“It’s a ghost town in there right now,” he said.

The same is true of the St. Cloud location, which employs 30 people. The parking lot was empty and the building’s doors locked at the engine plant, which is in the I-94 business park on the south side of the city.

“It’s never good to see that happen,” St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis said Friday. “Obviously the economy changes and what people buy changes. I think that’s the issue.”

In the glory days, 100 companies once competed in the snowmobile industry. Only four survived, two located in northern Minnesota: Arctic Cat and Polaris. But the industry is collapsing. Yamaha stopped making snowmobiles last year. Polaris reported an 80% drop in profits this year and Canada-based BRP Inc., which makes Ski-Doo, cut snowmobile production by 30%.

Warm winters and high interest rates are to blame. A new snowmobile can run $20,000. Without the guarantee of snow, it’s harder to justify the investment. Might as well buy a boat or side-by-side.

It takes years for snowmobile sales to rebound from a bad winter. And 2023 was a killer.

ABUJA, Nigeria — Stampedes during three Christmas charity events across Nigeria have left at least 67 people dead in the past week, many of them children. Families are struggling during the country’s worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.

At least 35 children were killed in southwestern Oyo state on Wednesday. And on Saturday, 22 people died in southeastern Anambra state while 10 died in the capital, Abuja, where more than 1,000 people had gathered at a church to receive clothes and food.

Here’s why people in Africa’s most populous country are risking their lives for holiday donations.

Inflation at a 28-year high

”There is hunger in this Nigeria. Every Nigerian needs food,” one woman, in tears, told the local Arise television after the stampede in Abuja.

The economic crisis is blamed on the government’s policies to save money and attract investors, which have contributed to pushing the inflation rate to a 28-year high of 34.6%. Meanwhile the naira currency languishes at record lows against the dollar.

At least 63% of Nigeria’s more than 210 million people population is poor, according to the government’s statistics office. The government has struggled to create jobs. And when people gather to protest hardship, security forces are quick to clamp down. In August, more than 20 people were shot dead by security forces during nationwide protests.

”The average Nigerian has seen food go out of their reach,” said Cheta Nwanze, managing partner at the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence research firm. In 2022, the firm found that about 97% of Nigerians spend up to 63% of their income on food, but that share must have grown since then, he said.

Since the Truman’s arrival, the U.S. has stepped up its airstrikes targeting the Houthis and their missile fire into the Red Sea and the surrounding area. However, the presence of an American warship group may spark renewed attacks from the rebels, like what the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower saw earlier this year. That deployment marked what the Navy described as its most intense combat since World War II.

On Saturday night and early Sunday, U.S. warplanes conducted airstrikes that shook Sanaa, the capital of Yemen which the Houthis have held since 2014. Central Command described the strikes as targeting a ”missile storage facility” and a ”command-and-control facility,” without elaborating.

Houthi-controlled media reported strikes in both Sanaa and around the port city of Hodeida, without offering any casualty or damage information. In Sanaa, strikes appeared particularly targeted at a mountainside known to be home to military installations. However, there were no images or information released regarding the strikes — which has happened previously when airstrikes hit vital facilities for the rebels.

Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesman, released a prerecorded statement hours later in which he claimed the rebels launched eight drones and 17 cruise missiles in their attack. He also claimed without offering any evidence that the Houthis shot down the F/A-18, likely following a pattern of him making exaggerated claims. During the Eisenhower’s deployment, he repeatedly falsely claimed the carrier had been struck by Houthi fire.

The Houthis have targeted about 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip started in October 2023 after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage.

Israel’s grinding offensive in Gaza has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, local health officials say. The tally doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.