax will end the phenomenon of zero-tax profitable corporations. A more accurate phrasing would be to say that the minimum tax will *help* ensure that *the most profitable* corporations pay at least some federal income tax.”

    There are lots of nuances to the tax; you can read more specifics here. Asked for comment on Thursday, a White House official told CNN: “The Inflation Reduction Act ensures the wealthiest corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, precisely the corporations the President focused on during the campaign and in office. The President’s full Made in America tax plan would ensure all corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, and the President has called on Congress to pass that plan.”

    Noting the big increase in the federal debt under Trump, Biden said that his administration has taken a “different path” and boasted: “As a result, the last two years – my administration – we cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion, the largest reduction in debt in American history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s boast leaves out important context. It is true that the federal deficit fell by a total of $1.7 trillion under Biden in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, including a record $1.4 trillion drop in 2022 – but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction. Biden did not mention that the primary reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had skyrocketed to a record high under Trump in 2020 because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected as the spending expired as planned. Independent analysts say Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits.

    Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics – an economics firm whose assessments Biden has repeatedly cited during his presidency – told CNN’s Matt Egan in October: “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, wrote in September that Biden’s actions will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits from 2021 through 2031, or $2.5 trillion if you don’t count the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill of 2021.

    National Economic Council director Brian Deese wrote on the White House website last week that the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill “facilitated a strong economic recovery and enabled the responsible wind-down of emergency spending programs,” thereby reducing the deficit; David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, told Egan in October that the Biden administration does deserve credit for the recovery that has pushed the deficit downward. And Deese correctly noted that Biden’s signature legislation, last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to bring down deficits by more than $200 billion over the next decade.

    Still, the deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of various additional bills and policies Biden has approved.

    Biden said, “Wages are up, and they’re growing faster than inflation. Over the past six months, inflation has gone down every month and, God willing, will continue to do that.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim that wages are up and growing faster than inflation is true if you start the calculation seven months ago; “real” wages, which take inflation into account, started rising in mid-2022 as inflation slowed. (Biden is right that inflation has declined, on an annual basis, every month for the last six months.) However, real wages are lower today than they were both a full year ago and at the beginning of Biden’s presidency in January 2021. That’s because inflation was so high in 2021 and the beginning of 2022.

    There are various ways to measure real wages. Real average hourly earnings declined 1.7% between December 2021 and December 2022, while real average weekly earnings (which factors in the number of hours people worked) declined 3.1% over that period.

    Biden said he was disappointed that the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives “added $114 billion to the deficit.”

    Facts First: Biden is correct about how the bill would affect the deficit if it became law. He accurately cited an estimate from the government’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

    The bill would eliminate more than $71 billion of the $80 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that Biden signed into law in the Inflation Reduction Act. The Congressional Budget Office found that taking away this funding – some of which the Biden administration said will go toward increased audits of high-income individuals and large corporations – would result in a loss of nearly $186 billion in government revenue between 2023 and 2032, for a net increase to the deficit of about $114 billion.

    The Republican bill has no chance of becoming law under Biden, who has vowed to veto it in the highly unlikely event it got through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

    Biden said that “MAGA Republicans” in the House “want to impose a 30 percent national sales tax on everything from food, clothing, school supplies, housing, cars – a whole deal.” He said they want to do that because “they want to eliminate the income tax system.”

    Facts First: This is a fair description of the Republicans’ “FairTax” bill. The bill would eliminate federal income taxes, plus the payroll tax, capital gains tax and estate tax, and replace it with a national sales tax. The bill describes a rate of 23% on the “gross payments” on a product or service, but when the tax rate is described in the way consumers are used to sales taxes being described, it’s actually right around 30%, as a pro-FairTax website acknowledges.

    It is not clear how much support the bill currently has among the House Republican caucus. Notably, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju this week that he opposes the bill – though, while seeking right-wing votes for his bid for speaker in early January, he promised its supporters that it would be considered in committee. Biden wryly said in his speech, “The Republican speaker says he’s not so sure he’s for it.”

    Biden claimed the unemployment rate “is the lowest it’s been in 50 years.”

    Facts First: This is true. The unemployment rate was just below 3.5% in December, the lowest figure since 1969.

    The headline monthly rate, which is rounded to a single decimal place, was reported as 3.5% in December and also reported as 3.5% in three months of President Donald Trump’s tenure, in late 2019 and in early 2020. But if you look at more precise figures, December was indeed the lowest since 1969 – 3.47% – just below the figures for February 2020, January 2020 and September 2019.

    Biden said that the unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic Americans are “near record lows” and that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is “the lowest ever recorded” and the “lowest ever in history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims are accurate, though it’s worth noting that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities has only been released by the government since 2008.

    The Black or African American unemployment rate was 5.7% in December, not far from the record low of 5.3% that was set in August 2019. (This data series goes back to 1972.) The rate was 9.2% in January 2021, the month Biden became president. The Hispanic or Latino unemployment rate was 4.1% in December, just above the record low of 4.0% that was set in September 2019. (This data series goes back to 1973.) The rate was 8.5% in January 2021.

    The unemployment rate for people with disabilities was 5.0% in December, the lowest since the beginning of the data series in 2008. The rate was 12.0% in January 2021.

    Biden said that fewer families are facing foreclosure than before the pandemic.

    Facts First: Biden is correct. According to a report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, about 28,500 people had new foreclosure notations on their credit reports in the third quarter of 2022, the most recent quarter for which data is available; that was down from about 71,420 people with new foreclosure notations in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 74,860 people in the first quarter of 2020.

    Foreclosures plummeted in the second quarter of 2020 because of government moratoriums put in place because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Foreclosures spiked in 2022, relative to 2020-2021 levels, after the expiry of these moratoriums, but they remained very low by historical standards.

    Biden said, “More American families have health insurance today than any time in American history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is accurate. An analysis provided to CNN by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies US health care, found that about 295 million US residents had health insurance in 2021, the highest on record – and Jennifer Tolbert, the foundation’s director for state health reform, told CNN this week that “I expect the number of people with insurance continued to increase in 2022.”

    Tolbert noted that the number of insured residents generally rises over time because of population growth, but she added that “it is not a given” that there will be an increase in the number of insured residents every year – the number declined slightly under Trump from 2018 to 2019, for example – and that “policy changes as well as economic factors also affect these numbers.”

    As CNN’s Tami Luhby has reported, sign-ups on the federal insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, have spiked nearly 50% under Biden. Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan pandemic relief law and then the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act temporarily boosted federal premium subsidies for exchange enrollees, and the Biden administration has also taken various other steps to get people to sign up on the exchanges. In addition, enrollment in Medicaid health insurance has increased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic, in part because of a bipartisan 2020 law that temporarily prevented people from being disenrolled from the program.

    The percentage of residents without health insurance fell to an all-time low of 8.0% in the first quarter of 2022, according to an analysis published last summer by the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services. That meant there were 26.4 million people without health insurance, down from 48.3 million in 2010, the year Obamacare was signed into law.

    Biden said, “And over the last two years, more than 10 million people have applied to start a small business. That’s more than any two years in all of recorded American history.”

    Facts First: This is true. There were about 5.4 million business applications in 2021, the highest since 2005 (the first year for which the federal government released this data for a full year), and about 5.1 million business applications in 2022. Not every application turns into a real business, but the number of “high-propensity” business applications – those deemed to have a high likelihood of turning into a business with a payroll – also hit a record in 2021 and saw its second-highest total in 2022.

    Trump’s last full year in office, 2020, also set a then-record for total and high-propensity applications. There are various reasons for the pandemic-era boom in entrepreneurship, which began after millions of Americans lost their jobs in early 2020. Among them: some newly unemployed workers seized the moment to start their own enterprises; Americans had extra money from stimulus bills signed by Trump and Biden; interest rates were particularly low until a series of rate hikes that began in the spring of 2022.

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  • Some of California’s beloved, storm-struck parks and forests remain closed | CNN

    Some of California’s beloved, storm-struck parks and forests remain closed | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    One of California’s biggest draws is the exquisite scenery in its state parks, national forests and other related natural sites. But because of the waves of storms that have dumped a year’s worth of water on drought-plagued lands in a matter of weeks in some spots, various outdoor recreational areas remain closed.

    Especially hard hit was Los Padres National Forest, which is almost 60 miles (97 kilometers) away from Santa Barbara by car.

    Damage there was so bad that a 60-day closure was ordered for four ranger districts (Monterey, Santa Lucia, Santa Barbara and Ojai). The Mt. Pinos District was not in the order.h

    The order was issued on January 13 because of “extreme winter weather events in early January that caused flooding, debris flows, bridge, road and trail failures.”

    On Tuesday, a tweet posted by Los Padres showed some of the damage that was still being assessed.

    It’s possible there will be a reprieve on the 60 day decision.

    The closure order said that it would be “superseded or terminated when conditions and recreational access improves.” Los Padres got more 100% of its annual rainfall along with high-wind damage earlier this month, the forest’s website said.

    On top of that, stretches of the roads to get to the national forest are compromised.

    California’s state park system also took a big hit from the deluges, and some of its sites are closed.

    Twenty one state parks, beaches, reserves and related sites were fully closed as of 6:45 p.m. PT January 24, and another 40 places were partially closed.

    The damage and the closures have been widespread.

    Some of the closures included El Capitán State Beach in Santa Barbara County and Limekiln State Park in Monterey County, some 165 miles (265 kilometers) away on a partially closed highway.

    Click here for the most current updates from the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

    It’s not just the recent wicked winter rainstorms that have closed down natural areas. Others are closed for more normal seasonal weather, previous weather events or both.

    At Death Valley National Park, an access road to a trail head is partially closed because of snow. And “many other roads remain closed due to damage and debris from major flooding this summer,” according to park management.

    Meanwhile, Devils Postpile National Monument, near Yosemite National Park in the heart of the Sierra Nevada range, is closed for the long winter season and is only open during summer months.

    Speaking of Yosemite, you’ll need a reservation to drive into the park on February 10-12, February 17-19 or February 24-26 because of the popular “Firefall” event at Horsetail Fall.

    With so many partial and full closures, you should check the status of any state or national park before committing to travel plans.

    Top image: Big Basin Redwoods State Park in California. Photo via Adobe Stock.

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  • Thousands without power after reported tornadoes strike Texas and Louisiana communities as storm continues to threaten South, Midwest | CNN

    Thousands without power after reported tornadoes strike Texas and Louisiana communities as storm continues to threaten South, Midwest | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    More than a dozen reported tornadoes struck across communities in Texas and Louisiana, damaging many homes and businesses as windows and roofs were blown off buildings – and the threat is expected to persist Wednesday in other southern states.

    A massive, multi-day storm is bringing different impacts to a large swath of the US this week, with parts of Alabama, Florida and Mississippi under a tornado watch through 5 a.m. Wednesday while snow is also in store for the Midwest.

    “A winter storm will move into the Mid-Mississippi Valley by Wednesday morning. Areas of heavy snow and a wintry mix over Oklahoma and the Ozarks will expand northeastward into the Ohio Valley through early Wednesday,” the National Weather Service said on Twitter.

    On Tuesday, the storm inflicted extensive damage to the Houston-area communities of Deer Park and Pasadena, where downed trees and debris littered streets and thousands were without power after lines were knocked down.

    “We’ve seen plenty of damage. We’ve seen buildings that have collapsed,” Pasadena Mayor Jeff Wagner said.

    Josh Bruegger, the city’s police chief, described the damage as the worst he has seen in 25 years, adding, “For the coming days, we’re going to have our hands full.”

    In Deer Park, people who were at St. Hyacinth Catholic Church hunkered down in a hallway and closed all doors as they heard what they believe to be a tornado roll through the area, Father Reginald Samuels said.

    “It got really loud, we heard glass breaking, and the building was shaking then it was calm,” Samuels told CNN, adding that no one was hurt.

    Damage was also reported at a Deer Park nursing home, prompting the evacuation of about 60 residents Tuesday afternoon, Mayor Jerry Mouton told CNN. There were no reports of injuries, according to Jerry Dilliard with the Atascocita Fire Department. CNN reached out to the nursing home’s operator Tuesday for more information.

    Mr. Electric employees Héctor Vázquéz, left, and Lucas Perry pass off a phone outside their office building where they were working when a powerful storm system hit Tuesday in Deer Park, Texas.

    As clean-up efforts are underway in Deer Park, schools in the city will close Wednesday, the district said.

    “We hope this will give families a chance to recover from the stress of today’s events, and we believe it is best for children to be with their parents or guardians after a natural disaster,” the district said in a statement sent to parents and employees Tuesday night.

    “It appears many homes and businesses in our area were damaged, and some neighborhoods remain without power at this time,” the statement continued.

    Photos of damage in Deer Park show tree limbs lying on roads, roofs flown off buildings and damaged vehicles.

    John Liparito surveys storm damage Tuesday in Pasadena, Texas.

    More than 100,000 homes and businesses in Texas and Arkansas were left in the dark early Wednesday morning, according to the tracking site PowerOutage.us. As of 9 p.m. ET, at least 14 tornadoes had been reported across southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana.

    In Louisiana’s Beauregard Parish, the sheriff’s office reported significant damage to homes and other buildings, noting that roads were blocked and power lines were down. Nearly 16,000 homes and businesses were also without power in Louisiana early Wednesday morning.

    Overall, there were no reports of serious injuries associated with Tuesday’s storm damage, with Pasadena officials reporting one injury.

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  • Drivers stranded and damage reported after possible tornado in Houston area | CNN

    Drivers stranded and damage reported after possible tornado in Houston area | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Emergency responders in the Houston area say they are responding to reports of damage and stranded motorists after a possible tornado moved through the area.

    The Harris County Sheriff’s Department is “responding to a high number of stranded motorists,” Sheriff Ed Gonzalez tweeted. The department had prepared its high-water rescue vehicles ahead of the storm, he said.

    The police department in Pasadena about 15 miles southeast of downtown Houston said it was “aware of a tornado touching down on the south east side of our city,”

    There have been reports of “several commercial trucks overturned” near Beltway 8, the beltway around the city of Houston, the department said, and some power lines were reported to be down.

    “Our officers and Fire Department are working towards assisting those people with who were immediately affected,” the department tweeted.

    More than 116,000 electric customers were without power in Texas Tuesday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.

    A tornado emergency was declared earlier Tuesday for the southeastern metro area of Houston where “a confirmed large and destructive tornado was observed over northwestern Pasadena, moving northeast at 60 mph,” according to the National Weather Service in Houston.

    Other locations in the path of this tornado included Deer Park, Baytown, Highlands and Channelview, according to the weather service.

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  • Fact check: McCarthy’s false, misleading and evidence-free claims since becoming House speaker | CNN Politics

    Fact check: McCarthy’s false, misleading and evidence-free claims since becoming House speaker | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Since winning a difficult battle to become speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy has made public claims that are misleading, lacking any evidence or plain wrong.

    Here is a fact check of recent McCarthy comments about the debt ceiling, funding for the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s resort and residence in Florida, President Joe Biden’s stance on stoves and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.

    McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

    McCarthy has cited the example of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, his Democratic predecessor as House speaker, while defending conservative Republicans’ insistence that any agreement to lift the federal debt ceiling must be paired with cuts to government spending – a trade-off McCarthy agreed to when he was trying to persuade conservatives to support his bid for speaker. Specifically, McCarthy has claimed that even Pelosi agreed to a spending cap as part of a deal to lift the debt ceiling under Trump.

    “When Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s what transpired. To get a debt ceiling, they also got a cap on spending for the next two years,” McCarthy told reporters at a press conference on January 12. When Fox host Maria Bartiromo told McCarthy in a January 15 interview that “they” would not agree to a spending cap, he responded, “Well Maria, I don’t believe that’s the case, because when Donald Trump was president and when Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s exactly what happened for them to get a debt ceiling lifted last time. They agreed to a spending cap.”

    Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are highly misleading. The deal Pelosi agreed to with the Trump administration in 2019 actually loosened spending caps that were already in place at the time because of a 2011 law. In other words, while congressional conservatives today want to use a debt ceiling deal to reduce government spending, the Pelosi deal allowed for billions in additional government spending above the pre-existing maximum. The two situations are nothing alike.

    Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, said when asked about the accuracy of McCarthy’s claims: “I’m going to steer clear of characterizing the Speaker’s remarks, but as an objective matter, the deal reached in 2019 increased the spending caps set by the Budget Control Act of 2011.”

    The 2019 deal, which was criticized by many congressional conservatives, also ensured that Budget Control Act’s caps on discretionary spending – which were created as a result of a 2011 debt ceiling deal between a Democratic president and a Republican speaker of the House – would not be extended past 2021. Spending caps vanishing is the opposite of McCarthy’s suggestion that the deal “got” a spending cap.

    Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email that McCarthy is “trying to rewrite history.” Bennett said, “As Republicans in Congress and in the Administration noted at the time, in 2019, Speaker Pelosi and Democrats were eager to reach bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit and, as part of the agreement, avert damaging funding cuts for defense and domestic programs.”

    In various statements since becoming speaker, McCarthy has boasted of how the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House “repealed 87,000 IRS agents” or “repealed funding for 87,000 new IRS agents.”

    Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are false. House Republicans did pass a bill that seeks to eliminate about $71 billion of the approximately $80 billion in additional Internal Revenue Service funding that Biden signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act – but that funding is not going to hire 87,000 “agents.” In addition, Biden has already made clear he would veto this new Republican bill even if the bill somehow made it through the Democratic-controlled Senate, so no funding has actually been “repealed.” It would be accurate for McCarthy to say House Republicans “voted to repeal” the funding, but the boast that they actually “repealed” something is inaccurate.

    CNN’s Katie Lobosco explains in detail here why the claim about “87,000 new IRS agents” is an exaggeration. The claim, which has become a common Republican talking point, has been fact-checked by numerous media outlets over more than five months, including The Washington Post in response to McCarthy remarks earlier this January.

    Here’s a summary. While Inflation Reduction Act funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations. Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up the vast majority of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

    The IRS has not yet released a detailed breakdown of how it plans to use the funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, so it’s impossible to say precisely how many new “agents” will be hired. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000.

    In his interview with Fox’s Bartiromo on January 15, McCarthy criticized federal law enforcement for executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Florida, which the FBI says resulted in the recovery of more than 100 government documents marked as classified and hundreds of other government documents. Echoing a claim Trump has made, McCarthy said of the documents: “They knew it was there. They could have come and taken it any time they wanted.”

    Facts First: It is clearly not true that the authorities could somehow have come to Mar-a-Lago at any time, without conducting a formal search, and taken all of the presidential records they were seeking from Trump. By the time of the search, the federal government – first the National Archives and Records Administration and then the Justice Department – had been asking Trump for more than a year to return government records. Even when the Justice Department went beyond asking in May and served Trump’s team with a subpoena for the return of all documents with classification markings, Trump’s team returned only some of these documents. In June, a Trump lawyer signed a document certifying on behalf of Trump’s office that all of the documents had been returned, though that was not true.

    When FBI agents and a Justice Department attorney visited Mar-a-Lago without a search warrant on that June day to accept documents the Trump team was returning in response to the subpoena, a Trump lawyer “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room,” the department said in a court filing after the August search. In other words, according to the department, the government was not even allowed to poke around to see if there were government records still at Mar-a-Lago, let alone take those records.

    In the August court filing, the department pointedly called into question the extent to which the Trump team had cooperated: “That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.”

    McCarthy wrote in a New York Post article published on January 12: “While President Joe Biden wants to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on, House Republicans are certainly cooking with gas.” He repeated the claim on Twitter the next morning.

    Facts First: There is no evidence for this claim; Biden has not expressed a desire to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on. McCarthy was baselessly attributing the comments of a single Biden appointee to Biden himself.

    It is true that a Biden appointee on the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., told Bloomberg earlier this month that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and said, “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the day before McCarthy’s article was published by the New York Post, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

    To date, even the commission itself has not shown support for a ban on gas stoves or for any particular new regulations on gas stoves. Commission Chairman Alexander Hoehn-Saric said in a statement the day before McCarthy’s article was published: “I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.” Rather, he said, the commission is researching gas emissions in stoves, “exploring new ways to address health risks,” and strengthening voluntary safety standards – and will this spring ask the public “to provide us with information about gas stove emissions and potential solutions for reducing any associated risks.”

    Trumka told CNN’s Matt Egan that while every option remains on the table, any ban would apply only to new gas stoves, not the gas stoves already in people’s homes. And he noted that the Inflation Reduction Act makes people eligible for a rebate of up to $840 to voluntarily switch to an electric stove.

    Defending his plan to bar Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff from sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, a committee Schiff chaired during the Democratic majority from early 2019 to the beginning of this year, McCarthy criticized Schiff on January 12 over his handling of the first impeachment of Trump. Among other things, McCarthy said: “Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public. He told you he had proof. He told you he didn’t know the whistleblower.”

    Facts First: There is no evidence for McCarthy’s insinuation that Schiff lied when he said he didn’t know the anonymous whistleblower who came forward in 2019 with allegations – which were subsequently corroborated – about how Trump had attempted to use the power of his office to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden, his looming rival in the 2020 election.

    Schiff said last week in a statement to CNN: “Kevin McCarthy continues to falsely assert I know the Ukraine whistleblower. Let me be clear – I have never met the whistleblower and the only thing I know about their identity is what I have read in press. McCarthy’s real objection is we proved the whistleblower’s claim to be true and impeached Donald Trump for withholding millions from Ukraine to extort its help with his campaign.” Schiff also made this comment to The Washington Post, which fact-checked the McCarthy claim last week, and has consistently said the same since late 2019.

    The New York Times reported in 2019 that, according to an unnamed official, a House Intelligence Committee aide who had been contacted by the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed a formal complaint did not inform Schiff of the person’s identity when conveying to Schiff “some” information about what the person had said. And Reuters reported in 2019 that a person familiar with the whistleblower’s contacts said the whistleblower hadn’t met or spoken with Schiff.

    McCarthy could have fairly repeated Republican criticism of a claim Schiff made in a 2019 television appearance about the committee’s communication with the whistleblower; Schiff said at the time “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower” even though it soon emerged that the whistleblower had contacted the committee aide before filing the complaint. (A committee spokesperson said at the time that Schiff had been merely trying to say that the committee hadn’t heard actual testimony from the whistleblower, but that Schiff acknowledged his words “should have been more carefully phrased to make that distinction clear.”)

    Regardless, McCarthy didn’t argue here that Schiff had been misleading about the committee’s dealings with the whistleblower; he strongly suggested that Schiff lied in saying he didn’t know the whistleblower. That’s baseless. There has never been any indication that Schiff had a relationship with the whistleblower when he said he didn’t, nor that Schiff knew the whistleblower’s identity when he said he didn’t.

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  • Tens of thousands without power in Northeast as another storm threatens the US from New Mexico to Maine | CNN

    Tens of thousands without power in Northeast as another storm threatens the US from New Mexico to Maine | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Tens of thousands of homes and businesses across multiple states in the Northeast were without power early Tuesday after a winter storm dumped more than a foot of snow across areas from central New York to the Maine-Canada border.

    And while the region is expected to get a slight reprieve from heavy snow Tuesday, another storm system is forming in the southern region of the country that’s forecast to move into the Northeast later this week.

    “A large-scale winter storm will move into the southern Plains Monday night and Tuesday, producing areas of heavy snow from eastern New Mexico through Oklahoma,” the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center said on Twitter.

    “The storm is expected to strengthen and track northeastward from the lower Mississippi Valley to the Great Lakes Tuesday night and Wednesday, and produce a stripe of moderate to heavy snow from the Ozarks to the Great Lakes,” the agency added.

    On Tuesday, parts of New England, especially southern parts of Maine, may experience light snow, National Weather Service said on its website. Meanwhile, areas across the Northeast are expected to see cold, dry air and windy conditions.

    And those conditions are persisting as thousands across Massachusetts and New Hampshire are without power after wind and snow from the previous storm knocked down power lines.

    “York County, Maine, has been most impacted by today’s long duration storm as leftover snow on trees and power lines from (last) Friday’s storm resulted in downed trees and blocked roads throughout the area,” Central Maine Power spokesperson Jon Breed told CNN Monday.

    As of early Tuesday morning, more than 30,000 homes and businesses were in the dark in Maine’s south westernmost York County, according to the PowerOutage.us.

    Snow already packed on trees from recent storms along with strong winds are likely to exacerbate damage to the electric system and bring additional outages, New England’s largest energy provider Eversource said in a statement Monday on the status of power outages in New Hampshire.

    “Our system has continued to take damage into tonight, and we are actively assessing and clearing damage while also supporting public safety efforts,” Eversource spokesperson William Hinkle told CNN Monday night.

    Eversource is tapping into its regional resources, bringing in additional crews from its Connecticut and Massachusetts based operations to support restoration efforts in New Hampshire, where more than 66,0000 homes and businesses were also without power Tuesday morning, according to PowerOutage.us.

    About 17 inches have fallen across parts of Maine and New Hampshire while some areas in Vermont and New York saw about 14 inches of snow.

    The next storm is expected to impact the country for several days beginning Tuesday, when more than 15 million people are under the threat of severe storms. High wind alerts have also been issued for more 20 million people as gusts could reach as high as 55 mph.

    There is an enhanced risk of severe storms (level 3 of 5) from southeastern Texas to the western Florida Panhandle, including New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Mobile, Alabama. The main threats are damaging winds, large hail and several tornadoes, a few of which could be strong.

    A slight risk for severe storms (level 2 of 5) surrounds the enhanced risk area and includes Houston, Beaumont, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana – which could also see tornadoes, damaging winds and isolated large hail.

    Meanwhile, there is also a marginal risk (level 1 of 5) for the middle Texas coast, across southern Louisiana into Alabama and the western Florida Panhandle, including Corpus Christi, Texas, and Jackson, Mississippi.

    On Wednesday, the severe storm threat will continue as it shifts to the east.

    A slight risk of severe storms has been issued for the region of southeastern Alabama and northern Florida and expands through Georgia and the Carolinas into Virginia and includes Jacksonville, Florida, north to Virginia Beach. That region is expected to see a few tornadoes and damaging winds.

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  • ‘I cried all night’: Millions of Chinese lose access to ‘World of Warcraft’ and other hit games | CNN Business

    ‘I cried all night’: Millions of Chinese lose access to ‘World of Warcraft’ and other hit games | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Millions of players in China have lost access to the iconic “World of Warcraft” franchise and other popular video games, as Blizzard Entertainment’s servers in the country went offline after two decades.

    The company’s services in China were suspended at midnight local time on Tuesday, marking the end of an era for fans, after a licensing agreement with longtime local partner NetEase

    (NTES)     expired.

    “World of Warcraft,” also known as “WoW,” is a hugely popular online multiplayer game that allows users to fight monsters and journey through expeditions in the medieval world of Azeroth.

    Many gamers around the world have grown up with the smash hit, including in China. That was underscored in recent days, as Chinese fans expressed their disbelief over the loss of their longtime pastime in social media posts.

    “When I woke up, I still didn’t want to accept [it],” one user said on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, on Tuesday. “I cried all night in my sleep because the game went offline. I dreamed that I was crying in the middle of the class.”

    Another player described “World of Warcraft” as “my first love.”

    “I really can’t forget it,” they wrote.

    The suspension follows a bitter dispute between Blizzard, a unit of Activision Blizzard

    (ATVI)    , and NetEase.

    Foreign publishers must work with local partners to offer video games in China. Last November, however, Blizzard and NetEase announced they would not renew licensing agreements that were set to expire this month.

    Those deals had covered the publication of several popular Blizzard titles in mainland China, including “World of Warcraft,” “Hearthstone,” and “Diablo III,” since 2008. In separate statements at the time, both sides said they were unable to reach a new agreement on key terms, without giving further details.

    Now, the discussions appear to have gotten more acrimonious.

    In a statement last Tuesday, Blizzard said it had reached out to NetEase to seek “their help in exploring a six-month extension to the current agreement.”

    The US company said it had appealed to NetEase to let fans continue playing uninterrupted, “based on our personal feelings as gamers, and the frustration expressed to us by Chinese players.”

    “Unfortunately, after renewed discussions last week, NetEase did not accept our proposal for an extension,” Blizzard said.

    NetEase hit back with its own statement last week.

    In unusually terse comments, the Chinese tech and gaming giant accused Blizzard of blindsiding it with its “sudden statement” and called the US company’s proposal “outrageous, inappropriate, and not in line with business logic.”

    NetEase also pointed out that Blizzard had already “started the work of finding new partners” in China, putting the Hangzhou-based company in an “unfair” position.

    The public spat marked an unexpected twist in the companies’ 14-year partnership.

    Under a separate agreement, the companies are working together on the joint development and publishing of “Diablo Immortal,” another widely followed multiplayer game that allows users to slay demons in an ancient world. NetEase said in a statement in November that this collaboration would continue.

    Blizzard said in December that “World of Warcraft” fans would be able to back up their playing history and ensure all progress was saved as it wound down its agreement and looked for a new partner.

    This week’s shutdown has been emotional, even for senior leadership at NetEase.

    In a LinkedIn post Monday, Simon Zhu, president of global investments and partnerships of NetEase Games, detailed how he grew up with Blizzard games in China, including older “Warcraft” and “Diablo” titles.

    “Only [a] few hours before Blizzard Games servers shut down in China, and that is a very very big deal for players in China,” he wrote.

    “Today is such a sad moment to witness the server shutdown, and we don’t know how things will play out in the future. The biggest victim would be players in China who live and breathe in those worlds.”

    Activision Blizzard, which previously had another Chinese partner before teaming up with NetEase, said it is continuing its search for a new distribution partner.

    “Our commitment to players on mainland China remains strong as we continue to work with Tencent to distribute ‘Call of Duty: Mobile,’ as well as continue active talks with potential partners to resume gameplay for Blizzard’s iconic franchises,” an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told CNN.

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  • Winter is more than halfway over, and many Northeast cities still await their first snow day | CNN

    Winter is more than halfway over, and many Northeast cities still await their first snow day | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared in the weekly weather newsletter, the CNN Weather Brief, which is released every Monday. You can sign up here to receive them every week and during significant storms.



    CNN
     — 

    While the western US has been piling up snowfall over the past several weeks, it has been the complete opposite across the Northeast and New England.

    We are more than halfway through meteorological winter, which runs from December through February, and cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC have yet to see measurable snow, defined as at least 0.1 inches.

    And it’s not just the coastal cities. Many locations across interior New England and the Northeast are seeing significantly below normal snowfall to date.

    “With the exception of some areas downwind of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and very small areas of interior New England, the East is certainly in a snow drought with some locations that normally have snow, down by as much as one to more than three feet,” the Weather Prediction Center Branch Chief Greg Carbin told CNN.

    Buffalo, New York was inundated with several feet of heavy snowfall earlier this winter.

    Carbin went on to explain there are two types of snow drought:

    • The first type is when there is an overall lack of winter precipitation, rain or snow, which contributes to drought conditions.
    • The second type is when overall precipitation amounts are near normal but instead of falling as snow, it falls mostly as rain.

    “Along the I-95 corridor from DC to Boston, the latter type of snow drought has been measured so far this winter,” Carbin said. “Precipitation amounts have been normal to slightly above normal, but it’s generally been too warm for precipitation to fall in the form of snow.”

    The period between snow events is likely to increase as the climate warms, and it may be especially true for coastal Northeastern cities. As the Northeast temperatures warm, the rain-snow line shifts farther north, leading to more rainy winter day along the coast and less snow, according to the US National Climate Assessment.

    And it’s not just the Northeast, winter (December, January, February) is also the fastest-warming season for 75% of 238 US locations, according to Climate Central’s data analysis.

    319

    Central Park in New York City has gone 319 days without measurable snow through Sunday, which currently ties for their third-longest streak. Central Park would have to be snowless through February 5, 2023, to break the record streak of 332 days set back in 2020.

    316

    Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC have all gone 316 days without measurable snow through Sunday, which rank 6th, 12th, and 19th respectively.

    1973

    Central Park is also approaching the latest date in the season for their first measurable snowfall since record keeping began in 1869.

    “The current record is Jan. 29, 1973, which went on to become the least-snowy winter in NYC history, with just 2.8 inches total snow accumulation,” Carbin said.

    “The pattern has been fairly consistent with the typical La Nina pattern across the Northeastern US so far this winter,” meaning the track of the storms and cold air have remained to the north and west of the Northeast, meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in New York City told CNN.

    Watch: Meteorologist Jennifer Gray explains the effects of La Niña

    La Niña, the counterpart of El Niño, is characterized by below-normal sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean near the equator, a result of shifting wind patterns in the atmosphere, which has a direct effect on weather seen across the US in the winter.

    “There are of course variations in this pattern due to short term factors that are not predictable more than one to two weeks in advance, such as the arctic outbreak during Christmas,” the weather service office in New York City said. “But these variations have been brief.”

    The most active weather and heaviest snowfall in recent weeks have been focused across the West and California, where more than 15 feet of snow have fallen across portions of the Sierras from December 26, 2022, through January 17, 2023.

    “While the jet stream meanders and can occasionally quickly change to support snowstorms just about anywhere during the winter, this winter has been quite active across the West, with a weak but broad area of high pressure (and warmer than average temperatures) over the eastern 2/3rds of the contiguous United States,” Carbin said.

    There is a chance Central Park could see some light accumulating snow Wednesday but there is still some uncertainty in the forecast, the weather service office in New York City said.

    If the city does not see snow this week, their streak will stay alive. After Wednesday, the weather service is currently forecasting dry conditions through January 29.

    “We need to make up the whole seasonal snowfall since none has accumulated, which is 29.8 inches,” the weather service office in New York City said. “The record storm total snowfall is 27.5 inches on January 22 to 24, 2016, so that is very close to our seasonal snowfall. All it may take is one storm to get us back on track.”

    While this scenario is certainly possible, it is not very likely. There have only been seven storms on record to dump 20 inches of snow or more across Central Park in recorded history, according to the weather service.

    “February and March are months in which big snows have fallen in the cities of the Northeast, so there remains some hope for snow lovers,” Carbin said. “Although, the later in the season you get started, the more likely you are to finish the season with lackluster snowfall.”

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  • After a historic first mission, what does the future hold for this controversial rocket? | CNN Business

    After a historic first mission, what does the future hold for this controversial rocket? | CNN Business

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    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.


    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    In the fervor-filled days leading up to the November 16 launch of the long-awaited Artemis I mission, an uncrewed trip around the moon, some industry insiders admitted to having conflicting emotions about the event.

    On one hand, there was the thrill of watching NASA take its first steps toward eventually getting humans back to the lunar surface; on the other, a shadow cast by the long and costly process it took to get there.

    “I have mixed feelings, though I hope that we have a successful mission,” former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao said in an opinion roundtable interview with The New York Times. “It is always exciting to see a new vehicle fly. For perspective, we went from creating NASA to landing humans on the moon in just under 11 years. This program has, in one version or another, been ongoing since 2004.”

    There have been numerous delays with the development of the rocket at the center of the Artemis I mission: NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket ever flown — and one of the most controversial. The towering launch vehicle was originally expected to take flight in 2016. And the decade-plus that the rocket was in development sparked years of blistering criticism targeted toward the space agency and Boeing, which holds the primary contract for the SLS rocket’s core.

    NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) repeatedly called out what it referred to as Boeing’s “poor performance,” as a contributing factor in the billions of dollars in cost overruns and schedule delays that plagued SLS.

    “Cost increases and schedule delays of Core Stage development can be traced largely to management, technical, and infrastructure issues driven by Boeing’s poor performance,” one 2018 report from NASA’s OIG, the first in a series of audits the OIG completed surrounding NASA’s management of the SLS program, read. And a report in 2020 laid out similar grievances.

    For its part, Boeing has pushed back on the criticism, pointing to rigorous testing requirements and the overall success of the program. The OIG report also included correspondence from NASA, which noted in 2018 that it “had already recognized the opportunity to improve contract performance management” and agreed with the report’s recommendations.

    In various op-eds, the rocket has also been deemed “the result of unfortunate compromises and unholy politics,” a “colossal waste of money” and an “irredeemable mistake.”

    Despite all the heated debate that has followed SLS, by all accounts, the rocket is here to stay. And officials at NASA and Boeing said its first launch two months ago was practically flawless.

    “I worked over 50 Space Shuttle launches,” Boeing SLS program manager John Shannon told CNN by phone. “And I don’t ever remember a launch that was as clean as that one was, which for a first-time rocket — especially one that had been through as much as this one through all the testing — really put an exclamation point on how reliable and robust this vehicle really is.”

    The Artemis program manager at NASA, Mike Sarafin, also said during a post-launch news conference that the rocket “performed spot-on.”

    But with its complicated history and its hefty price tag, SLS could still face detractors in the years to come.

    Many have questioned why SLS needs to exist at all. With the estimated cost per launch standing at more than $4 billion for the first four Artemis missions, it’s possible commercial rockets, like the massive Mars rocket SpaceX is building, could get the job done more efficiently, as the chief of space policy at the nonprofit exploration advocacy group Planetary Society, Casey Dreier, recently observed in an article laying out both sides of the SLS argument.

    (NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted that the $4 billion per-launch cost estimate includes development costs that the space agency hopes will be amortized over the course of 10 or more missions.)

    Boeing was selected in 2012 to build SLS’s “core stage,” which is the hulking orange fuselage that houses most of the massive engines that give the rocket its first burst of power at liftoff.

    Though more than 1,000 companies were involved with designing and building SLS, Boeing’s work involved the largest and most expensive portion of the rocket.

    That process began over a decade ago, and when the Artemis program was established in 2019, it gave the rocket its purpose: return humans to the moon, establish a permanent lunar outpost, and, eventually, pave the path toward getting humans to Mars.

    But the SLS is no longer the only rocket involved in the program. NASA gave SpaceX a significant role in 2021, giving the company a fixed-price contract for use of its Mars rocket as the vehicle that will ferry astronauts to the lunar surface after they leave Earth and travel to the moon’s orbit on SLS. SpaceX’s forthcoming rocket, called Starship, is also intended to be capable of completing a crewed mission to the moon or Mars on its own. (Starship, it should be noted, is still in the development phases and has not yet been tested in orbit.)

    Boeing has repeatedly argued that SLS is essential and capable of performing tasks that other rockets cannot.

    “The bottom line is there’s nothing else like the SLS because it was built from the ground up to be human rated,” Shannon said. “It is the only vehicle that can take the Orion spacecraft and the service module to the moon. And that’s the purpose-built design — to take large hardware and humans to cislunar space, and nothing else exists that can do that.”

    Starship, meanwhile, is not tailored solely to NASA’s specific lunar goals. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has talked for more than a decade about his desire to get humans to Mars. More recently, he has said Starship could also be used to house giant space telescopes.

    Yet, another reason critics remain skeptical of SLS is because of its origins. The rocket’s conception can be traced back to NASA’s Constellation program, which was a plan to return to the moon mapped out under former President George W. Bush that was later canceled.

    But the SLS has survived. Many observers have suggested a big reason was the desire to maintain space industry jobs in certain Congressional districts and to beef up aerospace supply chains.

    Members of Congress and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden unveil the Space Launch System design on September 14, 2011. From left: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison R-Texas, Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., Administrator Bolden.

    Much of the criticism levied against SLS, however, has focused on the actual process of getting the rocket built.

    At one point in 2019, former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine considered sidelining the SLS rocket entirely, citing frustrations with the delays.

    “At the end of the day, the contractors had an obligation to deliver what NASA had contracted for them to deliver,” Bridenstine told CNN by phone last month. “And I was frustrated like most of America.”

    Still, Bridenstine said, when his office reviewed the matter, it found “there were no options that were going to cost less money or take less time than just finishing the SLS” — and the rocket was never ultimately sidelined. (Bridenstine noted he was also publicly critical of delayed projects led by SpaceX and others.)

    NASA continued to stand by Boeing and the SLS rocket even as it became a political hot potato, with some in Congress both criticizing its costs and refusing to abandon the program.

    The SLS rocket ended up flying its first launch more than six years later than originally intended. NASA had allocated $6.2 billion to the SLS program as of 2018, but that price tag more than tripled to $23 billion as of 2022, according to an analysis by the Planetary Society.

    Those escalating costs can be traced back to the type of contracts that NASA signed with Boeing and its other major suppliers for SLS. It’s called cost-plus, which puts the financial burden on NASA when projects face cost overruns while still offering contractors extra payments, or award fees.

    In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Science last year, current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticized the cost-plus contracting method, calling it a “plague.”

    More in vogue are “fixed-price” contracts, which have a firm price cap, like the kind NASA gave to Boeing and SpaceX for its Commercial Crew Program.

    In an interview with CNN in December, however, Nelson stood by cost-plus contracting for SLS and Orion, the vehicle that is designed to carry astronauts and rides atop the rocket to space. He said that without that type of contract, in his view, NASA’s private-sector contractors simply wouldn’t be willing to take on a rocket designed for such a specific purpose and exploring deep space. Building a rocket as specific and technically complex as SLS isn’t a risk many private-sector companies are anxious to take on, he noted.

    “You really have difficulty in the development of a new and very exquisite spacecraft … on a fixed-price contract,” he said.

    “That industry is just not willing to accept that kind of thing, with the exception of the landers,” he added, referring to two other branches of the Artemis program: robotic landers that will deliver cargo to the moon’s surface and SpaceX’s $2.9 billion lunar lander contract. Both of those will use fixed-price — often referred to as “commercial” — contracts.

    Commercial landers will carry NASA-provided science and technology payloads to the lunar surface, paving the way for NASA astronauts to land on the Moon by 2024.

    “And even there, they’re getting a considerable investment by the federal government,” Nelson said.

    Still, government watchdogs have not pulled punches when assessing these cost-plus contracts and Boeing’s role.

    “We did notice very poor contractor performance on Boeing’s part. There’s poor planning and poor execution,” NASA Inspector General Paul Martin said during testimony before the House’s Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics last year. “We saw that the cost-plus contracts that NASA had been using…worked to the contractor’s — rather than NASA’s — advantage.”

    Shannon, the Boeing executive, acknowledged in an interview that Boeing and SLS have faced loud detractors, but he said that the value of the drawn out development and testing program would become evident as SLS flies.

    “I am extremely proud that NASA — even though there were significant schedule pressures — they could set up a test program that was incredibly comprehensive,” he said. “The Boeing team worked through that test process and hit every mark on it. And you see the results. You see a vehicle that is not just visually spectacular, but its performance was spectacular. And it really put us on the road to be able to do lunar exploration again, which is something that’s very important in this country.”

    But the rocket is still facing criticism. During a Congressional hearing with the House’s Science, Space, and Technology Committee in March 2022, NASA’s Inspector General said that current cost estimates for SLS were “unsustainable,” gauging that the space agency will have spent $93 billion on the Artemis program from 2012 through September 2025.

    Martin, the NASA inspector general, specifically pointed to Boeing as one of the contractors that would need to find “efficiencies” to bring down those costs as the Artemis program moves forward.

    In a December 7 statement to CNN, Boeing once again defended SLS and its price point.

    “Boeing is and has been committed to improving our processes — both while the program was in its developmental stage and now as it transitions to an operational phase,” the statement read, noting the company already implemented “lessons learned” from building the first rocket to “drive efficiencies from a cost and schedule perspective” for future SLS rockets.

    “When adjusted for inflation, NASA has developed SLS for a quarter of the cost of the Saturn V and half the cost of the Space Shuttle,” the statement noted. “These programs have also been essential to investing in the NASA centers, workforce and test facilities that are used by a broad range of civil and commercial partners across NASA and industry.”

    The successful launch of SLS was a welcome winning moment for Boeing. Over the past few years, the company has been mired in controversy, including ongoing delays and myriad issues with Starliner, a spacecraft built for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and scandal after scandal plaguing its airplane division.

    Now that the Artemis I mission has returned safely home, NASA and Boeing can turn to preparing more of the gargantuan SLS rockets to launch even loftier missions.

    SLS is slated to launch the Artemis II mission, which will take four astronauts on a journey around the moon, in 2024. From there, SLS will be the backbone of the Artemis III mission that will return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in five decades and a series of increasingly complex missions as NASA works to create its permanent lunar outpost.

    Shannon, the Boeing SLS program manager, told CNN that construction of the next two SLS rocket cores is well underway, with the booster for Artemis II on track to be finished in April — more than a year before the mission is scheduled to take off. All of the “major components” for a third SLS rocket are also completed, Shannon added.

    For the third SLS core and beyond, Boeing is also moving final assembly to new facilities Florida, freeing up space at its manufacturing facilities to increase production, which may help drive down costs.

    Shannon declined to share a specific price point for the new rockets or share any internal pricing goals, though NASA is expected to sign new contracts for the rockets that will launch the Artemis V mission and beyond, which could significantly change the price per launch.

    Nelson also told CNN in December that NASA “will be making improvements, and we will find cost savings where we can,” such as with the decision to use commercial contracts for other vehicles under the Artemis program umbrella.

    This image shows technicians and engineers at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility moving and connecting the forward skirt to the liquid oxygen tank (LOX) as they continue the process of the forward join on the core stage of NASA's Space Launch System rocket for Artemis II, the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program. Image credit: NASA/Michael DeMocker

    How and whether those contracts bear out remain to be seen: SpaceX needs to get its Starship rocket flying, a massive space station called Gateway needs to come to fruition, and at least some of the robotic lunar landers designed to carry cargo to the moon will need to prove their effectiveness. It’s also not yet clear whether those contracts will result in enough cost savings for the critics of SLS, including NASA’s OIG, to consider the Artemis program sustainable.

    As for SLS, Nelson also told reporters December 11, just after the conclusion of the Artemis I mission, that he had every reason to expect that lawmakers would continue to fund the rocket and NASA’s broader moon program.

    “I’m not worried about the support from the Congress,” Nelson said.

    And Bridenstine, Nelson’s predecessor who has been publicly critical SLS, said that he ultimately stands by SLS and points out that, controversies aside, it does have rare bipartisan support from its bankrollers.

    “We are in a spot now where this is going to be successful,” Bridenstine said last month, recalling when he first realized the Artemis program had support from the right and left. “All of America is going to be proud of this program. And yes, there are going to be differences. People are gonna say well, you should go all commercial and drop SLS…but at the end of the day, what we have to do is we have to bring together all of the things that are the best programs that we can get for America and use them to go to the moon.”

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  • Faucets in McCarthy’s district are running dry after years of drought. Constituents want him to do more | CNN Politics

    Faucets in McCarthy’s district are running dry after years of drought. Constituents want him to do more | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Shortly after Benjamin Cuevas and his family moved into their new home three years ago in Tooleville, California, he realized something was horribly wrong.

    In the middle of the day, the water pressure would drop completely. Cranking up both hot and cold could only coax a little drip out of the faucet.

    Then there was the water itself, contaminated with chemicals from agriculture runoff and treated with so much chlorine that it turned his family’s black clothing gray in the wash. His daughter and her baby live in the house, and Cuevas’s wife only bathes her granddaughter in the bottled water they receive from the county for drinking.

    Cuevas is not alone; the entire town of under 300 people faces the same water crisis. In many rural parts of the state, faucets and community wells are running dry after years of drought and heavy agriculture use pulls more water from the same groundwater residents use.

    One local nonprofit told CNN that about 8,000 people in the San Joaquin Valley need thousands of gallons of hauled water just to keep their taps flowing – and that number is growing.

    Benjamin Cuevas stands next to a town water tank in Tooleville.

    Newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has represented Tooleville for the past decade – though the small town is just outside his newly redrawn congressional district. The Republican lawmaker has long represented Kern and Tulare counties, and his redrawn seat adds portions of Fresno County.

    Throughout his tenure, this region of California has spent more time than any other part of the country in exceptional drought – the US Drought Monitor’s most severe category – a drought scientists say has been made more intense by human-caused climate change. Recent rainfall has put a dent in the region’s surface drought, though experts have told CNN it will do little to solve the ongoing groundwater shortage.

    Tulare, Kern and Fresno counties have endured more than 200 weeks in exceptional drought over the past decade, according to Drought Monitor data.

    Multiple people CNN spoke to for this story said McCarthy and his office don’t often engage on this issue in the district, especially compared with neighboring members of Congress. And they wish he would do more with his power in Washington – especially now that he holds the speaker’s gavel.

    McCarthy proposed an amendment this past summer to set up a grant program to help connect small towns like Tooleville with larger cities that have better water systems. The measure passed the House but died in the Senate. But as more and more wells go dry, McCarthy has made a point to vote against other bills addressing climate change and drought, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law.

    “In my experience, he has never engaged with us on any of these kinds of emergencies,” said Jessi Snyder, the director of community development at local nonprofit Self-Help Enterprises, who focuses on getting hauled water to entire communities that have gone dry.

    Cuevas moved to Tooleville three years ago.

    In a statement to CNN, McCarthy’s office said he has been “a staunch advocate on water issues in the Central Valley and California” since he was first elected to the House. McCarthy has joined his colleagues to “introduce broad legislative solutions every Congress related to this topic since our water situation continues to worsen,” his spokesperson Brittany Martinez said.

    But McCarthy does not mention climate change when talking about his district’s drought, and his office did not respond to questions from CNN about whether he believes climate change is playing a role. Instead, he often blames the drought on state mismanagement of water and has called for new and larger dams and reservoirs to be built to capture rainwater during wet years.

    Water experts in California say that’s missing the new reality.

    “Part of what’s happening now is the reality that there is no more new water,” said Peter Gleick, co-founder and senior fellow of California-based water nonprofit Pacific Institute. “The knee-jerk response of politicians has always been build another dam; find more water. There is no new reservoir that’s going to magically solve these problems. It’s now a question of managing demand.”

    When a call comes in from yet another community whose well has run dry, it’s a race against time for the staff at Self-Help Enterprises.

    The Visalia, California-based nonprofit has a self-imposed deadline of just 24 hours to drive out to the impacted community with emergency tanks to keep water flowing for showers, laundry and cleaning, as well as with five-gallon jugs of higher-quality water for drinking.

    “The team goes all hands-on deck,” Tami McVay, Self-Help’s director of emergency services, told CNN. “Everybody knows what their role is, and they just go get it done. And we move forward to the next one.”

    A tanker truck makes a water delivery in Tooleville.

    Rick Jackpot Fernandez of Kyle Koontz Water Hauling hooks up a hose to one of the town's water storage tanks.

    These days, there’s always a next one. Snyder said the summer of 2022 marked “a new level of crisis” as entire small communities of 80 to 100 homes started running out of water, in addition to individual homes.

    “It’s been a real struggle because it’s hard to provide a backup source of water to a whole community instead of one household,” she said.

    More than 1,400 wells were reported dry last year, according to the state of California, a 40% increase over the same period in 2021. Self-Help staff see this in person on the ground. New families are flowing into their hauled water program, but none are leaving. During the dry, warm-weather months, McVay estimates her nonprofit fields around 100 calls a day, dropping down to about 30 per week in the winter months.

    The punishing multi-year drought is what Brad Rippey, a meteorologist at the US Department of Agriculture, calls California’s “latest misery.” California has spent eight of the last 11 years in drought, with the last three years being the driest such period on record, state officials said in October. Human-caused climate change – which is raising global temperatures and making much-needed rain and snow less frequent in the West – is contributing to the severity, Rippey said.

    “The impacts are multiplying. You have these droughts piling on top of droughts with cumulative impacts,” including wildfires, he added.

    To supplement the dwindling groundwater supply in Tooleville, officials in Tulare County and nonprofits like Self-Help deliver five-gallon water jugs to the residents for drinking and 16,000 gallons of hauled water into tanks for washing their clothes, doing dishes and taking showers.

    Six five-gallon jugs of water are delivered to a resident's home in Tooleville.

    There’s so much demand in the warm months for the hauled water that a 16,000-gallon delivery lasted some communities just a few hours before needing to be refilled, Snyder said.

    “We literally cannot pump the water out of the tanker trucks fast enough to fill the storage tanks,” she added. “We can’t ever get ahead of it; physics is against us. It’s nuts and really stressful.”

    California’s extreme heat wave this summer pushed water usage even higher as residents watered grass and farms pumped more for crops. In Tooleville, Cuevas watched as the orange and lemon trees in his yard withered and died. Outdoor watering restrictions meant he couldn’t save his trees, even as some of his neighbors flouted the restrictions with noticeably green lawns.

    “Everything just perished,” Cuevas said. “It’s not a good feeling to see other people enjoying [the water], while you’re doing your part.”

    Seeing the nearby Friant-Kern Canal every day – which carries melted snowpack water from Northern California to Central Valley farms – is a nagging reminder of what his family doesn’t have.

    “It’s terrible,” Cuevas told CNN. “Just joking, I’d say I’ll go out there and put a hose [in it] running right back to my house.”

    Tooleville resident Maria Olivera has lived in town since 1974.

    Olivera cooks with bottled water.

    As Cuevas’s own trees died, commercial farms in the area were still producing – although their future is also uncertain. Farms are also having to drill deeper wells to irrigate orange groves and acres of thirsty pecan and pistachio trees.

    With this rush on groundwater, shallow residential wells don’t stand a chance. In West Goshen, a small town that sits outside McCarthy’s district in Tulare County, resident Jesus Benitez told CNN he burned through three well pumps – costing $1,200 a piece – during the warmer months when his neighbor, a farmer who grows alfalfa and corn, started irrigating his crops.

    “They’ve got the money to go every time deeper and deeper in the ground; we don’t have that luxury,” Benitez said.

    Two town wells in nearby Seville nearly ran dry this summer, said Linda Gutierrez, a lifelong resident who sits on the town’s water board. Across the street from the town’s wells is a pistachio farm, and when they start irrigating, the groundwater level plummets, she said.

    But she doesn’t blame the farmers. Like many who live in the area, her husband is a farm worker. There’s a lot of pride in the region’s far-reaching agriculture, and many feel it should be sustained.

    “You can’t not have farmers because you need food, but we have to have water in order to survive,” Gutierrez said. “There’s a very tricky balance to establish. Right now, if they don’t irrigate, we have water, but also a year from now we have no food.”

    A water usage notice is posted on a fence surrounding the Yettem-Seville water storage tanks.

    As big of a societal problem as drought and water shortages are, they are also intensely personal. Self-Help’s McVay gets emotional when talking about school children in the area getting beat up because they don’t have clean clothes or ready access to a shower.

    “They don’t have water in their homes to take baths, or brush their teeth, or have clean laundry, and they’re getting bullied,” she said. “Being made fun of because they’re taking baths at the local gas station bathroom. It’s not fair – the stress that it causes the parents because [they] start to feel like they’re failing as a parent.”

    Multiple local and state elected officials and leaders of nonprofits focusing on water delivery in the San Joaquin Valley said McCarthy isn’t engaged enough on what they consider one of his district’s most dire crises.

    McVay said outreach from McCarthy’s office on dry residential wells is “slim to none, and I am not saying that to discredit them at all.”

    “I have had more conversations, more engagement and just more wanting to know how they can assist from Congressman Valadao and his office than probably any other on the federal side,” McVay added.

    Snyder said Rep. David Valadao, a Republican representing neighboring Kings County as well as portions of Tulare and Kern, and his staff “will show up in a community at the time of a crisis” and are actively engaged on how they can support efforts to get people water.

    Other members of Congress, including Democratic Rep. Jim Costa and Republican Connie Conway, who left office earlier this month, have also been more accessible and engaged on the issue, Snyder said.

    “Kevin McCarthy, no,” Snyder added.

    A sign reading

    Oranges grown on trees in a grove in Tulare County.

    While McCarthy is popular in his district and influential among California and Central Valley Republicans, California state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, a Democrat who represents parts of the San Joaquin Valley plagued by drought, told CNN there are concerns that McCarthy’s ambition for House speaker has superseded his district’s needs.

    “He’s focused on that leadership position instead of actually working on issues to address the impacts of his district,” Hurtado told CNN. “Quietly, the word out there is it’s been a while that he’s actually delivered something for the region, given his focus on the leadership position. Maybe that’s part of his greater vision for helping this region out.”

    McCarthy’s office did not respond to questions about how he’ll use his position as House speaker to address climate change-fueled droughts in California and around the nation. Nor did it respond to the critiques about his lack of engagement.

    “The Leader has consistently worked in a bipartisan, bicameral fashion to deliver this life-giving resource for the families, agriculture producers and workers, and communities in the Central Valley and throughout California, and our Republican congressional delegation heavily relies on his steadfast leadership and decades of expertise when crafting their own pieces of water legislation,” McCarthy’s spokesperson Martinez told CNN in a statement. “When Democrats have held the majority, they time and time again blocked the progress and innovation of their House GOP colleagues.”

    McCarthy delivers remarks to supporters alongside Ronna Romney McDaniel, Republican National Committee chair, and Rep. Tom Emmer on November 9.

    In July, McCarthy spoke on the House floor about Tooleville’s plight, seeking to set up a federal grant program to help connect it and other small towns to larger cities’ water supply.

    “In our district, the community of Tooleville has run out of water as the groundwater table drops and aging infrastructure fails or becomes obsolete,” McCarthy said at the time. “Tulare County advises me that if California’s droughts continue, more small and rural communities in our district with older infrastructure could meet the exact same fate.”

    McCarthy’s measure authorized a grant program but didn’t contain any funding. And even though the bill passed the House, it died in the Senate, and it’s unclear whether it will come up again in the new Congress.

    Connecting Tooleville’s water infrastructure with that of nearby Exeter has been a decadeslong pursuit that is finally close to happening thanks to a state mandate and funding. The project will mean more reliable and cleaner water for residents like Cuevas. But it’s expected to take eight years for the two systems to fully merge.

    The Friant-Kern Canal carries melted snowpack water from Northern California to Central Valley farms.

    McCarthy is also co-sponsoring a bill with Valadao that would enlarge certain reservoirs and kickstart construction on a new reservoir in the Sacramento Valley. But some nonprofit leaders and local officials say these solutions would prioritize agriculture over residents.

    “We need more solutions beyond storage and dams,” said Susana De Anda, executive director of the San Joaquin Valley-based environmental justice nonprofit Community Water Center. “[McCarthy] lacks understanding of the real critical problems we’re experiencing around the drought and our communities.”

    Seeking to attract younger voters concerned about climate change to the Republican Party, McCarthy last year convened a Climate, Energy and Conservation Task Force to develop the party’s messaging and policies around the issue. And House Republican delegations have attended the last two United Nations climate summits.

    Cars drive past a sign on the outskirts of Tooleville.

    But all indications suggest that addressing human-caused climate change is not going to be a focal point of McCarthy’s now that he has the speaker’s gavel. McCarthy and House Republicans have shown they don’t want to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels, and few in the party are willing to connect global temperature rise to worsening droughts and extreme weather.

    McCarthy dissolved Democrats’ Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and he has vowed to investigate Department of Energy grants for electric vehicle components, as well as alleged “collusion” between environmental groups and China and Russia to “hurt American Energy,” according to a recent statement.

    “Our representatives don’t talk about climate change; it’s a real problem,” De Anda said. “Climate change is real. Our communities are the canaries in the coal mine. We get hit first.”

    It’s part of the reason Cuevas is hoping to move away in a couple years. He’s hopeful the water situation will improve by connecting Tooleville to a larger town’s water system; otherwise, he’s afraid he won’t be able to entice another buyer due to the water issues.

    “I’m happy I had a chance to buy it, but we are planning to move,” Cuevas told CNN. “Right now, if I try, I ain’t going to get nothing, not even what I paid for the home.”

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  • What experts say about exercising when you’re tired | CNN

    What experts say about exercising when you’re tired | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Seek advice from a health care provider if you have chronic sleep loss and also prior to starting a workout program.



    CNN
     — 

    It’s the end of another long day at the office after a poor night’s sleep. As usual, you’re exhausted, yet you want to stop at the gym on the way home to get the exercise you need to stay healthy.

    Should you work out when you are suffering from chronic sleep loss?

    This conundrum is a widespread problem, considering 1 in 3 Americans are sleep deprived, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    “It is definitely a bidirectional relationship, not one or the other,” said Dr. Phyllis Zee, director of the Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

    “First, there is clear data to show that regular exercise improves sleep quality — moderate exercise in the morning, afternoon or very early evening can improve deep sleep,” Zee said.

    Deep sleep is the healing stage in which your body repairs and restores itself. Also called “slow wave” sleep, it can only be achieved if your sleep quality is good, with few to no nighttime interruptions.

    “Research also shows that if you sleep better, you’re more likely to be able to engage in exercise and your physical activity levels are going to be higher,” Zee said.

    “So I would say that even if you have had a bad night’s sleep, you should maintain your physical activity.”

    To be healthy, the body needs to move through four stages of sleep several times each night. During the first and second stages, the body starts to decrease its rhythms. Doing so prepares us for the third stage — a deep, slow-wave sleep where the body is literally restoring itself on a cellular level, fixing damage from the day’s wear and tear and consolidating memories into long-term storage.

    Rapid eye movement sleep, called REM, is the final stage in which we dream. Studies have shown that missing REM sleep may lead to memory deficit and poor cognitive outcomes as well as heart and other chronic diseases and an early death.

    On the flip side, years of research has found sleep, especially the deepest, most healing kind, boosts immune functioning.

    Since each sleep cycle is roughly 90 minutes long, most adults need seven to eight hours of relatively uninterrupted slumber to achieve restorative sleep and be healthy, according to the CDC. Sleep debt, along with irregular sleep duration, has been linked to an increased risk of obesity, heart disease, dementia and mood disorders such as anxiety and depression.

    One night of poor sleep shouldn’t have to impact your workout routine, but chronic sleep deprivation leading to multiple days of exhaustion is another matter, experts say.

    It may not be wise to hit the gym or play a sport when you’re barely putting one foot in front of the other, said sleep specialist Dr. Raj Dasgupta, an associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.

    “Without sleep, your muscles can’t recover from the stress you put them through during workouts. It doesn’t do you much good to keep breaking down your muscles without giving them time to recover and grow stronger,” Dasgupta said.

    In addition, you’re more likely to suffer an injury when you’re exhausted, he explained, due to slowed reaction times from your tired brain working to make decisions during the workout or sport.

    “Poor sleep can also affect your motivation to exercise in the first place. You might find yourself dreading your normal workouts and hating every minute in the gym, which is not good for long-term adherence to a fitness plan,” Dasgupta said.

    In addition, sleep deprivation can lead you to make poor food choices, which affect your fitness and physical performance, he said.

    So it’s not a good idea to work out while extremely tired, but you will also sleep better and get more out of exercise if you do. What’s the answer?

    Use common sense, Zee said. “If you’re not sleeping well, don’t go for that intense workout, right? Walk or do yoga instead, but certainly maintain an exercise or physical activity regimen at the regular time of the day that you normally would be doing it.”

    If you’re pressed for time, consider fitting in several short bouts of exercise throughout your day.

    “Everything counts,” Dasgupta said. “Do anything that makes you feel happy and refreshed. This is about hitting the reset button for yourself, not doing some form of exercise because you feel obligated to.”

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  • Unusual dinosaur fossil discovery made in India | CNN

    Unusual dinosaur fossil discovery made in India | CNN

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    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    Paleontologists working in central India have made a rare discovery — a fossilized dinosaur hatchery with 92 nests and 256 eggs belonging to colonies of giant plant-eating titanosaurs.

    A study of the nests and their bowling ball-size eggs has revealed intimate details about the lives of the colossal, long-necked sauropods that lumbered across what’s now central India more than 66 million years ago.

    The eggs, which ranged between 15 centimeters and 17 centimeters (6 inches and 6.7 inches) in diameter, likely belonged to a number of titanosaur species. The number of eggs in each nest ranged from one to 20, said lead study author Guntupalli Prasad, a paleontologist in the department of geology at the University of Delhi. Many of the nests were found close together.

    The findings suggested titanosaurs, among the largest dinosaurs to have lived, were not always the most attentive parents, Prasad said.

    “Since titanosaurs were huge in size, closely spaced nests would not have allowed them to visit the nests to maneuver and incubate the eggs or feed the hatchlings … as the parents would step on the eggs and trample them.”

    Finding a very large number of dinosaur nests is unusual, as preservation conditions have to be “just so” to have turned all the delicate eggs to fossils, said Dr. Darla Zelenitsky, an associate professor of dinosaur paleobiology at the University of Calgary in Canada, who studies dinosaur eggs. Zelenitsky was not involved in the research.

    The nests were close together, suggesting that the dinosaurs laid eggs in groups, similar to many present-day birds that form colonies.

    The first dinosaur eggs in the region were discovered in the 1990s, but the latest study focused on a nesting site in Dhar district in the state of Madhya Pradesh, where excavations and fieldwork took place in 2017, 2018 and 2020.

    The eggs discovered there were so well preserved that the team was able to detect degraded protein fragments from the eggshells.

    Titanosaurs’ nesting behaviors shared characteristics with that of today’s birds and crocodiles, the research suggested.

    From the close proximity of the nests, researchers inferred the dinosaurs laid eggs together in colonies or rookeries, as many birds do in the present day.

    “Such nesting colonies would have been a sight to see back in the Cretaceous where the landscape would have been dotted by a huge number of large dinosaur nests,” Zelenitsky said.

    Prasad said one particular egg — known as an ovum-in-ovo, or egg-in-egg — the team had studied showed birdlike reproductive behavior and indicated that, similar to birds, some dinosaurs may have laid eggs sequentially. Ovum-in-ovo forms happen in birds when an egg becomes embedded in another egg still in the process of forming before they are laid.

    “Sequential laying is the release of eggs one by one with some time gap in between two laying events. This is seen in birds. Modern reptiles, for example turtles and crocodiles, on the other hand, lay all eggs together as a clutch,” he said.

    The eggs would have been laid in marshy flatlands and buried in shallow pits, akin to the nesting sites of modern-day crocodiles, Prasad said. Similar to crocodile hatcheries, nesting close to water may have been important to prevent the eggs from drying out and offspring dying prior to hatching, Zelenitsky added.

    The titanosaur eggs measured 6 inches to 7 inches in diameter.

    But unlike birds and crocodiles, which both incubate their eggs, Prasad said that, based on the physical characteristics of the nests, titanosaurs likely laid their eggs and then left the baby dinos to fend for themselves — although more data is needed to be sure.

    Other dinosaurs were thought to be more attentive parents. A dinosaur was discovered in Mongolia in the 1920s, for example, lying near a nest of eggs thought to belong to a rival. Paleontologists at the time assumed the animal had died while attempting to plunder the nest — and named the creature oviraptor, or “egg thief.”

    The so-called dinosaur thief’s reputation wasn’t restored until the 1990s, when another discovery revealed the eggs were, in fact, its own and that the creature likely sat upon them in a neatly arranged nest.

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  • The Federal Reserve is testing how climate change could hurt big banks | CNN Business

    The Federal Reserve is testing how climate change could hurt big banks | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The largest six banks in the United States have been given until July to show the Federal Reserve what effects disastrous climate change scenarios could have on their bottom lines.

    Noting the risks could be “material,” the Fed said the banks will have to show how their finances fare under a number of climate stress tests, including heat waves, wildfires, floods and droughts, according to details of a new Fed pilot program released on Tuesday.

    “The pilot exercise includes physical risk scenarios with different levels of severity affecting residential and commercial real estate portfolios in the Northeastern United States and directs each bank to consider the impact of additional physical risk shocks for their real estate portfolios in another region of the country,” wrote the Fed.

    The Federal Reserve first announced the pilot program in September, noting that Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo would participate.

    Climate activists said that the project was long overdue (Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has been questioned about it multiple times over the last year), and that other central banks are far ahead of the Fed on climate risk assessments. The Bank of England ran a similar exercise in 2021.

    They also said the proposal lacked any real teeth. In its announcement the Federal Reserve stressed that the exercise “is exploratory in nature and does not have capital consequences.” It also said that it would not publish individual banks’ results.

    San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly told CNN in October Thursday that this was a learning and exploratory exercise for the Federal Reserve. It would be “incredibly premature to jump to the conclusion that any new policies or programs would come out of it,” she said.

    The other side: Critics of the pilot program have argued that the Federal Reserve was overstepping its boundaries and that they might soon begin to enforce financial penalties.

    “The Fed’s new ‘pilot’ program is the first step toward pressuring banks into limiting loans to and investments in traditional energy companies and other disfavored carbon-emitting sectors,” wrote former Republican Senator Pat Toomey, then a ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee. “The real purpose of this program is to ultimately produce new regulatory requirements.”

    Powell said last week that the central bank would not become a “climate policymaker.”

    “Today, some analysts ask whether incorporating into bank supervision the perceived risks associated with climate change is appropriate, wise, and consistent with our existing mandates,” Powell said last Tuesday. “In my view, the Fed does have narrow, but important, responsibilities regarding climate-related financial risks. These responsibilities are tightly linked to our responsibilities for bank supervision. The public reasonably expects supervisors to require that banks understand, and appropriately manage, their material risks, including the financial risks of climate change.”

    The discovery, movement and use of oil has played an outsized role in shaping geopolitics over the past century and a half. But over the next 50 years, global interaction and wealth are more likely to be influenced by microchips, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger told CNN Tuesday.

    “Where the technology supply chains are, and where semiconductors are built, is more important for the next five decades,” Gelsinger said in an interview with CNN’s Julia Chatterley at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

    Intel (INTC) is betting those predictions prove true. The company announced in 2021 it would invest $20 billion to build two new US chipmaking facilities, as well as up to $90 billion in new European factories, aimed at reasserting its position as the leader of the semiconductor industry, reports my colleague Clare Duffy.

    Gelsinger said the company’s investment in new manufacturing facilities in the United States, Europe and elsewhere is important not only for the company’s future, but for the “globalization of the most critical resource to the future of the world.”

    “We need this geographically balanced, resilient supply chain,” he said.

    The announcements also came amid concerns about the concentration of manufacturing for chips, in Asia, particularly China and Taiwan, during the Covid-19 pandemic and as geopolitical tensions grew. Issues in the chip supply chain in recent years have caused shortages and shipping delays of everything from desktop computers and iPhones to cars.

    “If we’ve learned one thing from the Covid crisis and this multi-year journey that we’ve been on it’s we need resilience in our supply chains,” Gelsinger said, adding that Intel’s manufacturing investments are aimed at “leveling that playing field so that good investment decisions can be made.”

    The years following the peak of the Covid pandemic have not been good for wealth equality.

    The world’s wealthiest residents have been getting far richer, far faster than everyone else over the past two years, reports my colleague Tami Luhby.

    The fortune of the 1% soared by $26 trillion during that period, while the bottom 99% only saw their net worth rise by $16 trillion, according to Oxfam’s annual inequality report released Sunday.

    And the wealth accumulation of the super-rich accelerated during the pandemic. Looking over the past decade, they netted just half of all the new wealth created, compared to two-thirds during the last few years.

    Meanwhile, many of the less fortunate are struggling. Some 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages. And poverty reduction likely stalled last year after the number of global poor skyrocketed in 2020.

    “While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams,” said Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International.

    “Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires — a roaring ’20s boom for the world’s richest,” she said.

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  • Climate activist Greta Thunberg released after being detained by German police at coal mine protest | CNN

    Climate activist Greta Thunberg released after being detained by German police at coal mine protest | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was released by German police on Tuesday evening after being detained earlier in the day at a protest over the expansion of a coal mine in the western village of Lützerath, police confirmed to CNN on Wednesday.

    ”Thunberg was only briefly detained. Once (Thunberg’s) identity was established, she was free to go,” Max Wilmes, police spokesman in the city of Aachen, told CNN.

    ”Due to the recognition of her name, police sped up the identification process,” Wilmes said. He said she then waited for other protesters to be released.

    Thunberg swiftly resumed campaigning on Wednesday, tweeting: “Climate protection is not a crime.”

    “Yesterday I was part of a group that peacefully protested the expansion of a coal mine in Germany”, the activist said, adding: ”We were kettled by police and then detained but were let go later that evening.”

    Thunberg was part of a large group of protesters that broke through a police barrier and encroached on a coal pit, which authorities have not been able to secure entirely, police spokesman Christof Hüls told CNN Tuesday. This is the second time Thunberg has been detained at the site, he said.

    Since last Wednesday, German police have removed hundreds of activists from Lützerath. Some have been at the site for more than two years, CNN has previously reported, occupying the homes abandoned by former residents after they were evicted, mostly by 2017, to make way for the lignite coal mine.

    The German government reached a deal with energy company RWE, the owner of the mine, in 2022, allowing it to expand into Lützerath in return for ending coal use by 2030 – rather than 2038.

    Once the eviction is complete, RWE plans to build a 1.5-kilometer (0.93-mile) perimeter fence around the village, sealing off its buildings, streets and sewers before they are demolished.

    Thunberg tweeted on Friday that she was in Lützerath to protest the expansion. On Saturday, she joined thousands of people demonstrating against the razing of the village.

    Addressing the activists at the protest, Thunberg said, “The carbon is still in the ground. And as long as the carbon is in the ground, this struggle is not over.”

    Hüls said Thunberg had “surprisingly” returned to protest on Sunday, when she was detained for the first time, and then again on Tuesday.

    The expansion of the coal mine is significant for climate activists. They argue that continuing to burn coal for energy will increase planet-warming emissions and violate the Paris Climate Agreement’s ambition to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Lignite is the most polluting type of coal, which itself is the most polluting fossil fuel.

    “We need to stop the current destruction of our planet and sacrificing people to benefit the short-term economic growth and corporate greed,” Thunberg said.

    Clashes between activists and police have been ongoing this month, and photos from the protests have shown police wearing riot gear to remove the demonstrators.

    More than 1,000 police officers have been involved in the eviction operation. Most of the village’s buildings have now been cleared and replaced with excavating machines.

    RWE and Germany’s Green party – a member of the country’s governing coalition – both reject the claim the mine expansion will increase overall emissions, saying European caps mean extra carbon emissions can be offset. But several climate reports have made clear the need to accelerate clean energy and transition away from fossil fuels. Recent studies also suggest that Germany may not even need the extra coal. An August report by international research platform Coal Transitions found that even if coal plants operate at very high capacity until the end of this decade, they already have more coal available than needed from existing supplies.

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  • Jay Inslee Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    Jay Inslee Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of Jay Inslee, governor of Washington and former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.

    Birth date: February 9, 1951

    Birth place: Seattle, Washington

    Birth name: Jay Robert Inslee

    Father: Frank Inslee, biology teacher, coach and athletic director

    Mother: Adele (Brown) Inslee, store clerk

    Marriage: Trudi (Tindall) Inslee (August 27, 1972-present)

    Children: Jack, Connor and Joe

    Education: Stanford University, 1969-1970; University of Washington, B.A., 1973, economics; Willamette University College of Law, J.D., 1976, graduated magna cum laude

    Religion: Protestant

    Inslee is dedicated to addressing climate change and other environmental issues.

    While in the US House of Representatives, he served on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

    He was the first governor to enter the 2020 presidential race.

    At Seattle’s Ingraham High School, Inslee was the starting quarterback.

    Worked his way through college doing odd jobs.

    Has praised the “Green New Deal,” saying it is “raising people’s ambitions” and “making what might seem impossible within the realm of the possible,” but has not outright said he would support the entire package. Nor has he endorsed Medicare-for-all.

    Established Washington’s Marijuana Justice Initiative. It allows for gubernatorial pardons for those previously convicted of a single misdemeanor marijuana crime “between January 1, 1998, and December 5, 2012, when I-502 legalized marijuana possession.”

    After law school, works as an attorney with Peters, Schmalz, Leadon & Fowler (later Peters, Fowler and Inslee), and serves as a city prosecutor for over a decade.

    November 1988 – Wins an open seat in the Washington House of Representatives for the 14th District against Lynn Carmichael (R) with 51.64% of the vote. Is reelected in 1990 with 61.82% of the vote.

    1989-1993 – Washington House of Representatives.

    November 1992 – Wins US House of Representatives seat for Washington’s 4th District against Richard “Doc” Hastings (R) with 50.84% of the vote.

    January 3, 1993-January 3, 1995 – US House of Representatives.

    November 1994 – Loses his reelection bid to the US House of Representatives to Hastings with 46.6% of the vote.

    1995-1996 – Attorney at Gordon, Thomas, Honeywell, Malanca, Peterson & Daheim L.L.P.

    September 1996 – Unsuccessful gubernatorial bid, only coming in third with 10% of the vote in the primary.

    1997-1998 – Region 10 Director for the US Department of Health and Human Services under US President Bill Clinton, serving Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

    November 1998 – Wins US House of Representatives seat for Washington’s 1st District, after four years out of office, against incumbent Rick White (R) with 49.77% of the vote.

    January 3, 1999-March 20, 2012 – US House of Representatives. Reelected six times.

    2007 – His book, “Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy,” written with Bracken Hendricks, is published.

    March 10, 2012 – Announces he will resign from the US House of Representatives in order to focus on his run for governor of the state.

    November 2012 – Wins the election for governor of Washington, defeating Rob McKenna (R) with 51.54% of the vote. Is reelected in 2016 with 54.39% of the vote.

    January 16, 2013-present – Governor of Washington.

    February 11, 2014 – Announces that he is suspending executions while he is in office, meaning he will issue reprieves when any capital cases come to his desk for action.

    2015-2016, 2017-2018 – Education and Workforce Committee Chair, National Governors Association (NGA).

    2016-2017, 2018-2019 – Education and Workforce Committee Vice Chair, NGA.

    2016 – Endorses Hillary Clinton for president of the United States.

    2017-present – Co-chair of the US Climate Alliance, a group he co-founded with California Governor Jerry Brown and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. The Alliance pledges to uphold the Paris Climate Accord following the United States’ withdrawal from the agreement.

    2017-2018 – Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.

    July 5, 2017 – Inslee signs Washington’s paid family and medical leave act into law. It is considered one of the most generous such laws in the nation.

    November 6, 2018 – Loses a bid to enact a statewide carbon emissions tax, for the second time in two years.

    March 1, 2019 – Releases a video announcing his presidential candidacy.

    March 14, 2019 – Signs a bump stock buy-back program into law a week before a nationwide ban takes effect. The devices, which replace the standard stock and grip of a semi-automatic firearm, make it easier to fire rounds from such a weapon by harnessing the gun’s recoil to “bump” the trigger faster.

    August 21, 2019 – Suspends his 2020 presidential campaign.

    August 22, 2019 – Announces that he is running for a third term as governor.

    November 3, 2020 – Wins reelection to a third term as governor.

    June 30, 2022 – Inslee issues a directive that bars state police from cooperating with out-of-state investigatory requests related to abortion in his efforts to make the state a “sanctuary” for those seeking abortion services. The decision comes after the US Supreme Court ruled to strike down Roe v Wade, the 1973 legal precedent which guaranteed people’s federal constitutional right to abortion. The historic ruling essentially leaves abortion laws in states’ hands.

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  • The rich should pay higher fares to clean up aviation, says Heathrow boss | CNN Business

    The rich should pay higher fares to clean up aviation, says Heathrow boss | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Rich travelers will have to pay more to fly if the aviation industry is to transition to greener fuels, the boss of one of the world’s biggest airports said Tuesday.

    Speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos hosted by CNN’s Richard Quest, Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said that wealthy individuals and companies should pay extra to fly with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in order to bring the costs down for everyone else, particularly people in developing countries.

    He said that financiers and energy suppliers should invest in SAF production, including in emerging markets.

    “But as individuals and companies we need to be paying the premium for sustainable aviation fuels so that we can get the cost of it down so that the mass market and developing countries don’t have to pay for the energy transition. The wealthy people in this room and wealthy nations should be funding the energy transition in aviation to help support developing countries,” he added.

    Holland-Kaye said the solution to sustainable aviation was not to fly less, which was not necessarily an option outside Northern Europe, but to use cleaner sources of energy to travel.

    SAF is viewed as critical to reducing aviation’s carbon emissions but its green credentials come at a hefty price. Some airlines allow passengers to offset their CO2 emissions by paying more for their tickets to cover the extra cost of using SAF, but very few travelers currently make use of this option.

    Holland-Kaye said that companies can play a major role accelerating the adoption of SAF because business travel accounts for about 30% of fuel used in aviation. He cited the example of Microsoft

    (MSFT)    , which has an internal carbon tax for travel that requires each business unit to pay a fee based on its carbon emissions.

    Produced mainly from recycled food and agricultural waste, such as used cooking oil, SAF is a type of biofuel that cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 80% compared to conventional jet fuel.

    It also costs between two and eight times more than its fossil-fuel based alternative, which is why in 2019 it accounted for just 0.1% of jet fuel used in commercial aviation, according to a report by the World Economic Forum and McKinsey.

    In 2021, the industry pledged to replaced 10% of global jet fuel supply with SAF by 2030. This year, Virgin Atlantic plans to fly a Boeing 787 from London to New York powered solely by SAF in what has been billed as the world’s first net-zero transatlantic flight.

    Clean energy investments need a major boost if the world is to meet its climate goals, according to Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a surge in investment in renewables as countries race to secure alternative energy supplies, but much more needs to be done, he said.

    Speaking on another Davos panel hosted by CNN’s Julia Chatterley earlier on Tuesday, Birol said that for every dollar invested in fossil fuels, the world is now investing $1.50 in clean energy. That needs to increase to $9 to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, he added.

    — Anna Cooban contributed reporting.

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  • 5 things to know for Jan. 17: Storms, Gun violence, Biden, Crypto, Australian Open | CNN

    5 things to know for Jan. 17: Storms, Gun violence, Biden, Crypto, Australian Open | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Prices for used cars have been high in recent years as inventory has been hampered by computer chip shortages and other pandemic-related woes. Luckily, for those who are currently shopping for a vehicle, many automakers are reporting they have more of the parts they need and are ramping up production – meaning used car prices will likely continue to plunge.

    Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.

    (You can get “5 Things You Need to Know Today” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

    After an onslaught of atmospheric rivers recently battered California with flooding, a much-needed break from the rain is finally in sight. Flood watches that covered millions in coastal Central California have expired, though crews will be busy cleaning up the damage over the next several weeks. The storm system is now advancing farther inland and is expected to bring heavy snowfall into the Four Corners Region. Up to two feet of new snow is expected in parts of Colorado by this evening, while rain is in the forecast for much of the Southwest. By midweek, the threat will be in the South. The Storm Prediction Center has already highlighted an area from East Texas to the Lower Mississippi Valley for the potential for strong storms.

    Another spate of shootings this week is shaking up communities across the US. At least six people, including a mother and her 6-month-old baby, are dead after a “cartel-style execution” occurred Monday in the town of Goshen, California. The shooting appears to be gang-related, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office said. Separately, eight people were shot Monday at a block party in Fort Pierce, Florida, where the community was gathering to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. An investigation is ongoing to identify the shooter, authorities said. This incident marks the 30th mass shooting in the country this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. So far in 2023, the US is averaging about two mass shootings per day.

    Following the discovery of misplaced classified documents from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president, House Republicans are demanding that the White House turn over more information – including any visitors logs to Biden’s private residence, where a batch of documents was found. The White House counsel’s office, however, said there are no visitors logs that track guests who come and go at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware. “Like every President across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” the counsel’s office said in a statement Monday. Some Republicans are crying foul, saying former President Donald Trump was treated differently when FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago residence last August. Meanwhile, the White House is labeling the Republican investigations into the documents as “shamelessly hypocritical.”

    The Biden Administration has no visitor logs for Biden’s private home, where classified documents were found


    04:19

    – Source:
    CNN

    Cryptocurrencies are rebounding after getting pummeled by losses for the better part of last year. This is prompting speculation that the so-called crypto winter – the digital asset world’s equivalent of a bear market – is over. Bitcoin, the world’s most popular crypto, is up 25% over the past month, hovering above $20,000 for the first time since November, following the collapse of the crypto trading platform FTX. Ethereum, the No. 2 crypto, is up more than 30% over the past month, trading above $1,500 on Monday. Still, Bitcoin is substantially down from its peak in November 2021, just shy of $69,000. Two months ago, when FTX imploded and sent shock waves through the industry, bitcoin plummeted to a two-year low of $15,480.

    Ben McKenzie cnntm intv

    Actor rips crypto as ‘largest Ponzi scheme in history’


    03:13

    – Source:
    CNN

    Some players at the Australian Open expressed irritation today after extreme heat postponed play for hours at the tennis tournament. As temperatures reached almost 97 degrees Fahrenheit, organizers announced at around 2 p.m. local time that matches on outdoor courts would come to a halt. Separately, a Russian flag that was displayed in the stands at the Grand Slam event has sparked controversy and a rules update from Tennis Australia. Fans will no longer be allowed to bring Russian or Belarusian flags to the site of the tournament, officials said, citing the conflict in Ukraine. The decision comes after Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia “strongly condemn[ed]” the Russian flag being displayed Monday during the first-round match between Ukraine’s Kateryna Baindl and Russia’s Kamilla Rakhimova.

    Selena Gomez responds to body shamers

    The singer and actress shared a message about body positivity after trolls on social media criticized her appearance at the Golden Globes. 

    Tampering with leopard and monkey enclosures prompts zoo closure

    There appears to be some monkey business at the Dallas Zoo… Police say the fencing of some animal enclosures was cut open in “an intentional act,” prompting the zoo to close Friday.

    ‘The Mandalorian’ season 3 trailer has arrived

    After much fanfare, Baby Yoda is back in action. Watch the new trailer here.

    Netflix plans its biggest-ever slate of Korean content

    Fans worldwide are buzzing over K-content! Netflix said over 60% of its members watched South Korean titles last year. Check out some of the international shows and films heading to the platform soon.

    Enjoying nature may lessen the need for some medications, study finds

    Here’s a sign to take the scenic route. According to a new study, visiting nature is associated with lowering the odds of using blood pressure pills and mental health medications.

    Gina Lollobrigida, a legend of Italian cinema, has died, according to members of her family. She was 95. Together with Sophia Loren, Lollobrigida came to symbolize the earthy sexuality of Italian actresses in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to appearing in several European films, she made her English-language film debut in 1953 in John Huston’s “Beat the Devil,” alongside Humphrey Bogart.

    31

    That’s how many states have taken action to restrict TikTok on government devices, reflecting a wave of recent clampdowns by Republican and Democratic governors targeting the short-form video app. The accelerating backlash comes amid renewed security concerns about how the platform handles user data and fears that it could find its way to the Chinese government.

    “We don’t talk about a collapse, but it can happen any second.”

    – Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko, saying Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure remains severely threatened and could completely collapse if it were to be hit by Russian rockets. Klitschko’s warning comes as millions of Ukrainians continue to endure a winter without electricity, water, and central heating due to relentless Russian strikes.

    Check your local forecast here>>>

    16,000 antlers and counting

    This man searches the hills of Montana for antlers after deer and elk shed them each season. Check out his extensive collection. (Click here to view)

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  • Locally caught freshwater fish contain PFAS toxins, study finds | CNN

    Locally caught freshwater fish contain PFAS toxins, study finds | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Greener newsletter. Our limited newsletter series guides you on how to minimize your personal role in the climate crisis — and reduce your eco-anxiety.



    CNN
     — 

    Fish caught in the fresh waters of the nation’s streams and rivers and the Great Lakes contain dangerously high levels of PFOS, short for perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, a known synthetic toxin phased out by the federal government, according to a study of data from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

    The chemical PFOS is part of a family of manufactured additives known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, widely used since the 1950s to make consumer products nonstick and resistant to stains, water and grease damage.

    Called “forever chemicals” because they fail to break down easily in the environment, PFAS has leached into the nation’s drinking water via public water systems and private wells. The chemicals then accumulate in the bodies of fish, shellfish, livestock, dairy and game animals that people eat, experts say.

    “The levels of PFOS found in freshwater fish often exceeded an astounding 8,000 parts per trillion,” said study coauthor David Andrews, a senior scientist at Environmental Working Group, the nonprofit environmental health organization that analyzed the data.

    In comparison, the EPA has allowed only 70 parts per trillion of PFOS in the nation’s drinking water. Due to growing health concerns, in 2022 the EPA recommended the allowable level of PFOS in drinking water be lowered from 70 to 0.02 parts per trillion.

    “You’d have to drink an incredible amount of water — we estimate a month of contaminated water — to get the same exposure as you would from a single serving of freshwater fish,” Andrews said.

    “Consuming even a single (locally caught freshwater) fish per year can measurably and significantly change the levels of PFOS in your blood,” Andrews said.

    Chemicals in the PFAS family are linked to high cholesterol, cancer and various chronic diseases, as well as a limited antibody response to vaccines in both adults and children, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

    “This is an important paper,” said toxicologist Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program.

    “To find this level of contamination in fish across the country, even in areas not close to industry where you might expect heavy contamination, is very concerning. These chemicals are everywhere,” she said.

    Read more: Doctors should test levels of PFAS in people at high risk, report says

    It’s nearly impossible to avoid PFAS, experts say. Manufacturers add the chemicals to thousands of products, including nonstick cookware, mobile phones, carpeting, clothing, makeup, furniture and food packaging.

    A 2020 investigation found PFAS in the wrapping of many fast foods and “environmentally friendly” molded fiber bowls and containers.

    A 2021 study found PFAS in 52% of tested cosmetics, with the highest levels in waterproof mascara (82%), foundations (63%) and long-lasting lipstick (62%). Polytetrafluoroethylene, the coating on nonstick pans, was the most common additive.

    Read more: Makeup may contain potentially toxic chemicals called PFAS, study finds

    In fact, PFAS chemicals have been found in the blood serum of 98% of Americans, according to a 2019 report using data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

    “These chemicals are ubiquitous in the American environment. More than 2,800 communities in the US, including all 50 states and two territories, have documented PFAS contamination,” Dr. Ned Calonge, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health and chair of the Academies committee that wrote the report, told CNN previously.

    Read more: Dangerous chemicals found in food wrappers at major fast-food restaurants and grocery chains, report says

    Scientists at the Environmental Working Group used data from the EPA’s own monitoring programs — the National Rivers and Streams Assessment, which has been periodically testing stream conditions since 2008, and the Great Lakes Human Health Fish Fillet Tissue Study, which tests lake water every five years.

    “The analysis focused on EPA wild-caught fish in rivers, streams and throughout the Great Lakes from 2013 to 2015 as that was the latest data available,” Andrews said.

    The contamination was widespread, impacting “nearly every fish across the country,” he said. “I believe there was one sample without detected levels of PFOS.”

    The EWG created an interactive map of the results with details for each state. Fish caught near urban areas contained nearly three times more PFOS and overall PFAS than those caught in nonurban locations, the study found. The highest levels were found in fish from the Great Lakes.

    The analysis showed PFOS accounted for an average 74% of the contamination in the fish. The remaining 25% was a mixture of other PFAS known to be equally damaging to human health, Andrews said.

    CNN reached out to the EPA for comment but did not hear back before this story published.

    Based on the study’s findings, people who fish for sport might “strongly” consider releasing their catch instead of taking the fish home for a meal, Andrews said.

    Yet many people in lower socioeconomic groups, indigenous peoples and immigrants in the US rely eating freshly caught fish.

    “They need it for food or because it’s their culture,” Birnbaum said. “There are Native American tribes and Burmese immigrants and others who fish because this is who they are. This is key to their culture. And you can’t just tell them not to fish.”

    Read more: Water- and stain-resistant products contain toxic plastics, study says. Here’s what to do

    The predominant chemical in the fish, PFOS, and its sister perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, are known as “long-chain” PFAS, made from an 8-carbon chain.

    Read more: Plastics and pesticides: Health impacts of synthetic chemicals in US products doubled in last 5 years, study finds

    Manufacturers agreed in the early 2000s to voluntarily stop using long-chain PFAS in US consumer products, although they can still be found in some imported items. Due to growing health concerns, the use of PFOS and PFOA in food packaging was phased out in 2016 by the US Food and Drug Administration.

    However, industry reworked the chemicals by making them into 4- and 6-carbon chains — today over 9,000 different PFAS exist, according to the CDC. Experts say these newer versions appear to have many of the same dangerous health effects as the 8-chain PFAS, leaving consumers and the environment still at risk.

    Many of these longer-chain PFAS can be stored for years in different organs in the human body, according to the National Academies report. Scientists are examining the impact of newer versions.

    “Some of these chemicals have half-lives in the range of five years,” National Academies report committee member Jane Hoppin, an environmental epidemiologist and director of the Center for Human Health and the Environment at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, told CNN previously.

    Read more: FDA must do more to regulate thousands of chemicals added to your food, petitioners say

    “Let’s say you have 10 nanograms of PFAS in your body right now. Even with no additional exposure, five years from now you would still have 5 nanograms,” she said. “Five years later, you would have 2.5 and then five years after that, you’d have one 1.25 nanograms. It would be about 25 years before all the PFAS leave your body.”

    That’s why it’s “no surprise” to find such high levels of PFOA in freshwater fish, said the director of environmental pediatrics at NYU Langone Health, Dr. Leonardo Trasande, who was not involved in the new study.

    “These truly are ‘forever chemicals,’” Trasande said. “This reinforces the reality that we need to get all PFAS out of consumer products and people’s lives.”

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  • Another atmospheric river lashes California, renewing flooding concerns in state where storms have left at least 19 dead | CNN

    Another atmospheric river lashes California, renewing flooding concerns in state where storms have left at least 19 dead | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Another atmospheric river has arrived in storm-battered California, bringing renewed flooding fears, possible landslides and treacherous travel to the state Monday where a relentless string of storms has already delivered widespread damage and left at least 19 dead in recent weeks.

    “We have lost too much – too many people to these storms and in these waters,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement Saturday, urging residents to prepare for another round of rain.

    The latest storm is set to bring heavy mountain snow and periods of heavy rain, with an additional 1 to 3 inches of rainfall expected in areas already too saturated to absorb more water.

    Flood watches remain in place for around 8 million people in coastal California, including the Bay Area, until Monday afternoon. A slight risk – level 2 out of 4 – for excessive rain and flooding covers a large chunk of Southern California, including the Los Angeles metro area, until Monday morning then drops to a marginal risk through the day.

    Meanwhile, winter storm warnings are posted for the Sierra Nevada where up to 3 feet of new snow could fall through Monday.

    Residents of Ventura County’s remote Matilija Canyon were being urged Sunday to leave their homes after more than 17 inches of high-intensity rainfall resulted in significant damage and left towering piles of rock and mud over 40-feet tall blocking some roadways, isolating residents, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said, adding that more than ten helicopter flights have carried more than 70 residents from the area.

    To the north in San Joaquin County, around 175 residents were voluntarily evacuated from a mobile home park Sunday, including by boat, after flood waters inundated the community, according to the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office.

    Evacuation warnings were also in place Sunday evening for residents near the Carmel River in Monterey County, on California’s Central Coast. A warning was also in place for residents in Sacramento County’s Wilton area.

    “People are fatigued about evacuation orders. People are fatigued by seeing those Caltrans turn signs saying ‘detour’ – they’re just fatigued generally,” Newsom said in a news conference Saturday.

    The parade of atmospheric rivers – long, narrow regions in the atmosphere that can carry moisture thousands of miles – turned California communities into lakes, crippled highways and prompted thousands of evacuations.

    The good news? A much-needed stretch of dry weather is on the way.

    “As we push into the day on Tuesday we’re looking for quieter weather across much of the state with one fast moving additional system arriving for later Wednesday into early Thursday. After that, looking for a period of dry weather for much of the state finally as we head into late week, and pretty much through the weekend,” a National Weather Service spokesman said.

    Monday will see the latest round of rain slowly come to an end from Northern California in the early afternoon hours to Southern California later in the day.

    But for now, the state is bracing for more flooding, mudslides and rescues. Swift water resources and firefighters have been positioned statewide in preparation for Monday, which could see this round’s heaviest rainfall, state officials said.

    Wind gusts reached hurricane-force Sunday across the higher elevations of Southern California, where around 14 million people were under wind advisories into Monday.

    And as the latest storm approached, President Joe Biden on Saturday approved California’s request for a disaster declaration, freeing up federal aid to supplement recovery efforts in areas of the state affected by storms, flooding and mudslides since December 27.

    The federal assistance can include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, loans to help cover property losses for uninsured homes, according to the White House.

    Floodwater from the Russian River approaches homes Sunday following a chain of winter storms, in Guerneville, California.

    Some isolated higher rain rates of 0.5 inches per hour could lead to a couple instances of flooding, especially given the very wet conditions as atmospheric rivers hammered the state in previous weeks.

    Though this weekend’s rainfall totals will be lower than in previous storms, the threshold for flooding is much lower now because the ground is too saturated and conditions are ripe for mudslides and landslides.

    There have been 402 landslides recorded statewide since December 30, according to the California Geological Survey.

    Rainfall totals in recent weeks have been immense. Already, San Francisco has recorded one of its top 15 wettest winters on record. The Bay Area could see another 1-2 inches by Monday afternoon and the wettest peaks can see up to 3 inches.

    To the south, the Los Angeles area saw several locations set daily rainfall records with 1 to 2 inches received Saturday. Southern California may still see isolated areas where heavy rainfall could reach up to a half an inch per hour in the heaviest storms.

    Some areas of Santa Cruz County have seen more than 34 inches of rain since December 26, according to county recovery official. If this is to be confirmed by the weather service, it would land Santa Cruz in the top five wettest winters on record – with still a month left to the season.

    “We’re getting flooding in our coastal streams, creeks, and rivers,” Santa Cruz County official David Reid said. “And we’re getting extensive landslides and mudslides and road failures in our mountainous areas.”

    This aerial view shows the Capitola Pier damaged after recent storms in Capitola, California.

    “There’s definitely a fatigue that happens with the continued storms – folks begin to fear that what we’re telling them isn’t true, but we have real concerns,” Reid added.

    The need for residents to follow evacuation orders and adhere to roadway closures is real. Crews around the state have for weeks responded to rescues on flooded streets and inundated neighborhoods.

    Storm-related deaths in recent weeks have included a woman whose body was found inside a vehicle that washed into a flooded vineyard, two people who were found with trees on top of their tents, a child who was killed when a redwood tree fell on a home, and several other fatalities.

    And in San Luis Obispo County, rescuers are still searching for 5-year-old Kyle Doan, who was pulled from his mother’s hands by rushing floodwater on Monday after their SUV was swept away.

    Rains on Saturday hampered the search as water levels rose in the San Marcos Creek and Salinas River, but crews were back out searching for the boy on Sunday as conditions improved, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office said.

    As lower elevations deal with heavy rainfall, and potential floods and mudslides, those living on higher elevations can expect heavy snowfall and dangerous conditions on the road.

    Up to 3 feet of new snow could fall through Monday in Sierra Nevada while mountains in Southern California could see several inches of snow by early Tuesday morning.

    Flagstaff, Arizona, saw 14.8 inches on Sunday, shattering a previous record of 8.9 inches set back in 1978.

    “Heavy mountain snow and strong winds will lead to blowing snow and whiteout conditions at times, creating dangerous to near impossible travel above 4,000 ft in the mountains and passes of Central California and above 5,000 ft for Southern California,” the National Weather Service said.

    Snow could hammer the mountains at a rate of 2 inches per hour at times into Monday morning in the Sierra Nevada, the weather service added.

    For Tuesday, the rain and snow will move into the Four Corners Region, but isolated showers and snow showers could still impact parts of Southern California Tuesday morning.

    Lower elevations in Arizona, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico can see 1-4 inches of snowfall and the higher elevations can see 1-2 feet.

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  • 9-year-old Maryland girl discovers ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ megalodon tooth | CNN

    9-year-old Maryland girl discovers ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ megalodon tooth | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A 9-year-old aspiring paleontologist found the find of a lifetime on Christmas morning: a massive 5-inch tooth from a prehistoric megalodon.

    Molly Sampson, a fourth grader from Prince Frederick, Maryland, made the astonishing find on Calvert Beach.

    Molly told CNN that she has spent years combing Maryland’s beaches for shark teeth, inspired by her father’s love of fossils.

    “They’re just cool because they’re really old,” she said.

    Molly’s mother Alicia Sampson added that her daughter has long harbored a love of exploring the outdoors. “She loves treasure hunting,” she explained.

    Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs State Park is known as a hotspot for fossil finding, Alicia Sampson added.

    For Christmas, Molly asked her parents for cold-water waders so that she could hunt for shark teeth and other fossils in the Chesapeake Bay. Equipped with her new gear, she set out at 9:30 a.m. to search for the remnants of ancient predators.

    “I saw something big, and it looked like a shark tooth,” she said. “We were about knee deep in the water.”

    She explained that she tried to grab the tooth with a sifting tool, but it was too big. She was “amazed” when she realized just how large the tooth was. “I was so excited and surprised.”

    The Sampsons took their exciting find to the Calvert Marine Museum, where paleontology curator Stephen Godfrey confirmed their suspicions: It was indeed the tooth of a megalodon, the massive sharks that lived more than 23 million years ago.

    Godfrey told CNN that there are usually only five or six megalodon teeth comparable in size to Molly’s find discovered along Calvert Cliffs each year.

    “There are people that can spend a lifetime and not find a tooth the size Molly found,” he said.

    “This is like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of find.”

    Amateur fossil hunters typically find around 100 megalodon teeth on Calvert Cliffs per year, he added. But most of them are much smaller than Molly’s huge tooth. The largest megalodon teeth ever found have been just over 7 inches.

    The size of the tooth indicates that this particular megalodon was between 45 and 50 feet long.

    Godfrey explained that millions of years ago, the waters off Calvert Cliffs would have been home to whales and dolphins that would have served as bountiful prey for megalodons looking to eat. Because sharks replace their teeth over the course of their lives and because the teeth are made up of hardy enamel, they are “by far the most abundant vertebrate fossil.”

    Megalodons hold a particular fascination for humans because they served as the “apex predator on Earth” for millions of years, he said.

    Both Godfrey and Alicia Sampson said they hope Molly’s find helps inspire other children, especially girls, to pursue their scientific interests.

    “This will inspire people of all ages, children included, to pursue their natural inclination in nature, art music, there’s so many possibilities that are available to us today,” said Godfrey.

    Alicia Sampson said children around the globe have sent letters to Molly sharing their excitement at her discovery. She set up an Instagram page to share her daughters’ outdoor adventures.

    “We really want to reach other kids and get them excited about like being outside,” she said.

    Molly said she hopes to display the huge tooth in a shadowbox in her room – and one day hopes to become a paleontologist.

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