The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Thursday a preliminary review found that contract personnel unintentionally deleted files prompting a nationwide groundstop on Jan. 11 that disrupted more than 11,000 flights.

The FAA said the issue occurred while personnel were working “to correct synchronization between the live primary database and a backup database” and the FAA added that it “has so far found no evidence of a cyber-attack or malicious intent.”

The FAA said it has made necessary repairs to the system “and has taken steps to make the pilot message system “more resilient.”

U.S. President Joe Biden emphasized the role of global warming in natural disasters on Thursday as he toured areas of California hard hit by three weeks of deadly “atmospheric river” storms that inflicted widespread flooding, felled trees and mudslides in a state long plagued by drought and wildfires.

“If anybody doubts that the climate is changing, then they must have been asleep during the last couple of years,” Biden said at Seacliff State Beach along the Santa Cruz coastline, where a crumpled pier stood as testament to the destructive force of the recent storms.

The president, traveling with the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Deanne Criswell, landed at Moffett Federal Airfield in Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco, and was greeted by Governor Gavin Newsom and other officials.

Biden then flew by helicopter over other storm-stricken locations in Santa Cruz County, where flash floods, pounding surf and runoff from local mountains had forced thousands of residents to evacuate from low-lying communities.

He also paid a personal visit with residents and business owners along the waterfront in Capitola, where the picturesque coastal enclave’s wharf lay in ruins, then stopped in nearby Seacliff for brief remarks promising that FEMA teams would stay “until it’s all fixed and done.”

Earlier this week Biden signed a major disaster declaration authorizing federal recovery aid for several northern and central California counties. He said nearly 150,000 people were under evacuation orders at the peak of the winter storm crisis, and that some 1,400 remained displaced as of Thursday.

Criswell told reporters aboard Air Force One to California that early estimates put property damage at several hundred million dollars statewide, a figure that was expected to rise as further assessments are made.

“California has really experienced some unprecedented storms,” she said.

At least 20 deaths have been attributed to a three-week barrage of nine storms classified as atmospheric rivers – massive airborne currents of dense moisture funneled in from the Pacific and powered by sprawling low-pressure systems churning offshore.

Experts say the growing frequency and intensity of such storms, punctuating extreme drought, are symptoms of climate change and make it more difficult to manage California’s precious water supplies while minimizing heightened risks of floods and wildfires.

Torrential downpours triggered widespread flooding as well as hundreds of mudslides, rockfalls and sinkholes across the state, swallowing cars, forcing road closures and even disrupting rail travel. Several people died in flooding caused by breached levees along the Cosumnes River south of the state capital, Sacramento, during the first wave of the storms.

Landslide hazards mounted by the week from repeated saturation, with much of the damage greatest in areas below hillsides and canyon slopes that past wildfires had stripped of vegetation and left unstable.

The onslaught of showers, and heavy snow in the mountains, was accompanied by gale-force winds that drove pounding surf into coastal areas, washing out seaside roads and docks and uprooting thousands of drought-weakened trees in rain-soaked soil.

The high winds wreaked havoc on the state’s power grid, knocking out electricity to as many as 200,000 Californians at some point during the storms.

Although highly damaging, the storms eased a historic four-year dry spell in California, replenishing some badly depleted reservoirs and the Sierra Nevada snowpack, a critical source of fresh water for the state.

But experts have warned that most of California remains under moderate or severe drought conditions with no assurance that there will be enough precipitation over the remainder of the winter to sustain drought relief.

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Eli Lilly and Co on Thursday said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has rejected accelerated approval of its experimental Alzheimer’s drug because it did not submit enough trial data from patients who were treated for at least 12 months.

Lilly said the FDA sent it a complete response letter for donanemab, an antibody designed to remove amyloid protein plaques from the brains of people with early Alzheimer’s. Such letters typically outline concerns and conditions that must be addressed to gain U.S. approval.

Lilly said the FDA issued the letter “due to the limited number of patients with at least 12 months of drug exposure data provided in the submission.”

The company said it remained on track to report in the second quarter of this year results from a confirmatory Phase 3 trial of donanemab. That study, Lilly said, will form the basis of donanemab’s application for traditional FDA approval shortly thereafter.

The FDA action “doesn’t change the fact that true opportunity for donanemab rests entirely on the upcoming Phase 3 readout … along with a traditional approval,” Evercore ISI analyst Umer Raffat said in a research note.

The FDA can grant “accelerated” approval to drugs based on their impact on a measurement, in this case amyloid brain plaques, likely to correlate with patient responses. Full approval requires clinical evidence a drug will help patient outcomes.

Shares of Lilly were down 2% in after hours trading at $343.99.

Donanemab is in the same class as lecanemab, a treatment for early Alzheimer’s which was given accelerated approval by the FDA earlier this month. It is being marketed under the brand name Leqembi by partners Eisai Co Ltd (4523.T) and Biogen Inc (BIIB.O), which have said they are in the process of seeking full FDA approval.

Shares of Biogen were up 3% after hours at $289.

Sales of amyloid-lowering Alzheimer’s drugs, which need to be given by infusion, are expected to be minimal until they receive standard FDA approval. That is because the U.S. government’s Medicare health plan for people over age 65 currently reimburses amyloid-targeting drugs with accelerated approval only if patients are enrolled in a validated clinical study.

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The chances of a “soft landing” for the U.S. economy, where inflation declines without major job losses, appear to be growing, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Lael Brainard said on Thursday, and the central bank is now “probing” for the right level of rates to control inflation without tanking employment.

“Inflation has been declining over the past several months against a backdrop of moderate growth,” Brainard said at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, noting a “significant weakening in the manufacturing sector,” a moderation in consumer spending, and other data pointing to now “subdued growth” in 2023.

The slowdown is, for the most part, welcome. The Fed raised its benchmark overnight interest rate rapidly last year, from near-zero in March to the current 4.25%-4.50% range, to restrain inflation that climbed to 40-year highs.

That aggressive policy tightening is beginning to slow demand as intended, Brainard said, but the full impact is yet to come.

“We’re now in restrictive territory, and we are probing for the sufficiently restrictive level” to be confident that inflation is headed back down to the Fed’s 2% target, Brainard said.

Brainard’s remarks, among the last from a Fed policymaker before the Saturday start of an official quiet period ahead of the central bank’s next rate-setting meeting on Jan. 31-Feb. 1, did not give any explicit guidance on how high she feels interest-rates may ultimately need to go.

In December, Fed policymakers as a group signaled the policy rate will need to rise to at least 5.1%; financial markets, meanwhile, are pricing for the Fed to stop just short of 5%.

But she did appear to ratify market expectations for the Fed’s upcoming rate hike to be a quarter-of-a-percentage-point, a downshift from December’s half-point rate hike and from the four 75-basis-point rate hikes that preceded.

The “logic” that drove the Fed to slow its rate-hike pace in December, in order to have more time to assess the impact of policy, “is very applicable today,” Brainard said.

Speaking earlier Thursday, Boston Fed President Susan Collins was more explicit.

“I anticipate the need for further rate increases, likely to just above 5%, and then holding rates at that level for some time,” Collins told a conference organized by the Boston Fed, echoing a near-unanimous sentiment expressed by her rate-setting colleagues in recent weeks.

She also said she feels smaller rate hikes are now appropriate as the Fed manages “competing” threats: “the risk that our actions may be insufficient to restore price stability, versus the risk that our actions may cause unnecessary losses in real activity and employment.”

Brainard similarly, though less directly, called out the potential risk to the labor market as rates increasingly restrict the economy, a shift from last year when fighting inflation was the Fed’s clear priority.

“Now we’re in an environment where we’re balancing risks on both sides,” she said.

She also pointed to trends in prices, wages and margins that indicated inflation, which by the Fed’s preferred measure is running at almost three times its 2% target, was slowing and could well continue doing so.

The U.S. unemployment rate, meanwhile, is at a low 3.5%.

“Recent data suggests slightly better prospects that we could see continued disinflation in the context of moderate growth,” Brainard said. Still, she said, “it is a very uncertain environment and you can’t rule out worse trade-offs.”

Even as the Fed parses the progress it has made on inflation, she said it would “stay the course.”

“Even with the recent moderation, inflation remains high, and policy will need to be sufficiently restrictive for some time to make sure inflation returns to 2% on a sustained basis,” Brainard said.

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Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy said his government was expecting “strong decisions” from defence leaders of NATO and other countries meeting on Friday to discuss boosting Ukraine’s ability to confront Russian forces with modern battle tanks.

The meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany is the latest in a series since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly 11 months ago, and where future weapons supplies will be discussed, particularly of Germany’s Leopard 2 tanks used by armies across Europe.

Berlin has veto power over any decision to export the tanks and Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government has appeared reluctant so far to authorise that for fear of provoking Russia.

Some allies say Berlin’s concern is misplaced, with Russia already fully committed to war, while Moscow has repeatedly said Western weapons transfers would prolong the conflict and increase suffering in Ukraine.

Ukraine and Russia have both relied primarily on Soviet-era T-72 tanks, which have been destroyed in their hundreds during the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin started last Feb. 24, calling it a “special military operation” to protect Russia and Russian speakers.

Ukraine and its allies accuse Moscow of an unprovoked war to grab territory and to erase the independence of a fellow ex-Soviet republic and neighbour. Western countries have provided a steady supply of weapons to Ukraine.

“We are, in fact, now waiting for a decision from one European capital, which will activate the prepared chains of cooperation regarding tanks,” Zelenskiy said in a video address on Thursday night.

“We are preparing for the Ramstein meeting tomorrow. We are expecting strong decisions. We are expecting a powerful military aid package from the United States,” he said.

The United States on Thursday announced new military assistance for Ukraine valued at up to $2.5 billion, including hundreds of armoured vehicles and support for Ukraine’s air defence.

The aid includes 59 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 90 Stryker Armored Personnel Carriers, the U.S. Defense Department said in a statement. In total, the United States has committed more than $27.4 billion in security aid to Ukraine since the invasion began.

German government sources have said Berlin would move on the Leopard tanks issue if Washington agreed to send Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Abrams tanks were not included in Thursday’s announcement by the United States.

Germany’s new Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said earlier, however, that he did not know of any requirement that Ukraine receive U.S. and German tanks simultaneously.

“I’m not aware of any such stipulation,” Pistorius told German ARD television when asked if that meant Abrams and Leopards had to be delivered at the same time, a position that leaves open the possibility of an agreement on Friday.

Ukraine’s allies in the West have wanted to avoid NATO appearing to confront Russia directly and demurred on sending the Kyiv government their most potent weaponry.

Ukraine needed the tanks to defend itself, recapture occupied land, and did not plan to attack Russia, Zelenskiy told ARD television on Thursday.

“From Washington to London, from Paris to Warsaw, you hear one thing: Ukraine needs tanks. Tanks are the key to ending the war properly. It is time to stop trembling before Putin and take the final step,” tweeted Zelenskiy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak.

Meanwhile, CIA Director William Burns travelled in secret to Ukraine’s capital Kyiv to meet Zelenskiy, a U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday.

The official declined to say when the visit took place. The Washington Post, which first reported the visit, said it took place at the end of last week. The Post said Burns briefed Zelenskiy on his expectations on Russia’s military plans.

Fighting continued to be most intense in the strategic industrial region known as the Donbas on Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia, Ukrainian military officials said on Thursday night.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Russian forces shelled the town of Bakhmut, Russia’s main target in Donetsk province, which combined with Luhansk province forms the Donbas. Soledar, about 20 km from Bakhmut, also came under fire – Russian forces say they control Soledar, while Ukrainian sources say their military is still fighting in Soledar.

Nearby towns also were shelled by Russian forces – including Klishchiivka, just south of Bakhmut, the Ukrainian military said. Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Russian mercenary army, said his forces have taken control of Klishchiivka, a claim contested by Ukraine.

Reuters was not able to verify battlefield reports.

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Candidates to replace Jacinda Ardern as New Zealand’s prime minister after her shock resignation are expected to emerge on Friday ahead of a leadership vote on Sunday.

Ardern, 42, said on Thursday she had “no more in the tank” to continue leading the country, and would step down no later than early February and not seek re-election.

Chris Hipkins, a minister in her government and a top contender for the job, told news organisation Newshub on Friday that he expected Labour lawmakers to reach consensus on a new candidate, but declined to say whether he planned to run.

“We do have a responsibility to make sure that we’re making these decisions in the best interests of New Zealanders,” he said. “They will absolutely know who the next leader is going to be as those conversations finally conclude.”

If a candidate is unable to secure two thirds of the available votes on Sunday, the leadership contest will go to the wider membership.

Commentators point several Ardern ministers as possible candidates for the role, including Hipkins, the former COVID minister and current Minister of Education and Police, and current Minister of Justice Kiri Allen.

Ardern told media at Napier Airport on Friday that she intended to remain neutral during the election.

“I think the most important thing is that we focus on the process, it is swift, that (it) ensures that the team is able to move quickly back to focusing on the issues that matter for New Zealanders,” she said.

She added she had no regrets about her decision to step down.

The winner will become prime minister until the next general election. Ardern’s term as leader will conclude no later than Feb. 7 and a general election will be held on Oct. 14.

Labour has been struggling in the polls. A Taxpayers Union-Curia poll released Friday using data before Ardern stepped down saw Labour’s popularity fall to 31.7%, down from 1.4% last month, while the opposition New Zealand National Party holds 37.2% of the vote.

The United States said on Thursday it would send hundreds of armored vehicles plus rockets and artillery shells to Ukraine as part of a $2.5 billion military assistance package.

The package includes 59 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, 90 Stryker Armored Personnel Carriers, 53 mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles and 350 high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles, the U.S. Defense Department said in a statement.

The 59 Bradleys included in the latest U.S. package come after a previous 50 announced earlier in January. The armored Bradley has a powerful gun and has been used by the U.S. Army to carry troops around battlefields since the mid-1980s.

The latest assistance also includes additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), eight Avenger air-defense systems, tens of thousands of artillery rounds and about 2,000 anti-armor rockets, the Defense Department said.

In total, the United States has committed more than $27.4 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February last year.

Western allies have pledged billions of dollars in weapons for Ukraine. Fearing winter will give Russian forces time to regroup and unleash a major attack, Ukraine is pushing for more assistance to combat Moscow’s invasion.

In his trip to Washington in December, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the U.S. Congress that assistance to Ukraine is an investment in democracy, and not charity, while pressing for continued American support.

The U.S. hit its debt ceiling of $31.4 trillion on Thursday, raising economic concerns about what happens if lawmakers can reach a deal to pay the U.S. government’s debts. The Treasury Department has begun using a series of “extraordinary measures” to avoid a government default on its debt, which buys the U.S. about six months to either raise the debt ceiling or come up with a creative way out.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said she doesn’t anticipate Americans will feel the effects before June, but that Congress needs to negotiate a solution fast. No one knows what would happen if the U.S. defaults on its debt, which would be a historic first, but experts warn it would likely ripple into a global financial crisis.

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Whenever tax revenue doesn’t fully cover government programs, such as defense spending, social programs, and government salaries—which it has every year since 2001—the government must borrow money, but it’s restricted by a set limitation on how much debt the U.S. can incur. Per the U.S. Constitution, Congress needs to approve all borrowing, so Congress implemented the debt ceiling over a century ago to avoid approving each new debt. Since then, lawmakers have raised the debt ceiling dozens of times.

“It’s Congress’s responsibility,” Eric Swanson, a professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, tells TIME. “If you’re going to pass a law that the spending is this and the taxes are this, then whatever the difference is, has to be debt. You have to pass the law that authorizes the debt.”

Swanson is hopeful that Congress will avoid disaster by reaching an eventual agreement to raise the debt ceiling, but “they might push it really close to the deadline,” he says. “There’s a lot of disagreement these days.”

How’s how the debt ceiling fight could impact you.

Financial markets and 401(k)s

The U.S. defaulting on its debt would threaten the value of bonds, equities, and the U.S. dollar, which would unfurl in the global market already saddled with high inflation and interest, potential recession, and multiple geopolitical crises.

In short, it would be terrible for financial markets and anyone with a 401(k) retirement account.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped nearly 1,000 points in the past two days as Wall Street prepares for the potential shock. Firms like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are already strategizing for the future.

A similar standoff to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time, and there was a huge push to sell off stocks. The threat alone of reaching June without a solution may scare investors into pursuing international equities and foreign government bonds. A default would likely cause investors to lose confidence in the U.S.’s ability to pay its bonds, which have historically been viewed as some of the safest investments.

“Nobody knows for sure what will happen, because it’s never happened before. We’ve had these debt ceiling standoffs, the treasury has done these extraordinary measures before, and the standoffs have always gotten resolved,” Swanson says.

“So I guess there’s a big question when the Treasury comes to the end of these extraordinary measures, is there anything else they can do? Is there something else up the Treasury’s sleeve that they haven’t told anyone about?“ he adds.

Social Security and Medicare recipients

About 20%, just over $1 trillion, of the federal budget went to Social Security and around 13%, more than $760 billion, went to Medicare in 2022, making them two of the largest funded programs by the federal government. There are no disruptions in these programs expected for now.

However, if the government defaults on its debt, that could cause delays in Social Security and Medicare payments, along with other key programs like veterans’ benefits and SNAP food assistance.

To address the debt ceiling, House Republicans have begun discussing spending cuts to social programs. Some Republicans have discussed cuts to Social Security and Medicare, though the party is far from united behind that strategy. Lawmakers will likely prioritize funding Social Security and Medicare—not least because they are popular with a key voting bloc—older Americans.

“​​If Social Security payments were to be delayed, the voters would go completely ballistic,” Swanson says. “That would be politically very costly to both parties and I think none of them want that to happen.”

Filing taxes

The 2022 filing period for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is from Jan. 23 to April 18. The IRS estimates that taxpayers will receive their tax refunds within 21 days of filing their taxes electronically, which is good news for taxpayers because any effects from the debt ceiling fight likely won’t happen until June or later.The tax return process should carry out like normal.

The IRS typically announces adjustments to tax brackets in October or November, coupled with new tax provisions. These annual updates adjust taxes to keep up with the cost of living, so depending on inflation this fall, the adjustments for 2023 could be small or significant

Government employees

One likely outcome for how the government will retain enough funds to keep borrowing is to suspend investments in federal pensions. The Federal Employees Retirement System is considered to be one of the best retirement plans available, reserved for the nearly two million civilian federal employees. Pension investments should be made whole once the debt ceiling crisis is resolved.

“There’s a lot of federal employees, so that’s actually a lot of money,” Swanson says.

Seasoned federal employees are all too familiar with the longest government shutdown in U.S. history that halted all nonessential government operations for 35 days from 2018-2019. Similar consequences were threatened last month when Congress stalled to pass a federal spending bill.

The $1.7 trillion spending package Congress came up with after lengthy bipartisan discussions will fund the federal government until Sept. 30, 2023, when the fiscal year ends. At that point, Congress will need to pass a new spending bill, or the government will shut down, potentially leaving thousands of government employees on unpaid furloughs, like the more than 800,000 employees deemed nonessential in the 2019 shutdown.

Make Sunsets, a company behind a recent controversial effort to cool the earth by releasing particles of sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the upper atmosphere to reflect incoming heat, is canceling its upcoming experiments in Mexico, following a rebuke from the Mexican government.

“We have decided not to do launches in Mexico until we come up with a way to collaborate with the Mexican government,” Luke Iseman, the company’s founder, tells TIME in reaction to Mexico announcing on Jan. 13 plans to ban geoengineering. “We want to be working hard with government partners to buy us time for others to solve the shared challenges that we have to prevent catastrophic warming.”

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The two-person company made news in the climate world last month when the MIT Technology Review reported that they had launched weather balloons containing helium and SO2 in the Mexican state of Baja California last spring—the first recorded attempt to alter the stratosphere in the name of climate action.

The intent was that the balloons would burst when they reached the upper atmosphere and release the SO2, which would theoretically reflect solar radiation back into space. Such methods, known as stratospheric solar geoengineering, are one of the most controversial areas of study in the climate world, due to the possibility of large-scale SO2 releases affecting global weather and agriculture in unpredictable ways. Many environmental activists are also opposed to the possibility, arguing that geoengineering constitutes a moral hazard, since polluters could conceivably argue that it gives them license to continue emitting planet-warming greenhouse gasses.

Following news of the Make Sunsets launch, the Mexican government issued a press release saying that it would “prohibit and, where appropriate, stop experimentation practices with solar geoengineering,” citing a lack of international agreements and a 2010 UN moratorium on the practice. The announcement also noted that the startup had not consulted authorities before it carried out the experiments.

“It was surprising that people feel like we’re trying to sneak around some law when that is not the intent,” Iseman says. “There doesn’t appear to be some permit that I should have filed for and did not.”

Experts say that Make Sunsets’ SO2 release was small enough not to constitute an environmental danger, but many have criticized the company for attempting to profit off largely untested science. Make Sunsets sells $10 “Cooling Credits” on its website in exchange for releasing a gram of SO2 into the stratosphere, which it claims will correspond to eliminating the warming effect on one ton of carbon dioxide emissions for one year.

One of the concerns about geoengineering is the possibility that individual countries or even lone actors might take up the practice of their own accord, attempting to alter the climate without global buy-in or robust scientific support, a possibility that Make Sunsets might seem to illustrate.

Iseman, for his part, argues that there is no time to wait to pursue last-ditch climate efforts. He is hopeful that he can find another country more supportive of his work. “If someone, somewhere in the world wants to launch a balloon with us, I hope they reach out,” he says. “And if they are a government, I will bend over backward to be on the next plane to visit them.”