A number of airlines are waiving change fees ahead of what is expected to be a major winter storm forecast to hit the Northeast on Friday afternoon, affecting millions of people traveling after Christmas, during one of the busiest times of the year.
A winter storm warning from the National Weather Service (NWS) is in effect for New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut from Friday afternoon through Saturday, for up to 9 inches of snow and freezing temperatures, creating the potential hazardous travel conditions, flight delays, and cancellations. 1-6 inches of snow is expected from northeastern Pennsylvania up into New England; while freezing rain and sleet, are expected south into Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and West Virginia.
American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and JetBlue Airways have issued fee waivers for travelers flying into a number of airports including, New Yorks John F. Kennedy International Airport, New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport, and Philadelphia International Airport, according to CNBC.
The big three carriers, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and American Airlines, have issued travel alert for the following airports, and are allowing those whose plans may be affected, to rebook without change fees.
DELTA AIR LINES
Airports: New York, NY (JFK), New York, NY (LGA), Newark, NJ (EWR) , Philadelphia, PA (PHL), White Plains, NY (HPN)
Impacted travel dates: December 26-27, 2025
Ticket must be reissued on or before: December 30, 2025
Booked travel must begin no later than: December 30, 2025
UNITED
Airports: Allentown, PA (ABE), Albany, NY (ALB), Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, PA (AVP), Hartford, CT (BDL), Boston, MA (BOS), Newark, NJ (EWR), Ithaca, NY (ITH), New York, NY (JFK), Johnstown, PA (JST), New York, NY (LGA), Harrisburg, PA (MDT), Philadelphia, PA (PHL), Providence, RI (PVD), Rochester, NY (ROC), State College, PA (SCE)
Syracuse, NY, US (SYR)
For tickets booked before or on: December 23, 2025
Impacted travel dates: December 26-27, 2025
Ticket must be reissued on or before: December 31, 2025
AMERICAN AIRLINES
Airports: Boston, MA (BOS), New York, NY (JFK), New York, NY (LGA), Newark, NJ (EWR) , Philadelphia, PA (PHL), White Plains, NY (HPN)
For tickets booked before or on: December 24, 2025
Impacted travel dates: December 26-27, 2025
Ticket must be reissued on or before: December 31, 2025
For the most up-to-the-minute information, travelers should check the status of their flights frequently.
For international travelers flying on Singapore Airlines, the airline has already announced multiple cancellations for flights between New York’s JFK and New Jersey’s Newark airports, and its Singapore and Frankfurt hubs.
High-speed rail systems are found all over the globe. Japans bullet train began operating in 1964. China will have 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) of high-speed track by the end of 2025. The fastest train in Europe goes almost 200 mph (320 kph). Yet high-speed rail remains absent from most of the U.S.
Stephen Mattingly, a civil engineering professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, explains why high-speed rail projects in much of the country so often go off track.
Dr. Stephen Mattingly discusses the problems that come with implementing high-speed rail in the U.S.
The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion, edited for brevity and clarity.
How is high-speed rail different from conventional trains?
Stephen Mattingly: With conventional rail, were usually looking at speeds of less than 80 mph (129 kph). Higher-speed rail is somewhere between 90, maybe up to 125 mph (144 to 201 kph). And high-speed rail is 150 mph (241 kph) or faster. Theres also a difference in the infrastructure for these different rail lines.
Is there anything in the U.S. thats considered high-speed rail?
Mattingly: The Acela train operates in the Northeast Corridor and serves Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In some parts of the corridor, the Acela runs on infrastructure that accommodates the trains maximum 150 mph (241 kph) speed.
Why has the U.S. been slow to adopt this?
Mattingly: Except for some in the northeastern U.S., not many cities have enough travel between them and are at the correct distance to support an investment in high-speed rail, because its not necessarily going to take a huge number of cars off the road. Trains are not a replacement for auto travel; they compete more directly with air.
High-speed rail competes best with air when the trip is between one-and-a-half to three hours. Within that range, a trains door-to-door travel time is typically faster than air. Thats because of the additional security time required for air travel: sitting around in the airport, the time it takes to load and unload and all of that.
For longer distancesmore than three hoursthe trains travel time starts to get noncompetitive with air. Thats because for every three or four hours of high-speed rail travel, air travel only takes one hour.
Go lower than thata trip of less than an hour-and-a-halfand cars become the more attractive choice.
That said, what are the advantages of high-speed rail?
Mattingly: First, the environmental benefit is an advantage. High-speed rail has lower carbon emissions than air travel, especially on a per passenger basis. You can load more people onto a train than most planes.
Then, of course, its speed makes it a viable way to commute when compared with conventional rail. Our current Amtrak system, outside the Northeast Corridor, is really a leisure travel mode, as opposed to business travel mode.
What large-scale projects are in the works here in the U.S.?
Mattingly: Some higher-speed rail is in Florida, and Brightline, a private train company, is proposing to improve the existing line with more of a high-speed capability. Theres also a proposed line in Texas to run between Dallas and Houston.
The Texas project has a lot of challenges with eminent domain, which is the right of government to take private property for public use after providing compensation. A federal grant to help fund the line was recently terminated, and a strategic partner pulled out of the project. With delays, costs inevitably begin to increase.
Californias high-speed rail project for its Central Valley actually has about 120 miles (193 kilometers) of track laid down. And its working on slowly building that out. There are some other proposals in the Pacific Northwest, but those are more ideas than projects at this point.
When these systems are proposed, theyre often positioned as a replacement for auto travel. But Im incredibly skeptical that auto travel will significantly decrease with a new public transit mode that deposits you within a larger metropolitan destination, which may not even have the public transportation to take you to your final destination.
Regional networks of high-speed rail could connect more exurban or rural areas to hub airports and enhance economic development in these regions. In this case, a public high-speed rail system could receive public money, just like the federal government has done with the interstate highway system and all the other road investments that weve made over the past century and longer.
But Im not sure that high-speed rail will be a solution for congested freeways between cities for any place outside of the Northeast Corridor.
What is your central message about high-speed rail?
Mattingly: I love high-speed rail as a technology. For specific applications, its beneficial, especially from an environmental perspective. But thecountry has to be very careful in its choices on where those public investments in high-speed rail would actually make sense and be worthwhile investments. So Im hesitant to make large investments without really understanding what the outcomes are.
SciLine is a free service based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.
Stephen Mattingly is a professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Nvidia has agreed to license technology from AI startup Groq for use in some of its artificial intelligence chips, marking the chipmaker’s largest deal and underscoring its push to strengthen competitiveness amid surging demand.
Here is a list of multi-billion-dollar AI, cloud and chip deals signed recently:
OPENAI DEALS
Amazon and OpenAI
Amazon is considering an investment of around $10 billion in OpenAI, though talks remain “very fluid,” according to a source who requested anonymity due to the private nature of their talks.
Disney and OpenAI
Walt Disney to invest $1 billion in OpenAI and will let the ChatGPT-parent use characters from Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel franchises in its Sora AI video generator – a move that could transform Hollywood content creation.
As part of the three-year licensing agreement, Sora and ChatGPT Images will begin generating videos featuring licensed Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, and Mufasa early next year. The deal excludes any talent likeness or voices.
Broadcom and OpenAI
OpenAI has partnered with Broadcom to produce its first in-house artificial intelligence processors, the latest tie-up for the world’s most valuable startup for computing power amid surging demand for its services.
AMD and OpenAI
AMD agreed to supply artificial intelligence chips to OpenAI in a multi-year deal that would also give the ChatGPT creator the option to buy up to roughly 10% of the chipmaker.
Nvidia and OpenAI
Nvidia is set to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and supply it with data center chips, in a deal giving the chipmaker a financial stake in OpenAI. OpenAI is already an important customer for Nvidia.
Oracle and OpenAI
Oracle is reported to have signed one of the biggest cloud deals ever with OpenAI, under which the ChatGPT maker is expected to buy $300 billion in computing power from the company for about five years.
CoreWeave and OpenAI
CoreWeave signed a five-year contract worth $11.9 billion with OpenAI in March, before the Nvidia-backed startup’s IPO.
Stargate Datacenter Project
Stargate is a joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle to build data centers. The project was announced in January by U.S. President Donald Trump, who said that the companies would invest up to $500 billion to fund infrastructure for artificial intelligence.
META DEALS
Meta and CoreWeave
CoreWeave has signed a $14 billion agreement with Meta to supply computing power to the Facebook parent.
Meta and Oracle
Oracle is in talks with Meta for a multi-year cloud computing deal worth about $20 billion, underscoring the social media giant’s drive to secure faster access to computing power.
Meta and Google
Google struck a six-year cloud computing deal with Meta Platforms worth more than $10 billion, Reuters had reported in August.
Meta and Scale AI
Meta took a 49% stake for about $14.3 billion in Scale AI and brought in its 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang, to play a prominent role in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence strategy.
NVIDIA DEALS
Nvidia and Groq
Nvidia has agreed to license chip technology from startup Groq and hire its CEO Jonathan Ross, who helped Google start its AI chip program, among other engineers at the company. CNBC reported that Nvidia had agreed to acquire Groq’s assets for $20 billion.
Microsoft, Nvidia, and Anthropic
Microsoft will invest up to $5 billion and Nvidia up to $10 billion in Anthropic, while the Claude maker will pledge $30 billion to run its workloads on Microsoft’s cloud.
Under the agreement, Anthropic will commit up to 1 gigawatt of compute, powered by Nvidia’s advanced Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin hardware. The company will also team up with Nvidia to improve chips and AI models for better performance.
Nvidia-backed group and Aligned Data Centers
An investor group including BlackRock, Microsoft and Nvidia is buying U.S.-based Aligned Data Centers, one of the world’s biggest data center operators with nearly 80 facilities, in a deal worth $40 billion.
Nvidia and Intel
Nvidia will invest $5 billion in Intel, giving it roughly 4% of the company after new shares are issued.
CoreWeave and Nvidia
CoreWeave signed a $6.3 billion initial order with backer Nvidia, a deal that guarantees that the AI chipmaker will purchase any cloud capacity not sold to customers.
GOOGLE DEALS
Google and Texas
Google will invest $40 billion in three new data centers in Texas through 2027. One of the data centers will be in Armstrong County, in the Texas Panhandle, and the other two in Haskell County, a stretch of West Texas near Abilene.
The company is also continuing to invest in its existing Midlothian campus and Dallas cloud region, part of the company’s global network of 42 cloud regions.
Google and Windsurf
Google hired several key staff members from AI code generation startup Windsurf and will pay $2.4 billion in license fees as part of the deal to use some of Windsurf’s technology under non-exclusive terms.
OTHERS
Nebius Group and Microsoft
Nebius Group will provide Microsoft with GPU infrastructure capacity in a deal worth $17.4 billion over a five-year term.
Intel and Softbank Group
Intel is getting a $2 billion capital injection from SoftBank Group, making the Japanese tech investor one of the top-10 shareholders of the troubled U.S. chipmaker.
Tesla and Samsung
Tesla signed a $16.5 billion deal to source chips from Samsung Electronics, with the EV maker’s CEO Elon Musk saying that the South Korean tech giant’s new chip factory in Texas would make Tesla’s next-generation AI6 chip.
Amazon and Anthropic
Amazon.com pumped $4 billion into OpenAI competitor Anthropic, doubling its investment in the firm known for its GenAI chatbot Claude.
Juby Babu, Deborah Sophia, Arnav Mishra, Jaspreet Singh, and Zaheer Kachwala, Reuters
If you’re embarrassed every time you have to hand over that Gmail address you came up with in 2006, you’re in luck. Google is finally allowing users to change their Gmail username without creating an entirely new account.
The update will allow you to edit your email address to any that isnt taken. Until now, Google only offered the option to create an alternate email and forward your mail to a new @gmail.com address. But, if you wanted any of your documents, pictures, or other media, then it required you to transfer all the data overa process that is far from smooth.
Now, Google is offering the ability to keep all of that information, whether youve changed your name, need a more professional address, or just want something new.
There are a few caveats, however. Google has yet to make an official announcement about where exactly this new feature will be available. Right now, the support page appears to only be available in Hindi, so it might start in India.
Fast Company has reached out to Google for more details on the location and timeline.
How to change your Gmail address
If you already have the desired username as an alternative email, you will have to delete it first to add it as your primary account. You should also still have the original email address, with it acting as an alias of sorts. Basically, all correspondence sent to that username should still appear in your inbox and you should be able to use it for Google services, including Drive and YouTube.
It also appears that once you choose a new username, you will be stuck with it for at least 12 months.
You can check whether the update is available on Gmail a few different ways. On your computer, you can:
Click on your Google account
On the left, tap Personal info
Choose Email
Then, try to select Google account email
If the last option isnt available, then you likely dont have access to this update as of now.
Checking for the feature on your Apple or Android devices is quite similar. For the former, you start by opening the Gmail app and clicking your profile picture or initial. On an Android device, get to the same page by going to your settings app, choosing Google, and then your name.
From there, on both Apple and Android devices, you can:
Click Manage your Google Account
Tap Personal info
Click Email
Select Google Account email
Again, if the last option doesnt work, you likely cant change your username yet.
If you do have the option to change your email address, then you will see an edit option next to it. From there, you just have to enter a new and available username and you’ll be off to a much less embarrassing future.
AI is no longer the future of healthcare; its already reshaping how patients are diagnosed and treated. Some of the most interesting developments involve systems that sense and respond to human emotion. Cedars-Sinais Connect platform, for example, adapts care based on patient sentiment; CompanionMx interprets vocal and facial cues to detect anxiety; and Feel Therapeutics uses emotion-sensing wearables to tailor interventions in real time.
At the same time, clinical tools are evolving. Hospitals are pairing large language models (LLMs) with AI note-taking apps such as Nabla and Heidi, which can listen, summarize, and respond to the nuances of doctorpatient conversations. Investment in medical scribing technologies alone hit around $800 million last year.
A SHIFT TO AI ADAPTATION
All of this points to a bigger shift from AI that automates tasks to AI that adapts. Traditional AI sped up paperwork and crunched data. Adaptive AI helps clinicians make better judgments, understand patients more deeply, and respond in context. You can already see this shift in breast cancer screening, genomics, and drug discovery, where high quality data and constant validation are driving real progress.
Emotionally-aware tools, when designed responsibly, can strengthen the connection between clinicians and patients, personalize care, and ease pressure on overstretched systems. But as adaptive AI becomes more widely available, success depends less on technical brilliance and more on how systems are built. The tools that succeed will be able to flex around people, fitting patients needs, clinicians workflows, and the realities of care. Good AI needs to be anticipatory and sensitive to context, built for the full diversity of patients.
Even the most empathetic AI cannot, of course, erase the imperfections of human systems. Recent studies, for example, show that medical AI tools and LLMbased assistants routinely downplay symptoms in women and treat Black and Asian patients with less empathy than for white men. AI does not cleanse the biases of the real world; it carries them forward and often widens their impact. We have seen this pattern before.
DEPLOYMENT MATTERS
Thats why deployment conditions matter as much as technology. A system that mimics empathy does not automatically grasp nuance, context, or risk. Without firm ethical boundaries, so-called emotional intelligence can give a false sense of security. Clinicians still need to make the final calls, protecting patients and maintaining trust. AI can be a helpful care partner, but it cannot take on the weight of human responsibility.
Building trust requires strengthening the foundations on which it is used. Involving patients, families, and carers from the start surfaces blind spots early and helps balance compassion with practicality. It also clarifies where automation should step back and human care needs to step in. Our Cancer Platform, developed with the Cancer Awareness Trust, illustrates this in practice, showing how empathetic design creates dependable, genuinely helpful tools.
AI isnt here to replace people. Its here to support them in their expertise and scale their impact. Ideally we will build machines to handle complexity and pattern recognition, freeing clinicians to focus on what humans do best: exercise judgement, build connection, and provide care. Machines might learn to care, but it is up to us to create the ecosystem where that care is trustworthy, fair, and meaningfula challenge, yes, but one full of opportunity.
Nicki Sprinz is CEO of ustwo.
Beijing imposed sanctions on Friday against 20 U.S. defense-related companies and 10 executives, a week after Washington announced large-scale arms sales to Taiwan.The sanctions entail freezing the companies’ assets in China and banning individuals and organizations from dealing with them, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.The companies include Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation, L3Harris Maritime Services and Boeing in St. Louis, while defense firm Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey is one of the executives sanctioned, who can no longer do business in China and are barred from entering the country. Their assets in the East Asian country have also been frozen.The announcement of the U.S. arms-sale package, valued at more than $10 billion, has drawn an angry response from China, which claims Taiwan as its own and says it must come under its control.If approved by the American Congress, it would be the largest-ever U.S. weapons package to the self-ruled territory.“We stress once again that the Taiwan question is at the very core of China’s core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in ChinaU.S. relations,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday. “Any company or individual who engages in arms sales to Taiwan will pay the price for the wrongdoing.”The ministry also urged the U.S. to stop what it called “the dangerous moves of arming Taiwan.”Taiwan is a major flashpoint in U.S.-China relations that analysts worry could explode into military conflict between the two powers. China says that the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan would violate diplomatic agreements between China and the U.S.China’s military has increased its presence in Taiwan’s skies and waters in the past few years, holding joint drills with its warships and fighter jets on a near-daily basis near the island.Under the American federal law, the U.S. is obligated to assist Taiwan with its self-defense, a point that has become increasingly contentious with China. Beijing already has strained ties with Washington over trade, technology and other human rights issues.
Associated Press
For the past three years, AIs breakout moment has happened almost entirely through text. We type a prompt, get a response, and move to the next task. While this intuitive interaction style turned chatbots into a household tool overnight, it barely scratches the surface of what the most advanced technology of our time can actually do.
This disconnect has created a significant gap in how consumers utilize AI. While the underlying models are rapidly becoming multimodalcapable of processing voice, visuals, and video in real timemost consumers are still using them as a search engine. Looking toward 2026, I believe the next wave of adoption wont be about utility alone, but about evolving beyond static text into dynamic, immersive interactions. This is AI 2.0: not just retrieving information faster, but experiencing intelligence through sound, visuals, motion, and real-time context.
AI adoption has reached a tipping point. In 2025, ChatGPTs weekly user base doubled from roughly 400 million in February to 800 million by years end. Competitors like Gemini and Anthropic saw similar growth, yet most users still engage with LLMs primarily via text chatbots. In fact, Deloittes Connected Consumer Survey shows that despite over half (53%) of consumers experimenting with generative AI, most people still relegate AI to administrative tasks like writing, summarizing, and researching.
Yet when you look at the digital behavior of consumers outside of AI, its clear consumers crave immersive experiences. According to Activate Consultings Tech & Media Outlook 2026, 43% of Gen Z prefer user-generated platforms like TikTok and YouTube over traditional TV or paid streaming, and they spend 54% more time on social video platforms than the average consumer, abandoning traditional media for interactive social platforms.
This creates a fundamental mismatch: Consumers live in a multi-sensory world, but their AI tools are stuck delivering plain text. While the industry recognizes this gap and is investing to close it, I predict well see a fundamental shift in how people use and create with AI. In AI 2.0, users will no longer simply consume AI-generated content but will instead leverage multimodal AI to bring voice, visuals, and text together, allowing them to shape and direct their experiences in real time.
MULTIMODAL AI UNLOCKS IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING
If AI 1.0 was about efficiency, AI 2.0 is about engagement. While text-based AI is limited in how deeply it can engage audiences, multimodal AI allows the user to become an active participant. Instead of reading a story, you can interact with a main character and take the plot in a new direction or build your own world where narratives and characters evolve with you.
We can look to the $250 billion gaming industry as the blueprint for the potential that multimodal AI has. Video games combine visuals, audio, narrative, and real-time agency, creating an immersive experience that traditional entertainment cant replicate. Platforms like Roblox and Minecraft let players inhabit content. Roblox alone reaches over 100 million daily users, who collectively spend tens of billions of hours a year immersed in these worlds; engagement that text alone could never generate.
With the rise of multimodal AI, users everywhere will be able to create these types of experiences theyve loved to participate in through gaming. By removing technical barriers, multimodal allows everyone to build experiences that not only feel authentic to the real world but also actively participate in them. Legacy media is also responding to this trend. Disney recently announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI and a licensing deal that will let users create short clips with characters from Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars through the Sora platform.
WHY MULTIMODAL AI CAN BE SAFER FOR YOUNGER USERS
As AI becomes part of everyday life, safetyparticularly for younger usershas become one of the most critical issues facing the industry.
Moving from open-ended chat to structured, multimodal worlds allows us to design guardrails within the gameplay. Instead of relying on continuous unstructured prompts, these environments are built around characters, visuals, voices, and defined story worlds. Interaction is guided by the experience itself. That structure changes how and where safety is designed into the system.
Educational AI demonstrates this approach. Platforms like Khan Academy Kids and Duolingo combine visuals, audio, and structured prompts to guide learning. The AI isnt trying to be everything; it focuses on one task well. As multimodal AI evolves, one of its most meaningful opportunities may be this ability to balance creative freedom with thoughtful constraint. AI 2.0 presents a design shift that could give builders, educators, and families new ways to shape safer, more intentional digital spaces for the next generation.
WHY MULTIMODAL AI IS THE NEXT FRONTIER
In 2026, I predict that consumers wont be prompting AI; it will be a more immersive interactive experience. This excites me because users wont just passively receive outputs; theyll actively shape experiences and influence how AI evolves in real time. We could see users remixing the series finale of their favorite TV show, or students learning history not by reading a textbook, but by actively debating a historically accurate AI simulation.
For founders and creators, the next step is to stop building tools only for efficiency and start building environments for immersion and exploration. The winners of the next cycle wont be the ones with the smartest models, but the ones who make AI feel less like a utility and more like a destination for rich, interactive experiences.
Karandeep Anand is CEO of Character.AI
The White House will unveil new details on President Donald Trump’s planned East Wing ballroom during a hearing early next month, according to a federal commission tasked with reviewing the project.
The new ballroom, which Trump has said would cost $400 million and would dwarf the adjacent White House building, has been challenged in court by preservationists, while Democratic lawmakers have called it an abuse of power and are investigating which donors are supporting it.
The National Capital Planning Commission, chartered by Congress to manage planning for Washington-area federal lands, said on its website that the White House will provide an “information presentation” on plans to rebuild the East Wing during a commission meeting on January 8.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The commission, chaired by a White House aide and onetime personal lawyer to Trump, Will Scharf, has declined to review the demolition of the former East Wing, preparation activities at the site, or potential effects to historic properties, in what would mark the biggest change to the historic property in decades.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit organization chartered by Congress, is suing to halt the construction, arguing that the proposed 90,000 square foot (8,360 square meter) ballroom would dwarf the rest of the White House, at 55,000 square feet.
The judge in the case earlier this month declined to issue a temporary restraining order against work on the project, noting among other things that the size, scale and other specifications had not been finalized. Another hearing is scheduled for next month.
The president, a one-time real estate developer, has taken a hands-on role in what he has described as sprucing up the White House and the U.S. capital city ahead of celebrations next year marking the Declaration of Independence’s 250th anniversary.
He has also proposed a new grand arch near Washington, while decorating the Oval Office extensively in gold leaf and installing plaques there offering his personal take on his predecessors’ legacies.
The former East Wing was largely demolished in October, with comparatively little public notice or consultation.
In a recent notice posted online, the planning commission said a formal review taking place this coming spring will consider topics including lines of sight, public space and landscapes. Members of the public will be allowed to submit comments or testify during the review, it said.
Trevor Hunnicutt, Reuters
California, soaked from days of relentless rain and recovering from mudslides in mountain towns, was hit with another powerful storm Christmas Day that led to evacuation warnings and high surf advisories.The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in Southern California issued an evacuation warning for Wrightwood, a mountain town about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, a day after rescuing people trapped in cars during a mud slide.The National Weather Service said waves near the San Francisco Bay Area could reach up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) Friday.Statewide, more than 70,000 people were without power Thursday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.A day ago, heavy rain and fierce winds were blamed for at least two deaths.A major storm system moving toward the Midwest and Northeast was expected to interfere with travel, according to the National Weather Service.A mix of freezing rain and sleet could create icy conditions in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Maryland. Forecasters warned heavy ice could cause outages. Snow was expected to blanket the Northeast early Friday.Roads in the 5,000-resident California town of Wrightwood were covered in rocks, debris and thick mud on Thursday. With power out, a gas station and coffee shop running on generators were serving as hubs for residents and visitors.“It’s really a crazy Christmas,” said Jill Jenkins, who was spending the holiday with her 13-year-old grandson, Hunter Lopiccolo.Lopiccolo said the family almost evacuated the previous day, when water washed away a chunk of their backyard. But they decided to stay and still celebrated the holiday. Lopiccolo got a new snowboard and e-bike.“We just played card games all night with candles and flashlights,” he said.Davey Schneider hiked a mile and a half (1.6 kilometers) through rain and floodwater up to his shins from his Wrightwood residence Wednesday to rescue cats from his grandfather’s house.“I wanted to help them out because I wasn’t confident that they were going to live,” Schneider said Thursday. “Fortunately, they all lived. They’re all okay just a little bit scared.”Arlene Corte said roads in town turned into rivers, but her house was not damaged.“It could be a whole lot worse,” she said. “We’re here talking.”With more rain on the way, more than 150 firefighters were stationed in the area, said San Bernardino County Fire spokesman Shawn Millerick.“We’re ready,” he said. “It’s all hands on deck at this point.”A falling tree killed a San Diego man Wednesday, news outlets reported. Farther north, a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy died in what appeared to be a weather-related crash.Areas along the coast, including Malibu, were under a flood watch until Friday afternoon, and wind and flood advisories were issued for much of the Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.The storms were the result of atmospheric rivers carrying massive plumes of moisture from the tropics during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.Southern California typically gets half an inch to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.5 centimeters) of rain this time of year, but this week many areas could see between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters), with even more in the mountains, National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford said.More heavy snow was expected in the Sierra Nevada, where gusts created “near white-out conditions” and made mountain pass travel treacherous. Officials said there was a “high” avalanche risk around Lake Tahoe and a winter storm warning was in effect through Friday.Ski resorts around Lake Tahoe recorded about 1 to 3 feet (30 to 91 centimeters) of snow overnight, said Tyler Salas, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Reno. Forecasters expect to see up to another 3 feet (91 centimeters) of snow through Friday, Salas said. The area could see 45-mph (72-kph) gusts in low elevation areas and 100-mph (161-kph) winds along mountain ridges.Gov. Gavin Newsom declared emergencies in six counties to allow state assistance.The state deployed resources and first responders to several coastal and Southern California counties, and the California National Guard was on standby.
Associated Press writers Sophie Austin in Oakland, California, and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.
Ty ONeil, Associated Press
Whats one thing most Americans likely dont know? Demand for donor sperm is increasing. Initially established in the 1970s to help men undergoing vasectomies and facing cancer treatments, sperm banks today support people facing a wide range of challenges on their path to pregnancy. Alongside heterosexual couples dealing with infertility issues like azoospermia and young men facing cancer diagnosis, single mothers by choice, and same-sex couples are frequently turning to sperm banks in hopes of building their family.
With approximately 1,500 sperm donors serving the entire United States, a new sperm bank, Premier Sperm Bank, is venturing to address modern family building needs with a commitment to research and ethically-minded practices. I caught up with John Jain, MD, the sperm banks founder, to understand more about the future of family building with donor sperm.
Q: Why sperm and why now? Why enter the sperm bank industry?
Jain: During my time running an egg bank in California, I took a real interest in male reproductive health, observing that very little research was being done even though sperm is 50% of the baby equation. So, it was sort of a natural progression for me, having run an egg bank, to open Premier Sperm Bank. And this is an exciting time to open a sperm bank, as the way people build their families has evolved and society is adapting with new technologies. Were seeing increased rates of single mothers by choice, lesbian couples, and people of all identities wanting to be parentsand we can help these families by offering them a chance to self-inseminate in the privacy of their own home as an alternative to in-clinic insemination.
Simultaneously, while launching Premier, I built a research center in Oxford, England to study the genetics and epigenetics of sperm.
Q: Can you explain a little bit more about your research? How is that connected Premier Sperm Bank?
Jain: The cornerstone for male fertility has been the semen analysis, a nearly 100-year-old test that was standardized in the 1930s that does not truly predict fertility. There have been no meaningful advances in sperm testing to connect the health of the sperm to fertility outcomes, and/or the health of the resulting children. This field is strangely quite nascent when compared to our understanding of female fertility. How does the DNA work, how do the epigenetics fit in? My research going forward is focused on epigenetics and how we better assess sperm to ensure we are optimizing for good fertility outcomes and healthy babies for families using donor sperm.
Q: Your website mentions that you are the only sperm bank in the world that DNA verifies sperm. What does that mean?
Jain: It means we have verified the identity of the donor by matching his sperm to his DNA profile. Its important because the other methods of verification used by sperm banks depend on manual human processes or electronic medical witnessing systems. Clients want to know that they are receiving the correct sperm. DNA-verified is nearly 100% accurate and Premier is the only sperm bank in the world to offer the service.
Q: What is your donor selection process? How do you select a donor?
Jain: It’s pretty rigorous. We only accept 1.8% of donor applicants into our portfolio. While we consider physical characteristics, personal accomplishments, and check criminal and educational backgrounds, my role as a medical director is to assure quality sperm from healthy donors. We do that by performing an extensive 100-question family and medical history, FDA-mandated infectious disease tests, and sperm quarantine for 6 months. We also use a test that screens 500 genes to lower the risk of passing on a genetic disease.
Q: Where do you see the industry in the next 10 to 20 years?
Jain: I think there needs to be more acknowledgement about the needs of donor-conceived children and their families. Legacy sperm banks have not consistently monitored how many families have used a donors sperm; it is not uncommon to see donors whose sperm has resulted in dozens or even hundreds of donor-conceived children. Many donor-conceived children eventually want to meet their biological father. Anonymous donation is becoming a thing of the past, as we are now only accepting donors willing to disclose their identity once the child is 18.
The next 10 to 20 years will also see the emergence of better tools to evaluate sperm and predict fertility and childhood health. My lab in Oxford was built with that purpose in mind. And then there’s germline gene editing, the intentional modification of DNA in sperm, eggs, and embryos, currently banned in most countries. I believe gene editing is inevitable as it brings the potential of eliminating serious diseases like cancer, but it does change the human genome and presents an ethical slippery slope that requires oversight.
Maureen Brown is CEO and cofounder of Mosie Baby.
