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Blizzard conditions, freezing rain and strong winds slow holiday travel

Published

1 year ago

December 26, 2023

Blizzard conditions, freezing rain and strong winds slow holiday travel

A tractor trailer veers into ditch on Christmas Day on Interstate 80 in Nebraska as a winter storm pummels part of the Midwest. Forecasters are predicting that heavy snow and blizzard conditions will continue through early Wednesday across part of the north-central U.S.

Nebraska State Patrol/AP

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Nebraska State Patrol/AP

Millions of people are under winter weather alerts on Tuesday as a blizzard-fueling storm pounds parts of the Plains region and Upper Midwest, leaving holiday travelers facing dangerous whiteout conditions and travel delays.

The “significant” winter storm with heavy snow, freezing rain and potentially damaging ice is expected to last through early Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.

A combination of high winds and snowfall could bring down tree branches and power lines across the High Plains into the Northern Plains, the NWS cautioned in a midday advisory. Meanwhile, the Dakotas and northern Minnesota are experiencing a mix of sleet and rain which could lead to dangerous ice accumulations of up to half an inch on roads across the region.

⚠️During a high wind warning, motorists should avoid traveling since these winds can make driving difficult, especially for high profile vehicles like semi-trucks and light-weighing and smaller vehicles. High winds also may reduce visibility with snow. pic.twitter.com/V5DYuwbMDL
— Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) (@ColoradoDOT) December 26, 2023

In Colorado’s eastern plains, a blizzard shut down a stretch of Interstate 70 and disrupted dozens of flights at Denver International Airport, Colorado Public Radio reported. At least 350 flights were delayed at DIA Tuesday morning during the post-Christmas travel rush, according to the tracking website FlightAware. At least 16 were canceled.

As of 1 p.m. local time, drivers in the eastern plains were urged to limit or avoid travel due to high winds warnings on I-70, “especially for high profile vehicles like semi-trucks and light-weighing and smaller vehicles,” the Colorado Department of Transportation said.

“High winds also may reduce visibility with snow,” transportation officials said.

In Nebraska, the NWS warned drivers to plan on slippery road conditions and patchy blowing snow that could significantly reduce visibility, slowing the evening commute.

“Travel should be restricted to emergencies only. If you must travel, have a winter survival kit with you. If you get stranded, stay with your vehicle,” the agency added.

The Nebraska Department of Transportation announced it had closed portions of I-80 from Big Springs to North Platte — a stretch of about 74 miles — due to low visibility and hazardous driving conditions.

The NWS forecast an additional 6 inches or more of snow for portions of South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming on Tuesday.

Freezing rain continued to drop on parts of the Red River Valley in Minnesota on Tuesday “after bringing both blizzard conditions and record warmth to the region over the holiday weekend,” Minnesota Public Radio reported.

North Dakota’s utility company, Cass County Electric Cooperative, was reporting more than 3,100 customers without power in parts of Jamestown, Fargo and Wahpeton.

“Conditions on the roads and right-of-ways are hazardous between the ice and now mud with the continuing rain, but our lineworkers are doing their best to restore power to as many members as possible,” Cass County Electric Cooperative officials reported in an update Tuesday morning. “There are several thousand members without power and over 150 unique outages at this time, and it changes with the minute.”

And about 3,100 Otter Tail Power Company customers between Bismark and Fargo were also in the dark as of 4 p.m. local time. While several crews were reportedly on their way, the company said they could not yet provide an estimated restoration time due to icy and wet conditions.

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Bishop Asks Trump to ‘Have Mercy’ on Immigrants and Gay Children

Published

6 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Press Room

Bishop Asks Trump to ‘Have Mercy’ on Immigrants and Gay Children

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde was nearing the end of her sermon for the inaugural prayer service on Tuesday when she took a breath and looked directly at President Donald J. Trump.

“I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” said Bishop Budde, the leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. “There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”

The direct appeal to Mr. Trump, at the start of the first full day of his presidency, was a remarkable moment. Twenty-four hours after he had reclaimed the highest office in the land, summoning tech billionaires as witnesses and pulling off a sweeping display of power by signing of a flurry of executive orders, he was suddenly confronted by an extraordinary act of public resistance from an unlikely source: a soft-spoken bishop.

“The vast majority of immigrants are not criminals,” Bishop Budde said. “I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”

Mr. Trump, seated in the first row of pews in the towering Washington National Cathedral, looked down and then away. Vice President JD Vance raised his eyebrows and looked several times at his wife, Usha Vance, who kept her gaze trained ahead on the bishop. When Bishop Budde finished, Mr. Trump said something to Mr. Vance, who shook his head in apparent irritation. Members of the Trump family seated directly behind them appeared to look at one another, noticeably perturbed. Eric Trump, Mr. Trump’s middle son, shook his head.

It was not how Mr. Trump has generally been spoken to as he returns to the White House. Since winning the election, he has been courted by powerful business leaders and politicians alike, including many who kept their distance during his first term. Just the day before, he celebrated his return to office with an inauguration in the Capitol Rotunda, a rally surrounded by supporters and a succession of inaugural balls. Even former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. greeted Mr. Trump at the White House by saying, “Welcome home.”

Bishop Budde’s comments came a day after Mr. Trump issued a flurry of executive orders focused on transgender rights and immigration.

The appeal by the pastor clearly grabbed Mr. Trump’s attention. Asked by a reporter what he thought of the service, the president said: “Did you like it? Did you find it exciting? Not too exciting, was it?

“I didn’t think it was a good service, no,” Mr. Trump continued. “They could do much better.”

In an interview, Bishop Budde said she had decided to speak to the president directly because “of the fear that I have seen and experienced among our people — people that I know and love, both within the immigrant community and within the L.G.B.T.Q. community, and how terrified so many are.”

She said she was concerned about “the level of license to be really quite cruel” that some people feel now.

“I wasn’t necessarily calling the president out. I was trying to say, ‘The country has been entrusted to you,’” Bishop Budde said. “And one of the qualities of a leader is mercy, right? Mercy. And to be mindful of the people who are scared.”

Bishop Budde is not the only prominent clergy member to call attention to the fear caused by Mr. Trump’s agenda. Pope Francis on Sunday called Mr. Trump’s plans for mass deportations “a disgrace.”

Mr. Trump began his presidency on Monday with executive actions that aimed to turn his campaign rhetoric into tangible policies, including one that rescinded a Biden administration order that sought to prevent discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

Mr. Trump’s new order, the administration said, seeks to defend women against “gender ideology extremism” that allows biological males to undermine their rights and privacy. And the definitions it sets forth go further to more explicitly define “sex.”

Under the order signed by Mr. Trump on Monday, males and females would be defined at “conception,” the text states. Someone who eventually produces “the large reproductive cell” would be deemed female, the order says. A male would be defined as the person who eventually “produces the small reproductive cell.”

The order also says that the federal government would no longer recognize “gender identity,” and only “sex” as defined by “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”

The order also prohibits the use of federal funds for any promotion of “gender ideology” through grants or other government programming, as well as the use of public funding for transition-related medical procedures in prisons.

The order effectively defines transgender Americans out of existence.

“At its core, this executive order is an appallingly cruel effort to make transgender people strangers to the law and push them back into the closet,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign.

Mr. Trump also issued multiple immigration-related executive orders on Monday that suspended refugee admissions, severely restricted asylum for migrants and made clear that he intended to deploy the military to the southern border. The border, however, remains relatively calm after a record number of illegal crossings earlier in the Biden administration.

The Trump administration also rescinded a Biden policy that directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to not make arrests at schools, places of worship and other places described as “sensitive locations.”

Throughout his campaign, and during his first term, Mr. Trump often portrayed all migrants crossing the border illegally as criminals. While sporadic crimes by migrants have gained national attention in recent years, homeland security officials themselves acknowledge that most people crossing the border are fleeing poverty or violence and seeking a better life.

“There are times when he talks of immigrants in broad strokes that feel as if the image portrayed is that all immigrants who are coming into the country are dangerous,” Bishop Budde said. “And I know that’s not true. It’s not true.”

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TikTok-owner ByteDance plans to spend $12bn on AI chips in 2025

Published

7 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Press Room

TikTok-owner ByteDance plans to spend bn on AI chips in 2025

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TikTok-owner ByteDance plans to spend more than $12bn on artificial intelligence infrastructure this year, betting on the cutting-edge technology for new growth while under pressure from Washington to sell its popular video-sharing app in the US.

The Beijing-based company has budgeted Rmb40bn ($5.5bn) to acquire AI chips in China in 2025, according to two people familiar with the plans, which would double the amount it spent last year. The group also plans to invest about $6.8bn overseas to beef up its foundation model training capabilities using advanced Nvidia chips.

About 60 per cent of ByteDance’s domestic semiconductor orders would go to Chinese suppliers such as Huawei and Cambricon, while the rest would be spent on Nvidia chips that have been watered down to align with US export controls, according to the people.

Beijing has given Chinese tech companies informal guidance to buy at least 30 per cent of their chips from the country’s own suppliers, the people added.

The $6.8bn in overseas investment was budgeted to build out ByteDance’s AI computing capacity for model training. This investment could face challenges from recently expanded US export controls designed to hamper Chinese companies building sensitive technologies.

A worker holding a semiconductor wafer on the production line of a factory in Binzhou, China © Chu Baorui/VCG via Getty Images

The push comes as ByteDance faces pressure in its core social media business. TikTok restored service to 170mn US users on Sunday after the country’s incoming President Donald Trump vowed that companies that distributed and hosted the platform would not be held liable for violating a US law that banned the video app unless it was sold.

While Trump signed an executive order on Monday to keep TikTok open for 75 days, he said he wanted a US company to have 50 per cent ownership in TikTok in the future. Trump said he could “certainly” put tariffs on China if it rejected a deal.

Any such transaction could affect plans for a future ByteDance initial public offering, with the company valuing itself at $300bn during a recent share buyback programme.

The company drew up its huge purchasing budget for graphic processing units in 2025 before the recent interventions in the US.

ByteDance, which under the direction of the tech group’s founder Zhang Yiming has become the frontrunner in China’s AI race, is doubling down to build out its own AI infrastructure to train its foundation model, as well as to implement AI functions across its various platforms.

It has ramped up computing capacity in south-east Asia, particularly in Malaysia. Though Chinese companies have been banned from purchasing Nvidia chips outside of the US since 2023, they have been able to secure access to chips through rental agreements with third-party data centre providers, several industry insiders said.

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming at a conference near Jiaxing, China, in 2016 — ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming © VCG via Getty Images

This loophole was closed last week by the outgoing Biden administration, which issued new rules that the identity of both the owner and operator of the chips must undergo a review process.

While Trump could take a different stance on export controls, the regulations — if strictly implemented — would make ByteDance’s chip purchases overseas more difficult than ever.

It has already made large orders to build up overseas AI capacity this year, such as through rental agreements, according to one of the people. It should be sufficient for most of the company’s needs in 2025 but what happened after that remained uncertain, the person added.

ByteDance’s budget for purchases of AI chips overseas was previously reported by news outlet The Information. In response to the FT’s reporting, ByteDance said: “The anonymously sourced information about our plan is incorrect.”

ByteDance also faces challenges from deep-pocketed local competitors, such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, which are investing heavily in generative AI. Alongside these rivals, it has been pushing out more capable models and lowering costs for developers.

Chinese companies still need to build up the capacity of AI data centres onshore to support the use of AI applications even after the models have been trained.

ByteDance plans to use most of its Chinese AI chips — including Huawei’s Ascend and Cambricon — for “inference” tasks, the computation undertaken by large language models to generate a response to a prompt.

ByteDance released its AI chatbot Doubao in August 2023 and the AI app has become China’s most popular AI application, according to website analytics site Aicpb.com.

Doubao, which means “beanbag” in Chinese, had 71mn regular monthly active users as of December, compared with OpenAI’s 300mn weekly active users globally.

Nvidia recorded $11.6bn in revenue from China, including Hong Kong, or about 13 per cent of its global total, during the first three quarters of 2024, according to company filings.

ByteDance is by far the largest client for Nvidia in China. The TikTok parent can only buy less advanced chips such as Nvidia’s H20 for Chinese data centres, a specialised and less-powerful version of its GPUs tailored to align with US export controls.

In 2024, it ordered about 230,000 of Nvidia’s chips, mostly H20s, according to estimates from tech consultancy Omdia. This compares with 485,000 of the more advanced “Hopper” chips bought by Microsoft last year and the 224,000 acquired by Meta.

Tech companies around the world have spent an estimated $229bn on servers in 2024, according to Omdia, led by Microsoft’s $31bn in capital expenditure and Amazon’s $26bn.

Additional reporting by Ryan McMorrow in Beijing and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

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Breaking down the executive actions Trump is using to govern : Consider This from NPR

Published

7 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Press Room

Breaking down the executive actions Trump is using to govern : Consider This from NPR

US President Donald Trump signs executive orders during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena, in Washington, DC.

ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

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ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

US President Donald Trump signs executive orders during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena, in Washington, DC.

ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald J. Trump began taking decisive steps to implement his agenda hours after being sworn in.

In the day since he’s once again become President, Trump has signed more than 200 executive actions aimed at delivering on campaign promises such as lower energy prices, mass deportations and an end to birthright citizenship.

There’s been a deluge of actions, orders and pronouncements during the President’s first day. From tariffs to immigration to the January 6th pardons – we breakdown everything down.

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org

Email us at considerthis@npr.org

This episode was a huge team effort. It was produced by Brianna Scott, Gabriel Sanchez and Michelle Aslam. It was edited by Courtney Dorning, Robert Little, Nadia Lancy, Justine Kenin, Roberta Rampton, Tara Neill and John Ketchum. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.