Marty Ross-Dolen went to Green-Wood Cemetery to stand by a monument that her grandparents’ names are on. The monument is “hidden back there,” she said. “You don’t know that people even know about it.” She herself didn’t know much about why her grandparents’ names belonged on the monument until nearly 20 years ago, when she was in her mid-40s and finally read up on something that was almost never talked about when she was growing up: a midair collision over New York Harbor in December 1960. Her grandparents — her mother’s mother and father — had been passengers on one of the two planes. “The plane crash had been a part of my life since I asked my mother where her parents were,” Ross-Dolen said. “I must have been 4. I knew who they were because there were pictures around the house, and I was named for my grandmother. But my mother raised me in silence. In the 1960s, there was no language for processing grief.” Ross-Dolen, who learned that language on her way to becoming a child psychiatrist and a writer, has processed more than grief in a just-published memoir, “Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter’s Search for Truth” (She Writes Press). It is a very personal account of the aftermath of a disaster that captured attention for a few days. Then the world moved on — for everyone else. Her mother’s parents, Garry and Mary Myers, ran the magazine Highlights for Children, which Garry Myers’s parents had started after World War II. Ross-Dolen said the trip to New York, with another Highlights executive, had a purpose. Her grandparents wanted to see about getting Highlights for Children on newsstands. They boarded a Trans World Airlines plane in Columbus, Ohio, where they lived and the magazine had its headquarters. New York was little more than 90 minutes away on the propeller-driven Super Constellation, and as it pushed through sleet and fog, air traffic controllers cleared it to descend to 5,000 feet on its way to landing at LaGuardia Airport.A different plane heading toward a different airport was also preparing to land — a United Airlines DC-8, bound for what was then known as Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport). The two aircraft should never have been less than three miles from each other. But the jet, which had transceiver trouble, was not over New Jersey, where the pilots and the air traffic controllers assumed it was. It was already over Staten Island. And then the two dots on the radar screen merged into one. In all, 134 people died — 128 passengers and crew members on the two planes, and 6 people on the ground in Brooklyn, where wreckage from the United plane landed in Park Slope. “There was one time in high school when I discovered my mother looking at old newspapers,” Ross-Dolen said. “I didn’t inquire. I didn’t try to find those articles.” But in 2008, with a little time on her hands, “I decided to sneak, almost like a kid, and see what had happened.” And by 2008, there was Google, which made her search easier. “I’m sure I was shaking when I was reading about it,” she said. Then, in 2010, as the 50th anniversary of the accident approached, she and her mother talked about it — to a reporter from The Columbus Dispatch, who had asked to interview her mother. “We were trying to hold ourselves together,” Ross-Dolen said. “It became less a mother-daughter thing and more partners in mourning.” In The New York Times’s articles about the anniversary, I wrote that it was “almost a ghost disaster, one without the universally shared imagery of the Titanic or the Hindenburg, one that is, in a strange way, nearly forgotten by those who weren’t there or touched directly by it.” Ross-Dolen was touched by it, even though she was born six years after it happened. She began working on her book after the monument was unveiled on the 50th anniversary of the crash. She said that seeing it again last week was “profound,” because she had a feeling of coming full circle. “Fourteen years ago, I was standing there with people who had been connected to the story of the accident,” she said. “This time, I was standing by myself, but I was also putting my story into the world.”

In a statement from his personal office on May 18, former President Joe Biden revealed he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. “While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” his office said in a statement. “The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.” Recent studies show that survival for men with prostate cancer that has spread to the bone is just under two years. But this form of cancer, though aggressive, can sometimes be controlled. Here's what oncologists who treat prostate cancer say are the most common strategies for treating a cancer like Biden's, and some of the challenges. Advertisement The latest ways to curb aggressive prostate cancer “The good news is this: we have now entered an era of different treatments that I call therapy intensification where we are trying to attack cancer with a multi-modality approach,” says Dr. Maha Hussain, deputy director of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We can come up with a significant prolongation of life by comparison to when I entered the field." She has seen patients with prostate cancer that has spread survive and "live many, many years.” Most prostate cancer is fueled by the male hormone testosterone, so the most effective strategies to control it starve the cancer by cutting off its supply, say experts. Historically, doctors have removed the testes—the main source of the hormone—but today, pills and injections can suppress testosterone not just in the testes but in other organs that produce small amounts, such as the adrenal glands, as well. Doctors also now add chemotherapy to hormone-suppression to better control cancer growth.

Alice Park by Alice Park Senior Correspondent The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will no longer recommend yearly COVID-19 vaccines for kids and most adults. In an editorial article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Vinay Prasad, the newly appointed head of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and research at the FDA, and Dr. Martin Makary, FDA commissioner, explained their plan for how the FDA will evaluate and recommend COVID-19 vaccines going forward. Until now, federal guidance has recommended that everyone six months or older receive a COVID-19 vaccine targeting the latest circulating version of the virus to maximize their chances of avoiding severe disease. Advertisement The new FDA leadership still recommends that groups at higher risk of being hospitalized or dying from COVID-19 receive yearly COVID-19 shots. This includes seniors, adults with weakened immune systems, and people with underlying health conditions like cancer. Some people in these groups may even qualify for a second shot in a given year, depending on their risk factors. But for people at lower risk, the FDA leadership is instead pushing for additional studies to test whether people in the general population who get an annual shot have fewer COVID-19 symptoms, less-severe cases, and fewer hospitalizations and deaths compared to those receiving a placebo. Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax, which make the COVID-19 vaccines, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the changes. “We simply don’t know whether a healthy 52-year old woman with a normal BMI who has had COVID-19 three times and has received six previous doses of a COVID-19 vaccine will benefit from the seventh dose," Prasad and Makary write in the editorial. "This policy will compel much-needed evidence generation.” Advertisement Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang Branded Content Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang By China Daily Read More: How Having a Baby Is Changing Under Trump Prasad and Makary write that the proposed studies would not interfere with the current timeline of approving the yearly COVID-19 vaccines, since they would be conducted after the vaccine is released in what the agency calls post-marketing studies. The FDA’s advisory committee of experts is meeting on May 22 to review data from the World Health Organization about which variants to target in next season’s vaccine, which would be distributed in the fall. Even if the additional studies won’t delay the availability of the next COVID-19 shot, they would place an additional burden on pharmaceutical companies to conduct another trial, which could add to the cost of the vaccine for the public, says Dr. Paul Offit, a member of that FDA advisory committee and professor at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Another challenge is that in order to conduct this type of trial, some people would have to receive a placebo and therefore potentially be less protected from COVID-19. “Anybody can catch this virus and be hospitalized and killed," Offit says. "We know the vaccine works and probably saved three million lives, and we know that the virus is still circulating and still causes harm.” Because of that continued risk, he says it’s not clear whether an institutional review board—which evaluates all study designs involving human volunteers—would consider this an ethical trial.

Acompany can offer all the free snacks and on-site massages in the world—but if the people don’t make you feel supported, you’re probably still not happy at your job. To an increasing extent, “the corporate world is understanding that relationships and the culture of relationships at work is the new competitive edge,” says Esther Perel, a psychotherapist who hosts the popular couples’ therapy podcast Where Should We Begin? In May, Perel shifted her focus from improving relationships at home to bettering those at work. She released a 100-question card game with prompts designed to get people to open up and share stories, in hopes of improving team dynamics and fixing a workplace’s culture. Each prompt targets one of her four pillars of healthy workplace relationships—trust, belonging, recognition, and collective resilience—and it’s designed to be played at an off-site meeting, while onboarding a new employee, during a one-on-one check-in, or at an after-work happy hour. “This goes way beyond your typical icebreaker,” Perel says: Telling personal stories at work can make people feel less siloed and improve collaboration. At the average all-hands meeting, for example, “You see where the eyes go, you see who's listening, you see the blank stares, you see people on their phone,” she says. “Once a person starts to tell a story, everybody's eyes lift. Now you come to life, you're interested, and you elicit curiosity.” Advertisement We asked Perel how to level up your workplace relationships—and she suggested starting with these seven questions. “What brings out the best in you?” Asking a colleague to share exactly what helps them excel is a “beautiful” way to grow your connection. “It demands some form of self-knowledge and self-awareness,” Perel says. To answer candidly, your colleague will need to understand what encourages, motivates, and pushes them. When you have that information, you no longer have to guess what they prefer; for example, you might learn that when they’re receiving feedback, they want you to get right into it rather than mincing your words. If a colleague asked Perel this question, her response would “tell you what I know about myself, what you should know about me, and how we can work better together,” she says. “It’s a question that builds trust and tells you what recognition is for me.

The world’s ice sheets are on course for runaway melting, leading to multiple feet of sea level rise and “catastrophic” migration away from coastlines, even if the world pulls off the miraculous and keeps global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to new research. A group of international scientists set out to establish what a “safe limit” of warming would be for the survival of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. They pored over studies that took data from satellites, climate models and evidence from the past, from things like ice cores, deep-sea sediments and even octopus DNA. What they found painted a dire picture. The world has pledged to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. However, not only is this limit speeding out of reach — the world is currently on track for up to 2.9 degrees of warming by 2100. But the most alarming finding of the study, published Tuesday in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, is that 1.5 might not even be good enough to save the ice sheets. Even if the world sustains today’s level of warming, at 1.2 degrees, it could still trigger rapid ice sheet retreat and catastrophic sea level rise, the scientists found. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets together hold enough fresh water to raise global sea levels by around 213 feet — an unlikely scenario but one that must be acknowledged to fully understand the risk. Since the 1990s, the amount of ice they’ve lost has quadrupled; they are currently losing around 370 billion tons a year. Ice sheet melting is the dominant contributor to rising seas and the rate of annual sea level rise has doubled over the past 30 years. Multiple studies suggest 1.5 degrees of warming is “far too high” to prevent rapid ice sheet retreat that would be irreversible on human timescales, and the world should prepare for many feet of sea level rise over the coming centuries, according to the study. “You don’t slow sea level rise at 1.5, in fact, you see quite a rapid acceleration,” said Chris Stokes, a study author and glaciologist at Durham University. It’s an existential threat to the world’s coastal populations. Around 230 million people live less than 1 meter (3.2 feet) above sea level. Even small changes in the amount of ice held in the ice sheets will “profoundly alter” global coastlines, displacing hundreds of millions of people and causing damage that stretches the limits of adaptation, the study found. Seas could surge by 0.4 inches a year by the end of the century, within the lifetimes of young people now, the scientists found. At this level, which equates to 40 inches a century, “you’re going to see massive land migration on scales that we’ve never witnessed since modern civilization,” said Jonathan Bamber, a study author and glaciologist at the University of Bristol. There are still huge uncertainties about where tipping points lie. The way climate change unfolds is not linear and it’s unclear exactly when warming might trigger rapid retreat and even collapse. What’s hugely concerning, the study authors say, is that the best estimates of “safe” temperature thresholds for saving the ice sheets keep going down as scientists better understand their vulnerability to climate change. Early modeling suggested temperatures would need to hit around 3 degrees of warming to destabilize the Greenland ice sheet, for example, but recent estimates suggest it would only take around 1.5 degrees. To avoid the rapid collapse of one of more ice sheets means limiting global warming to closer to 1 degree above pre-industrial levels, the study authors concluded. This would require drastic cuts to the amount of fossil fuels humans burn, something which looks exceptionally unlikely as countries including the US continue to embrace oil, coal and gas. The world is already starting to see some of the worst-case scenarios play out in terms of ice loss, Stokes said. “There’s very little that we’re observing that gives us hope here,” he said. “The absolute best-case scenario is that sea level rise is slow and steady,” he added. The findings don’t mean the world should give up on climate targets, as every fraction of a degree of warming translates to worse impacts, Stokes said. “Limiting warming to 1.5 will be a major achievement. It should absolutely be our target, but in no sense will it slow or stop sea level rise and melting ice sheets.”

Sometime between today and 200 years from now, scientists say “the big one” will hit the United States. There is danger lurking on the sea floor off the Pacific Northwest’s coast: After centuries of two tectonic plates pushing up against each other, the Cascadia subduction zone that runs from Northern California all the way up to British Columbia is due to rupture — possibly in our lifetimes. “We know that we have the potential for a really massive scale earthquake, the largest we’ve ever seen on the planet,” said Harold Tobin, a professor at the University of Washington and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. “We know that the Pacific Northwest has that possibility.” The resulting earthquake could be a devastating magnitude 9.0, and the subsequent tsunami could be 100 feet high, overwhelming coastal cities and towns. Around 13,800 people could die and more than 100,000 others could be injured, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has estimated. In short, it could be the worst natural disaster the United States has seen in modern times. And many scientists say we are less prepared for it than ever before. The league of experts and scientists who have spent decades keeping watch — the guardians at the gate — is being decimated by the Trump administration’s staffing cuts. It’s not just earthquakes and tsunamis; experts who sound the alarm for volcano eruptions say the cuts will be felt most when there’s a crisis. The scientists who watch the sun for invisible-yet-crippling solar storms are not just losing staff; they face being moved into an entirely different agency. A spokesperson for US Geological Survey, the federal agency tasked with monitoring earthquakes and volcanoes, declined to comment on personnel matters in a statement to CNN, but added it “remains committed to its congressional mandate as the science arm of the Department of the Interior.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees tsunamis and solar storms, did not return a request for comment from CNN. In addition, new spending restrictions for some federal agencies are creating extra hoops for scientists to jump through to fix earthquake seismographs and deep ocean sensors that capture how fast tsunami waves are traveling, four separate people with knowledge of the situation told CNN. The same goes for equipment that monitors earth tremors before volcanoes erupt. “We are already underprepared for these events,” said Corina Allen, the former tsunami program manager at NOAA’s National Weather Service Tsunami Program. Allen was recently fired from her position, like thousands of other probationary federal employees who had been on the job less than a year. “Being able to detect forecast and alert people of an incoming tsunami will save hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands of lives,” Allen added. “That is the impact. That is the risk we face by reducing the capability to do this work at NOAA.” Here’s more on four major earth hazards that experts are warning will get tougher to plan for due to staffing cuts and funding restrictions. Earthquakes A network of roughly 800 seismographs in the West is the first line of defense against “the big one.” It senses shaking and movement deep underground, alerting scientists when tremors occur. “Many of (the sensors) have to be in remote locations,” Tobin said. “Up on mountaintop, the back end of a logging road. It’s pretty rugged terrain. And every one of them needs maintenance one way or another.” Teams of scientists from the USGS typically go out every summer to fix broken instruments or dig them out of deep snow. It’s gotten more difficult after federal workers there and at other agencies were told they could spend no more than $1 on any single expense, making that critical task increasingly difficult. There are loopholes to the limit, but getting travel approved has become onerous, and a culture of fear is spreading through the agency, a person familiar with the matter told CNN, creating more of a barrier to getting the work done. Tobin, who along with USGS oversees the ShakeAlert early warning system for major earthquakes, is particularly worried about what could happen if Trump’s budget passes without funding for the program. “We wouldn’t be able to have the staff we have right now without that funding,” Tobin said. “All by itself, it represents something like 50% of my budget.” Without enough staff or funding for maintenance to support the ShakeAlert system, “it wouldn’t shut off on day one, but I don’t know how long it would sustain,” Tobin said. Tsunamis Tsunamis are deadly disasters that can emerge from an earthquake in the ocean — giant waves that push far inland, inundating miles of normally dry land. Similar to the seismographs scattered along the West coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps a network of sensors deep in the ocean, designed to alert scientists when a tsunami wave rolls through. NOAA’s two tsunami warning centers and the National Weather Service program working to modernize their outdated software systems have been hit with probationary firings and several staffers taking the so-called “buyouts,” according to Corina Allen, who used to work as the tsunami program manager at NWS. The 24/7 monitoring centers were already thinly staffed, Allen said, and the further reductions are deeply concerning, especially given the threat of an earthquake and tsunami in the Pacific Northwest. “These programs are already at the bare bones,” Allen said. “They’ve been reduced; they’ve been cut. The vacancies haven’t been filled.” At the time she was fired, Allen was tasked with modernizing the tsunami warning program’s software to integrate it more seamlessly into the alerts system used by the National Weather Service — a critical upgrade to help get alerts out to communities faster. “These staff cuts and the potential budget cuts make the United States more at risk for a tsunami and earthquake, and they will have devastating impacts for coastal populations and the US economy,” Allen said. Volcanoes The Kilauea volcano in Hawaii has been erupting on and off since last year – spewing lava and ash. USGS, which monitors volcanoes in addition to earthquakes, predicts more eruptions to come, according to its website. Its scientists are also closely watching Great Sitkin, a volcano in Alaska’s islands that has been slowly spewing lava since it began erupting in 2021. Another volcano that’s actively being monitored right now is Alaska’s Mt. Spurr, where small volcanic earthquakes have been recently detected. There are two main USGS offices monitoring volcano activity – one in Hawaii and the other in Alaska. Some USGS volcano scientists have taken the deferred resignation program, according to Jeff Freymueller, a professor at Michigan State University who used to work at the Alaska Volcano Observatory and who remains in touch with the remaining USGS staff. The volcano observatories are monitored 24/7, and if there is a big volcanic eruption, it turns into an all-hands-on-deck situation. “The staffing shortages will be made much, much worse when there’s a volcanic crisis, because you simply need to bring everybody on board to cover the workload,” Freymueller said. For now, data is continuing to flow. But Freymueller is watching to see if seismograph maintenance happens this summer. He says, “they’re hoping that there’s been enough blood to appease the higher ups so that there won’t be further” staff cuts. Solar storms While many of the biggest hazards that take constant monitoring happen on earth, there are others in the cosmos. Particularly, from our sun. Solar storms happen when the sun flings plasma and other charged particles carrying the sun’s magnetic field toward Earth. The resulting storms, which are otherwise invisible to the naked eye, can create awe-inspiring auroras, but can wreak havoc on our electric grids and radio systems. And these kinds of storms have been happening more because the sun is in a particularly active phase. There are roughly a dozen experts who work at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, with generally two scientists on any given 24-hour shift. They have recently lost three employees, according to Tim Keebler, a space weather researcher at the University of Michigan. “They’re wildly understaffed for a small team,” Keebler said. More big changes could be coming to the program, which is one of just a handful like it in the world. The Trump administration has proposed moving it from NOAA to the Department of Homeland Security. The program is preparing to launch a new satellite to better measure and predict space weather, but so much uncertainty could threaten the future of a small but important program. “Many, many people rely on these few people at this one office,” Keebler said. “It’s the power companies, it’s the satellite operators, cell phone operators, railroad companies.”

At a time when some of the most powerful people in the country have made “DEI” into a four-letter word, the NFL claims it’s standing firm in its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Recent developments make it fair to ask whether the NFL is truly committed, or whether the NFL is simply trying to thread a needle that is getting smaller all the time. The latest news came from the league’s cancellation of the 2025 version of the accelerator program, which puts minority candidates in front of owners during the May meetings. The NFL issued a statement last week that attempted to create a “nothing to see here” vibe, explaining that the program was stopped for a year in an effort to make it better next year. Another view would be that doing it is still better than not doing it, and that it could have been held in its current form in 2025 as usual and changes could still be made for 2026. Jarrett Bell of USA Today has taken a closer look at the league’s mixed signals. On a subject where the league tries to say all the right things, the actions aren’t completely meshing with the words. “I realize that people are going to look at [the cancellation of the 2025 accelerator program] and say, ‘These people are backing off,’” Steelers owner Art Rooney II told Bell. “That’s not going to happen. There’s nothing I can really do about that perception, except to say that we’re still not satisfied with where we are, and we recognize that we still have work to do.” Both the perception and the reality when it comes to the league’s hiring practices for key positions like coach and General Manager have been equally bad over the years. Not long before former Dolphins coach Brian Flores put his career on the line by filing a landmark racial discrimination case against the NFL and multiple teams, NFL executive V.P. of football operations Troy Vincent provided a damning admission that was highlighted in Flores’s civil complaint. “There is a double standard, and we’ve seen that,” Vincent said. “And you talk about the appetite for what’s acceptable. Let’s just go back to . . . Coach [Tony] Dungy was let go in Tampa Bay after a winning season. . . Coach [Steve] Wilks, just a few years prior, was let go after one year . . . Coach [Jim] Caldwell was fired after a winning season in Detroit . . . It is part of the larger challenges that we have. But when you just look over time, it’s over-indexing for men of color. These men have been fired after a winning season. How do you explain that? There is a double standard. I don’t think that that is something that we should shy away from. But that is all part of some of the things that we need to fix in the system. We want to hold everyone to why does one, let’s say, get the benefit of the doubt to be able to build or take bumps and bruises in this process of getting a franchise turned around when others are not afforded that latitude? . . . [W]e’ve seen that in history at the [professional] level.” Since Flores filed his lawsuit in 2022, the NFL has been trying to change its ways. The problem, as of 2025, is that a full-throated commitment to DEI can result in an executive order at worst — and a rambling, nonsensical, all-caps social media assault at best. Speaking of rambling and nonsensical, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones provided some quotes to Bell regarding the impact of the political assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion. “I don’t want to . . . I think it just makes us all aware,” Jones told Bell. “The emphasis the president puts on it just makes us all aware and thinking about it.” What’s there to think about? Whether to remain committed to diversity? Or whether to find a way to tiptoe through a field full of mines planted by those who would like to 86 DEI? “I know you’re saying, ‘Was this a reaction to that? And the timing of it?’” Jones told Bell regarding the cancellation of the accelerator program for 2025. “I don’t believe and have seen nothing from talking to anybody, that this is a reaction to that. I think you’d be naïve if you didn’t think the Supreme Court decisions have impacted decisions all over the country. The issue of technically, how and what you’re doing, I think that’s a lot more influenced than anything our president is talking about. . . . You see what I’m saying? The overall direction the Supreme Court took, that whole area would be a bigger impact.” Jones is referring to the Supreme Court’s ruling from 2023 limiting race-conscious admissions practices for colleges and universities. Which is one of the unsurprising outcomes of a Supreme Court that has been stacked with the kind of conservative, business-friendly justices to whom someone like Jones would gift a Super Bowl ring and then act like it’s not part of a broader effort to ensure that the Supreme Court’s body of work will be favorable to the interests of America’s oligarchs. The challenge for the NFL is to create a P.R. strategy that pushes the idea that they’re trying to increase and promote diversity, while also discreetly waging legal battles aimed at minimizing liability. It’s one of the reasons why the league always tries to pull any civil action against it from the true independence of the court system and into the secret, rigged, kangaroo court of arbitration, where the Commissioner is the one who hands out (and sometimes wears) the black robe. Here’s the NFL’s apparent DEI playbook: Say one thing, do another. And then, when the thing you do gets noticed and criticized, say whatever you have to say to explain it all away. That approach works, until it doesn’t. With the top of the executive branch currently going scorched earth on DEI, the tentpoles of the NFL’s P.R. effort are being quietly knocked down. Beyond the decision to abandon the accelerator in 2025 under the guise of making it better for 2026, the NFL didn’t conduct during the 2025 annual meeting (as Bell notes) a media briefing from the diversity committee, which Rooney chairs. The reason for that seems obvious. Anything the NFL would have said during the briefing to pat itself on the back when it comes to DEI efforts could (and quite possibly would) have been used against it, if/when the Commander-in-Tweet had happened to notice it while scrolling through his phone from the golden throne with a hole in the middle of the seat.

President Trump wanted a quick solution to his Air Force One problem. The United States signed a $3.9 billion contract with Boeing in 2018 for two jets to be used as Air Force One, but a series of delays had slowed the work far past the 2024 delivery deadline, possibly beyond Mr. Trump’s second term. Now Mr. Trump had to fly around in the same old planes that transported President George H.W. Bush 35 years ago. It wasn’t just a vanity project. Those planes, which are no longer in production, require extensive servicing and frequent repairs, and officials from both parties, reaching back a decade or more, had been pressing for replacements. Mr. Trump, though, wanted a new plane while he was still in office. But how? “We’re the United States of America,” Mr. Trump said this month. “I believe that we should have the most impressive plane.” The story of how the Trump administration decided that it would accept a free luxury Boeing 747-8 from Qatar to serve as Air Force One involved weeks of secret coordination between Washington and Doha. The Pentagon and the White House’s military office swung into action, and Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, played a key role. Soon after Mr. Trump took office, military officials started to discuss how the United States could buy a temporary plane for Mr. Trump to use while Boeing’s work creaked along, an investigation by The New York Times found. But by May 11, when the president announced on social media that Qatar would be providing the plane to the United States, he characterized it as “a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE.” There are lingering questions about how much financial sense the still-unsigned deal would make, given the costs of refitting the plane for presidential use and operating it over the long run — or even whether the plane could be ready for Mr. Trump to use before the end of his second term. The outlines of the arrangement that emerged have also drawn condemnation from both Democrats and Republicans in Washington, as well as ethics lawyers, who said it looked either like Mr. Trump himself was taking the gift or that the Qataris were using it to curry favor with the administration. And it remains unclear exactly how a plan that Pentagon officials and others inside the administration initially assumed would involve buying the plane from Qatar morphed into a proposed gift by the Middle Eastern nation. Editors’ Picks How Much Notice Do You Have to Give Your Landlord? Should You Fly Through Newark Airport? Here’s What You Need to Know. How a Sustainable Clothing Entrepreneur Spends Her Sundays Qatar has denied any intention of using the transaction as part of an influence campaign, and Mr. Trump has said he would not use the plane after leaving office. Some elements of the effort to acquire the plane were reported earlier by CNN. Interviews with 14 people involved in or briefed on the search for the replacement plane say it started when the White House Military Office, which oversees presidential travel, worked with Boeing and the Defense Department to compile a list of every late-model 747 on the market with a business-jet layout, which could more quickly be retrofitted into a presidential plane. There were only eight planes in the world that fit the bill, including a flashy double-decker jet that Qatar had been trying to sell for several years, with no luck. A brochure for the aircraft advertised just the kind of opulence Mr. Trump favors. There were “soft fabrics of the highest quality” in the bedroom, along with “luxurious leather and exquisite wood veneers” and a “lavishly designed” bathroom that is “almost a piece of art.” The emir of Qatar had donated the same make and model to Turkey in 2018 as a gesture of support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr. Erdogan had stood by Doha as the country’s bitter rivals in the region cut off diplomatic and transport ties with Qatar, effectively isolating it. But this second 747 was still available for sale. Mr. Witkoff, an old friend from Mr. Trump’s early days in New York real estate, knew the Qataris well. The country’s sovereign wealth fund had bailed him out in 2023 when a real estate deal on Central Park South went bad.

A violent, tornado-spawning storm system tore across the central US, leaving at least 25 people dead in Missouri and southeastern Kentucky as it cut a path of destruction through several states. The storm made its way towards Kansas and Oklahoma late Sunday, where significant damage was reported in Grinnell, a town some 250 miles west of Wichita. Photos show severely damaged homes, blocked roads and overturned vehicles. One image shows a local church with its roof blown off. Parts of the I-70 and Kansas Highway northwest of the state have been closed due to downed power lines near Grinnell, according to roadway tracker KanDrive. In the small town of Plevna, roughly 60 miles from Wichita, Reno County Sheriff Darrian Campbell said a passing tornado Sunday night caused significant damage to homes. “We did have a tornado touch down and travel approximately 12 miles and went through a small town of Plevna,” Campbell said in an email to CNN. There are no reports of injuries in Kansas, where a life-threatening tornado alert was issued for the cities of Sylvia, Plevna, and Abbyville until roughly midnight CST. CNN has reached out to state authorities for more details. Over the weekend, 18 deaths were reported in Kentucky, just hours after authorities announced seven fatalities in the St. Louis, Missouri area. Two additional deaths were reported in northern Virginia. Both fatalities were caused by trees falling onto vehicles, one in Fairfax County and another on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, Fairfax County police and the United States Park Police said. The storms damaged homes and downed power lines across the Midwest and Great Lakes, brought by the same system that produced destructive storms and tornadoes Thursday. Over 100,000 homes and businesses across five states were without power as of Sunday night, with Missouri, Michigan and Arkansas among the hardest hit, according to Poweroutage.us. The same storm system hit Colorado Sunday afternoon, producing at least two tornadoes. Homes and buildings in Arapahoe, Adams and Elbert County were damaged or lost, according the counties’ sheriff’s offices. No injuries were reported. It’s part of a multiday spate of widespread severe weather stretching into early next week. As the system that generated deadly tornadoes in Missouri and Kentucky loses strength, another round of severe storms is expected near the border with Mexico, thrusting more than 20 million Americans across the Southwest in the risk zone. Southeastern Kentucky hit hard The National Weather Service reported a radar-confirmed, “large, extremely dangerous” tornado sweeping east across lower Kentucky shortly after midnight. Video and photos from southeastern Kentucky show a trail of destruction that began in Pulaski County before moving east into neighboring Laurel County, leaving at least 18 dead and 10 in critical condition across the state. Videos showed widespread damage to buildings, cars, trees and infrastructure in the wake of the possible tornado. “I’ve now been governor for at least 14 federally declared disasters, 13 of them weather. And this is one of the worst,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said at a news conference Saturday evening. “It’s one of the worst in terms of the loss of human life. It’s one of the worst in terms of damage.” Beshear has declared a state of emergency in the state and requested a federal disaster declaration. Mahala Watts told CNN affiliate WLKY her family was watching the news after 11 p.m. Friday when their phones started blaring with tornado warnings. She grabbed the dog, and her family took cover in the bathroom in the center of their home in Laurel County. The storm suddenly roared over her house – as the family was “breathing in all the debris.” They got on their hands and knees, Watts told the station. A bathroom mirror fell on Watts before the roar went silent. “We were just kind of praying, you know, scared it was going to come back,” she said. “We had no idea the roof was gone. The fridge was blocking the bathroom door.” Watts told WLKY her family climbed over the refrigerator and stood outside in the dark, fearing another hit. Cars were overturned and debris was strewn about. They used a relative’s car to get to a hospital where they sought refuge before making it to a hotel after the storm passed. Drone video over London, Kentucky, at daylight Saturday showed a vast wasteland of damaged and overturned vehicles and flattened homes as first responders searched heaps of rubble for possible survivors. London is about 75 miles south of Lexington. At the London-Corbin Airport, several planes were damaged and a medical helicopter was destroyed, CNN affiliate WLKY reported, adding officials said at least one airplane was pulled into a funnel cloud. Hangars and other buildings were leveled. In another video from Laurel County, first responders are seen descending on the Sunshine Hills area, a barren landscape of twisted cars, downed trees and piles of debris. Seventeen deaths were reported in Laurel County, including in London, Mayor Randall Weddle told CNN affiliate WKYT. Among those who died was Maj. Leslie Roger Leatherman of the Laurel County Fire Department, who had been responding to the storm, the governor said Saturday. “I have never personally witnessed what I’ve witnessed here tonight. There’s a lot of devastation,” Weddle told WKYT. Police in Corbin, south of London, were responding to mutual aid calls for tornado victims and described the devastation as overwhelming. “Stop and pray for Laurel County residents and victims of the tornado that touched down there,” the department wrote. Pulaski County Judge Executive Marshall Todd declared a state of emergency, and crews are working on cleanup efforts, county spokesperson John Alexander told CNN. One person was reported dead in the county. Heavy damage can be seen in Somerset, a city in Pulaski County to the west of London, where emergency officials urged residents to stay indoors. “The southern side of the city has been hit by a possible tornado!” the Somerset Fire Department posted on social media around 11 p.m. Friday. “Please avoid the area, poles and power lines are down!” St. Louis has massive damage A storm that produced a devastating tornado in the St. Louis area Friday afternoon has left five people dead and many others injured, according to local authorities. The EF3 tornado traveled at least 8 miles, according to an initial survey conducted by the National Weather Service. “We’re just a city that’s really grieving,” the city’s new mayor, Cara Spencer, told reporters Saturday. About 5,000 buildings have been impacted by the severe weather but she noted, “This community is coming together in a truly, truly amazing way.” Spencer called the event “one of the worst storms” in the city’s history. A curfew will remain in place overnight and thousands of homes and businesses still have no power. Nearly 40 people were injured, the mayor said. A state of emergency was declared in the city, and officials are seeking a federal major disaster declaration. More than 130 miles to the south of St. Louis, in Scott County, two others were killed during Friday’s storms, Sheriff Derick Wheetley announced on social media. Several others were taken to medical facilities, “with injuries ranging from minor to severe,” the sheriff added. “The tornado moved from the eastern part of the county, leaving behind a trail of destruction, with multiple homes completely lost and areas left unrecognizable,” the sheriff said. The devastation occurred after a tornado warning was issued at 2:34 p.m. Friday and a “likely tornado” touched down seven to eight minutes later, said Ben Herzog, a science and operations officer with the National Weather Service. One St. Louis resident, Cindy Spellman, told CNN her niece was in her apartment when the storm hit. Damage from the Friday storm is seen in St. Louis. Damage from the Friday storm is seen in St. Louis. Cindy Spellman “When the sirens sounded, she went to the basement of her building,” Spellman said. When her niece returned to her apartment, “she had to push her way inside because the tornado had thrown all of her furniture to the far walls.” They helped clean up after the storm passed and had to park over a mile away due to road closures, Spellman said. Dirt, glass and debris from trees and nearby homes coated everything inside the apartment and building. It took more than four hours to secure her niece’s apartment, clean it and remove her necessary belongings before dark. Another resident, Joan Miller Hitt, was in her home Friday when it was torn apart like a dollhouse. When a large tree outside started swaying violently and all the doors shut like in the movie “Carrie,” Miller Hitt and her husband took shelter in a bathroom. Seconds later, “the whole back of the house was gone.” Miller Hitt said she never saw it coming. “I never had any fear of anything happening to that house with a storm because of where I live and the sound structure of the house,” she told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield on Saturday afternoon. “I go between being overwhelmed, shocked, teary.” Gov. Mike Kehoe said he has already been in contact with federal officials about disaster relief. The American Red Cross opened three shelters in St. Louis for storm and tornado victims, the nonprofit announced Saturday. First responders looking for victims or people in distress searched about 4,000 residences. More technical searches with boom microphones and cameras were being conducted Saturday. One victim was identified as Patricia Pendleton, who had been serving lunches before the storm caused a roof to collapse at Centennial Christian Church, her family told. Sarah Russell, commissioner of the City Emergency Management Agency in St. Louis, said some of the tornado sirens did not go off Friday, which will be investigated. “We’re looking into that,” she told reporters Saturday. The focus now is on life-saving measures in the community, she added. The citywide system of tornado sirens was being replaced and had undergone testing on Thursday. Residents were encouraged to rely on multiple warning systems, including mobile apps and weather radio, she said. The National Weather Service is surveying the damage and has no information on the intensity but estimated winds reached 100 mph. Herzog’s message for residents: “I think the biggest thing would be staying away if you don’t need to be around.” Damaging storm risks persist As the system that hit Missouri and Kentucky weakens and pushes across the Southeast, another round of severe storms threatens the Great Plains and Texas. The level 3 of 5 threat of severe storms will affect the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex Saturday evening, with large hail, damaging winds and the potential for tornadoes. The possibility of more severe weather stretches through Tuesday in the Great Plains and the lower Mississippi River Valley. The Plains will remain the main focus of severe weather on Sunday and Monday as well as the storms passing through Oklahoma and Kansas. The severe thunderstorm threat will then shift back into parts of the Mississippi Valley on Tuesday.

The 49ers and linebacker Fred Warner have made it across the goal line. According to multiple reports, Warner and San Francisco have agreed to a three-year extension, keeping the linebacker under contract through 2029. It was reported on Sunday that the two sides were close to a deal. The initial Monday afternoon reports indicate Warner will make $63 million on his new contract with $56 million guaranteed. Warner, 28, was seeking a new deal despite having two years remaining on his previous contract. But with a $29.2 million cap hit in 2025, it behooved both sides to get an extension done. A third-round pick in 2018, Warner has become one of the league’s best at his position. He’s been an AP first-team All-Pro for three consecutive seasons and four times overall. He also has not missed a game since 2021, playing 94 percent of San Francisco’s defensive snaps in 2024. In 115 career games, Warner has recorded 36 tackles for loss, 30 QB hits, 10.0 sacks, 15 forced fumbles, and 10 interceptions. The 49ers have now reached extensions with Warner, quarterback Brock Purdy, and tight end George Kittle over the last few weeks.