January 30 2025

1. Wichita American Airlines flight crashes into helicopter in Washington, D.C.
2. Power Line Faults Detected Moments Before California Wildfire
3. Trump's First 100 Days: Federal v Local Education Battle, Guantánamo Bay Immigrant Detention, Funding Freeze Rescinded, Meta Settlement
4. Democratic Party Hits Record Low Approval in Poll
5. Foreign Hackers Weaponize US AI Products in Cyber Attacks
January 29, 1968: Tet Offensive starts in Vietnam

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FLASH…Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) sentenced to 11 years in jail for bribery scheme involving gold bars…

1. Wichita American Airlines flight crashes into helicopter in Washington, D.C.

A. A commercial airliner from Wichita collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night, producing a fiery explosion and prompting a massive but increasingly grim search-and-rescue operation. Officials early Thursday didn’t immediately confirm fatality numbers, but appeared to brace the public for a high toll. American Airlines flight 5342 was approaching Runway 33 at Reagan National Airport (DCA) in Arlington, Virginia, when it collided with a Sikorsky H-60 helicopter, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. All flights out of and landings into DCA were halted, and the debris of the plane and helicopter were in the Potomac River. The DC-bound plane, a Bombardier CRJ-700, is designed for regional flight and can seat between 68 to 73 passengers. According to American Airlines, 60 passengers and four crew members were on board. Several coaches and skaters with the United States figure skating team were on the flight, according to U.S. Figure Skating.  

B. The U.S. has gone 12 years without a fatal crash of an airline-operated jetliner, according to a database from the Aviation Safety Network. The most recent was in July 2013, when a Boeing 777 operated by South Korea's Asiana Airlines crash landed in San Francisco. Three passengers were killed. Before that, in 2009, 49 passengers and crew were killed when a de Havilland Dash 8 crashed about 5 miles north of Buffalo Niagara Airport in New York state. Investigators identified pilot action as the probable cause.

Article Source: Wichita Eagle, WSJ

2. Power Line Faults Detected Moments Before California Wildfire

Moments before flames erupted below transmission towers near Altadena, Calif., high-voltage power lines faulted in the area, new sensor data shows, offering fresh clues about whether utility equipment may have failed as the deadly Eaton fire broke out on Jan. 7. About three seconds later, another major fault was registered near Altadena, according to Whisker Labs, which has a network of sensors installed in homes around the country that are collectively able to measure abnormal activity on the electrical grid. The two electrical disruptions along transmission lines were so powerful that they reverberated as far away as Oregon and Utah, across tens of thousands of sensors.  

Editors note: this is interesting but not the fundamental issue, which is humans encroaching on nature. These things will continue to happen, but construction and policy has to build resilience so a future electrical fault doesn’t lead to a massive catastrophe.

Article Source: NYT

3. Trump's First 100 Days: Federal v Local Education Battle, Guantánamo Bay Immigrant Detention, Funding Freeze Rescinded, Meta Settlement

A. With a series of executive orders, President Trump has demonstrated that he has the appetite for an audacious fight to remake public education in the image of his “anti-woke,” populist political movement. But in a country unique among nations for its hyperlocal control of schools, the effort is likely to run into legal, logistical and funding trouble as it tests the limits of federal power over K-12 education.  

B. President Trump on Wednesday ordered his administration to prepare to house tens of thousands of “criminal aliens” at the Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, the latest prong in his widening crackdown on immigration. “We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” he said. “Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo.” He said the move would “double our capacity immediately,” adding that Guantánamo was a “tough place to get out of.”  

C. The White House on Wednesday rescinded a directive that froze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans after the order led to mass confusion and legal challenges that accused the Trump administration of violating the law. The order, issued Monday night, was an attempt to purge the government of what President Trump has called a “woke” ideology. A federal judge in the District of Columbia temporarily blocked it Tuesday afternoon, but the lack of clarity sent schools, hospitals, nonprofits and other organizations scrambling to understand if they had lost their financial support from the government. 

D. Meta Platforms has agreed to pay roughly $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit that President Trump brought against the company and its CEO after the social-media platform suspended his accounts following the attack on the U.S. Capitol that year, according to people familiar with the agreement. Of that, $22 million will go toward a fund for Trump’s presidential library, with the rest going to legal fees and the other plaintiffs who signed on to the case.

Article Source: NYT, WSJ

4. Democratic Party Hits Record Low Approval in Poll

A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday had this stunning finding: While Americans were about evenly split in their views of the Republican Party (43 percent favorable to 45 percent unfavorable), negative views of the Democratic Party outpaced positive ones by 26 points — 31 percent favorable to 57 percent unfavorable. That’s not only a huge imbalance but also an unprecedented one. In fact, Democrats’ 57 percent unfavorable rating is their highest ever in Quinnipiac’s polling, dating back to 2008, while the GOP’s 43 percent favorable rating is its highest ever.

Article Source: WaPo

5. Foreign Hackers Weaponize US AI Products in Cyber Attacks

Hackers linked to China, Iran and other foreign governments are using new AI technology to bolster their cyberattacks against U.S. and global targets, according to U.S. officials and new security research. In the past year, dozens of hacking groups in more than 20 countries turned to Google’s Gemini chatbot to assist with malicious code writing, hunts for publicly known cyber vulnerabilities and research into organizations to target for attack, among other tasks, Google’s cyber-threat experts said. While Western officials and security experts have warned for years about the potential malicious uses of AI, the findings released Wednesday from Google are some of the first to shed light on how exactly foreign adversaries are leveraging generative AI to boost their hacking prowess.

Article Source: WSJ

January 30, 1968: Tet Offensive starts in Vietnam

In coordinated attacks all across South Vietnam, communist forces launch their largest offensive of the Vietnam War against South Vietnamese and U.S. troops. Dozens of cities, towns, and military bases—including the U.S. embassy in Saigon—were attacked. The massive offensive was not a military success for the communists, but its size and intensity shook the confidence of many Americans who were led to believe, by the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, that the war would shortly be coming to a successful close.

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Sources

2. A https://www.kansas.com/news/local/article299414004.html
B https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/plane-crash-dc-reagan-airport?st=8xFZWA&reflink=article_copyURL_share

3. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/29/business/energy-environment/eaton-fire-electrical-faults-southern-california-edison.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

4. A https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/us/trump-executive-orders-local-control-schools.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
B https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/us/politics/trump-migrants-guantanamo.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
C https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/29/us/trump-federal-freeze-funding-news/federal-freeze-grants?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
D https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/trump-signs-agreement-calling-for-meta-to-pay-25-million-to-settle-suit-6f734c8c?st=LS9EE7&reflink=article_copyURL_share

5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/29/democrats-brutal-poll-problem/

6. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chinese-and-iranian-hackers-are-using-u-s-ai-products-to-bolster-cyberattacks-ff3c5884?st=7gGdCE&reflink=article_copyURL_share