USDA cancels $1B in local food purchasing for schools, food banks

Excerpt:

"Roughly $660 million that schools and child care facilities were counting on to purchase food from nearby farms through the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program in 2025 has been canceled, according to the School Nutrition Association.The Biden administration expanded the spending for both programs to build a more resilient food supply chain that didn’t just rely on major food companies. "

Southwest Airlines flight abruptly rises to avoid another plane crossing Chicago runway

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Audio recording of communication between the smaller jet and the control tower recorded its pilot misstating instructions from a ground tower employee, who repeated that the pilot should “hold short” of a runway. About 30 seconds later, the ground tower ordered the pilot “hold your position there.”

The past few weeks have seen four major aviation disasters in North America. They include the Feb. 6 crash of a commuter plane in Alaska that killed all 10 people on board and the Jan. 26 midair collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight at Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport that killed all 67 aboard the two aircraft.

A medical transport jet with a child patient, her mother and four others aboard crashed Jan. 31 into a Philadelphia neighborhood. That crash killed seven people, including all those aboard, and injured 19 others.

Twenty-one people were injured Feb. 17 when a Delta flight flipped and landed on its roof at Toronto’s Pearson Airport.

Trump administration fires workers at NIH's Alzheimer's research center, including incoming director

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The firings at the Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias (CARD) affected roughly a tenth of the nearly 100 employees at the center, but in interviews with ABC News, workers there described a carefully woven web of collaboration that they say could be threatened by the layoffs of just a handful of employees, warning that it could jeopardize progress in answering key questions about dementia.

Most shocking to CARD workers was the termination of lead researcher Kendall Van Keuren-Jensen, who was announced internally as the organization's next acting director and was expected to bring significant advancements to the research field.

Trump begins firings of FAA staff just weeks after fatal DC plane crash

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The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said in a brief statement Monday it was “analyzing the effect of the reported federal employee terminations on aviation safety, the national airspace system and our members....

Other FAA employees who were fired were working on an urgent and classified early warning radar system the Air Force had announced in 2023 for Hawaii to detect incoming cruise missiles, through a program that was in part funded by the Defense Department. It’s one of several programs that the FAA’s National Defense Program manages that involve radars providing longer-range detection around the country’s borders.

Due to the nature of their work, staff in that office typically provide an extensive knowledge transfer before retiring to make sure no institutional knowledge is lost, said Charles Spitzer-Stadtlander, one of the employees in that branch who was terminated.

Trump administration cuts reach FDA employees in food safety, medical devices and tobacco products

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Kennedy also has called for eliminating thousands of chemicals and colorings from U.S. foods. But the cuts at FDA include staffers responsible for reviewing the safety of new food additives and ingredients, according to an FDA staffer familiar with the firings.... The total number of positions eliminated was not clear Sunday, but the firings appeared to focus on employees in the agency’s centers for food, medical devices and tobacco products — which includes oversight of electronic cigarettes.

NOTE:

**  DOGE touts the cuts in funding & personnel as cost saving. However, as noted in the article:

Nearly half of the FDA’s $6.9 billion budget comes from fees paid by companies the agency regulates, .... .  Eliminating those positions will not reduce government spending.

Why Private Forecasting Companies Can’t Replace the National Weather Service

NOAA and the NWS provide public weather data that private companies cannot recreate

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The forecasts can seem effortless, but behind the scenes, a vast network of satellites, airplanes, radar, computer models and weather analysts are providing access to the latest data – and warnings when necessary. This data comes from analysts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA, and its National Weather Service.

The agency operates a fleet of 18 satellites that are packed with instruments dedicated to observing weather phenomena essential to predicting the weather, from how hot the land surface is to the water content of the atmosphere. Some are geostationary satellites which sit high above different parts of the U.S. measuring weather conditions 24/7. Others orbit the planet. Many of these are operated as part of partnerships with NASA or the Air Force.

Trump Team Looks to Drastically Cut Weather and Climate Agency

Mass layoffs at the U.S. climate and weather agency would have a ripple effect across the economy, say former NOAA officials

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The Trump administration is looking to halve the NOAA workforce, say two former officials of the agency, a member of Congress and a congressional staff member.

The draconian cut, they say — which would reduce the number of NOAA employees from about 12,000 to 6,000 — threatens to cripple an agency that provides climate and weather information across the U.S. economy.

“The Musk approach is, ‘Hey, I'll break it and if somebody says afterwards you shouldn't have broken that, I'll say, oops,’” Rosenberg said. “Once they destroy the agencies, they're not going to be able to put them back together again, no matter what a judge says.”