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SpaceX catches Starship in novel landing at Texas site

Current News / News & Features /

SpaceX successfully caught its Starship rocket as it returned to the Texas launch site from orbit, a novel engineering feat and major step toward Elon Musk’s goal of developing a fully reusable system.

Starship descended from the sky over SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas after 3 p.m. local time on Saturday, lowering itself belly ...Read more

Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Airport nightmares continue as FAA struggles to pinpoint blame for historic meltdown

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Transportation was working Saturday to determine whether Friday’s air traffic control system meltdown resulted from human error or equipment failure as travelers across the nation continued to grapple with a cascade of flight delays and cancellations.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the crisis ...Read more

Pedro Portal/El Nuevo Herald/TNS

What Donalds' new policy aide signals about plans for healthcare, food assistance

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MIAMI — Florida Gov.-elect Byron Donalds’ new policy chair is a lobbyist who has claimed credit for ensuring Obamacare subsidy extensions died in Congress last year.

Donalds named Tarren Bragdon as the policy chair of his transition team this week. He’s the founder and CEO of the Naples-based conservative think tank Foundation for ...Read more

Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune/TNS

Rejection of Minneapolis police chief nominee prompts anxiety over department's future

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MINNEAPOLIS — Supporters of Bill Peterson’s bid to become Minneapolis’ next police chief felt optimistic Thursday morning.

Top Minneapolis police supervisors, gathered behind closed doors, declared that the interim chief had the votes to secure the job.

But by mid-afternoon, following hours of scrutiny from skeptical City Council members...Read more

Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune/TNS

Measles cases are gaining a foothold again in Minnesota

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LONG PRAIRIE, Minn. — Talk to enough Amish residents in Todd County and you’ll hear a common refrain about the measles outbreak happening there.

“It’s just measles. Might as well get it over with,” said Emmanuel Schwartzentruber, who sells wooden chests and baskets from his farm west of Long Prairie, Minn.

Talk to the doctor treating...Read more

Pedro Portal/El Nuevo Herald/TNS

Flight delays and cancellations at South Florida airports persist over weekend

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MIAMI — Hundreds of flights were canceled at South Florida airports Saturday after a telecommunications outage prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a nationwide ground stop Friday, blocking planes from taking off and causing headaches for weekend travelers.

The head of the FAA say delays and cancellations will continue ...Read more

Aaron Schwartz/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Duffy eyes possible L3Harris 'incompetence' in FAA meltdown

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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday that officials are looking into whether aerospace and defense contractor L3Harris Technologies Inc. was at fault for an aviation traffic control system shutdown that grounded flights nationwide for more than four hours.

L3Harris was replacing a copper line with fiber at a remote Federal ...Read more

Airport nightmares continue as FAA struggles to pinpoint blame for historic meltdown

Current News / News & Features /

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Transportation was working Saturday to determine whether Friday’s air traffic control system meltdown resulted from human error or equipment failure as travelers across the nation continued to grapple with a cascade of flight delays and cancellations.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the crisis ...Read more

Flight ground stop leaves travelers scrambling for ways home

Current News / News & Features /

It was arguably one of the worst times for a nationwide flight grounding: Friday, late afternoon, just as people were heading to airports for weekend jaunts or to return home from business trips.

The ground stop from the Federal Aviation Administration, called around 4 p.m. Eastern time Friday, left passengers across the country stranded on ...Read more

Ting Shen/Getty Images North America/TNS

Airport nightmares continue as FAA struggles to pinpoint blame for historic meltdown

Current News / News & Features /

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Transportation was working Saturday to determine whether Friday's air traffic control system meltdown resulted from human error or equipment failure as travelers across the nation continued to grapple with a cascade of flight delays and cancellations.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the crisis ...Read more

United Launch Alliance/TNS/TNS

ULA delays Vulcan launch again awaiting chance to help Amazon play catch-up to SpaceX

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ORLANDO, Fla. — United Launch Alliance delayed the return of Vulcan one more time Saturday after a new communication issue popped up one day after having to push the rocket’s chance to return to flight because of a vendor issue.

“The launch of a United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket carrying the Amazon Leo 1 mission is delayed due to a ...Read more

Sean Gallup/Getty Images Europe/TNS

Pentagon eyes smaller troop cuts across Europe in reversal

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The Trump administration’s cuts to roughly 80,000 U.S. troops across Europe will be lower than the continent’s leaders have feared, according to people familiar with the matter.

European allies had previously feared the U.S. might cut as many as 25,000 troops, but a smaller cut is now more likely because the U.S. has looked favorably on ...Read more

Genya Savilov/Getty Images North America/TNS

Zelenskyy says US floats NATO membership in deal for Donbas

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said U.S. peace envoys asked whether Ukraine would be willing to give up the Donbas region in the nation’s east to Russia in exchange for NATO membership, signaling a potential shift in Washington’s negotiating tactics.

As the full-scale war between Ukraine and Russia heads toward the end of its ...Read more

How Iran used data from social media, fitness apps and satellites to target US bases

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MANAMA, Bahrain — When Iran's military planners prepared to hit American bases in the Middle East, they relied on intelligence from an unlikely source: U.S. service members themselves.

According to security experts and even the U.S. military, Iran harvested data from social media accounts, fitness apps and even ads to establish patterns of ...Read more

Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Even this business-friendly California city is souring against data centers

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LOS ANGELES -- There is only one place new data centers are being built in the greater Los Angeles area: the city of Vernon.

Just south of downtown L.A., it’s a city made up almost exclusively of companies. About 50,000 people commute every day into Vernon to work, but only about 300 actually live there, and the city government is famous for ...Read more

The US and Iran are at war. But ICE is still working with Tehran on deportations

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LOS ANGELES — Mohammadjamal Azizi, an Iranian refugee living in the Tujunga neighborhood of Los Angeles, panicked when his wife called him last month about a message from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement instructing her to contact Iranian government officials in Washington about her case.

The United States and Iran have been at war ...Read more

David Guralnick/The Detroit News/TNS

What caused the national ground stop? Here is what we know

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WASHINGTON — For more than four hours, a ground stop of virtually all aircraft in the United States brought unprecedented chaos and delays that are expected to last days.

Here is what we know about what went wrong.

—What caused the stop?

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said switches and routers on the Federal Aviation ...Read more

Ting Shen/Getty Images North America/TNS

Duffy calls for emergency air traffic upgrade runds after outage

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WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called on Congress to authorize $50 billion in emergency funding to overhaul the U.S. air traffic control system after a technical issue spawned the longest nationwide grounding in more than two decades.

“This is an emergency,” Duffy said at a White House news conference on Friday. He ...Read more

Finn Gomez/Getty Images North America/TNS

Nationwide ground stop lifted, but passengers remain stranded at airports

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The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday issued an extraordinary four-hour ground stoppage on all flights in the United States after a communications issue crippled air traffic control centers.

The situation caused havoc at airports across the country and affected thousands of flights. The stop was lifted at around 8:30 p.m. Eastern time, ...Read more

Alex Wong/Getty Images North America/TNS

Former US Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington dies at 89

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WASHINGTON — Former Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., a fierce advocate for universal healthcare and outspoken war critic who served 28 years in Congress, died Thursday at the age of 89, his family announced.

In a roughly 50-year career in state and federal office, the salty-tongued, liberal lawmaker from Seattle won praise and criticism for ...Read more