SUMMARY: Retail sales fell 0.9% in May 2025, following a 0.1% drop in April, as consumers pulled back after a March surge to beat Trump’s new tariffs. Auto sales plunged 3.5%, and home and garden sales dropped 2.7%. Some discretionary spending, like furniture and online sales, increased modestly. Businesses like Picnic Time, Inc. report steep cost increases and lower sales due to tariffs, prompting price hikes and hiring freezes. Consumers are reacting to rising prices by bulk buying, choosing generics, and shopping thrift. Despite soft spending, inflation remains moderate and unemployment low, suggesting cautious but ongoing consumer activity amid tariff uncertainty.

Read the full article

The post Americans turn cautious and retail sales slide after a spring rush to beat tariffs appeared first on www.abccolumbia.com

SUMMARY: Israel continued a five-day air campaign targeting Iran’s military and nuclear sites, killing at least 224 people. The IAEA confirmed Israeli strikes damaged Natanz’s underground uranium enrichment halls, a critical part of Iran’s nuclear program. Iran retaliated with over 370 missiles and drones toward Israel, causing 24 deaths. Tehran residents fled amid evacuation warnings from Israel and U.S. President Trump, who dismissed ceasefires and hinted at demanding Iran’s full surrender. Israel claims aerial superiority over Tehran and has destroyed key missile launchers and command centers. Tensions escalated as Trump left the G7 early to address the conflict, rejecting diplomatic peace efforts for now.

Read the full article

The post Israeli strikes damage Iran’s underground nuclear site, agency says as Trump warns Tehran appeared first on www.abccolumbia.com

by Jane Winik Sartwell, Carolina Public Press
June 17, 2025

Less than 1% of people affected by Tropical Storm Helene in Western North Carolina had flood insurance. 

That means that most of the personal property and business property losses incurred as a result of the costliest disaster in North Carolina history will not be reimbursed by insurers. 

While the numbers of flood insurance holders may increase in the mountains after Helene, the future of flood insurance in America is rife with uncertainty. Understanding the complexities of the industry may be key to weathering future storms. 

[Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ alerts and weekend roundup newsletters]

“One of the biggest disasters of Helene is the uninsured residential losses — that number is estimated at $9.5 billion,” Donald Hornstein, environmental law professor at UNC Chapel Hill, told Carolina Public Press. 

“These losses fell on a population that has very little private resources to deal with it. People really didn’t imagine you’d get this level of flooding in the mountains. People are tight on money. They didn’t insure for something they viewed as irrelevant to them.”

Still, the storm ranks 10th among the most significant flood insurance payouts in history, according to the Insurance Information Institute. 

The majority of flood insurance policies are provided by the federal government, through an arm of FEMA called the National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP. 

Outside of coastal zones, people rarely use the program to insure against floods. Only 6% of Americans hold it. That percentage was much lower in most of the areas of North Carolina struck by Helene.

Private insurers have almost entirely left the flood insurance market, due to the immense costs and large-scale damage associated with flooding, especially given the increasing severity of rain events. The premiums they would need to charge would deter almost anyone. 

That leaves the NFIP as one of the only providers of flood insurance. 

Across Western North Carolina counties, only about 6,500 total NFIP policies were in place, according to program data. 

But 43,700 paid losses were associated with Helene, accumulating to $1.8 million total paid out by NFIP. The average paid loss came in at $40,709.

Some assumed they would be covered for flood losses, thanks to their homeowners insurance or other storm-related policies. 

They were wrong. 

“The wording in insurance policies is so vague,” Ginger Frank, CEO of Asheville-based Poppy Handcrafted Popcorn, told CPP. Her business suffered major setbacks due to Tropical Storm Helene.

“You think you’re covered, and then you’re not. The insurance company comes back and tells you what the loophole is in the policy so they don’t have to cover you. People pay so much for insurance, and then when something happens, they aren’t there.

“I just feel like there has to be reform to this. Your only recourse is to file a lawsuit and spend tons of money that no one has to take them to court, and hope that you win. Insurance companies rely on the fact that very few people in the situation will have the resources to do that.”

The main way to cover the flood’s impacts on the structure and contents of your home is to hold an NFIP policy. 

Voluntarily purchasing flood insurance is even more uncommon. Usually, people only have a policy if their mortgage requires it. That’s often because that property has received federal assistance for flood-related damage before. 

Since so many properties did receive federal assistance in Helene, and the region now has heightened awareness of flood risk, the number of flood insurance policies in the region will likely grow in the coming years. 

But even if you are covered, NFIP can’t reimburse you for anything that you can’t claim was lost.

For this reason, it’s crucial to take pictures and make lists of everything in your home when preparing for a hurricane, according to Lisa Sharrard, an insurance agent with Wilmington-based Choice Flood Insurance. 

The NFIP can cover up to $250,000 in home structure losses and $100,000 in home contents losses. 

But individual preparation, while crucial, cannot fix the deeper problems plaguing the program.

“The NFIP was not designed for the planet on which we now live,” Hornstein said. 

“It was designed for everyday flooding events, not for these periodic but absolutely guaranteed catastrophic events. The NFIP has never charged rates high enough to cover those.

“It’s popular to talk about the NFIP as broken, because it regularly runs out of money and has to go to Congress to get special appropriations to bail out of their debt. If you look at it that way, the NFIP is not a functioning insurance company.”

During President Donald Trump’s first term, he planned Risk Rating 2.0, which changes the way the NFIP calculated rates, bringing models up to date. This new system would have increased rates, so Trump abandoned it during his bid for reelection. It wouldn’t have been politically expedient. 

But former President Joe Biden picked up where Trump left off and implemented the new rating system, raising flood insurance rates for 75% of flood insurance holders.

“In the third year of implementation of Risk Rating 2.0, prices continue to tick up, and a significant number of people are being forced to drop their flood coverage because of these steady, small rate increases,” Hornstein said. 

“On the one hand, this is the correct price, so the program will have more money when the disaster comes. But on the other hand, as people drop it, the NFIP finds themselves in a terrible financial situation.”

Given Trump’s promise to eliminate FEMA after the current hurricane season — alongside the general cost-cutting priorities of his administration — the future of the NFIP is anything but certain. 

It’s not clear, for instance, whether the process of “wean(ing) off FEMA” will extend to the NFIP, which is a separate office within the agency. Trump has not addressed that issue directly, but the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — an influential conservative policy document — calls for the dismantling of the NFIP and advocates for flood insurance to go private. 

These political priorities should change how individuals prepare for this hurricane season, according to Mark Friedlander, spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute.

“I would be wary of making the assumption that FEMA will be there to help me after a catastrophe during this hurricane season,” Friedlander told CPP. 

“There are too many unknowns.”

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Flood insurance covered few Helene victims in NC appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This article maintains a generally factual tone while examining systemic issues in flood insurance coverage and policy, particularly in the wake of Tropical Storm Helene. However, the piece leans slightly left in its framing and critique of the private insurance sector and government response. The article highlights socioeconomic disparities, criticizes insurance loopholes, and includes pointed commentary on both former President Trump’s and President Biden’s NFIP policies, though Trump’s motives are more critically framed. References to conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation are presented with a cautionary tone. These elements suggest a Center-Left bias, primarily through subtle framing rather than overt ideology.