The Federal Aviation Administration halted all departing flights across the country Friday afternoon, citing "extraordinary circumstances" and "reasons of safety." Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a rolling frequency outage knocked out communications at all Air Route Traffic Control Centers, with inbound international flights handled case by case. It's the first nationwide ground stop since the January 2023 FAA computer failure, and before that, September 11th.
October's Producer Price Index rose a smaller-than-expected 0.3 percent on the month, but the goods side told the real story: up 0.5 percent in October and 10.2 percent year over year, the steepest annual jump since October 2022. Analysts point to the Iran war and tariffs entrenching higher prices, even as energy offered some relief. Stocks still closed the week green on the lighter headline number.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth narrowly avoided becoming only the third Cabinet secretary ever impeached after eleven House Democrats failed to reach the floor in time, reportedly stuck behind a police motorcade and campus bus traffic. Republicans sent the articles to committee on a 211 to 204 vote. The blunder has House Democrats openly questioning Hakeem Jeffries' grip on the caucus.
The high court agreed Friday to hear whether the administration can bar asylum applications from migrants who cross the southern border illegally. It's one of the most consequential immigration cases of the term and will test the limits of executive authority over asylum law. A ruling is expected by summer.
Tehran told the UN watchdog that inspections cannot resume while the country faces what it called persistent, explicit, and public threats of armed aggression from the American president. Separately, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they hit a US early-warning radar in Bahrain, the first claimed attack on American assets in a Gulf state since early September. President Trump said the US could take out Iran's energy infrastructure in three days, and Iran reported a fifth tanker explosion in two days in the Strait of Hormuz.
Erdogan and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani signed the pact in Istanbul on Friday, pledging a unified position in the face of an external attack. The timing, with the Gulf on edge over Iran, is hard to miss. It deepens Ankara's military footprint in a region already crowded with competing security guarantees.
Moscow said Friday that European governments have to demonstrate real readiness to contribute to the peace process before they can join negotiations. The comment follows this week's US-brokered trilateral session in Abu Dhabi, where Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner got Russia and Ukraine to agree in principle to a prisoner exchange. The envoys then went on to Moscow for talks with Putin and Dublin to meet Zelenskyy.
An object moving through the solar system is speeding up in a way gravity alone cannot explain, and Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb says its trajectory closely matches Phobos 1, the Soviet Mars probe lost in 1988. NASA has weighed in as the near-earth object draws growing scrutiny. If the match holds, it would be a nearly four-decade-old ghost coming back around.
NASA brought a crew home early from the International Space Station after a medical issue in orbit, the first time in the station's twenty-five-year history a mission has been truncated for health reasons. The agency said the affected astronaut was stable, but managers wanted proper diagnostic testing on the ground. Administrator Jared Isaacman called it the safest available course.
Giants quarterback Jameis Winston tried to draw Washington offside on fourth-and-one from his own eleven-yard line by working the Baha Men into his cadence. Broadcaster Al Michaels was audibly floored. The Commanders did not jump, and the Giants lost.
