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In early October, blizzard conditions in Nepal killed more than 16 foreign trekkers and 17 locals, most of them lightly-dressed porters who were carrying the trekkers' gear. The tragedy calls attention to the dangers of trekking — and the risky life of local porters.

At 42, Rane Tamang knows the trekking business well. From a poor village in central Nepal and with little formal education, he started work as a porter 25 years ago, lugging 90 pounds of gear up mountains. He moved up to serve as an assistant cook and now alternates between cook and guide.

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At Least 20 Trekkers Die In Blizzard, Avalanche In Nepal's Himalayas

The blizzards hit the Thorung La Pass, the high point of the popular Annapurna Circuit. Tamang has crossed the pass over 30 times. "The storm struck so fast, what could the porters do?" Tamang explained during an interview in Katmandu. "Many were walking alone, without experience, and that is why I think many of them died."

In Nepal, tourism is key to the economy. Of 750,000 tourists each year, about a third trek the Annapurna Circuit. There are over 1,000 registered trekking agencies, but in a country with massive underemployment, there is also an underworld of freelance guiding and portering.

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Rane Tamang, left, and Padam Ghale. Both men started out working as porters in the mountains of Nepal. Tamang is now a guide and cook. Ghale owns a trekking company. Donatella Lorch for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Donatella Lorch for NPR

Rane Tamang, left, and Padam Ghale. Both men started out working as porters in the mountains of Nepal. Tamang is now a guide and cook. Ghale owns a trekking company.

Donatella Lorch for NPR

Porters on Annapurna earn about $11 a day, a respectable sum in a country where the per capita income is $2 a day. So there's a lot of competition for jobs. Plus, many trekkers now go on their own and use mules and yaks to carry gear.

And it's not a year-round occupation. Trekking season is October-November and April-May. Tamang last year worked four treks. This year he finished a trek to Annapurna and leaves soon for a 30-day trek near Kanchenjunga in eastern Nepal.

Many Nepalis who work in the trekking business began as porters. Tamang's son, Bilbahadur, 26, is a porter. His boss, Padam Ghale, 60, owns Shambhala Trekking but started as a porter, making his shoes from old tires. Ghale still guides today.

In Nepal, portering, though grueling, is a route out of poverty — and not just because of the pay. Many porters hope that their clients will sponsor them for English classes, business training or mountain-guiding classes.

The government requires that registered companies insure their porters. Many also provide them with sleeping bags and warm jackets for high altitude. But there is no safety net for freelancers, who often trek in sandals and flimsy windbreakers.

Hundreds of trekkers cross Thorung-La every day, attracting freelance porters and guides who troll for clients at both ends of the pass. If they disappear in a storm, no one will know.

Ghale, who was once snowed in on the pass, says good guides are essential for survival. "You don't leave shelter in a storm," he warns.

Last October, Tamang and Ghale took a group of five French trekkers to Makalu Base Camp. They arrived under blue skies but by nightfall and for the next three days, it snowed. They spent hours shoveling off their tents. With clear weather but snow to their chests, Ghale decided to forge a trail through the blanket of deep snow that had buried all landmarks. A normal three-hour trek took 14. Porters lost their sneakers and wrapped their feet in plastic bags. Tamang and Ghale, who knew the area well, wondered whether they would survive, but everyone made it out. Two porters suffered snow blindness. Others had early stages of frostbite.

"Many times, I have stopped clients from going ahead," Ghale said. "My job is that they stay alive. The mountains will always be here. We can come back when it is safer."

Under criticism for not having an early warning system in place, the government of Nepal says it will introduce new regulations by April that will include a weather warning system, stricter registration of trekkers and a requirement that all trekkers hire trained guides.

The government is also studying the possibility of requiring all trekking groups to carry a GPS tracking device. But good topographical mapping does not exist in Nepal, and shoestring travelers aren't likely to have the money to comply.

Reporter Donatella Lorch lives in (and blogs about) Nepal.

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It was another stomach-churning day on Wall Street. At one point, the Dow industrials were down 460 points — a huge drop that followed four consecutive days of stock market losses.

The decline more than wiped out the year's gains. But then late in the trading day, tocks started to recover. And by the close, the Dow's loss was a little more than 1 percent.

Investors are worried about a global economic slowdown, the Federal Reserve's next move and even the Ebola virus.

October has sometimes been a catastrophic month for the stock market, and though this month isn't that bad yet it sometimes felt Wednesday like disaster was lurking.

Stock prices plunged sharply in the morning, came back a bit and then fell again. At one point Wednesday, the Standard and Poor's 500 was down nearly 3 percent. That came after several days of steep losses, but the index recovered some of its lost ground by the end of the day.

"Given that we've seen volatility spike up to levels that we haven't seen since the fall of 2011, I would consider that there's a bit of fear out there right now and that's something we haven't seen for a very long time," said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at Schwab.

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Frederick says investors are growing more and more worried about how much the economy has slowed in Asia and Europe. He says Germany, for instance, largely escaped the consequences of the last downturn in 2011.

"But we've seen recent significant declines in German GDP, we've seen sharp drops in German business and investor confidence and we see really the European Central Bank kind of in a position where they are talking of doing things but they can't seem to come to a decision on exactly what they are going to do and I think some people are beginning to question if they have any true ammunition left to combat this," Frederick said.

Compared with Europe, the U.S. economy continues to grow at a pretty good pace. But a string of bad economic data Wednesday left a lot of investors questioning how long it will keep doing so. Retail sales plunged more than expected in September.

And then there's the Ebola virus. In addition to all the other bad things it would do, an outbreak of the disease in this country could wreak havoc on U.S. trade and investment.

"All these things are kind of hitting at one time and people are now saying, 'I want to reduce my risk exposure very, very quickly,' " said Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist at Channel Capital Research.

With all these fears mounting, investors did what they have so often done: They pulled their money out of riskier investments and into the safety of U.S. Treasury bonds. And that drove interest rates down sharply.

Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, says investors may be overreacting.

"The fact that the 10-year yield broke 2 percent again in a U.S. economy that arguably is in the best shape and fastest-growing that it's been in the entire recovery — I think that's a real disconnect," he said.

But for now investors seem to be swamped by fears. One other looming concern is where the Federal Reserve is likely to go in the months ahead.

As the U.S. economy has improved, Fed officials have gradually made clear that an interest rate increase is somewhere on the horizon. That's not likely to happen anytime soon, but it's enough to add to the market's jitters at a time when there are already plenty of things to worry about.

The number of men getting vasectomies spiked during the Great Recession, rising one-third from 2006 to 2010, a study finds.

In 2006, 3.9 percent of men said they had had a vasectomy; in 2010, 4.4 percent reported having the surgery. That means an additional 150,000 to 180,000 men per year had vasectomies in each year of the recession.

That squares with earlier research that showed birth rates dropped during the recession, falling 4 percent between 2007 and 2009.

After the recession, man were making less money, were less likely to be working full time, and were less likely to have health insurance, according to the National Survey for Family Growth, which researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College used to come up with the vasectomy numbers.

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They reported their results Monday at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in Hawaii.

OK, so what were women up to? The Weill Cornell researchers didn't look at this, but the survey did ask recession-era women about birth control, and there was no increase in the number of women who got birth control or had sterilization surgery from 2002.

Men typically aren't nearly as apt to embrace sterilization as a form of birth control as are women.

For women who use contraception, 26.6 percent chose tubal sterilization, which is permanent, compared to 27.5 percent for the pill, according to 2010 numbers from the Guttmacher Institute.

But just 10 percent of women said they're relying on their partner's vasectomy to avoid pregnancy, according to Guttmacher.

We'll have to stay tuned to see if guys' seeming embrace of vasectomy was just a recessionary blip, or if they really are saying no (or no mas) to fatherhood.

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Barely 24 hours after a gunman attacked Parliament Hill in Ottawa, killing a soldier, lawmakers gave a standing ovation to Kevin Vickers, the legislature's sergeant-at-arms for reportedly firing the shots that took down the alleged assailant.

Vickers, 58, stood at attention and appeared close before the House of Commons as the applause wore on. He's being regarded as a hero in Canada for keeping the gunman from penetrating further into the parliamentary compound.

The CBC reports that Vickers has been identified as the one who shot the assailant inside the Hall of Honour, the main entrance to Centre Block.

The CBC says of Vickers that he became sergeant-at-arms in the House of Commons eight years ago after spending nearly three decades in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, where he rose to the rank of superintendent.

"I just couldn't be prouder of him right now," John Vickers said of his brother.

When asked about Vickers's reported heroics, his cousin Keith said "It's Kevin being Kevin," according to CBC.

The House of Commons observed a moment of silence for Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, who was killed by the gunman as he stood a ceremonial guard at the National War Memorial near Parliament Hill. Members of Parliament also joined in singing the national anthem, O Canada.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, addressing the assembly, thanked Vickers for his service. He said the objective of the attack was to instill fear and panic in Canada and to interrupt the business of government.

He called on Parliament to expedite plans to give Canada's security establishment more surveillance and detention powers.

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