San Francisco Bay Area residents woke up to some bad news for their Friday commute.
Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, the region’s main commuter rail system, which connects San Francisco’s peninsula with the East and South Bay, systematically shut down due to a “computer networking problem” affecting train control.
The agency announced it was closing all 50 stations at 4:24 a.m. on Friday morning, the East Bay Times reported.
As of this writing on Friday morning, BART said that train service had resumed, although passengers should expect “major delays.”
Technicians are on site trying to get to the bottom of the situation, but right now, that is the information that we have, BART communication officer Cheryl Stalter told KQED shortly after 6 a.m local time. We have a computer networking problem that is systemwide . . . it is affecting all operations, so we cannot put trains into service.
Chris Filippi, a spokesman for BART, said in a statement to the New York Times, that the last time this happened, it took several hours to resolve.
The incident left tens of thousands of commuters looking for new ways to get to work, with many reportedly clogging the Bay Area’s freeways, while the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni bus and rail services, assisted remaining passengers at some BART stations, per the Times.
The San Francisco Bay Ferry also ran larger ferries from the North and East Bay, per the East Bay Times.
Some 170,000 area residents use BART on weekdays, with ridership just half of what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the American Public Transportation Association, as reported by the New York Times.
Global equity funds attracted the smallest weekly inflows in four weeks in the week through May 7, amid concerns about the impact of tariffs on the global economy and as investors awaited anticipated U.S.-China trade talks for more clues.
According to LSEG Lipper data, investors bought just $856 million worth of global equity funds during the week, when compared with their $6.13 billion worth of net purchases in the previous week.
European equity funds witnessed robust demand for a fourth successive week with investors ploughing in a net $12.81 billion into these equity funds.
Asian funds also saw a net $3.32 billion worth of inflows while in the U.S., there were outflows for a fourth consecutive week, to the tune of $16.22 billion, on a net basis.
Sectoral funds, meanwhile, saw net selling for a ninth successive week, grossing approximately $2.6 billion for the week.
The financial sector with $1.19 billion and the metals and mining sector with $478 million in net sales, led sectoral outflows.
Global bond funds, however, gained popularity during the week as these funds saw weekly inflows totalling a net $11.4 billion, the highest in nine weeks.
Dollar-denominated bond funds witnessed a revival in demand with investors allocating a net $4.33 billion to these funds, the biggest amount in eight weeks. Global short-term and high yield funds also witnessed a significant $1.91 billion and $1.29 billion worth of net purchases, respectively.
Global money market funds saw a hefty $66.3 billion worth of weekly inflows, the biggest since February 5.
At the same time, gold and precious metal commodity funds experienced their second weekly outflow in 13 weeks, to the tune of $655 million.
Data covering 29,582 emerging market funds showed, equity funds received approximately $1.48 billion while bond funds gained a net $1.56 billion, a second successive weekly inflow in each segment.
Gaurav Dogra and Patturaja Murugaboopathy, Reuters
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will no longer track the cost of climate change-fueled weather disasters, including floods, heat waves, wildfires and more. It is the latest example of changes to the agency and the Trump administration limiting federal government resources on climate change.
NOAA falls under the U.S. Department of Commerce and is tasked with daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings and climate monitoring. It is also parent to the National Weather Service.
The agency said its National Centers for Environmental Information would no longer update its Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database beyond 2024, and that its information going as far back as 1980 would be archived.
For decades, it has tracked hundreds of major events across the country, including destructive hurricanes, hail storms, droughts and freezes that have totaled trillions of dollars in damage.
The database uniquely pulls information from the Federal Emergency Management Agencys assistance data, insurance organizations, state agencies and more to estimate overall losses from individual disasters.
NOAA Communications Director Kim Doster said in a statement that the change was in alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes.
Scientists say these weather events are becoming increasingly more frequent, costly and severe with climate change. Experts have attributed the growing intensity of recent debilitating heat, Hurricane Milton, the Southern California wildfires and blasts of cold to climate change.
Assessing the impact of weather events fueled by the planet’s warming is key as insurance premiums hike, particularly in communities more prone to flooding, storms and fires. Climate change has wrought havoc on the insurance industry, and homeowners are at risk of skyrocketing rates.
One limitation is that the dataset estimated only the nation’s most costly weather events.
The information is generally seen as standardized and unduplicable, given the agency’s access to nonpublic data, and other private databases would be more limited in scope and likely not shared as widespread for proprietary reasons. Other datasets, however, also track death estimates from these disasters.
Jeff Masters, a meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections, pointed to substitutes from insurance brokers and the international disaster database as alternative sources of information.
Still, The NOAA database is the gold standard we use to evaluate the costs of extreme weather, Masters said, and its a major loss, since it comes at a time when we need to better understand how much climate change is increasing disaster losses.
These moves also dont change the fact that these disasters are escalating year over year, Kristina Dahl, vice president of science at nonprofit climate organization Climate Central. Extreme weather events that cause a lot of damage are one of the primary ways that the public sees that climate change is happening and is affecting people.”
Its critical that we highlight those events when theyre happening, she added. All of these changes will make Americans less safe in the face of climate change.
The move, reported Thursday by CNN, is yet another of President Donald Trumps efforts to remove references to climate change and the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the weather from the federal governments lexicon and documents.
Trump has instead prioritized allies in the polluting coal, oil and gas industries, which studies say are linked or traced to climate damage.
The change also marks the administration’s latest hit overall to the weather, ocean and fisheries agency.
The Trump administration fired hundreds of weather forecasters and other federal NOAA employees on probationary status in February, part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency efforts to downsize the federal government workforce. It began a second round of more than 1,000 cuts at the agency in March, more than 10% of its workforce at the time.
At the time, insiders said massive firings and changes to the agency would risk lives and negatively impact the U.S. economy. Experts also noted fewer vital weather balloon launches under NOAA would worsen U.S. weather forecasts.
More changes to the agency are expected, which could include some of those proposed in the president’s preliminary budget.
The agency’s weather service also paused providing language translations of its products last month though it resumed those translations just weeks later.
___
The Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Alexa St. John, Associated Press
Data journalist Mary Katherine Wildeman contributed to thi report.
Virginia Olsen has pulled lobsters from Maine’s chilly Atlantic waters for decades while watching threats to the state’s lifeblood industry mount.Trade imbalances with Canada, tight regulations on fisheries and offshore wind farms towering like skyscrapers on open water pose three of those threats, said Olsen, part of the fifth generation in her family to make a living in the lobster trade.That’s why she was encouraged last month when President Donald Trump signed an executive order that promises to restore American fisheries to their former glory. The order promises to shred fishing regulations, and Olsen said that will allow fishermen to do what they do best fish.That will make a huge difference in communities like her home of Stonington, the busiest lobster fishing port in the country, Olsen said. It’s a tiny island town of winding streets, swooping gulls and mansard roof houses with an economy almost entirely dependent on commercial fishing, some three hours up the coast from Portland, Maine’s biggest city.Olsen knows firsthand how much has changed over the years. Hundreds of fish and shellfish populations globally have dwindled to dangerously low levels, alarming scientists and prompting the restrictions and catch limits that Trump’s order could wash away with the stroke of a pen. But she’s heartened that the livelihoods of people who work the traps and cast the nets have become a priority in faraway places where they often felt their voices weren’t heard.“I do think it’s time to have the conversation on what regulations that the industry does need. We’re fishing different than we did 100 years ago,” she said. “If everything is being looked at, we should be looking at the regulations within the fishing industry.”
A question of sustainability and competitiveness
But if fishing and lobstering interests finally have a seat at the table, the questions become how much seafood can be served there and for how long. Trump’s April 17 order, called “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness,” promises an overhaul of the way America fishes, and cites a national seafood trade deficit of more than $20 billion as the reason to do it. The order calls on the federal government to reduce the regulatory burden on fishermen by later this month.It arrives at a time when conservation groups and many marine scientists say the ocean needs more regulation, not less. One oft-cited 2020 study led by a scientist at the University of British Columbia looked at more than 1,300 fish and invertebrate populations and found that 82% were below levels that can produce maximum sustainable yields. The university said the study “discovered global declines, some severe, of many popularly consumed species.”Trump’s order prioritizes commerce over conservation. It also calls for the development of a comprehensive seafood trade strategy and a review of existing marine monuments, which are underwater protected zones, to see if any should be opened for fishing. At least one, the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, has already been reopened.Many commercial fishermen and fishing trade groups lauded the order. Members of the industry, one of the oldest in the country, have long made the case that heavy regulations many intended to protect the health of fish populations leave the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage to the fleets of countries that don’t bear the same kind of burden. That disadvantage is a big piece of why America imports more than two-thirds of its seafood, they argue.“The president’s executive order recognizes the challenges our fishing families and communities face, and we appreciate the commitment to reduce burdensome regulations and strengthen the competitiveness of American seafood,” said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.Some fishermen, including Maine lobsterman Don McHenan, said they’re looking forward to members of the industry being able to fish in areas of the ocean that have been closed off to them for years. McHenan said he’s also hopeful the pace of new regulations will slow.“As long as they don’t put any more onto us,” McHenan said. “We’ll see time will tell.”
Not all fishermen are on board
But the support for deregulation is not unanimous among fishermen. Some say strong conservation laws are critical to protecting species that fishermen rely on to make a living.In Alaska, for example, Matt Wiebe said the executive order “terrifies” him. A commercial fisherman with more than 50 years of experience fishing for salmon, he said the order could potentially harm the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fishery, which has received praise from sustainability organizations for careful management of the fish supply.Absent that management, he said the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery could go the way of the New England cod fishing business, which collapsed due in large part to overfishing and has never recovered.“Since New England fishers lost their cod fishery due to overfishing, many other fisheries came to respect and depend on conservation efforts,” Wiebe said. “We fish because it’s what we do, and conservation efforts mean we and our kids can fish into the future.”The executive order arrived at a time when America’s commercial fishermen are coping with environmental challenges and the decline of some once-marketable species. Maine’s historic shrimp fishery shuttered more than a decade ago, California’s salmon industry is struggling through closures and the number of fish stocks on the federal overfished list has grown in recent years.There is also the looming question of what Trump’s trade war with major seafood producers such as Canada and China will mean for the U.S. industry not to mention American consumers.To many in Maine’s lobster and fishing business, the answer is clear: Cut regulations and let them do their thing.“We definitely feel the industry is over-regulated as a whole,” said Dustin Delano, a fourth-generation Maine lobsterman who is also chief operating officer of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association. “We hope that this will help for sure. It does seek to initiate that America-first strategy in the fishery.”
Patrick Whittle and Robert F. Bukaty, Associated Press
The Soviet Union launched over a dozen probes to Venusmost successfully. But one never made it past Earths orbit and has, in fact, stayed there since 1972.
Now, over 50 years later, the one-meter-large Kosmos 482 is coming home, albeit a bit haphazardly.
The 1,091-pound craft, also known as Kosmos 482 and Venera 8, is predicted to reach reentry within nine hours of 1:54 a.m. ET on May 10, according to the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS).
In other words, this could be late afternoon today or sometime tomorrow morning.
If you think the when is varied, wait until you hear about the where.
Aerospace, the American nonprofit research and development center that runs CORDS, currently predicts that the craft could land anywhere between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south latitude.
Ironically, that covers almost every country except the USSRs successor, Russia.
What will happen to the probe upon reentry?
The craft could stay intact the entire way to Earth, as it was designed to survive the more severe atmosphere of Venus. However, the risk of it causing injury or death upon impact is about 0.4 in 10,000, according to Aerospace.
While the risk is nonzero, any one individual on Earth is far likelier to be struck by lightning than to be injured by Kosmos 482, the organization states. We definitely do not expect Kosmos 482 to land in your yard specifically. Given the nature of its orbit, most of the Earth is still in play for its reentry, and consequently it is far more likely to land in the ocean or an unpopulated area.
In the rare chance that Kosmos 482 does land near you, Aerospace cautions you to contact the authorities and not touch it as it could be hazardous. Plus, an early space-age United Nations treaty means it could technically belong to Russia.
How can I track Kosmos 482 and follow updates?
You can stay up-to-date on Kosmos 482s predicted reentry time on Aerospace’s tracking page.
Secondly, the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking Operation Centers (EU SST) is also tracking the craft’s reentry and posting updates on its website and X account.
China’s exports to the United States tumbled in April while its trade with other economies surged, suggesting that President Donald Trump’s tariffs offensive is hastening a shakeup in global supply chains.Total exports from China rose 8.1% last month from a year earlier, much faster than the 2% pace most economists had been expecting. That was much slower than the 12.4% year-on-year increase in March. Imports fell 0.2% in April from the year before.Shipments to the U.S. sank 21% in dollar terms as Trump’s tariffs on most Chinese exports rose to as high as 145%. With Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods at 125%, business between the two biggest economies has grown increasingly uncertain.China’s imports from the U.S. dropped more than 13% from a year earlier, while its politically sensitive trade surplus with the United States was nearly $20.5 billion in April, down from about $27.2 billion a year earlier.In the first four months of the year, China’s exports to the United States fell 2.5% from a year earlier, while imports from the U.S. fell 4.7%.A potential break in the tariffs stalemate could come as soon as this weekend. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other senior trade officials are due to meet with Chinese officials in Geneva on Saturday. But Beijing and Washington are at odds over a raft of issues, including colliding strategic interests that will may impede progress in the talks.Some of the punitive tariffs, including Beijing’s retaliatory 125% tariffs on U.S. exports, could be rolled back, but a full reversal is unlikely, Zichun Huang of Capital Economics said in a report.“This means China’s exports to the U.S. are set for further declines over the coming months, not all of which will be offset by increased trade with other countries. We still expect export growth to turn negative later this year,” Huang said.Whatever the outcome of those discussions, the rapid increase in Chinese exports to other countries reflects a restructuring that began years ago but has gained momentum as Trump has raised barriers to exporting to the U.S.Global manufacturers have been looking for alternatives to a near total reliance on manufacturing in China after disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for more diverse options.The need for more versatile supply chains grew more apparent as Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese exports during his first term in office. Most of those remained during former President Joe Biden’s term.Exports to the United States accounted for about a tenth of China’s total exports in April and the U.S. is still China’s largest single-country market. But the European Union and Southeast Asia are larger regional export markets.Trade with a broader grouping, the 15-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which does not include the United States, is still bigger. And exports to countries participating in China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” a vast network of Beijing-supported infrastructure projects, are bigger still.In the first four months of the year, exports to the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations rose 11.5% from a year earlier, and those to Latin America also climbed 11.5%. Shipments to India jumped nearly 16% by value, and exports to Africa surged 15%.Some of the fastest growth was in Asia, reflecting moves by Chinese and other manufacturers to diversify their supply chains outside of the Chinese mainland. Most notable were exports to Vietnam, which jumped 18% year-on-year. Exports to Thailand were up 20%.Back in China, preliminary data have shown a sharp decline in shipping and other trade activity. Earlier this week, Beijing announced a barrage of measures meant to counter the impact of the trade war on its economy, which was already struggling to regain momentum after the pandemic and a lengthy downturn in its housing sector.
Associated Press researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed.
Elaine Kurtenbach, AP Business Writer
As a woman in the United States, turning 21 means beginning a lifelong journey of getting a pap smear every three years.
It’s not a pleasant experience. You’ll lie down with your legs in stirrups, while your doctor inserts a speculum inside your vagina. Then, she or he will take a sample from your cervix with a hard plastic device to figure out if you have any trace of HPV (the human papillomavirus), a sexually transmitted infection that can cause cervical cancer, or cancerous and precancerous cells.
Starting today, however, there’s an easier solution. Teal Health, a woman’s health company founded in 2020, has developed a new product that allows you to take a sample at home and send it to a lab for testing. Today, the device received FDA approval, so it is now possible to order one online. It will be covered by insurance. The company is still working on out-of-pocket pricing, but aims to make the product as affordable and accessible for women as possible.
Teal was founded by Kara Egan, a health tech investor, and Avnesh Thakor, an interventional radiologist and Stanford School of Medicine professor. Egan realized that many women were skipping their pap smears. (In 2019, 23% of women were overdue for their cervical cancer screening.) But cervical cancer is the fourth deadliest cancer among women. “It’s just so easy to accidentally skip your appointment,” says Egan. “That’s especially true if you don’t have insurance or don’t have a doctor you see regularly.”
Some proportion of women also skip their pap smear because the process itself is so uncomfortable. “It can feel like a very violating experience, but it is also so important,” Egan says.
[Photo: Teal Health]
How Teal works
Working with the design studio Ideo, Egan and Thakor have developed a device that looks a like a tampon and is designed be comfortable to insert with a plastic applicator. Ideo designed the wand so women could use it with one hand while standing up while in the bathroom.
A woman will insert the wand into her vagina and use a thumb-operated wheel to deploy a sponge at the tip. Spinning the sponge collects cell samples from the cervix. From there, she can use the wheel to retract the sponge back into the wand to prevent contamination. The sponge pops off the applicator, and is then sent to a lab where it will be tested.
Teal is a telemedicine platform. When you buy the wand, you will see a doctor online who will walk you through the process of using the device. If the results come back abnormal, the doctor will walk through the results with you and also talk about the next steps, which likely will involve seeing a doctor and following some sort of treatment plan.
Part of what motivated Egan to pursue this device is that cervical cancer can be easily treated with early testing. HPV is a common virus that is commonly spread through sex or skin-to-skin contact. There is now a vaccine that pediatricians give to both girls and boys that reduces the risk of contracting HPV. Most HPV infections don’t lead to cancer. But if even a woman does get infected with HPV, it is relatively easy to clear the infection if it is detected early enough.
By taking a sample of cervical cells, we are now able to identify the 14 different kinds of precancerous cells associated with cervical cancer. “If you screen for cervical cancer and catch it early, it is nearly 100% curable,” says Egan.
After developing the wand, Teal health has done clinical trials to identify its effectiveness. Then, the company sent the results to the FDA to get approval to start selling the device. That approval came through today.
Teal’s wand will be available through the brand’s website. The product will be covered by insurance. But the company also wants to make it available to women who aren’t covered by insurance. It hasn’t established the out-of-pocket cost yet, but Egan promises that the final pricing will be as affordable to as many women as possible. It will also have a donation program, so that some women can get the test for free. “We will find ways for people who don’t have the means to make sure they’re still accessing screening,” she says. “No one needs to get cervical cancer.”
The Trump administration on Thursday proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of a U.S. air traffic control system that it said still relies on floppy disks and replacement parts found on eBay and has come under renewed scrutiny in the wake of recent deadly plane crashes and technical failures.The plan calls for six new air traffic control centers, along with an array of technology and communications upgrades at all of the nation’s air traffic facilities over the next three or four years, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.“We use radar from the 1970s,” said Duffy, who compared the proposal with upgrading from a flip phone to a smartphone. “This technology is 50 years old that our controllers use to scan the skies and keep airplanes separated from one another.”How much it will all cost wasn’t immediately revealed. Duffy said he’ll work with Congress on the details.“It’s going to be billions, lots of billions,” he said.The plan has an aggressive timeline, calling on everything to be finished by 2028 although Duffy said it may take another year.Demands to fix the aging system that handles more than 45,000 daily flights have increased since the midair collision in January between an Army helicopter and a commercial airliner that killed 67 people over Washington, D.C.That crashand a string of other crashes and mishapsshowed the immediate need for these upgrades, Duffy said in front of airline officials, union leaders and family members of those who died in the crash near Reagan National Airport.The proposal sets out to add fiber, wireless or satellite technology at more than 4,600 locations, replace 618 radars and more than quadruple the number of airports with systems designed to reduce near misses on runways.Six new air traffic control centers also would be built under the plan, and new hardware and software would be standardized across all air traffic facilities.The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week budgeted $12.5 billion to overhaul the system, but that estimate came out before the Transportation Department revealed its plan. Duffy said the final price tag will be higher.U.S. Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, who heads the House transportation committee, called the amount only a “down payment.”To build the system quickly, as planned, Duffy said Congress must give the Federal Aviation Administration all the money up front and streamline the permitting process.“The system we have here? It’s not worth saving. I don’t need to preserve any of this. It’s too old,” Duffy said.Trump said Thursday that the plan will revolutionize flying. “The new equipment is unbelievable what it does,” he said from the Oval Office. He began to say it may even alleviate the need for pilots before adding, “In my opinion, you always need pilots. But you wouldn’t even have to have pilots.”The newly revealed proposal appears to have wide support across the aviation industry from airline CEOs to the unions representing controllers and pilots but this is just the beginning and many details haven’t been revealed.Duffy quickly said the plan will not involve privatizing the air traffic control system, as Trump had supported in his first term.Following the midair crash near Washington, Trump promised to fix what he called “an old, broken system” and to tackle the nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers while blaming the previous Biden administration for both problems.But the weaknesses within the air traffic control system have been highlighted for years in hearings before Congress and government reports. The struggles to keep up with increasing air traffic has been recognized since the 1990s long before either Trump or Biden took office.The Trump administration’s overhaul plan will need enough funding to be more effective than previous reform efforts during the last three decades. Already more than $14 billion has been invested in upgrades since 2003 but none have dramatically changed how the system works.The FAA has been working since the mid-2000s to make upgrades through its NextGen program.One of the biggest challenges with a massive upgrade is that the FAA must keep the current system operating while developing a new system and then find a way to seamlessly switch over. That’s partly why the agency has pursued more gradual improvements in the past.The shortage of controllers and technical breakdowns came to the forefront in the last two weeks when a radar system briefly failed at the Newark, New Jersey, airport, leading to a wave of flight cancellations and delays.Without the planned upgrades, those breakdowns will be repeated around the nation, Duffy said. “Newark has been a prime example of what happens when this old equipment goes down,” he said.
Associated Press reporter Will Weissert in Washington contributed.
Josh Funk and John Seewer, Associated Press
The Federal Emergency Management Agency faced fresh upheaval Thursday just weeks before the start of hurricane season when the acting administrator was pushed out and replaced by another official from the Department of Homeland Security.The abrupt change came the day after Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL who held the job for the last few months, testified on Capitol Hill that he did not agree with proposals to dismantle an organization that helps plan for natural disasters and distributes financial assistance.“I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” he said Wednesday.President Donald Trump has suggested that individual states, not the federal government, should take the lead on hurricanes, tornadoes and other crises. He has been sharply critical of FEMA’s performance, particularly in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa, will run FEMA for the time being. He does not appear to have any experience in managing natural disasters. He currently serves as the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction.The administration made no statement about any potential permanent nominee. Nor did the White House answer questions about Richardson’s background, the impact of Hamilton’s testimony or whether the president personally ordered his dismissal.An administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss a personnel matter, said Hamilton was offered another government job that would be a better fit for him, but did not say what that job would be.FEMA staff were notified of the change in leadership through a brief email.Through a January executive order, Trump established a review council tasked with “reforming and streamlining the nation’s emergency management and disaster response system,” according to Homeland Security. The 13-member council is chaired by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.During Hamilton’s appearance before a House Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday, he shared concerns about how FEMA assistance is administered. He also said the agency had “evolved into an overextended federal bureaucracy, attempting to manage every type of emergency no matter how minor.”But when Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, asked Hamilton how he felt about plans to eliminate FEMA, Hamilton said he did not believe the agency should be eliminated.“Having said that,” Hamilton continued, “I’m not in a position to make decisions and impact outcomes on whether or not a determination such as consequential as that should be made. That is a conversation that should be had between the president of the United States and this governing body.”In a statement Thursday afternoon, DeLauro expressed support for Hamilton and accused the Republican president of firing “anyone who is not blindly loyal to him.”“The Trump administration must explain why he has been removed from this position,” said DeLauro. “Integrity and morality should not cost you your job.”
Chris Megerian and Gabriela Aoun Angueira, Associated Press
Since 1974, William Stout Architectural Books in San Franciscos Jackson Square has been one of the citys most iconic destinations for its seemingly endless stock of art, design, and architecture books. As the store was approaching its 50th year in business with a fresh owner, the Eames Institute for Infinite Curiosity, it discovered a problem: It had run out of stickers to label its books. Then it discovered another problemit didnt have a formalized logo to print more.But as luck would have it, a fairly competent design firm resided just across the street that offered to help: LoveFrom.Its a store we loved. And if we didnt get to design [their brand], it would have been like, we wish we could have done that! says Chris Wilson, designer at LoveFrom. Its something that falls into that category of projects we do for the love of doing themquite organic by just being in the neighborhood and going in the store.[Image: LoveFrom]The ongoing health and legacy of San Francisco is a core reason that Jony Ive founded his studio in his favorite neighborhood, Jackson Square, which sits in the shadow of the Transamerica Pyramid. Ive first visited the neighborhood in 1989, and fell in love with William Stout, along with other local gems. When he left Apple to build LoveFrom, he did so here, right next door to Laurene Powell Jobss Emerson Collective, around the corner from his hardware startup with Sam Altman called io Products. After acquiring nearly $90 million in real estate, Ive is a landlord to several businesses in the neighborhood where hes offered to lower rents, and LoveFrom has offered pro bono design services to many of its neighbors, like the local three Michelin star restaurant Quince, hoping that rising tides raise all boats. It all makes for a nice story. But the effect of this financial and creative investment on the ground level really has been something to watch. Ive visited the neighborhood several times over the past few years, and have witnessed firsthand how the once sleepy blocks are now bustling with activitylike a successful game of SimCity playing out IRL.The William Stout bookstore is a preservation project unto itself, acquired by the Eames Institute in 2022, ensuring that the beloved destination will stick around into the foreseeable future. We dont want it to disappear, says Lauren Smith, chief experience officer at the Eames Institute, who takes our call from deep in the William Stout stacks. Its important to the San Francisco design community and the neighborhood. There arent many architecture book stores left in the world.[Image: LoveFrom]Rebuilding a brandWhen Wilson and fellow LoveFrom designer Antonio Cavedoni (who in a past life developed Apples San Francisco typeface) began searching for the stores original logo, they learned William Stout never really had one; instead, the companys small sign wrote out the stores name in the typeface Washington upon a square placard, and that seemed to inform letterheads and other brand assets. It was a bit quirky and a bit architectural, but it didnt feel codified into a larger, scalable brand system. We kind of thought there was something to hold onto there, says Wilson. Theres a lot of stuff that was a bit odd and a bit weird. We loved some of that, but we just wanted to rationalize these things.The team started by breaking down the core square into five equal quadrants. Then, they looked more closely at the typeface to fill them. Washington was a contemporary (albeit retro) typeface when the store opened. A mix of serif and sans serifs, some of its cleaner geometries (like a perfect circle O) made it appealing for a design store, but the Art Deco stylewhile spiritedfelt too prescriptive of one particular era to represent the entirety of William Stouts purview.[Image: LoveFrom]The obvious choice would have been to do what many do in this situation (and indeed, what William Stout had to do fill some of its brand needs throughout the years): opt for Futura, a now ubiquitous geometric typeface that has similar qualities to Washington. But instead, LoveFrom modified Washington into a new typeface it calls LF Washington with permission from Russell Bean, the creator of the typeface. Designers evened out the cap heights of Washington, while lowering the midlines that made for the high waisted Art Deco look. Meanwhile, LoveFrom drew new numbers that moreclosely align with the new letterforms.LF Washington sings on William Stouts new sign. (The LoveFrom industrial design team created it custom out of enameled steel.) But it also looks straightforward as it balances atop photos to promote William Stout events. For times that the typeface needs to be more expressive, or playful, Cavedoni was inspired by another 1970s typefacesAvant Gardeapproach to ligatures with its overlapping Os and letters nested inside other letters. Later, Cavedoni was joyed to discover that Frank Lloyd Wright took an all-around similar approach in his own branding, making all these decisions feel pretty appropriate for an architectural bookstore.[Image: LoveFrom]The brand beyond the typeAs the team considered the brand colors, it started with those on the original sign: black, white, and red. LoveFrom mostly stuck with this color system, but it expanded a palette of synergistic hues inspired by two of Le Corbusiers famed color studies. LoveFrom contracted illustrator Satoshi Hashimoto to create a series of illustrations. His vaguely mid-century cartoon style captures a kinetic energy that, as Wilson explains, juxtaposes the more formal architectural typography. We wanted to soften [the type] with the warmth of what it feels like to walk in the store, says Wilson. Theres some jazz playing, the doors open, and you see the light inside the store.Its yet another illustration of LoveFroms sense of whimsy offsetting its stricter approaches to geometry. These illustrations are perfect tote bag or T-shirt fodder, but they also introduce a subtle and sweet part of William Stouts e-commerce UX.Anyone visiting the newly launched William Stout website will be welcomed by an illustration of the shops storefront, drawn by Hashimoto. But what they might not realize until visiting again is that this storefront (and its solitary tree) changes with the seasonsyellow in the fall and adorned with multicolor lights in the winter. The front door is sometimes open and sometimes closed (matching the open/closed hours of the building). And if you look really closely, you will spot a bird somewhere in the scenewhich was something of a mascot for Ray and Charles Eames. Click on it, and youll be ushered to the Eames Institute. While not technologically complex, the evolving illustration a clever way to bridge a physical store with a digital shop that Im a bit surprised I havent seen before.The website is definitely a way for us to get a bigger reach; were a very small square foot storefront in San Francisco, says Smith. But we want that shopping experience to feel like coming into the store.The new William Stout brand and website is live today.
