By MARK SCOLFORO, TASSANEE VEJPONGSA and KATHY McCORMACK, Associated Press

PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. (AP) — Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of wintry weather Monday, a forecast sure to disappoint many after what’s already been a long, cold season across large parts of the United States.

His annual prediction and announcement that he had seen his shadow was translated by his handlers in the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club at Gobbler’s Knob in western Pennsylvania.

The news was greeted with a mix of cheers and boos from the tens of thousands who braved temperatures in the single-digits Fahrenheit to await the annual prognostication. The extreme cold kept the crowd bundled up and helped keep people on the main stage dancing.

Usually guests can come up on stage and take pictures of Phil after his prediction, but this year the announcer said it was too cold for that and his handlers were afraid to keep him out too long. Instead, the audience was asked to come to the stage, turn around and “do a selfie.”

The club says that when Phil is deemed to have not seen his shadow, that means there will be an early spring. When he does see it, it’s six more weeks of winter. Phil tends to predict a longer winter far more often than an early spring.

The annual ritual goes back more than a century, with ties to ancient farming traditions in Europe. Punxsutawney’s festivities have grown considerably since the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day,” starring Bill Murray.

Lisa Gibson was at her 10th Groundhog Day, wearing a lighted hat that resembled the tree stump from which Phil emerges shortly after daybreak.

“Oh man, it just breaks up the doldrums of winter,” said Gibson, accompanied by her husband — dressed up as Elvis Presley — and teenage daughter. “It’s like Halloween and New Year’s Eve all wrapped up into one holiday.”

Gibson, a resident of Pittsburgh, had been rooting for Phil to not see his shadow.

Rick Siger, Pennsylvania’s secretary of community and economic development, said the outdoor thermometer in his vehicle read 4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius) on his way to Gobbler’s Knob.

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“I think it’s just fun — folks having a good time,” said Siger, attending his fourth straight Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney. “It brings people together at a challenging time. It is a unifying force that showcases the best of Pennsylvania, the best of Punxsutawney, this area.”

Last year’s announcement was six more weeks of winter, by far Phil’s more common assessment and not much of a surprise during the first week of February. His top-hatted handlers in the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club insist Phil’s “groundhogese” of winks, purrs, chatters and nods are being interpreted when they relate the meteorological marmot’s muses about the days ahead.

AccuWeather’s chief long-range weather expert, meteorologist Paul Pastelok, said early Monday some clouds moved into Punxsutawney overnight, bringing flurries he called “microflakes.”

Pastelok said the coming week will remain cold, with below-average temperatures in the eastern United States.

Phil isn’t the only animal being consulted for long-term weather forecasts Monday. There are formal and informal Groundhog Day events in many places in the U.S., Canada and beyond.

Groundhog Day falls on Feb. 2, the midpoint between the shortest, darkest day of the year on the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It’s a time of year that also figures in the Celtic calendar and the Christian holiday of Candlemas.

Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, McCormack from Concord, New Hampshire.

By MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press

The spotlight is on Gobbler’s Knob in western Pennsylvania on Monday morning, when handlers of a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil announce whether he saw his own shadow, thereby predicting six more weeks of winter or an early spring.

Thousands attend the annual event that exploded in popularity after the 1993 Bill Murray movie, “Groundhog Day.”

It’s part of a tradition rooted in European agricultural life, marking the midpoint between the shortest day of the year on the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

And in eastern and central Pennsylvania, where people of German descent have been watching the groundhog’s annual emergence from hibernation for centuries, there’s a tradition of groundhog clubs and celebrations that are independent of Phil.

Some dismiss the Punxsutawney event as an unworthy rival to their own festivities, which they say forecast more accurate weather predictions. There have been weather-predicting groundhogs in many U.S. states and Canadian provinces, and less formal celebrations far and wide.

One thing it’s not: serious business.

“We know this is silly; we know this is fun,” said Marcy Galando, executive director of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club. “We want people to come here with a sense of humor.”

What are the holiday’s origins?

Celtic people across Europe marked the four days that are midway between the winter solstice, the spring equinox, the summer solstice and the fall equinox. What the Celts called Imbolc is also around when Christians celebrate Candlemas, timed to Joseph and Mary’s presentation of Jesus at the Temple in Jerusalem.

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Ancient people would watch the sun, stars and animal behavior to guide farming practices and other decisions, and the practice of watching an animal’s emergence from winter hibernation to forecast weather has roots in a similar German tradition involving badgers or bears. Pennsylvania Germans apparently substituted the groundhog, endemic to the eastern and midwestern United States.

Historians have found a reference in an 1841 diary to groundhog weather forecasts in early February among families of German descent in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, according to the late Don Yoder, a University of Pennsylvania professor whose book about Groundhog Day explored the Celtic connection.

Yoder concluded the festival has roots in “ancient, undoubtedly prehistoric, weather lore.”

Why is it celebrated in Punxsutawney?

Punxsutawney is an area that Pennsylvania Germans settled — and in the late 1880s started celebrating the holiday by picnicking, hunting and eating groundhogs.

The Bill Murray movie caused such a resurgence of interest that two years after it came out, event organizers voiced concern about rowdy crowds drinking all night, people climbing trees and others stripping to their underwear. In 1998, a groundhog club leader wearing a $4,000 groundhog suit reported being assaulted by a half-dozen young men.

Alcohol is now prohibited at Gobbler’s Knob, Phil’s spot some 80 miles (123 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh.

Does Phil have any competition?

The early festivities in Punxsutawney were followed in 1907 by folks in Quarryville, a farming area in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania’s southeastern corner. The roughly 240 members of the Slumbering Groundhog Lodge there report the winter forecast from Octoraro Orphie, or least via his well-preserved remains.

Quarryville lodge board chair Charlie Hart credits Orphie as a far better forecaster than Phil. “Octoraro Orphie has never been wrong,” he claimed.

Groundhogs on the menu?

The groundhog is a member of the squirrel family and related to chipmunks and prairie dogs. It’s also known as a woodchuck, a whistle pig — or in the parlance of Pennsylvania Dutch, a language with German roots, a “grundsau.”

Groundhogs are herbivores that are themselves edible to humans, although they are not widely consumed. Their lifespan in the wild is typically two or three years.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission says tens of thousands of hunters take more than 200,000 groundhogs in a year.

Game Commission spokesperson Travis Lau found groundhog a bit stinky to clean, with thick skin.

“It was actually really good, no doubt about it — and to my taste, more like beef than venison is,” Lau said. “The whole family ate it and liked it, and everybody had apprehensions.”

When did clubs and lodges spring up?

Starting in the 1930s, groundhog lodges opened in eastern Pennsylvania. They were social clubs with similarities to Freemasonry.

Intended to preserve Pennsylvania German culture and traditions, clubs would sometimes fine those who were caught speaking anything but their Pennsylvania Dutch language at meetings. A dozen or more such clubs remain active.

They all share the unifying feature of a groundhog’s weather prognostication, said William W. Donner, a Kutztown University anthropology professor who has written about efforts to preserve German heritage.

“I think it’s just one of these traditional rituals that people enjoy participating in, that maybe take them away from modern life for 15 minutes,” Donner said.

Will Phil get it right this year?

Some well-meaning efforts have sought to determine Phil’s accuracy, but what “six weeks of winter” means is debatable. Claims that a groundhog has or has not seen its shadow — and that it’s able to communicate that to a human — are also fair territory for skeptics and the humor-impaired.

By all accounts, Phil predicts more winter far more often than he predicts an early spring.

Groundhogs are mostly solitary creatures who start to emerge in midwinter to find a mate. The science behind whether they can make any accurate weather predictions is problematic at best.

Among the skeptics is the National Centers for Environmental Information. The government agency has compared Phil’s record with U.S. national temperatures and concluded he was right only three of the past 10 years.

By ELAINE KURTENBACH, Associated Press Business Writer

U.S. futures and world shares skidded on Monday as worries over President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next Federal Reserve chair amplified jitters over a possible bubble in the artificial intelligence boom.

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South Korea’s exchange, which is heavily influenced by tech-related developments, briefly suspended trading as its benchmark Kospi bounced, closing 5.3% lower at 4,949.67. Samsung Electronics gave up 6.3%, while chip maker SK Hynix sank 8.7%.

The Kospi has been forging records for weeks as big tech companies piggybacked on the AI craze with deals with major players like chip maker Nvidia and OpenAI.

In early European trading, Germany’s DAX edged less than 0.1% lower to 24,528.57. The CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.2% to 8,108.56, while Britain’s FTSE 100 declined 0.3% to 10,195.88.

The future for the S&P 500 sank 0.7%, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.4%.

Markets took a hit as investors considered how Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve after Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s term ends in May might handle interest rates.

Warsh’s nomination requires Senate approval. But financial markets fear the Fed may lose some of its independence because of Trump, who has pushed hard for more and faster rate cuts. That fear has helped catapult skyward the price of gold and weaken the U.S. dollar’s value over the last year.

“People do not get handed the keys to the most powerful central bank on earth because they plan to drive in the opposite direction of the people who gave them the keys,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

Early Monday, the price of gold fell 1.9%, while silver bounced back slightly, gaining 0.2%. Both plunged Friday as record runs in precious metals markets ground to a halt.

On Friday, the price of gold dropped 11.4%, suddenly losing momentum after a tremendous rally where it roughly doubled over 12 months. It topped $5,000 for the first time on Jan. 26 and was around $5,600 at one point on Thursday.

Silver, which had been on a similar, jaw-dropping tear, plunged 31.4%.

U.S. benchmark crude oil lost $3.46 to $61.75 per barrel, while Brent crude, the international standard, fell $3.47 to $65.85 per barrel.

Speaking to reporters during the weekend, Trump said Iran should negotiate a “satisfactory” deal to prevent the Middle Eastern country from getting any nuclear weapons.

“I don’t know that they will. But they are talking to us. Seriously talking to us,” he said.

That comment apparently assuaged some worries over potential disruptions to oil supplies that had pushed prices higher, analysts said.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 gave up early gains, sinking 1.3% to 52,655.18.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 2.2% to 26,775.57, while the Shanghai Composite index sank 2.5% to 4,015.75.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 fell 1% to 8,778.60.

Taiwan’s Taiex lost 1.4%.

On Friday, the S&P 500 dropped 0.4% and the Dow lost 0.4%. The Nasdaq composite lost 0.9%.

The Fed chair has a big influence on the economy and markets worldwide by helping to dictate where the U.S. central bank moves interest rates. That affects prices for all kinds of investments, as the Fed tries to keep the U.S. job market humming without letting inflation get out of control.

A report released Friday showed U.S. inflation at the wholesale level was hotter last month than economists expected. That could put pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates steady for a while instead of cutting them, as it did late last year.

The longtime assumption has been that the Fed should operate separately from the rest of Washington so that it can make moves that are painful in the short term but necessary for the long term. To get inflation down to the Fed’s goal of 2%, for example, may require the unpopular choice to keep interest rates high and grind down on the economy for a while.

In other action early Monday, the dollar fell to 154.88 Japanese yen from 154.94 yen. The euro was unchanged at $1.1853.

BEIJING (AP) — Beijing on Monday criticized the Dalai Lama ’s first Grammy win, describing the music industry award for an audiobook, narration and storytelling as “a tool for anti-China political manipulation.”

The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, who lives in exile in India, took the award on Sunday for his book, “Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.”

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He said in a statement on his website that he saw the award “as a recognition of our shared universal responsibility.”

“I receive this recognition with gratitude and humility,” he added.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said: “It is well known that the 14th Dalai Lama is not merely a religious figure but a political exile engaged in anti-China separatist activities under the guise of religion.”

“We firmly oppose the relevant party using the award as a tool for anti-China political manipulation,” he added.

The Dalai Lama, who is seen by many as the face of Tibet’s struggle for autonomy, has lived in exile since 1959, when Chinese troops crushed an uprising in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.

China, which governs Tibet as an autonomous region, has been accused of trying to stamp out the Tibetan language, culture and identity.

Beijing and the Dalai Lama also spar over the spiritual leader’s eventual successor. Tibetan Buddhists believe the Dalai Lamas are reincarnations of a spiritual leader first born in 1391.

Beijing maintains the next Dalai Lama will be born in Tibet and recognized by the ruling Communist Party, whereas the Dalai Lama has said his successor will be from a free country and that China has no role in the process.