Texas measles cases rise to 146 in an outbreak that led to a child’s death

• February 28, 2025

By JAMIE STENGLE

DALLAS (AP) — The number of people with measles in Texas increased to 146 in an outbreak that led this week to the death of an unvaccinated school-aged child, health officials said Friday.

The number of cases — Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years — increased by 22 since Tuesday. The Texas Department of State Health Services said cases span over nine counties in Texas, including almost 100 in Gaines County, and 20 patients have been hospitalized.

The child who died Tuesday night in the outbreak is the first U.S. death from the highly contagious but preventable respiratory disease since 2015, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The child was treated at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, though the facility said the patient didn’t live in Lubbock County.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official and a vaccine critic, said this week that the U.S. Department of the Health and Human Services was watching cases but dismissed the outbreak as “not unusual.”

The virus has largely spread through rural, oil rig-dotted West Texas, with cases concentrated in a “close-knit, undervaccinated” Mennonite community, state health department spokesperson Lara Anton has said.

Gaines County has a strong homeschooling and private school community. It is also home to one of the highest rates of school-aged children in Texas who have opted out of at least one required vaccine, with nearly 14% skipping a required dose last school year.

Texas law allows children to get an exemption from school vaccines for reasons of conscience, including religious beliefs. Anton has said the number of unvaccinated kids in Gaines County is likely significantly higher because homeschooled children’s data would not be reported.

The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is safe and highly effective at preventing infection and severe cases. The first shot is recommended for children ages 12 to 15 months, and the second for ages 4 to 6 years. Most kids will recover from measles, but infection can lead to dangerous complications such as pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death.

Vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, and most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.

The U.S. had considered measles, a respiratory virus that can survive in the air for up to two hours, eliminated in 2000, which meant there had been a halt in continuous spread of the disease for at least a year. Measles cases rose in 2024, including a Chicago outbreak that sickened more than 60.

Eastern New Mexico has nine cases of measles currently, but the state health department said there is no connection to the outbreak in West Texas.

​ Orange County Register 

Where do local booksellers get help when things get tough? Here.

• February 28, 2025

If the last few months have taught us anything, it’s that bookstores and booksellers can be counted on to step up and support their communities.

But who steps up to support the booksellers and bookstores – who operate on the slimmest of financial margins during even the best of times – when disasters like the Eaton and Palisades wildfires hit?

Turns out, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation does. The nonprofit, which got its start as an organization connected to Borders bookstores nearly 30 years ago, went national in 2012 with a mission to help book and comic book sellers across the country when times get tough.

“We are the only national nonprofit dedicated to assisting book and comic people,” says BINC communication coordinator Erika Mantz. “Our core program is we help the actual book people – booksellers, comic retailers and owners of stores and comic shops – with their personal financial crisis needs.”

“We provide an emergency financial grant – grant, not a loan,” says Mantz. “There’s no repayment.”

“We don’t write a check to somebody,” she says. “We pay the bills.”

While BINC’s support is confidential, Fables & Fancies bookseller Ana Buckley volunteered during an interview that she’d gotten help from the nonprofit – and wanted others to know how good the experience with her program manager had been.

“She called me back the same day,” says Buckley. “They really are what they say they are.”

BINC focuses on helping individuals with housing, healthcare or other issues, such as a death in the family.

“It could be a housing stability issue: Your landlord says, ‘Sorry, you have to leave; you need to find a new apartment,’” says Mantz. “We can help with the first month’s deposit, the starting out, getting you there.”

Or as some booksellers across Southern California have learned, BINC could help those impacted by the Eaton and Palisades wildfires.

“We can help in times of natural and manmade disasters – and obviously the wildfires,” says Mantz. “Before that was the southeast region of the country with the terrible flooding. … In other states, hurricanes Milton, Helene, Ian.

“Natural disasters are certainly the ones in the news cycle,” she says. “But you know, every day, even during the wildfires, we’re having just as many related to, you know, dental bills.”

But sweeping away these seemingly small obstacles can create profound improvements in a person’s life.

“If you can just get that paid and get ahead, you can take off from there and soar,” says Mantz.

The help, which Mantz says on average is about $2300 or so, doesn’t have to be large to be effective.

“A household can quickly become vulnerable. You know, we’re not talking about grants of tens of thousands of dollars. We’re not talking about massive amounts of money.

“You have a family member who passes away, you’ve got funeral expenses, you need to travel. You don’t have the extra money for that. This is where book and comic people can come in and help. We’ve distributed over $11 million to more than 10,000 individuals and stores in our history – and those numbers probably need a little updating.”

Mantz describes the process, which involves BINC program managers who take time to listen and determine the best way to help.

“We have program managers who talk one-on-one with anyone who comes seeking help or is referred to us for help. It’s completely confidential,” she says. “Your store owner doesn’t have to know. Your coworkers don’t know, and we work with you.”

“We offer resources. It might be financial – working on your finances, your taxes, free resources. We offer access to free mental health and wellness,” she says. “They’ll give resources for how to negotiate your medical bills, to get the cost down.

Mantz praises the nonprofit’s partners for their support and fundraising, which allow them to do this work.

“We really rely on our amazing partners –  the big publishers, the small publishers, Libro.fm, Bookshop.org. These organizations share the same values and see the value in what we do,” says Mantz. “We really could not do it without them.”

The admiration goes both ways, says Mark Pearson, CEO and co-founder of Libro.fm.

“Libro.fm is immensely grateful for BINC’s vital role in supporting booksellers and comic retailers in need. The needs are so great across thousands of bookstores that without BINC, no other organization could handle the needs at this scale,” says Pearson via email.

“BINC is uniquely positioned to redirect contributions from book lovers to booksellers who need it most during an emergency.”

Mantz says the goal is to keep our bookstores and comic book shops open and serving the community. Because that’s good for everyone.

“These stores are a safe harbor for ideas and equity and access, but without that help a lot of book and comic people would have to leave their profession and their communities,” she says. “We feel passionately … that the safe space they provide is so vital.

“I think most anyone I talk to has their store – they love their bookstore, and they wouldn’t want to see it be gone,” she says. “We provide this safety net for the people who work there, the employees who give them great hand-selling recommendations, and the stores who stay open and get in the materials that they’re looking for.

“If you want to keep your store in your community, this is one way you can help.”

For more about the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, check out its website. 

Corinna Vallianatos shares a secret link between her stories

Corinna Vallianatos is the author of “Origin Stories,” which arrived 13 years after her Grace Paley Prize-winning debut collection, “My Escapee,” came out to raves. She’s also the author of the 2020 novel, “The Beforeland.” She spoke with correspondent Michael Schaub and took the Q&A.

Q: Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?

I’ve been recommending Joy Williams’ collected stories, “The Visiting Privilege,” to students and friends for years. If I sense they have a slight inner appetite for chaos, I’ll recommend “The Quick & the Dead” too.

Q: How do you decide what to read next?

I keep a stack of books on my bedside table. It’s often a matter of what kind of mind, what sort of logic and language, I want to be privy to.

Q: Can you recall a book that felt like it was written just for you (or conversely, one that most definitely wasn’t)?

Since I love being surprised by the strange workings of someone else’s mind, I prefer reading books that don’t feel as if they were written just for me. But I am grateful for the thuds of recognition that come over me when I read something that strikes me as particularly true, darkly true or courageously true or strangely true or hilariously true. That last is the best.

Q: Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?

I mostly read fiction — short stories and novels — but I find I’m reading more nonfiction lately, especially books by Janet Malcolm and Emmanuel Carrère.

Q: Do you have a favorite book or books?

“The Great Fires,” a collection of poetry by Jack Gilbert, is a book I return to again and again. And I read “The White Book” by Han Kang at least once a year.

Q: Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?

The children’s librarian at the Burke Branch library in Alexandria, Virginia. Mrs. Reinhart, possibly? She dressed up like a lion for story hour and showed Charlie Chaplin movies on a projector and pull-down screen and was tall and dashing and in possession of excitement and gravitas. My brother and I used to check out towers of books from the library each week.

Q: What’s something about your book that no one knows?

Two stories — “New Girls” and “Blades in Silver Water” — feature a common character named Emily. She’s a secondary character in “New Girls,” and the protagonist in “Blades in Silver Water.” “Blades” goes back in time — she’s younger there by several years. The story’s interested in understanding how she came to be. It’s not important that readers make this connection, but it’s there nonetheless.

Teen legal challenge

Huntington Beach teenagers sue over book review board, restricted access to books. READ MORE

• • •

The week’s bestsellers

The top-selling books at your local independent bookstores. READ MORE

• • •

Bookstores to the rescue

How bookstores in Pasadena and Monrovia became local aid resources after wildfires. READ MORE

• • •

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• Dive into all of our books coverage

New time for ‘Bookish’

The next event, which is Fri. March 21, at 4 p.m., will salute SCNG’s Notable list of California authors and feature novelist and writer Lidia Yuknavitch.

Sign up for free now.

Want to watch previous Bookish shows? Catch up on virtual events and more! 

​ Orange County Register 

Already-lagging broadband program faces more uncertainty under Trump

• February 28, 2025

By Madyson Fitzgerald, Stateline.org

A massive federal program meant to expand broadband access to underserved areas across the country is falling behind schedule, state broadband officials and experts say, even as Trump administration actions create further uncertainty about its funding and rules.

Now in its third year, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, known as BEAD, is largely still in the planning phase.

In Alpine County, California, the vice chair of the county Board of Supervisors, David Griffith, said he is still waiting to see how BEAD funds will help his area. Out of the county’s roughly 1,100 residents, most rely on phone lines to connect to the internet and can’t afford high-speed connections.

That means instead of renewing their driver’s licenses online, for example, many of the county’s residents drive 30 miles to the closest department of motor vehicles location, he said. They lack internet speed for telemedicine, banking and tax filing.

“We all want government to work,” Griffith said, “and unfortunately, the BEAD program is an example where the need is there and the funding is there, but it’s just a very inefficient process.”

Congress awarded California $1.8 billion to ensure households get access to high-speed internet as part of the $42.45 billion BEAD program, created under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.

All 50 states have had their initial proposals approved, unlocking a portion — often 20% — of the money the feds will provide. Delaware, Louisiana and Nevada are the only states to have submitted their final proposals.

Some local officials and experts are questioning the efficiency of the program. Progress is slow in part, they say, because of inadequate federal mapping of where broadband is most needed and a lengthy challenge process to the maps. And some experts worry that states are favoring overly expensive infrastructure.

Federal and state broadband officials are also waiting to see how President Donald Trump’s funding freeze may affect the BEAD program, as well as how federal officials might change an affordability requirement or the type of technologies given preference under the program.

At his confirmation hearing, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who took office Feb. 19, said he supported the goals of BEAD but wanted to make sure it was done “efficiently and effectively” and sidestepped questions asking him to commit to sending money out to states.

Griffith said he’s hopeful the money will still flow, noting that most of BEAD’s funds will go to rural areas, many of which tend to elect and support Republicans.

State snags

Louisiana was the first state to have both its initial and final BEAD proposals approved by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

The state plans to deploy more than $1.35 billion in funding through its GUMBO 2.0 program. States grant the federal money to internet service providers, local governments, nonprofits and other groups to build out the infrastructure.

Shortly after the state’s plans were approved in January, Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry sent a letter to the Commerce Department asking for changes within NTIA and the BEAD program, including a request to streamline the agency’s requirements and a commitment to more timely and transparent funding reviews.

NTIA declined to answer Stateline’s questions about the BEAD program.

Officials in some states have run into snags with challenges to the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Map.

Through the map challenge process, local governments, internet service providers, nonprofits and other groups can help determine whether a particular location actually has internet service.

Griffith, the California county supervisor, said the map was originally “full of errors” in his area.

“We went through it in Alpine County, and about 7-8% of residences and businesses were left off of the National Broadband Map,” he said. “Unless you’re on the National Broadband Map, that money cannot be used to connect your home or business.”

The BEAD program also has an affordability requirement that mandates state broadband officials include a low-cost service option for low-income households. But industry groups have pushed back, calling the rule “completely unmoored from the economic realities of deploying and operating networks in the highest cost, hardest-to-reach areas.”

The BEAD program has “moved a little slower than it should have,” said Sachin Gupta, the vice president of business and technologies strategies at Centranet, part of the Central Rural Electric Cooperative in Oklahoma. The group serves households living just outside of Oklahoma City.

“There are people who cannot do remote work, or distance learning, or be part of the digital economy or do telehealth and telemedicine,” he said. “So, there’s real-world consequences.”

In August, the feds approved Oklahoma’s initial BEAD proposal, allowing the state to request access to over $797 million.

The goal is to get households connected to the internet as quickly as possible, but there are going to be some challenges, such as mapping, Gupta said.

“This work has gone on for some time,” Gupta said, “but if you pull this money back, people are just going to be even more distressed than they were before.”

Technology choices

Experts at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a science and technology policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., have argued that the BEAD program favors overly expensive broadband infrastructure.

Fiber-optic internet, which BEAD gives preference to, is considered faster and more reliable than other methods of connection, but other technologies, such as satellites, could be more cost-effective, according to the group. The money saved from using less costly infrastructure could be put toward affordability efforts instead.

“That may be the best kept secret: The reason people aren’t online anymore is not about broadband being unavailable,” said Joe Kane, the director of broadband and spectrum policy at the foundation. “It’s that they can’t afford it.”

In states like Nevada, where officials are planning to spend about $77,000 per business or residential location to deploy fiber, there’s not going to be much money left over for affordability efforts, Kane said. It’s even more crucial now that the Affordable Connectivity Program, a pandemic-era discount program for low-income households, has dissolved.

“I think the most important thing for broadband overall is that we should be trying to take a data-focused approach to what are the real causes of the digital divide, and how is our broadband policy meeting that,” Kane said. “Because right now, we have a complete mismatch.”

But Gupta, who has been involved with Oklahoma’s broadband expansion for years, said other types of broadband internet cannot provide the same internet speed as fiber.

“If we deploy technologies that are not scalable, then all we’re doing is kicking that can down the road another five years.”

Affordability concerns

As consumer prices rise, internet affordability is a significant concern, said Derrick Owens, the senior vice president of government and industry affairs at WTA — Advocates for Rural Broadband. The group represents small, rural telecommunications providers across the country.

Alongside federal broadband programs, some states have worked to expand broadband access by passing new laws. As of Feb. 24, lawmakers in 43 states had filed a total of 300 bills regarding broadband access, infrastructure, affordability and more, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures broadband legislation database.

Three of those states — Connecticut, Minnesota and New York— are hoping to improve the process of mapping which areas need better internet service.

This year, lawmakers in 10 states — Connecticut, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Virginia — have filed legislation to expand broadband access to rural areas.

“If you don’t have access to broadband today on a permanent, full-time basis, then you’re not able to participate fully in today’s economy,” Owens said. “And it’s not just the local economy, it’s the global economy. And so, the efforts are being made to make sure people have high-speed, quality, reliable broadband, and hopefully that’s what BEAD brings.”

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Where things stand as Congress tries to avoid a partial government shutdown in two weeks

• February 28, 2025

By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — As House members finished voting for the week and left Washington, the lead Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, voiced frustration that Republicans had yet to respond to her latest offer on a full-year spending bill, even though it had been made five days earlier.

Meanwhile, her Republican counterpart outright dismissed Democratic efforts to include assurances in the legislation that funding approved by Congress would be spent by President Donald Trump’s administration as lawmakers intended.

“A Republican Senate and a Republican House are not going to limit what a president can do, particularly when he has to sign the bill,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.

The exchanges demonstrate the divides that remain as the nation approaches a March 14 deadline to avoid a partial federal government shutdown.

Such deadlines have become commonplace in recent years with lawmakers almost always working out their differences in the end, or at least agreeing to a short-term funding extension.

But with Republicans now in charge of the White House and Trump sidestepping Congress on previous funding decisions, a more contentious dynamic has emerged during negotiations, raising questions about whether lawmakers will avoid a shutdown this time.

Here’s a look at where things stand.

First things first: How much to spend?

The stage for the current negotiations was set nearly two years ago when then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and then-President Joe Biden worked out a two-year budget deal that would essentially hold non-defense spending flat for 2024, while boosting it slightly for defense. The agreement provided for 1% increases for both in 2025.

Democrats want to adhere to that agreement, which would bring defense spending to about $895.2 billion and non-defense to about $780.4 billion. Republicans are looking to spend less on non-defense programs. Cole has argued Republicans are not bound to an agreement negotiated by two men no longer in office.

It’s unclear how much the two sides disagree on an overall spending amount. But Sen. Patty Murray, the lead Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said they weren’t far apart.

“We are close on topline spending, but we need to know Republicans are willing to work with us to protect Congress’ power of the purse — and I welcome any and all ideas they may have on how we can work together to do just that,” Murray said.

With Trump and Musk slashing government, Democrats want guarantees

Trump pushed early to pause grants and loans potentially totaling trillions of dollars while his administration conducted an across-the-board review of federal programs. A subsequent memorandum purported to rescind the pause.

Still, a federal judge issued an order earlier this week as a backstop. The preliminary injunction continued to block the pause. The judge said the freeze had “placed critical programs for children, the elderly, and everyone in between in serious jeopardy.”

Meanwhile, Trump has empowered Elon Musk to help engineer the firing of thousands of federal employees and potentially shutter entire agencies created by Congress.

The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to appropriate money and requires the executive to pay it out. A 50-year-old law known as the Impoundment Control Act makes that explicit by prohibiting the president from halting payments on grants or other programs approved by Congress.

Democrats have sought to place in the spending bill some guarantees the administration would follow what Congress intended.

“What we’ve been talking about is the numbers, and we’re talking about the issue of assurances,” DeLauro said. “It’s trying to make it possible to have the money go as intended.”

But Republicans are making clear that’s a non-starter.

“Democrats are placing completely unreasonable conditions on the negotiations. They want us to limit the scope of executive authority. They want us to tie the hands of the president,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said.

Why is Congress so late?

The current fiscal year began in October, so lawmakers are already five month late.

Trump complained Thursday on Truth Social, blaming Biden, saying he “left us a total MESS.”

“The Budget from last YEAR is still not done. We are working very hard with the House and Senate to pass a clean, temporary government funding Bill (“CR”) to the end of September. Let’s get it done!”

But it was congressional Republicans who opted in December to hold over budget negotiations for a few months, largely because Trump would be in the White House. Johnson on Fox News in December urged a short-term extension so “we get to March where we can put our fingerprints on the spending. That’s when the big changes start.”

What happens if they can’t reach an agreement?

The first fallback option is the continuing resolution Trump endorsed, a stopgap measure that would generally fund federal agencies at current levels.

“It looks as though it is becoming inevitable at this point,” Johnson said, blaming Democrats.

That will be tough for defense hawks to accept, as many Republicans already consider the Pentagon to be underfunded. But it will also be tough for Democrats who worry that funding for housing programs, child care, nutrition assistance and other services is failing to keep pace with inflation, fraying the safety net for many Americans.

Murray and DeLauro issued a joint statement Friday morning, saying they hoped Republicans would return to the negotiating table and that “walking away” from bipartisan talks “raised the risk of a shutdown.”

They also said the continuing resolution being pursued by Republicans would “give Trump new flexibility to spend funding as he sees fit.”

“While Elon Musk has been calling for a shutdown, Democrats have been working to pass bills that make sure Congress decides whether our schools or hospitals get funding — not Trump or Musk,” the two Democratic lawmakers said.

The White House has submitted to lawmakers a list of what are referred to as “anomalies” that it wants to see added to a continuing resolution. For example, it wants an additional $1.6 billion to increase pay for junior enlisted service members by an average of 10% effective April 1. Congress has also supported a pay increase in previous legislation.

The White House is also seeking $485 million for more immigrant detention beds and for removal operations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The request also seeks to give Trump more flexibility on how money within certain departments is spent. For example, the White House wants language allowing $30 billion in Department of Defense transfers.

Democrats will want to negotiate some of the changes the White House is seeking, adding to the uncertainty of reaching a final agreement.

Republicans likely need votes from the other side

Getting spending bills over the finish line has required support from both parties. Some Republicans never vote for continuing resolutions. Nearly three dozen House Republicans voted against the last one in December, and they now only have a one-vote cushion to work with in the House if Democrats withhold their support.

If talks break down completely, funding for agencies will end at midnight March 14. Both parties will pin the blame on the other — and some of that is already happening.

Trump is no stranger to shutdowns. He presided over the longest one in the nation’s history, one that lasted 35 days, with Trump relenting only after intensifying delays at the nation’s airports and another missed payday for hundreds of thousands of federal workers brought new urgency to resolving the standoff.

Associated Press writer Leah Askarinam contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Watch: Trump and Vance call Zelenskyy ‘disrespectful’ in Oval Office meeting

• February 28, 2025

President Donald Trump shouted at Ukraine’s leader on Friday during an extraordinary meeting in the Oval Office, berating President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for “gambling with millions of lives” and suggesting his actions could trigger World War III.

The last 10 minutes of the nearly 45-minute engagement devolved into a tense back and forth between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Zelenskyy — who had urged skepticism about Russia’s commitment to diplomacy, citing Moscow’s years of broken commitments on the global stage.

It began with Vance telling Zelenskyy, “Mr. President, with respect. I think it’s disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media.”

Zelensky tried to object, prompting Trump to raise his voice and say, “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people.”

“You’re gambling with World War III, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have,” Trump said.

It was an astonishing display of open antagonism in the Oval Office, a setting better known for somber diplomacy. Trump laid bare his efforts to coerce Zelenskyy to agree to giving the U.S. an interest in his country’s valuable minerals and to push him toward a diplomatic resolution to the war on the American leader’s terms.

​ Orange County Register 

Skype to shut down 14 years after Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase

• February 28, 2025

By Matt Day | Bloomberg

Microsoft Corp. is signaling the end of the line for Skype, the iconic internet calling and chat service it bought almost 14 years ago.

Once a byword for digital calls that bypassed long-distance charges, Skype was surpassed in recent years by smartphone-native communication apps and Zoom video calls. When Microsoft tried to stretch the Skype brand into the workplace, it lost out to Slack Technologies Inc.

Microsoft’s response was to start from scratch and build Teams, a chat, voice and video communication service for the workplace, which gained ground as part of its software bundle. The Redmond, Washington-based company will offer Skype users the option of migrating to Teams, which is now its strongest rival to Salesforce Inc.-owned Slack, before it shuts down in May.

“I’ve been at Microsoft for over 30 years, and there’s a lot of software that we’ve done that was incredibly valuable in its era, and then the next era came and it was the foundation,” said Jeff Teper, a Microsoft president who oversees communications and collaboration tools.

Microsoft said there were more than 300 million monthly Skype users in 2016, but its daily user count had dwindled to 36 million in 2023. Teams, by comparison, has risen to 320 million monthly users.

Founded in 2003 by Nordic entrepreneurs, Skype at one time was owned by eBay Inc. and was in the hands of a private equity-led consortium when Steve Ballmer came knocking. The then-Microsoft boss made an uncharacteristically splashy bet on the market leader in online calls, paying $8.5 billion, a 40% premium to Skype’s internal valuation. The May 2011 deal was the largest acquisition by Microsoft at the time, and Skype became a key piece of its strategy for the emerging mobile age.

It didn’t pan out as Ballmer would have hoped. Upstarts like Telegram, Snapchat, WeChat and WhatsApp solved problems that Skype didn’t. Microsoft’s center of gravity in corporate software ultimately ensnared Skype, which found itself in the Office division and under orders to build tools geared toward a workplace audience as well as a consumer one.

By the time Slack arrived on the scene, Skype users were complaining that elements of the core experience had started to break down. They cited missed or phantom calls and failures to sync information on different devices. The company worked to improve the service’s reliability, but some loyal users were put off by frequent redesigns, including a short-lived effort to fashion Skype in the mold of Snapchat.

Microsoft, which also saw its acquisition of Nokia Oyj’s mobile phone business end in failure, is far from alone in encountering rejection by a fickle consumer market. Alphabet Inc.’s Google has cycled through several iterations and brands for its online communications tools, which are today known as Chat and Meet. And this month, Amazon.com Inc. said it would be winding down Chime, the video and voice calling service it tried with little success to sell to corporate clients.

The Windows maker is shuttering Skype to focus on developing new features for Teams, including artificial intelligence tools, Teper said. The company is working to infuse AI into its product suite, while keeping a lid on spending that isn’t part of that effort. It’s reassigning staff that had worked on Skype to other areas of the business and will not lay anyone off, Teper added.

At one point, Skype played host to one of Microsoft’s biggest AI demonstrations: a real-time translator. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella had nudged researchers to bring the product to market as quickly as possible and heralded it as “magical” in a 2014 demonstration early on in his tenure.

Teams is “going well and this is a step to double down on it,” Teper said, adding that Microsoft wanted to keep Skype running until it was confident that the Teams version for individual users was fully ready. “It’s the most successful product in its category by far,” he said.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

​ Orange County Register 

Most Americans who experienced severe winter weather see climate change at work, poll shows

• February 28, 2025

By TAMMY WEBBER and AMELIA THOMSON-DeVEAUX, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Matt Ries has lived in Florida only three years, but everyone told him last summer was unusually hot. That was followed by three hurricanes in close succession. Then temperatures dropped below freezing for days this winter, and snow blanketed part of the state.

To Ries, 29, an Ohio native now in Tampa, the extreme weather — including the bitter cold — bore all the hallmarks of climate change.

“To me it’s just kind of obvious,” said Ries, a project manager for an environmental company and self-described conservative-leaning independent. “Things are changing pretty drastically; just extreme weather all across the country and the world. … I do think humans are speeding up that process.”

About 8 in 10 U.S. adults say they have experienced some kind of extreme weather in recent years, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, with about half saying they’ve been personally affected by severe cold weather or severe winter storms.

Among those saying severe cold was among the types of extreme weather they experienced, about three-quarters say climate change is at least a partial cause of those events — suggesting that many understand global warming can create an unstable atmosphere that allows cold air from the Arctic to escape farther south more often.

Midwesterners are most likely to feel the brunt of the cold weather, with about 7 in 10 adults who live in the Midwest experiencing severe cold in the past five years, compared with about half of residents of the South and the Northeast and about one-third of those in the West, the survey found.

“It’s counterintuitive to think, ‘Oh, gee, it’s really cold. That probably has something to do with global warming,’” said Liane Golightly-Kissner, of Delaware, Ohio, north of Columbus, who believes climate change is influencing many weather extremes.

Golightly-Kissner, 38, said it was so cold this winter that schools were closed and her family let faucets drip to prevent burst pipes. She remembers one extremely cold day when she was a child in Michigan, but she says now it seems to happen more often and over multiple days.

The poll also found that, while only about one-quarter of U.S. adults feel climate change has had a major impact on their lives so far, about 4 in 10 think it will in their lifetimes — including on their health, local air quality and water availability. About half of adults under age 30 believe climate change will impact them personally.

About 7 in 10 U.S. adults believe climate change is occurring, and they are much more likely to think it has had or will have a major impact on them than those who say climate change isn’t happening.

Americans are catching on, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, who credits a combination of media coverage, political leaders speaking up and public concerns that creates a “symbiotic relationship.”

“We have seen growing awareness among the American people that climate change is affecting them here and now,” though many still see it as a distant problem that their grandchildren will have to worry about, he said.

Rosiland Lathan, 60, of Minden, Louisiana, said she’s a believer because it seems that summers are getting hotter and winters colder — including a couple years ago, when snow and ice kept her car stuck at work for several days.

This winter, she said, there was a stretch of temperatures in the teens and 20s, while a couple of summers ago, it got “real, real hot” with highs in the 100s.

“It’s normally hot in Louisiana, but not that hot,” Lathan said.

Hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters, like the devastating Southern California fires, also have many concerned that climate change could lead to higher property insurance premiums and household energy costs.

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about increasing property insurance premiums, and just over half are similarly concerned about climate change’s impact on energy costs, the AP-NORC survey found. About half are “extremely” or “very” concerned that climate change will increase costs for local emergency responders and infrastructure costs for government. Republicans are less worried than Democrats and independents.

The survey also found broad support for a range of measures to help people who live in areas becoming more susceptible to extreme weather and natural disasters, with the exception of restricting new construction in these communities.

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they “somewhat” or “strongly” favor providing money to local residents to help them rebuild in the same community after disasters strike, while similar shares support providing money to make residents’ property more resistant to natural disasters and providing homeowners’ insurance to people who cannot get private insurance. About one-quarter of Americans neither favor nor oppose each of these proposals, while around 1 in 10 are “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed.

When it comes to restricting new construction, opinion is more divided. About 4 in 10 “somewhat” or “strongly” favor restricting new construction in areas that are especially vulnerable to natural disasters, about 4 in 10 have a neutral view and about 2 in 10 are “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed.

Golightly-Kissner said she believes there should be rebuilding restrictions or tougher building standards in disaster-prone areas.

“These extreme weather conditions, they’re not going anywhere, and it would be hubris for us to continue in the same way,” she said. “I think we we have to change. We have to look toward the future and what’s the best way to keep our lives together when this happens again. Because it’s really not a question of if, it’s when.”

The AP-NORC poll of 1,112 adults was conducted Feb. 6-10, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

​ Orange County Register 

Israel’s army admits failures on Oct. 7. Its probe of the attack could put pressure on Netanyahu

• February 28, 2025

By TIA GOLDENBERG, Associated Press

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — An investigation by the Israeli military has determined that Hamas was able to carry out the deadliest attack in Israeli history on Oct. 7, 2023, because the much more powerful Israeli army misjudged the group’s intentions and underestimated its capabilities.

The findings, released Thursday, could pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch a widely demanded broader inquiry to examine the political decision-making that preceded the attack, which triggered the war in Gaza.

Many Israelis believe the mistakes of Oct. 7 extend beyond the military, and they blame Netanyahu for what they view as a failed strategy of deterrence and containment in the years leading up to the attack. That strategy included allowing Qatar to send suitcases of cash into Gaza and sidelining Hamas’ rival, the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

The prime minister has not taken responsibility, saying he will answer tough questions only after the war, which has been paused for nearly six weeks by a tenuous ceasefire. Despite public pressure, including from the families of the roughly 1,200 people killed in the Oct. 7 attack and the 251 taken as hostages into Gaza, Netanyahu has resisted calls for a commission of inquiry.

The military’s main findings were that the region’s most powerful and sophisticated military misread Hamas’ intentions, underestimated its capabilities and was wholly unprepared for the surprise attack by thousands of heavily armed terrorists in the early morning hours of a major Jewish holiday.

In comments made to military commanders Monday, and shared with the media on Thursday, the army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said he took responsibility for the army’s failures.

“I was the commander of the military on October 7th, and I have my own responsibility. I also carry the weight of all your responsibility — that, too, I see as mine,” said Halevi, who announced his resignation in January and is set to step down next week.

The military’s findings are in line with past conclusions reached by officials and analysts. The military released only a summary of the report and military officials outlined its findings.

“Oct. 7 was a complete failure,” said one military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

A central misconception was that Hamas, which seized control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in 2007, was more interested in governing the territory than fighting Israel, the inquiry found.

The military also misjudged the group’s capabilities. Military planners had envisioned that, at worst, Hamas could stage a ground invasion from up to eight border points, the official said. In fact, Hamas had more than 60 attack routes.

Intelligence assessed in the aftermath of the attack has shown Hamas came close to staging the offensive on three earlier occasions but delayed it for unknown reasons, the official said.

The official said that in the hours before the attack, there were signs that something was amiss, including when Hamas fighters switched their phones over to the Israeli network.

The perception that Hamas did not want war guided decision makers away from taking action that night that might have thwarted the attack. The Israeli military official said intelligence shows that Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack who was killed last October, had begun planning it as early as 2017.

With the military off guard on a holiday weekend, Hamas launched a heavy wave of rockets that allowed thousands of fighters to burst through the security fence or fly over it on hang gliders. They knocked out surveillance cameras and quickly overwhelmed hundreds of soldiers stationed along the border.

From there they advanced to key highway intersections and attacked troops dispatched to the area, including some senior officers, disrupting the military’s command and control, according to a second military official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

For the first three hours after the attack, Hamas fighters marauded through border communities and a music festival with little resistance. That was when most of the 251 hostages were taken and most people were killed, the official said. The official said the chaos led to friendly fire incidents, although he said there were not many, without disclosing a figure.

It took hours for the military to regain control and days until the area was fully cleared of fighters.

According to the first official, the report blamed the military for being overconfident in its knowledge and not showing enough doubt in its core concepts and beliefs. The summary said a key lesson was that Israel could not let a threat develop on its border.

It spelled out several recommendations, including creating special units meant to prepare for such surprise and large-scale events, as well as reform in the military intelligence department that would foster “openness, skepticism, listening, learning.”

It did not place blame on any individual soldiers or officers, but is likely to pave the way for a reckoning in the military and eventual dismissals.

Some high-ranking officers other than Halevi have also resigned, including the former head of military intelligence.

​ Orange County Register