WASHINGTON, United States (AP) — An airline passenger could wind up paying $14,500 for refusing to wear a face mask and drinking alcohol that he had brought on board.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it proposed the civil penalty against a passenger on a Dec. 23 JetBlue Airways flight that left New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport bound for the Dominican Republic, but turned back to JFK because of the man’s behavior.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Will the coronavirus ever go away?
No one knows for sure. Scientists think the virus that causes COVID-19 may be with us for decades or longer, but that doesn’t mean it will keep posing the same threat.
The virus emerged in late 2019 and it’s difficult to predict how it will behave over the long term. But many experts believe it’s likely the disease will eventually ease from a crisis to a nuisance like the common cold.
That would happen as people build up immunity over time, either through infection or vaccination. Other viruses have followed a similar path.
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RHODE ISLAND, United States (AP) — The remains of a Cold War-era Russian submarine once seen in a movie starring Harrison Ford caught fire in Providence on Tuesday morning as workers were using a blowtorch to cut it up for scrap, fire officials said.
The fire at a waterfront scrap yard sent a plume of black smoke over the city at about 9:30 a.m. but was quickly extinguished. No one was hurt.
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Dubai’s airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, can already feel surreal, with its cavernous duty-free stores, artificial palm trees, gleaming terminals, water cascades and near-Arctic levels of air conditioning.
Now, the key east-west transit hub is rolling out another addition from the realm of science fiction — an iris-scanner that verifies one’s identity and eliminates the need for any human interaction when entering or leaving the country.
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NEW YORK, United States (AP) — A new national study adds strong evidence that mask mandates can slow the spread of the coronavirus, and that allowing dining at restaurants can increase cases and deaths.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the study Friday. It looked at counties placed under state-issued mask mandates and at counties that allowed restaurant dining — both indoors and at tables outside. The agency’s director says it shows decreases in cases and deaths when people wear masks. And it found increases in cases and deaths when in-person restaurant dining is allowed. The study was released just as some states are rescinding mask mandates and restaurant limits.
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BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s governing party pulled out of its conservative group in the European Union’s legislature on Wednesday following years of conflict over the rule of law and European values.
The right-wing Fidesz party has held a two-thirds majority in Hungary’s parliament almost uninterrupted since 2010. It left the European People’s Party over the latter’s adoption on Wednesday of new procedures allowing for entire parties to be excluded from the group rather than just individual lawmakers.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Calls for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation intensified late Monday after a third woman accused him of offensive behavior, saying he’d touched her face and back and asked to kiss her moments after they met at a wedding reception.
Anna Ruch told The New York Times late Monday that she removed the Democratic governor’s hand from her back, but he said she seemed “aggressive,” promptly put his hands on her face and asked if he could kiss her.
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BEIJING (AP) — Beijing isn’t ready to follow the United States in allowing Boeing’s 737 Max back into the air after a pair of fatal crashes two years ago.
China was the first country to ground the 737 Max in 2019 after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed a total of 346 people. American regulators approved the plane in November to resume commercial flights after Boeing made technical changes and a new training regime was put into place for pilots.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, United States (AP) — Spacewalking astronauts ventured out Sunday to install support frames for new, high-efficiency solar panels arriving at the International Space Station later this year.
NASA’s Kate Rubins and Victor Glover put the first set of mounting brackets and struts together, then bolted them into place next to the station’s oldest and most degraded solar wings. But the work took longer than expected, and they barely got started on the second set before calling it quits.
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WASHINGTON, United States (AP) — A choppy day on Wall Street ended with stocks mostly lower Friday, helping push the S&P 500 to its second straight weekly loss.
Investors continued to watch the bond market, where Treasury yields eased lower, as well as Washington, where Congress is expected to vote on President Joe Biden’s stimulus package.
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