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India Gazette
2 days ago
- Politics
- India Gazette
"Strengthening early warning systems, coordination is crucial", says PM Modi addressing ICDRI
New Delhi [India], June 7 (ANI): Highlighting the significance of strengthening early warning systems to mitigate risks from disasters, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that coastal regions and islands are at great risk due to natural disasters and climate change. Addressing the International Conference on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (ICDRI) via videoconference, the Prime Minister said that India in recent times witnessed Cyclone Remal in India and Bangladesh, Hurricane Beryl in the Caribbean, Typhoon Yagi in Southeast Asia, and Hurricane Helene in the United States. 'The theme of this conference is shaping our resilient future for coastal regions. Coastal regions and islands are at great risk due to natural disasters and climate change. In recent times, we saw Cyclone Remal in India and Bangladesh, Hurricane Beryl in the Caribbean, Typhoon Yagi in Southeast Asia, Hurricane Helene in the United States, Typhoon Usagi in the Philippines, and Cyclone Chido in parts of Africa. Such disasters damage life and property,' the Prime Minister said. He recounted India's experience during the super cyclone of 1999 and the Tsunami in 2004. 'India also experienced the pain during the super cyclone of 1999 and the tsunami in 2004. Cyclone shelters were constructed across the vulnerable areas. We also helped build a Tsunami Warning system for 29 countries,' PM Modi said. 'The coalition for disaster-resilient infrastructure is working with 25 small island developmental states. Resilient homes, hospitals, schools, energy and water security and early warning systems are being built,' he added. Further emphasising the need for a skilled workforce to tackle future challenges, PM Modi said, 'Courses, modules and skill-development projects need to become part of the higher education system. This will build a skilled workforce that can tackle future challenges. 'Many countries faced disasters and rebuilt with resilience. A global digital repository for the learnings and best practices would be beneficial. Disaster resilience requires innovative finance; we must design actionable programmes and ensure that developing nations have access to finance,' he added, stressing the global digital repository. 'Strengthening early warning systems and coordination is crucial. This helps in early decisions and effective last-mile communication,' the Prime Minister further said. (ANI)
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's contract-cutting blitz rattles a once-flourishing DC industry
A Trump administration project to revisit thousands of federal agreements is starting to sink a vast ecosystem of contractors that deploy jobs across the Washington economy. It's an effort — launched in February — that's already produced claims of big savings, including $43 million for oversight and protection of private information in the federal insurance marketplace. Contracts worth $14 million for health care support within the Department of Veterans Affairs and $16 million for assisting relief efforts in Texas following last year's Hurricane Beryl and other natural disasters have also been marked as terminated. At least 2,775 out of more than 20,000 contracts for consulting and investment advice under review have been cut as of May 11, worth $3.1 billion in claimed savings, according to an analysis of DOGE's list of terminations and government data obtained by POLITICO. But the reach of the review — looking back at contracts that have already gone through a competitive bidding process overseen by career civil servants — is nonetheless unprecedented. It has frozen hiring, triggered layoffs and sparked chaos across the consulting industry, a vast shadow workforce across Virginia, Washington and Maryland that often weathers broader economic slumps. 'The government's going to force [contractors] into a race to the bottom,' said Stan Soloway, a former procurement official at the Defense Department who later ran the Professional Services Council, a trade association for federal contractors. 'These are consequences that happen when the process leading up to them is not appropriately deliberative and thoughtful and insightful.' For decades, the government has grown increasingly reliant on the private sector to perform functions once handled by federal employees, a shift done ostensibly to control costs by having companies compete. It also created today's opportunity: The Trump administration has brought a new intensity to slashing contractors partly because they're easier to cut than federal workers, many of which have civil service protections. In the same breath, the government is renegotiating contracts to get better deals for relatively greater work, according to three lobbyists representing large and small consulting firms who, like others in this report, were granted anonymity for fear of retribution. The General Services Administration, which oversees government contracting and is leading the review, is systematically targeting business deals it can retroactively deem 'non-essential' — 'any contract that merely generates a report, research, coaching, or an artifact,' according to an agency memo obtained by POLITICO. The early stages of the economic fallout for the D.C. region are starting to trickle out. Consulting firms included in GSA's list of 20,000-plus contracts have reported layoffs for nearly 3,600 employees in Washington, Maryland and Virginia alone since the start of the Trump administration, according to publicly available data. And consulting industry giant Deloitte, which has not yet announced layoffs in the DMV area, is widely expected to shed staff as well. Trump administration officials say the undertaking is determined to make sure the agreements provide good value to taxpayers. It's exactly the sort of mission conservatives elected President Donald Trump to do — shrink the federal government in a way that previous administrations have failed to deliver. They have also said these cuts would not impact essential services and instead target redundancies. Veterans Affairs spokesperson Peter Kasperowicz said the agency has so far canceled 'hundreds' of the 130,000 contracts it is reviewing and won't cancel those that 'directly support Veterans, and beneficiaries or provide services VA cannot do itself.' Josh Gruenbaum, GSA's commissioner for the federal acquisitions division, also downplayed the fears of the administration's critics. The contract review, he said, 'is simply identifying the right private industry partners who take the deficit as seriously as we do and are willing to provide quality goods and services at competitive prices.' White House DOGE adviser Katie Miller did not respond to multiple requests for comment. To get out of a contract early, the government can simply pay companies a 'kill fee' that varies by contract, said Christine Harada, who oversaw procurement in the White House and GSA during the Obama and Biden administrations. But it's against federal business practices for agencies to cut a contract midway just to get a better deal, she said. But taking the government to court comes with enormous risks, said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the center-left Brookings Institution who studies government contracting. 'If you sue this White House, you're never going to get a future contract. Everybody knows that,' he said. As part of its review, Trump's GSA instructed agencies to provide one-sentence justifications for essential contracts worth keeping, according to the GSA memo. It has also asked every agency to review their contracts with the 10 consulting firms it says receive the most government funds and terminate any non-essential agreements. POLITICO is tracking updates to DOGE's 'Wall of Receipts,' which already claims nearly $32 billion in savings from all contract terminations it has posted publicly, and $170 billion in savings overall from cuts government-wide, as of May 11 — though DOGE's logs have been riddled with errors. Among those terminations are at least 2,775 of the consulting contracts highlighted by GSA. The actual number of consulting contracts DOGE claims to have canceled may be higher, as the group has masked identifying information from hundreds of contracts on its page due to 'legal reasons' and describes its termination list as a 'subset' of its activity. However, what DOGE claims to have cut is not always the same as what the agencies themselves claim. One of the largest contracts listed as canceled is a $1.3 billion agreement with New York-based Deployed Resources originally intended to help construct and furnish an immigration processing center along the southern border. But the contract, initially with the Department of Homeland Security, is active and was taken over by the Department of the Army, according to Army public affairs specialist Ryan Mattox. In recent weeks, GSA has signaled to some contracting firms that it wanted far deeper reductions, said one agency official who was granted anonymity for fear of retribution. And while contracts with behemoth companies like Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics and Deloitte are under the government's microscope, smaller, little-known companies could also have their work cut or reduced. One contract with a roughly 50-person research firm, MEF Associates, that helped states improve employment and other supportive services for welfare recipients facing domestic violence, mental health, substance use and other issues was cut in April. That's made it unclear if families on welfare are more likely to miss out on service improvements. Contractors and former government officials are also worried there could be unintended cancellations for a broader sweep of projects because GSA's spreadsheets labeled contracts 'consulting' even if, in practice, they were used for construction and other unrelated services. Detailed descriptions for each contract are not always available in public federal spending data sets, nor in the data obtained by POLITICO. But some contracts that have been under review, identified through a series of GSA documents, include a$33 million contract for logistical support following Tropical Storm Helene in Asheville, North Carolina (which DOGE claims to have canceled), a $155 million award to build out a system to help prevent veteran suicide and$132 million toward human resources services to help veterans transition back to civilian life. At IBM, another large contractor whose deals GSA is scrutinizing, executives noted the contract review and cancellations prompted them to be 'prudently cautious around consulting for the year,' Chief Financial Officer Jim Kavanaugh said on an earnings call in late April. 'We actually process veterans benefits claims. We help process how the GSA does procurement. We help implement payroll systems,' Arvind Krishna, IBM's president and CEO, told investors. 'I don't think of these as optional.' Many lobbyists, contractors and current and former federal officials acknowledged in interviews there are redundancies within consulting contracts. But some of these redundancies, they noted, are fail-safes that help keep important systems running smoothly and prevent service outages. Harada, the Obama and Biden procurement official, said the Trump administration's penchant for making broad cutsand then backtracking makes her worry it could wipe out important programs and unnecessarily imperil thousands of private sector jobs. 'They're the ones that are operating the Medicare call centers,' she said. 'They're the ones that are administering your Medicaid payments, your veterans benefits. They're the ones that are actually doing some of the medical services for veterans.' Consulting firms aren't sitting by passively. Some have spent the first months of the Trump administration lobbying lawmakers and federal agencies including GSA to stave off contract cuts. Companies including Guidehouse and Booz Allen, which have been singled out by GSA, are working with agencies to make strategic carve-outs, according to three lobbyists and contractors familiar with the matter. But these firms have hit a wall. As DOGE and GSA hack away at contracts, the businesses are having trouble breaking through, they said. A congressional staffer familiar with the matter told POLITICO that lawmakers' ability to intervene in the contract review is limited because appropriations laws don't dictate whom the executive branch hires or what contracts agencies need to issue. During the lobbying blitz, contractors have learned the Trump administration is looking to "rescope" the size of preexisting contracts with the ultimate goal of squeezing lower prices and greater productivity from these consultancies, the three lobbyists and contractors said. 'Everybody's so desperate for work now,' said a former staffer at a major consulting firm GSA targeted. 'So they're going and they're basically lowball[ing] their price. … And as long as it's not ungodly low, they'll win on price.' It's left the contractors in a precarious position: Do they put forward the cheapest bids to secure a deal, unsure if the money they are asking for is enough to fulfill the work, or forgo a contract entirely? 'We're heading toward an unhealthy dynamic. Would you use low price to choose your heart surgeon?' said Soloway, the former Pentagon procurement official, who now runs Celero Strategies, a federal market consulting firm. 'The end result is it ends up costing the taxpayer more. You get a lot less for your money.' Methodology POLITICO obtained 53 spreadsheets that GSA circulated to federal agencies, along with a memo instructing them to conduct a review of 'non-essential consulting' contracts. In total, those spreadsheets amounted to 22,150 rows of data, most of which refer to single contracts, though some individual contracts were repeated across rows. That data is shown in full in the table above, though some columns, including those with personal identifying information, have been removed. POLITICO compared this data to DOGE's publicly available contract termination list posted on May 11 in order to identify contracts that DOGE claims to have canceled. When available, old versions of the DOGE data were used for USAID contract cancellations that are now stripped of identifying information on the DOGE website due to 'legal reasons.' As a result, there may be additional USAID consulting contracts on GSA's list that have been canceled by DOGE.
CBC
22-05-2025
- Climate
- CBC
Expect an above-average hurricane season, says NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is forecasting an above-average Atlantic hurricane season. According to the federal climate and weather agency, the season — which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30 each year — has a 60 per cent chance of an above-normal season, a 30 per cent chance of a near-normal season and a 10 per cent chance of a below-normal season. They are also forecasting between 13 to 19 named storms, with six to 10 of them becoming hurricanes. Of those, three to five are forecast to be major hurricanes (from Category 3 to Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale). They have a 70 per cent confidence in these predictions. Last year, NOAA forecasted between 18 to 25 named storms, with 8 to 13 becoming hurricanes. And in the end, there were 18 named storms and 10 hurricanes. "The 2024 hurricane season outlook that was issued in May last year, was right on the money," said Laura Grimm, acting NOAA administrator in a press conference. Three of those storms affected Canada in 2024. The remnants of Hurricane Beryl — which was a major hurricane that caused widespread damage throughout the Caribbean — was responsible for one death in Wolfville, N.S., in July due to flash flooding. It also caused two tornadoes near London, Ont. The most significant to hit Canada was Hurricane Debby which became an extratropical storm by the time it hit Quebec in August. According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, it was the costliest severe weather event in Quebec's history, causing almost $2.5 billion in damages due to flooding. About a week later, the remnants of Hurricane Ernesto hit Newfoundland with minimal impacts. Warmer Atlantic Ocean Since 2023, the Atlantic Ocean has been significantly warmer than average due to global warming. The oceans have absorbed roughly 90 per cent of the warming over the past few decades as we continue to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, mostly from burning fossil fuels. Graham noted that, although the warmer Atlantic Ocean temperature hasn't influenced the number of storms we're seeing in a hurricane season, it is contributing to more rainfall, as the atmosphere is now holding more moisture. However, it is believed that the warmer temperatures have contributed to rapid intensification, as was the case with Hurricane Otis in 2023, which strengthened from a tropical storm to a Category 5 in less than 24 hours. It slammed into Acapulco, Mexico, killing at least 100 people who were caught by surprise by the intensification. But Graham said that their forecasts concerning rapid intensification has been getting better. "We saw the forecast improvements first-hand in 2024," he said. "The skill is better than ever. It was amazing to watch in 2024. Helene was forecast to be a major hurricane … before it was even a depression. It was a bunch of clouds, a couple of thunderstorms." When asked about the Trump administration's cuts and how that could affect the forecast and local offices, Grimm said that it wasn't an issue. "Weather prediction, modelling and protecting human lives and property is our top priority," she said. "We are fully staffed at the hurricane centre and we definitely are ready to go and we are really making this a top priority for this administration, for NOAA, for the department of commerce. So we are very supportive of our national weather staff." About 10 per cent of NOAA's workforce has been cut. Message: Be prepared Most of the press conference centred around preparedness for those who may be in the path of any hurricane. They stressed that people should begin preparations before any hurricanes even develop. "There are no lines for supplies today. No lines for gas, no lines for plywood, no lines for water," said Ken Graham, director, NOAA's National Weather Service. "So while there're no lines, it's a good time to go out there and get your supplies and your kit [and] put it together." He also said that people who are further inland and think they may not experience the effects from a hurricane should still prepare. "Everything's in place for an above-average season," Graham said. "There's no such thing as 'Hurricane Just a' ... There's no such thing as just a Cat 1, there's no such thing as just a Cat 2, just a Cat 3. Every one of them is different." "We're prepared here at NOAA," he said. "Are you?"
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Galveston beach homeowners accuse city officials of having no road since Hurricane Beryl
The Brief Galveston homeowners say they used to have a paved road that ran in front of their beachhouse. However, that road hasn't been there since Hurricane Beryl. The homeowners accused the city of dragging their feet in an effort to fix the road. City officials said they will be repairing the road with new limestone, but not with a hard surface road. GALVESTON, Texas - Fawn and Terry Maldonado had a paved road that ran in front of their Galveston beach house on Buena Vista Drive. Fawn has pictures to prove it. What they're saying "See how many people were parking there. We had no issues. No one was worried about getting stuck," she said. The couple can't even park in front of their own home. "We haven't had a street since Hurricane Beryl," Terry said. "The last time that I drove down here and parked in front of my house, I got stuck." "We've spoken to the Mayor's office, the City Manager's office, the public works supervisor," said Fawn, who has neighbors as frustrated as she. "We're all in the same situation, and after speaking with them, they're hearing the exact same thing I have," she said. "You don't have to complete the thing but do something to improve it from where it is now," said Mike Chambers. "We've seen emergency vehicles come back here, and they have to back up because they can't turn around." What's the city's response? "They keep saying that they're going to fix it," Fawn said. "They just keep kicking the can down the road." The other side In a statement to FOX 26's Randy Wallace, officials with the city of Galveston, said, "Just following up with you on Buena Vista Drive. I spoke with our public works team and this is what's going on with the road: The City of Galveston has completed many repairs to West End roads since Hurricane Beryl and our work there is ongoing. Nearly half of our budget for streets is spent on the West End and crews are constantly working in the area to keep sand off the roadways. East Buena Vista Drive and West Buena Vista Drive have both recently been bladed (sand removed) to make the road more passable. The problems in this area have been ongoing since Hurricane Ike when the beach row of homes was destroyed. Since, it has been a constant battle to keep sand off this road and this has been exacerbated by the lack of rain this spring. However, the city performs regularly blading in the area. While we would like to do a hard surface road on East and West Buena Vista Drive, we are prohibited by the GLO. We have been working with our state partners to maximize our sustainable options and looking at other surfaces. As of now, the plan is to repair the road with new limestone and those repairs are forthcoming in the coming weeks. City Council has prioritized beach nourishment projects in this area because of erosion, and one is planned for later this year. While this won't necessarily result in less sand on the road, the project would help by keeping tides farther from the infrastructure and preventing the road from washing out." The Source FOX 26 Reporter Randy Wallace spoke with Galveston beach homeowners and got a response from the City of Galveston.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
2024 Atlantic hurricanes break records, setting stage for 2025
Panama City, Fla. (WMBB) – The 2025 Atlantic Hurricane Season is now less than one month away and help prepare those in the Panhandle for the upcoming hurricane season, we are breaking down the record breaking 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season. In 2024, both Colorado State and NOAA were forecasting an above-average hurricane season, and that's exactly what we saw. We not only saw record-breaking sea surface temperatures, but we also witnessed the earliest category 5 storm on record, Hurricane Beryl. We saw rapid intensification and numerous record-breaking storms throughout the 2024 season. The west coast of Florida had three landfalling hurricanes, two of which were major hurricanes. The major hurricanes that hit the west coast of Florida were Hurricane Helene, which made landfall as a major category 4 storm on September 26th in the Big Bend, just SE of Franklin County. Two weeks later, Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key on October 9th as a Category 3 storm. Before Milton made landfall, it rapidly intensified from a category 1 storm to a category 5 storm in less than 24 hours, making this storm one of the top five lowest pressures ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin. Milton encountered wind shear on approach to landfall that helped weaken the storm from a Category 5 storm to a Category 3 storm, but it broadened its wind field to nearly 400 miles wide, stretching impacts well beyond the cone. All ahead of landfall were feeder bands that caused a record-breaking tornado outbreak across Florida with at least 19 confirmed tornadoes and over 100 tornado-warned storms. For the upcoming 2025 season, many hurricane forecasters, including Colorado State, are forecasting an above-average season, but not quite as severe as what we saw in 2024. Now that we are less than a month out, it is important to start preparing and always get your hurricane forecasts from trusted sources. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
