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Trump wants new nuclear testing. What would that mean?

admin - Latest News - November 2, 2025
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President Trump says he wants the Defense Department to begin testing nuclear weapons “immediately.” Experts say that’s wishful thinking.



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Nov. 2, 2025, 5:30 AM ESTBy Harriet BaskasTravelers booking hotel reservations online may soon notice that the process increasingly mirrors what it’s like to buy airline tickets.Want early check-in or late check-out? More space, a higher floor or a garden view? Pool access or a “hydration station” (aka bottled water) in your room?Check “yes” before you book and the cost will be added to your basic room rate.How about milk and cookies for the kids or a gourmet snack box for your dog? Those bonus amenities can be waiting for you in your room, for an added, prepaid fee.Artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies are turning hotel operators into travel retailers, selling much more than just rooms.Individual properties can now creatively unbundle and repackage their room inventories, allowing guests to personalize their stays and increasing revenue.But it can be tricky for a hotel to find the sweet spot between giving guests more control over the details of their stays and leaving them feeling like a hotel is charging for perks that guests expect for free.Boutique perksAt the 14-room Lakehouse Inn in Lee, Massachusetts, a new AI-powered booking platform helps match guests with specific rooms and maximizes returns on each booking.“Each of our rooms is unique, and previously guests could only book a room type, i.e., king or queen, and then call us if they wanted a specific room,” said co-owner Kurt Inderbitzin.The Lakehouse Inn’s new booking platform asks prospective guests their preferred room size, bedding, location and view. Then it provides detailed photos and descriptions of a few specific rooms that meet the requests.The question, then, becomes whether a guest is willing to pay more for a room that’s a little bit more to their liking.Only 14% of U.S. hotel guests were willing to pay a premium for a room with a better view, and only 11% for a room on a higher floor, according to surveys conducted earlier this year by Atmosphere Research Group, a travel industry market research firm.“I’m a budget traveler and never spend extra” on perks, said Debbie Twombly, 74, a substitute teacher in Astoria, Oregon.While some guests may feel nickel-and-dimed if they are asked to pony up for once-standard amenities like bottled water or pool access, others will pay for amenities they view as contributing to the enjoyment of their stay.Los Angeles-based leadership brand strategist Anne Taylor Hartzell, 50, is fine with paying extra for a better view. “I’ve also paid for a bottle of bubbles to be chilled and waiting in my room,” she said.At the 79-room Inn at the Market, a boutique hotel tucked in Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market, hotel guests can prepay to have a bouquet of market flowers or a box of fresh macaron cookies from a bakery around the corner waiting in their rooms.And even though only around 5%-10% of guests opt for one of these a la carte perks, the additional income is “a positive outcome” that helps the property stand out from the city’s other downtown properties, said Jay Baty, the inn’s marketing and sales director.Columbia Hospitality, which manages about 50 unique properties across the country, has also added optional upgrades into its booking path.Its 73-room Wren hotel in Missoula, Montana, offers flower bouquets and an in-room pour-over coffee station as pre-bookable perks.In Walla Walla, Washington, its hip, 80-room Finch offers a s’mores kit and half-pound boxes of chocolates.AI-powered amenitiesIt’s not just boutique inns that are taking advantage of new ways to create custom stays.In 2024, more than 5,000 Wyndham hotels adopted new technology that allows properties to text guests 24 hours before check-in with locally tuned add-on offers.These include early check-in at a Howard Johnson hotel near Disneyland, and a basket of sunscreen and beach toys at a Days Inn in Jekyll Island, Georgia.“The most successful hotels are those offering add-ons that truly enhance the experience at a price that makes sense for both sides,” said Scott Strickland, Wyndham’s chief commercial officer.Other large chains are also using new technology to expand optional attributes, amenities and add-on services offered during booking.Among them are IHG Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International and Hilton Hotels, according to a closely watched global business travel forecast for next year.A slippery slopeAt a time when U.S. hotels are facing big challenges from owner rentals like Airbnb and VRBO, it can be tempting for properties to lean on new technology to offer ever more add-ons.But this only works if hotels are prepared to deliver on all the products and experiences that technology permits them to offer to guests upfront.“Letting guests reserve a fruit and cheese plate or rose petals on the bed upon arrival is great,” said Henry Harteveldt, president of Atmosphere Research Group.“But it means a hotel has to make sure the cheese doesn’t look like it’s from the castaway bin at Safeway and that there are always fresh rose petals on hand and a staff member on duty who can artfully arrange them.”Harteveldt said this means hotel owners need to ask themselves a new question: “Just because we can do this, should we?”Harriet BaskasHarriet Baskas is an NBC News contributor who writes about travel and the arts.
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Nov. 12, 2025, 3:52 PM ESTBy Erika EdwardsAs flu season gets underway, global health experts are increasingly worried about a new strain of the virus that popped up in June — four months after the makeup of this year’s flu shots had been decided. The new strain, a version of H3N2, is causing outbreaks in Canada and the U.K., where health officials are warning about the early wave that’s sending people to the hospital. “Since it emerged, it’s rapidly spreading and predominating in some countries so far in the Northern Hemisphere,” Dr. Wenqing Zhang, head of the World Health Organization’s Global Respiratory Threats Unit, said Wednesday during a media briefing. The version of H3N2 that’s circulated worldwide this year “acquired 7 new mutations over the summer,” Antonia Ho, a consultant in infectious diseases at Scotland’s University of Glasgow, said in a media statement. That “means the virus is quite different to the H3N2 strain included in this year’s vaccine,” she said.The U.K. is heading “into what looks set to be a cruel winter, with flu cases being triple what they were this time last year,” the head of the U.K.’s National Health Service, James Mackey, said last week. It’s picking up in Canada, too, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan. H3N2 is generally thought to cause more illness and be worse for older adults than other strains. Japan is also experiencing an unusually early and harsh flu season that’s “unprecedented,” Rasmussen said. Japanese news outlet Nippon TV reported that as of Nov. 4, flu cases in Tokyo had surged to nearly six times the level seen at this time last year, according to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. More than 2,300 day cares and schools in the country were at least partially closed because of the outbreak, the outlet reported.“These are not good signs,” Rasmussen said. Is this flu strain already in the U.S.?H3N2 is an A strain of influenza. While there are plenty of anecdotal reports of people testing positive for flu A across the country, the insights stop there. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn’t provided a detailed, national report on flu activity since Sept. 26 because of the government shutdown.Even if it reopens in the coming days, Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, said that the “hollowing out” of the CDC in the form of massive layoffs could further delay flu data collection and analysis. Earlier this year, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it would cut up to 10,000 full-time jobs in the public health sector. “We are going to be dependent on state laboratories and academic laboratories for these investigations and report them out,” Schaffner said. “The information will not be as comprehensive, centralized and as quickly analyzed and communicated from the CDC as we have had in previous years.”Will this year’s flu shot be helpful?Global health officials and drugmakers select which viral strain to include in fall flu vaccines for the Northern Hemisphere each year in February, based on which types are circulating in the Southern Hemisphere. This year’s flu shots protect against three strains of influenza, including two types of influenza A and one type of influenza B. The annual flu shot doesn’t prevent people from getting infected with the flu. It’s mainly used to lessen the severity of the illness. Last year, the vaccine was up to 55% effective in keeping adults with the flu out of the hospital. On Tuesday, health authorities in the U.K. published preliminary evidence that this year’s vaccine is up to 40% effective in preventing hospitalization among adults. Schaffner encouraged people to get the shot anyway. “All of the data over previous decades shows that even if there is not a close match, use of the vaccine continues to prevent hospitalizations, intensive care unit admissions and continues to help keep people out of the cemetery,” he said. Erika EdwardsErika Edwards is a health and medical news writer and reporter for NBC News and “TODAY.”
October 28, 2025
Oct. 28, 2025, 2:28 PM EDTBy Rebecca Cohen, Jay Blackman and Tom CostelloAs the government shutdown drags on, federal employees who support the country’s airports, such as air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration workers, say they are still in the dark about when they will next be paid. On Tuesday, workers received their first zero-dollar paycheck, reflecting two weeks of unpaid work amid the ongoing government shutdown. During the nearly monthlong shutdown, these individuals, whose roles are deemed essential, have been required to show up for work without the promise of a paycheck at the end of a standard pay period. Their last payout was a partial paycheck that included funds for time worked in September before the shutdown that began Oct. 1. Also Tuesday, controllers took matters into their own hands, pushing back on the work the government is demanding of them by handing out leaflets that describe the impact of the shutdown on aviation workers and how people can contact their members of Congress to call for the shutdown to end. The actions were scheduled to take place at nearly 20 airports nationwide. “We are here to ensure that the flying public is safe every time they get on an airplane. We have to be 100% focused, 100% of the time,” Pete LeFevre, an air traffic controller out of Washington Dulles International Airport, said in an interview with NBC News. “And all we’re looking for is to be relieved of the financial uncertainty that comes with the government shutdown, and we’d like to be paid as soon as possible.”While these federal employees will eventually receive back pay when the government shutdown ends, thanks to a 2018 law, the uncertainty of when that will be has air traffic controllers taking up side gigs to stay afloat. Some of these workers are now driving for DoorDash or Uber after their grueling work schedules, prompting a few to call in sick due to the job’s stress and the extra hours off the clock. The air traffic control industry is understaffed, and current controllers had already been working six-day weeks, 10-hour shifts, before the shutdown. “They should never work a side job, that they should never get off a night shift and then go wait tables,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said at a news conference Tuesday at LaGuardia Airport in New York. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at the Tuesday news conference that he has been encouraging controllers to go to work and “do really important work for our country,” while acknowledging the unease of working without assured pay. “They can’t make it without two paychecks,” Duffy said of controllers, adding later, “controllers and those other critical employees need our government to be open and they need to be paid.”He acknowledged that there have been “less problems” in the airspace this time around compared with prior shutdowns, due to his asking controllers to go to work. LeFevre added that the lack of pay adds another layer of stress to the already high-stress position. “It’s uncomfortable,” he said. “We do our best to leave all of our stress and worry at the door, but financial stress is challenging and it’s unique and it’s different, and it’s permeating.”The air traffic controller made clear that flying is still safe, and that his colleagues are working to ensure safety in the skies — something Duffy also called out during the news conference. Duffy has previously said that if there aren’t enough controllers to handle the workload on any given day, flights will be delayed and canceled to mitigate risk. Within the U.S., 2,109 flights had been delayed as of 1 p.m., according to flight tracking website FlightAware. At least 118 flights had been canceled. It was not immediately clear whether those delays and cancellations were a direct result of controllers calling out of work due to the shutdown. But the lack of immediate pay is also having a notable impact on real people in their lives outside the office. LaShanda Palmer, a TSA worker and the president of Local 333, which represents Philadelphia and Wilmington Airport TSA employees, said this is the “most trying” shutdown she’s been through in her 23 years in the industry.”We’re all one step away from being out on the street right about now,” Palmer told NBC News. “I have officers calling me honestly. They don’t have money for gas, they don’t have money to get child care, they don’t have food. It is extremely hard this go around. It’s hard to get help.” She said she’s in a similar situation, with a mortgage payment due Saturday that she isn’t sure how she’ll pay — her bank account is in the negative, and her bank keeps hitting her with overdraft fees. “The oath that I took, nothing has came down on our watch, and I don’t think people even consider that,” Palmer said. “We’re doing what we’re supposed to do, we should get our check.”Rebecca CohenRebecca Cohen is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.Jay BlackmanJay Blackman is an NBC News producer covering such areas as transportation, space, medical and consumer issues.Tom CostelloTom Costello is an NBC News correspondent based in Washington, D.C.  
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