Elon Musk could be on track for a $1trn (£761bn) pay package – if Tesla meets a series of extremely ambitious targets over the next 10 years.The Latest News from the UK and Around the World | Sky News
Month: November 2025
Three prisoners have been charged with the murder of a child killer found dead in his cell.The Latest News from the UK and Around the World | Sky News
It’s a year since the US put Donald Trump back in the White House and I’ve spent this anniversary week in Florida and in Pennsylvania – two worlds in one country where I found two such contrasting snapshots of Trump’s America.The Latest News from the UK and Around the World | Sky News
ITV has revealed talks with Sky, the owner of Sky News, over the possible sale of its media and entertainment (M&E) division in a deal worth £1.6bn.The Latest News from the UK and Around the World | Sky News
Public safety is “at risk” because more inmates are being sent to prisons with minimal security, a serving governor has warned – as details emerge of another manhunt for a foreign national offender.The Latest News from the UK and Around the World | Sky News
AP- U.S. airlines began canceling hundreds of flights Thursday due to the Federal Aviation Administration’s order to reduce traffic at the country’s busiest airports starting Friday because of the government shutdown.
Airports that will see cuts include Anchorage International and Seattle Tacoma, both directly affecting Alaskan travelers.
More than 500 flights scheduled for Friday were already cut nationwide, and the number of cancellations climbed steadily throughout Thursday, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions.
The FAA order to cut flights at 40 of the busiest airports across the U.S. includes New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, according to a list distributed to the airlines and obtained by The Associated Press. But the impact will disrupt travel at many smaller airports too.
The FAA seeks to reduce service by 10% across “high-volume” markets to maintain travel safety as air traffic controllers exhibit signs of strain during the shutdown. The move also comes as the Trump administration is ramping up pressure on Democrats in Congress to end the shutdown.
Airlines will phase in the 10% reduction in their flight schedules at the airports across more than two dozen states. Just hours before the reductions went into place, airlines were scrambling to figure out where to cut and some travelers began changing or canceling itineraries preemptively.
Travelers with plans for the weekend and beyond waited nervously to see if their flights would take off as scheduled.
The affected airports included busy connecting hubs and those in popular tourist destinations, such as Atlanta, Denver, Orlando, Miami and San Francisco. In some of the biggest cities — such as Dallas, Houston and Chicago — multiple airports will be affected.
Flight cuts will begin gradually
Airlines will phase in the cuts at the direction of the FAA, eliminating 4% of flights at the 40 airports on Friday and working up to 10%, according to three people familiar with the plans who were not authorized to discuss them publicly.
Delta Air Lines said it planned to cancel roughly 170 flights Friday. By late Thursday afternoon, United Airlines had called off 145 flights and American Airlines had canceled 32 for Friday, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
The FAA had not yet published an official order as of the afternoon.
Some airlines planned to focus on slashing routes to and from small and medium-size cities.
“This is going to have a noticeable impact across the U.S. air transportation system,” industry analyst Henry Harteveldt said.
The flight reductions just weeks before the busy holiday season prompted some travelers to change their plans or looking at other options.
Fallon Carter canceled her Friday flight from New York to Tampa, Florida, where she planned to spend the weekend at the beach. She was worried about making it back to Long Island to be a bridesmaid at her best friend’s wedding.
“I don’t know if I get there, will I get home?” Carter said.
The FAA is imposing the reductions to relieve pressure on air traffic controllers who are working without pay during the shutdown, which began Oct. 1, and have been increasingly taking sick days. Most controllers work mandatory overtime six days a week, leaving little time for side jobs to help cover bills unless they call out.
In recent weeks the FAA has delayed flights when airports or its other facilities are short on controllers.
Shuffling schedules
Airlines said they would try to minimize impact on customers, some of whom will see weekend travel plans disrupted with little notice.
United, Delta and American were among carriers that said they would offer refunds to passengers who opt not to fly, even if they purchased nonrefundable tickets.
The head of Frontier Airlines recommended that travelers buy backup tickets with another airline to avoid being stranded.
The cuts also could disrupt package deliveries because two airports with major distribution centers are on the list — FedEx operates at the airport in Memphis, Tennessee, and UPS in Louisville, Kentucky, the site of this week’s deadly cargo plane crash.
The cuts could affect as many as 1,800 flights, or upward of 268,000 passengers, per day, according to an estimate from Cirium.
Airlines are used to dealing with canceling thousands of flights on short notice during severe weather, but the difference now is that these cuts during the shutdown will last indefinitely until safety data improves.
Shutdown already straining travel
The shutdown is putting unnecessary strain on the system and damaging confidence in the U.S. air travel experience, said U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman.
Kelly Matthews, who lives in Flat Rock, Michigan, and frequently flies for work, said she has canceled most of her upcoming trips and understands why federal airport employees have stopped showing up.
“You can’t expect people to go in to work when they’re not getting a paycheck for the continuation of over a month now,” she said. “I mean it’s not a matter of them not wanting to do the job — but you can’t afford to pay for gas, your day care and everything else.”
Controller staffing worsening
The past weekend brought some of the worst staffing issues since the start of the shutdown.
From Friday to Sunday evening, at least 39 air traffic control facilities reported potential staffing limits, according to an AP analysis of operations plans shared through the Air Traffic Control System Command Center system. The figure, which is likely an undercount, was well above the average for weekends before the shutdown.
NOTN- The City and Borough of Juneau’s Assembly began early budget discussions on Wednesday, bracing for a projected $6 million loss following the passage of two ballot measures exempting food and utilities from local sales tax.
Finance Committee Chair Christine Woll said the Assembly convened sooner than usual, typically, the city begins its budget process in December to address the significant fiscal impact of the new exemptions, which take effect next month.
“When food and utilities become tax exempt for residents here next month that will, impact the amount of money the city is taking in.” Woll said, “And essentially the high-level message coming out of that meeting was the assembly wants to use those extra savings we ended up with at the end of last year to take our time, to really look at our whole city budget with the public and talk about what priorities we have before making any large cuts.”
Still, Woll said city departments have been directed to “tighten spending” and pause new projects until the Assembly determines long-term strategies to balance the budget.
“You won’t be seeing the pool hours changing, or any of our facilities being shut down immediately.” Said Woll, “As we think towards next year, we will see significant service reductions, and we don’t want to make those decisions too early before getting a lot of input from our community. But you know, in anticipation of some big cuts, we asked our city manager to be pretty conservative.”
Woll added that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fully fund Phase Two of the HESCO barrier flood protection project helped to relieve financial pressure, but doesn’t have any impact on the city’s budget.
“We really didn’t have funding in place for it, and so it was going to be very complicated, especially with the ballot initiative passing, that had really tied our hands.” she said, “Unfortunately, because it wasn’t in our budget, it doesn’t replace any funding. It doesn’t give us more funding, but it does mean that we can move forward with a project that otherwise I’m not sure we were going to be able to do.”
By: Jacob Fischler, States Newsroom
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will reduce the largest monthly food assistance payments by about 35% in November, a smaller decrease than the department initially estimated, according to a court filing late Wednesday.
That means the maximum monthly benefit likely would be roughly two-thirds of the usual benefit flowing to recipients, rather than the half initially projected.
USDA miscalculated how to adjust benefit payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to account for a lack of full funding during the government shutdown, a department official said in a filing to the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island.
The formula the government initially used and sent to states Tuesday would have resulted in about a 50% cut to the maximum monthly benefits, and left some households without benefits.
SNAP pays benefits on a sliding scale depending on the size of a household, the household’s income and other expenses such as housing. By cutting the maximum benefit by one-half, the department would have spent about $3 billion from a SNAP contingency fund instead of the full $4.65 billion in the fund, which is what the court ordered it to spend.
The error was first reported to U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. by the coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations that sued to force the government to pay SNAP benefits this month.
An analysis submitted by Sharon Parrott, a former White House budget officer who now leads the left-leaning think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, showed that the table the department submitted to the court and sent to states on Tuesday would fall short of the court’s order to spend the entire contingency fund.
The groups said the department’s error was another reason the court should compel the government to transfer funds to pay out full benefits for November.
“Defendants’ approach means that only around $3 billion—out of the $4.65 billion Defendants have said is available—will be spent on SNAP benefits in November, leaving more than $1.5 billion in contingency funds unspent,” they wrote in a Wednesday brief. “Defendants opted for partial (and delayed) SNAP payments, but even then, did not manage to do that correctly.”
The department said in its filing later Wednesday that it independently discovered its miscalculation and worked to fix it before Parrott’s declaration hit the court docket.
“Defendants realized this error and worked to issue new guidance and tables as soon as it was discovered, not in response to Plaintiffs’ notice filed earlier this evening,” USDA’s brief said.
The parties are scheduled to argue before McConnell again Thursday afternoon.
This report will be updated.
By: James Brooks, Alaska Beacon
The number of people working in Alaska’s famed seafood industry has set a new record low, surpassing last year’s record low, according to figures published this month by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development in its magazine, Alaska Economic Trends.
In 2024, an average of 5,393 people were employed as fishers, processors or other seafood workers each month in Alaska, wrote analyst Joshua Warren. That’s down by 443 jobs from the same figure in 2023.
Alaska remains the No. 1 seafood producer among U.S. states, according to federal statistics, and produces more seafood than every other state combined.
The state department of labor has kept a monthly tally of seafood jobs in the state since 2001, and industry employment has been in a steady decline since 2019 due to a variety of factors, including a lack of available fish, competition from cheaper international sources, and high operating costs that can make fishing uneconomic.
Since the start of 2001, the high point of fishing employment was in 2015, when an average of 8,501 people were employed in the seafood industry each month.
Historically, seafood employment was significantly higher due to reduced rates of automation and the fact that Alaska seafood tended to be processed and packaged locally.
The modern trend has been toward direct export and processing internationally, where wages are lower.
Seafood employment in Alaska is extremely seasonal, with a peak in June and July during the salmon season and a low ebb in December, before a new season of fishing in federal waters offshore.
In July 2024, only 17,361 people worked in the Alaska seafood industry, the lowest annual peak on record since January 2021. In July 2013, the highest peak, more than 25,000 people were employed in the state’s seafood industry.
NOTN- The Juneau Assembly held a Committee of the Whole meeting Monday night and among a number of meaty topics, reviewed Goldbelt Inc.’s proposal to develop a large-scale cruise ship facility and supporting infrastructure on West Douglas.
“we’re still just getting in more information on the project.” Said Deputy Mayor Greg Smith, “We want to hear more about master planning back there, because it’s potentially significant development, there’s hundreds of acres of what we believe to be much better developable land for housing.”
Mayor Beth Weldon said the proposed project, still in its early stages, would include extending North Douglas Road, building an onshore terminal and parking area, wastewater treatment facilities, a small boat harbor, and two cruise ship berths.
The project, nicknamed “Goldbelt Aaní” has no officially announced opening date.
According to Goldbelt, Goldbelt Aaní, will highlight Lingít culture and boost the city’s economy.
The Assembly also discussed updating the West Douglas master plan, which will help guide long-term development on the island.
“We’d like authorization to start doing some master planning.” said Smith, “The assembly said, Yes, bring in some more information about what Master Planning might look like, how much it might cost, try to work in collaboration with Goldbelt, should they want to.”
The Master plan along with Goldbelt’s proposed cruise port, involves potentially developing hundreds of acres of land, with a critical focus from the city on establishing a second crossing to enable future development.
“We felt that there should be master planning in relation to their project. Goldbelt doesn’t feel like there should be.” said Smith, “We have to figure things out, you know, if they want to use utilities out there, or emergency services and other city services like that.”
According to the city, public outreach and public comment will be a big part of the master plan process, which will proceed as Goldbelt prepares to submit a conditional use permit.