New York — “The Fall Guy,” the Ryan Gosling-led, action-comedy ode to stunt performers, opened below expectations with $28.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, providing a lukewarm start to a summer movie season that’s very much to be determined for Hollywood.

The Universal Pictures release opened on a weekend that Marvel has regularly dominated with $100 million-plus launches. (In 2023, that was “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” with a $118 million debut.) But last year’s strikes jumbled this year’s movie calendar; “Deadpool & Wolverine,” originally slated to open this weekend, is instead debuting in July.

So in place of a superhero kickoff, the summer launch went to a movie about the stunt performers who anonymously sacrifice their bodies for the kind of action sequences blockbusters are built on. Going into the weekend, forecasts had the film opening $30 million to $40 million.

“The Fall Guy,” directed by former stuntman and “Deadpool 2” helmer David Leitch, rode into the weekend with the momentum of glowing reviews and the buzz of a SXSW premiere. But it will need sustained interest to merit its $130 million production budget. It added $25.4 million in overseas markets.

Working in its favor for a long run: strong audience scores (an “A-” CinemaScore) and good reviews (83% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal, believes things line up well for “The Fall Guy” in the coming weeks.

“We had a very solid opening,” said Orr. “We’re looking forward to a very long, very robust, very successful run throughout the domestic box office for literally weeks if not months to come.”

But the modest start for “The Fall Guy” hints at larger concerns for the film industry. Superhero films haven’t been quite the box-office behemoth they once were, leading studios to search for fresher alternative. “The Fall Guy” seemed to check all the boxes, with extravagant action sequences, one of the hottest stars in the business, a director with a track-record for crowd pleasers and very good reviews.

But instead, the opening for “The Fall Guy,” loosely based on the 1980s TV series, only emphasized that the movie business is likely to struggle to rekindle the fervor of last year’s “Barbenheimer” summer. “The Fall Guy” stars one from each: Gosling, in his first post-Ken role, and Emily Blunt, of “Oppenheimer.” Both were Oscar nominated.

“It’s going to be a very interesting, nontraditional summer this year,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore.

In part due to the effects of last year’s work stoppages, there are fewer big movies hitting theaters. Expectations are that the total summer box office will be closer to $3 billion than the $4 billion that’s historically been generated.

“The summer season is just getting started, so let’s give ‘The Fall Guy’ a chance to build that momentum over time. It’s a different type of summer kickoff film,” said Dergarabedian. “There’s always huge expectations placed on any film that kicks off the summer movie season, but this isn’t your typical summer movie season.”

In a surprise, No. 2 at the box office went to the Walt Disney Co. rerelease of “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.” The first episode to George Lucas’ little-loved prequels collected $8.1 million over the weekend, 25 years after “Phantom Menace” grossed $1 billion.

Last week’s top film, the Zendaya tennis drama “Challengers,” slid to third place with $7.6 million in its second week. That was a sold hold for the Amazon MGM release, directed by Luca Guadagnino, dipping 49% from its first weekend.

The Sony Screen Gems supernatural horror film “Tarot” also opened nationwide. It debuted with $6.5 million, a decent enough start for a low-budget release but another example of horror not quite performing this year as it has the last few years.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “The Fall Guy,” $28.5 million.

2. “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,” $8.1 million.

3. “Challengers,” $7.6 million.

4. “Tarot,” $6.5 million.

5. “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” $4.5 million.

6. “Civil War,” $3.6 million.

7. “Unsung Hero,” $3 million.

8. “Kung Fu Panda 4,” $2.4 million.

9. “Abigail,” $2.3 million.

10. “Ghostbuster: Frozen Empire,” $1.8 million.
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Washington — The first living patient to receive a genetically modified pig kidney transplant has died two months after the procedure, the US hospital that carried it out said.

“Mass General is deeply saddened at the sudden passing of Mr. Rick Slayman. We have no indication that it was the result of his recent transplant,” the Boston hospital said in a statement issued late Saturday.

In a world first, surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital in March successfully transplanted the genetically edited pig kidney into Slayman, who was 62 years old at the time and suffering from end-stage kidney disease.

“Slayman will forever be seen as a beacon of hope to countless transplant patients worldwide and we are deeply grateful for his trust and willingness to advance the field of xenotransplantation,” the hospital statement said.

Organ shortages are a chronic problem around the world and Mass General said in March that there were more than 1,400 patients on its waiting list for a kidney transplant.

The pig kidney used for the transplant was provided by a Massachusetts biotech company called eGenesis and had been modified to remove harmful pig genes and add certain human genes, according to the hospital.

Slayman, who suffered from Type 2 diabetes and hypertension, had received a transplanted human kidney in 2018, but it began to fail five years later.

When the hospital announced the successful transplant in March, Slayman said he had agreed to the procedure “not only as a way to help (him), but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive.”

In a statement posted on Mass General’s website, his family said while they were “deeply saddened about the sudden passing of our beloved Rick” they took “great comfort knowing he inspired so many.”

The family said they were “comforted by the optimism he provided patients desperately waiting for a transplant”.

More than 89,000 patients were on the national kidney waiting list as of March this year, according to a US health department website.

On average, 17 people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant.

Slayman’s family also thanked the doctors “who truly did everything they could to help give Rick a second chance. Their enormous efforts leading the xenotransplant gave our family seven more weeks with Rick, and our memories made during that time will remain in our minds and hearts.”

“After his transplant, Rick said that one of the reasons he underwent this procedure was to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive,” the family added.

“His legacy will be one that inspires patients, researchers, and health care professionals.”

The transplantation of organs from one species to another is a growing field known as xenotransplantation.

About a month after Slayman’s procedure, surgeons at NYU Langone Health in New York carried out a similar transplant on Lisa Pisano, who had suffered heart failure and end-stage kidney disease.

Pig kidneys had been transplanted previously into brain-dead patients, but Slayman was the first living person to receive one.

Genetically modified pig hearts were transplanted in 2023 into two patients at the University of Maryland, but both lived less than two months.

Mass General said Slayman’s transplant had been carried out under a policy known as “compassionate use” that allows patients with “serious or life-threatening conditions” to access experimental therapies not yet approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
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london — Thousands of ride-or-die Taylor Swift fans who missed out on her U.S. concert tour last year or didn’t want to buy exorbitantly priced tickets to see her again found an out-of-the-way solution: Fly to Europe. 

The pop star is scheduled to kick off the 18-city Europe leg of her record-setting Eras Tour in Paris on Thursday, and planeloads of Swifties plan to follow Miss Americana across the pond in the coming weeks. The arena where Swift is appearing said Americans bought 20% of the tickets for her four sold-out shows. Stockholm, the tour’s next stop, expects about 10,000 concertgoers from the U.S. 

A concert might sound like an odd raison d’etre for visiting a foreign country, especially when fans can watch the Eras Tour from home via the documentary now streaming on Disney+. Yet online travel company Expedia says continent-hopping by Swift’s devotees is part of a larger trend it dubbed “tour tourism” while observing a pattern that emerged during Beyonce’s Renaissance world tour. 

Some North American fans who plan to fly overseas for the Eras Tour said they justified the expense after noticing that tighter restrictions on ticket fees and resales in Europe made seeing Swift perform abroad no more costly — and potentially cheaper — than catching her closer to home. 

“They said, ‘Wait a minute, I can either spend $1,500 to go see my favorite artist in Miami, or I can take that $1,500 and buy a concert ticket, a round-trip plane ticket, and three nights in a hotel room,” Melanie Fish, an Expedia spokesperson and travel expert, said. 

That was the experience of Jennifer Warren, 43, who lives in St. Catharines, a city in the Niagara region of Ontario. She and her 11-year-old son love Swift but had no luck scoring what she considered as decently priced tickets in the U.S. Undeterred, Warren and her husband decided to plan a European vacation around wherever she managed to get seats. It turned out to be Hamburg, Germany. 

“You get out, you get to see the world, and you get to see your favorite artist or performer at the same time, so there are a lot of wins to it,” said Warren, who works as the director of research and innovation for a mutual insurance company. 

The three VIP tickets she secured close to the stage — “I would call it brute-force dumb luck” — cost 600 euros ($646) each. Swift subsequently announced six November tour dates in Toronto, within driving distance of Warren’s home. “Absolute nose-bleed seats” already are going for 3,000 Canadian dollars ($2,194) on secondary resale sites like Viagogo, Warren said. 

Trend reflects hunger for ‘experiences’

Hard-core fans trailing their favorite singer or band on tour is not a new phenomenon. “Groupie” emerged in the late 1960s as a somewhat derogatory word for the ardent followers of rock bands. Deadheads took to the road in the 1970s to pursue the Grateful Dead from city to city. 

More recently, music festivals such as California’s Coachella and England’s Glastonbury, and concert residencies in Las Vegas by the likes of Elton John, Lady Gaga and Adele, have attracted travelers to places they wouldn’t otherwise visit, Fish noted. 

Travel and entertainment analysts also have spoken of a pent-up consumer demand for “experiences” over material objects since the coronavirus pandemic. Some think the willingness of music lovers to broaden their fandom horizons is part of the same mass cultural correction. 

“It does seem like it’s more than a structural shift, maybe a personality transformation we all went through,” said Natalia Lechmanova, the chief Europe economist for the Mastercard Economics Institute. 

As Swift hopscotches across Europe, Lechmanova expects restaurants and hotels to see the same boost that Mastercard observed within a 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) radius of concert venues in the U.S. cities she visited in 2023. The U.S. dollar’s strong value against the euro may also increase retail spending on apparel, memorabilia, beauty products and supplies for the friendship bracelets fans exchange as part of the Eras Tour experience, the economist said. 

Former college roommates Lizzy Hale, 34, who lives in Los Angeles, California, and Mitch Goulding, 33, who lives in Austin, Texas, already had tickets to see the Eras Tour in Los Angeles last summer when they decided to try to get ones for Paris, London or Edinburgh, Scotland, too. They saw a Europe concert trip as a makeup for travel plans they had in May 2020 to celebrate Goulding’s birthday but had to cancel due to the pandemic. 

Goulding managed to secure VIP tickets for one of Swift’s three Stockholm shows. He, Hale and two other friends scheduled a 10-day trip that also includes time in Amsterdam and Copenhagen. 

“As people who enjoy traveling and enjoy music, if you can find an opportunity to combine the two, it’s really special,” said Hale, who is pregnant with her first child. 

Eras Tour creates ‘Swiftonomics’

The local economic impact of what the zeitgeist has termed “Swiftonomics” and the “Swift lift” can be considerable. It’s no wonder the exclusive arrangement Singapore’s government made with Swift to make the city-state her only tour stop in Southeast Asia earlier this year aroused regional jealousy. 

No European governments have complained of their countries not being among the dozen selected for the Europe leg of the Eras Tour, although some fans have expressed surprise that Gelsenkirchen, a city with a population of about 264,000 is one of the three cities in Germany that made the cut. 

Airbnb reported Tuesday that searches on its platform for the U.K. cities where Swift is performing in June and August — Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and London — increased an average of 337% when tickets went on sale last summer. 

Not to be outdone when it comes to trend-spotting, the property rentals company cited the demand as an example of “passion tourism,” or travel “driven by concerts, sports and other cultural events.” 

In Stockholm, 120,000 out-of-towners from 130 countries — among them 10,000 from the U.S. — are expected to swarm Sweden’s capital this month, Stockholm Chamber of Commerce Chief Economist Carl Bergqvist said. Stockholm is the only Scandinavian city on Swift’s tour, and airlines added extra flights from nearby Denmark, Finland and Norway to bring people to the May 17-19 shows, he said. 

The city’s 40,000 hotel rooms are sold out even though prices skyrocketed for the tour dates, Bergqvist said. Concert visitors are expected to pump around 500 million Swedish kroner, or more than $46 million, into the local economy over the course of their stays, an estimate that does not include what they paid for Swift tickets or to get to Sweden, he said. 

“So this is going to be huge for the tourism sector in Sweden and Stockholm in particular,” Bergqvist said. 

Clubs, bars cater to Swifties

Nightclubs, restaurants and bars are seizing the opportunity to cater to fans with Taylor Swift-themed events, such as karaoke, quizzes and after-concert dance parties. 

Houston resident Caroline Matlock, 29, saw Swift more than a year ago when the Eras Tour came to the Texas city. Now she’s making more friendship bracelets and trying to learn a few words of Swedish as she prepares to see the 3 1/2-hour show in Stockholm. The idea of seeing Swift in Europe was her friend’s, and Matlock needed some persuading at first. 

“I was like, ‘I only want to go if it’s a country I haven’t been to. I’ve seen Taylor Swift,'” she said. 

Visiting the Scandinavian cities of Oslo and Gothenburg is on their itinerary. The concert is the last night of the trip and Matlock looks forward to interacting with Swifties from other countries: “Americans tend to have a very obsessive culture, especially Taylor Swift-related, so I’m curious if the crowd will be more toned-down.” 

It remains to be seen if the music tourism trend has legs as long and strong as Swift’s and Beyoncé’s, and if it will carry over to Billie Eilish, Usher and other artists with world tours scheduled next year. Expedia’s Fish thinks other big-name artists in Europe this summer will prove that booking a foreign trip around a concert is catching on. 

Kat Morga, a travel consultant based in Nashville, a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee, isn’t so sure. Morga saw Swift perform in Nashville last year and helped two clients with school-aged children book European family vacations this summer that include seeing Swift in concert. But she thinks the difficulty of navigating ticket purchases through language barriers, currency conversions, international banking regulations and the risk of cancellations will limit the appeal of regular gig getaways. 

“I think this is an anomaly,” Morga said. “People aren’t typically going to build their $20,000 huge family vacation only because Taylor Swift is there. She’s the one-off. She’s special.” 

Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel, whose company operates Booking.com, priceline.com, agoda.com, Kayak and OpenTable, is even less enthusiastic about concert tours as a tourism instigator. The Swift Effect causes a “little blip” when the superstar goes to smaller destinations, but for the worldwide travel industry, “one star touring around does not make a difference,” he said. 

“It may just shift it a little bit. A person was going to go to the Caribbean for a week vacation. Instead that person (says), ‘Let’s travel to the Taylor Swift thing,'” Fogel said. “It doesn’t increase it. It just moves it from here to there.” 
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Analysts say whichever candidate wins the 2024 U.S. presidential election will face the challenge of trying to restore the country’s influence on the continent of Africa, home to more than 1.2 billion people. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken submitted a report to Congress criticizing Israel’s conduct in Gaza. However, the report says Israel is not currently stopping aid into Gaza and stops short of saying it is using U.S. weapons in ways that violate U.S. or international law. The findings follow Washington’s suspension of a bomb shipment to Israel over concerns that the Israeli prime minister plans to expand military operations in Rafah. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
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WASHINGTON — A soon-to-be-released Biden administration review of Israel’s use of U.S.-provided weapons in its war in Gaza does not conclude that Israel has violated the terms for their use, according to three people who have been briefed on the matter. 

The report is expected to be sharply critical of Israel, even though it doesn’t conclude that Israel violated terms of U.S.-Israel weapons agreements, according to one U.S. official. 

The administration’s findings on its close ally’s conduct of the war, a first-of-its-kind assessment that was compelled by President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats in Congress, comes after seven months of airstrikes, ground fighting and aid restrictions that have claimed the lives of nearly 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. 

Biden has tried to walk an ever-finer line in his support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war against Hamas. He has faced growing rancor at home and abroad over the soaring Palestinian death toll and the onset of famine, caused in large part by Israeli restrictions on the movement of food and aid into Gaza. Tensions have been heightened further in recent weeks by Netanyahu’s pledge to expand the Israeli military’s offensive in the crowded southern city of Rafah, despite Biden’s adamant opposition. 

Biden faces demands from many Democrats that he cut the flow of offensive weapons to Israel and denunciation from Republicans who accuse him of wavering on support for Israel at its time of need. 

Two U.S. officials and a third person briefed on the findings of the national security memorandum to be submitted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Congress discussed the findings before the report’s release. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not yet public. 

A senior Biden administration official said the memorandum is expected to be released later Friday but declined to comment on its conclusions. 

Axios first reported on the memorandum’s findings. 

The Democratic administration took one of the first steps toward conditioning military aid to Israel in recent days when it paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs out of concern over Israel’s threatened offensive on Rafah, a southern city crowded with more than a million Palestinians, a senior administration official said. 

The presidential directive, agreed to in February, obligated the Defense and State departments to conduct “an assessment of any credible reports or allegations that such defense articles and, as appropriate, defense services, have been used in a manner not consistent with international law, including international humanitarian law.” 

The agreement also obligated them to tell Congress whether they deemed that Israel has acted “arbitrarily to deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly,” delivery of any U.S.-supported humanitarian aid into Gaza for starving civilians there. 

Lawmakers and others who advocated for the review said Biden and previous American leaders have followed a double standard when enforcing U.S. laws governing how foreign militaries use U.S. support, an accusation the Biden administration denies. 

They had urged the administration to make a straightforward legal determination of whether there was credible evidence that specific Israeli airstrikes on schools, crowded neighborhoods, medical workers, aid convoys and other targets, and restrictions on aid shipments into Gaza, violated the laws of war and human rights. 

Their opponents argued that a U.S. finding against Israel would weaken it at a time it is battling Hamas and other Iran-backed groups. Any sharply critical findings on Israel are sure to add to pressure on Biden to curb the flow of weapons and money to Israel’s military and further heighten tensions with Netanyahu’s hard-right government over its conduct of the war against Hamas. 

Any finding against Israel also could endanger Biden’s support in this year’s presidential elections from some voters who keenly support Israel. Former president Donald Trump is the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee facing off against Biden.

At the time the White House agreed to the review, it was working to head off moves from Democratic lawmakers and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to start restricting shipments of weapons to Israel. 

Israel launched its offensive after an October 7 terror attack by Hamas into Israel killed about 1,200 people. Two-thirds of the Palestinians killed since then have been women and children, according to local health officials. U.S. and U.N. officials say Israeli restrictions on food shipments since October 7 have brought on full-fledged famine in northern Gaza. 

Human rights groups long have accused Israeli security forces of committing abuses against Palestinians and have accused Israeli leaders of failing to hold those responsible to account. In January, in a case brought by South Africa, the top U.N. court ordered Israel to do all it could to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive. 

Israel says it is following all U.S. and international law, that it investigates allegations of abuse by its security forces and that its campaign in Gaza is proportional to the existential threat it says is posed by Hamas. 

Biden in December said “indiscriminate bombing” was costing Israel international backing. After Israeli forces targeted and killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen in April, the Biden administration for the first time signaled it might cut military aid to Israel if it didn’t change its handling of the war and humanitarian aid. 

Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, in the 1980s and early 1990s, were the last presidents to openly hold back weapons or military financing to try to push Israel to change its actions in the region or toward Palestinians. 

A report to the Biden administration by an unofficial, self-formed panel including military experts, academics and former State Department officials detailed Israeli strikes on aid convoys, journalists, hospitals, schools and refugee centers and other sites. They argued that the civilian death toll in those strikes — such as an October 31 strike on an apartment building reported to have killed 106 civilians — was disproportionate to the blow against any military target.
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DETROIT — Federal investigators say they have “significant safety concerns” about a Ford SUV recall repair that doesn’t fix gasoline leaks that can cause engine fires.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is demanding volumes of information from the automaker as it investigates the fix in a March 8 recall of nearly 43,000 Bronco Sport SUVs from the 2022 and 2023 model years, and Escape SUVs from 2022. All have 1.5-liter engines.

Ford says the SUVs have fuel injectors that will crack, allowing gas or vapor to leak near hot engine parts that can cause fires, fuel odors and an increased risk of injuries.

In an April 25 letter to Ford released Thursday, the agency’s Office of Defects Investigation wrote that based on its review of the recall repairs, it “believes that the remedy program does not address the root cause of the issue and does not proactively call for the replacement of defective fuel injectors prior to their failure.”

Ford’s remedy for the leaks is to add a drain tube to send the gas away from hot surfaces, and a software update to detect a pressure drop in the fuel injection system. If that happens, the software will disable the high-pressure fuel pump, reduce engine power and cut temperatures in the engine compartment. Owners also will get a “seek service” message.

But in the 11-page letter to the automaker, the agency asks Ford to detail any testing it did to verify the remedy resolved the problem and whether hardware repairs are needed. It also asks the company to explain any other remedies that were considered and any cost-benefit analysis the company did when it picked the fix.

Safety advocates have said Ford is trying to avoid the cost of replacing the fuel injectors and instead go with a cheaper fix that drains gasoline to the ground.

Ford said Thursday that it is working with the NHTSA during its investigation.

NHTSA also is asking ford to detail how the software will detect a fuel pressure drop, how much time elapses between cracking and detection, and what messages will be sent to the driver. It also asks what effect disabling the high-pressure fuel pump has on other fuel system parts, and how the SUVs will perform when the pump is disabled.

The agency also wants to know how much fuel will leak and whether the amount complies with federal environmental and safety standards. And it wants to hear Ford’s take on “its obligations (legal, ethical, environmental and other) to prevent and/or limit fuel leakage onto the roadway at any point during a vehicle’s lifespan.”

Ford has to provide information to the agency by June 21, the letter said. Depending on the results of its investigation, the agency can seek additional repairs that fix the fuel leaks.

The company has said in documents that it has reports of five under-hood fires and 14 warranty replacements of fuel injectors, but no reports of crashes or injuries.

In a previous email, Ford said it is not replacing fuel injectors because it is confident the recall repairs “will prevent the failure from occurring and protect the customer.” The new software triggers a dashboard warning light and allows customers to drive to a safe location, stop the vehicle and arrange for service, the company said. NHTSA documents filed by Ford say the problem happens only in about 1% of the SUVs.

The company also said it will extend warranty coverage for cracked fuel injectors, so owners who experience the problem will get replacements. Repairs are already available, and details of the extended warranty will be available in June, Ford said.

The recall is an extension of a 2022 recall for the same problem, according to Ford. The repair has already been tested on vehicles involved in the previous recall, and Ford said it’s not aware of any problems.

The company also said it isn’t recommending that the SUVs be parked only outdoors because there’s no evidence that fires happen when vehicles are parked, and the engines are off.

NHTSA said in documents that in the 2022 recall, which covered nearly 522,000 Bronco Sports and Escapes, Ford had the same remedy as the latest recall.

 
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washington — The Senate has passed a $105 billion bill designed to improve air safety and customer service for air travelers, a day before the law governing the Federal Aviation Administration expires. 

The bipartisan bill, which comes after a series of close calls between planes at the nation’s airports, would boost the number of air traffic controllers, improve safety standards and make it easier for customers to get refunds after flights are delayed or canceled. 

The bill passed the Senate 88-4. The legislation now goes to the House, which is out of session until next week. The Senate is considering a one-week extension that would give the House time to pass the bill while ensuring the FAA isn’t forced to furlough around 3,600 FAA employees. 

The bill stalled for several days this week after senators from Virginia and Maryland objected to a provision that would allow an additional 10 flights a day to and from the heavily trafficked Reagan Washington National Airport. Other senators have tried to add unrelated provisions, as well, seeing it as a prime chance to enact their legislative priorities. 

But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called a vote Thursday evening after it became clear that senators would not be able to agree on amendments to the bill before it expires. After the bill passed, leaders in both parties were still working out how to pass an extension and ensure the law does not expire on Friday. The House passed a one-week extension earlier this week. 

The FAA has been under scrutiny since it approved Boeing jets that were involved in two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019. The Senate legislation would govern FAA operations for the next five years and put several new safety standards in place. 

The bill would increase the number of air traffic controllers and require the FAA to use new technology designed to prevent collisions between planes on runways. It would require new airline planes to have cockpit voice recorders capable of saving 25 hours of audio, up from the current two hours, to help investigators. 

It would also try to improve customer service for travelers by requiring airlines to pay a refund to customers for flight delays — three hours for a domestic flight and six for an international one.  

In addition, the bill would prohibit airlines from charging extra for families to sit together and triple the maximum fines for airlines that violate consumer laws. And it would require the Transportation Department to create a “dashboard” so consumers can compare seat sizes on different airlines. 

The FAA says that if the law expires on Friday, the 3,600 employees would be furloughed without a guarantee of back pay starting at midnight. The agency would also be unable to collect daily airport fees that help pay for operations, and ongoing airport improvements would come to a halt. 

No one in “safety critical” positions — such as air traffic controllers — would be affected if the deadline is missed, the FAA says, and the safety of the flying public would not be at risk. 
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While both the Biden and Trump campaigns share their messaging on abortion, VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports on how the issue of reproductive rights is faring in the minds of citizens and lawmakers ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
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Miami, Florida — Former President Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron Trump, has been chosen to serve as a Florida delegate to the Republican National Convention, the state party chairman said Wednesday.

Republican Party of Florida chairman Evan Power said the 18-year-old high school senior will serve as one of 41 at-large delegates from Florida to the national gathering, where the GOP is set to officially nominate his father as its presidential candidate for the November general election. NBC News first reported the choice of Barron Trump as a delegate.

Barron Trump has been largely kept out of the public eye, but he turned 18 on March and is graduating from high school next week. The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York said there would be no court on May 17 so that Trump could attend his son’s graduation. 

Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany, are also part of the Florida delegation to the convention taking place in Milwaukee from July 15 to July 18.

“We are fortunate to have a great group of grassroots leaders, elected officials, and members of the Trump family working together as part of the Florida delegation to the 2024 Republican National Convention,” Power said in an emailed statement.
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