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SpaceX launches 11th test flight of its mega Starship rocket with another win

SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship makes a test flight from Starbase, Texas, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025.
Eric Gay/AP
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Eric Gay/AP
SpaceX launched another of its mammoth Starship rockets on a test flight Monday, successfully making it halfway around the world while releasing mock satellites like last time.
Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — thundered into the evening sky from the southern tip of Texas. The booster peeled away and made a controlled entry into the Gulf of Mexico as planned, with the spacecraft skimming space before descending into the Indian Ocean. Nothing was recovered.
“Hey, welcome back to Earth, Starship,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot announced as employees cheered. “What a day.”
It was the 11th test flight for a full-scale Starship, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk intends to use to send people to Mars. NASA’s need is more immediate. The space agency cannot land astronauts on the moon by decade’s end without the 403-foot (123-meter) Starship, the reusable vehicle meant to get them from lunar orbit down to the surface and back up.

Instead of remaining inside Launch Control as usual, Musk said that for the first time he was going outside to watch — “much more visceral.”
The previous test flight in August — a success after a string of explosive failures — followed a similar path with similar goals. More maneuvering was built in this time, especially for the spacecraft. SpaceX conducted a series of tests during the spacecraft’s entry over the Indian Ocean as practice for future landings back at the launch site.
Like before, Starship carried up eight mock satellites mimicking SpaceX’s Starlinks. The entire flight lasted just over an hour, originating from Starbase near the Mexican border.
NASA’s acting administrator Sean Duffy praised Starship’s progress. “Another major step toward landing Americans on the moon’s south pole,” he said via X.
SpaceX is modifying its Cape Canaveral launch sites to accommodate Starships, in addition to the much smaller Falcon rockets used to transport astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station for NASA.

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Nor’easter brings flooding to US east coast as storm sweeps away homes in Alaska

New Jersey and parts of New York City were under a state of emergency on Monday as slow-moving nor’easter moved up the easter US seaboard, while in western Alaska remnants of Typhoon Halong lashed coastal hamlets and ripped houses off their foundations.
In Alaska, rescue aircraft were sent to the villages of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, where there were reports of up to 20 people possibly unaccounted for.
“We have received reports that people’s homes have floated away and that people were potentially in those homes,” Zidek, a spokesperson for the state division of homeland security and emergency management, told the Associated Press.
The area is among one of the most isolated in the US, where some communities have few roads and residents use boardwalks, boats and snowmobiles to get around, Zidek said.
The Alaska governor, Mike Dunleavy, extended a disaster declaration to communities in the Yupitt, Pribilof Island and Lower Kuskokwim education districts.
“Every effort will be made to help those hit by this storm. Help is on the way,” Dunleavy said in a statement on X.
Separately, the storm making its way up the east coast prompted flooding and high winds in coastal areas from the Carolinas to New England.
In Delaware, emergency management officials activated the state national guard in response to rising floodwaters and harsh winds. In North Carolina’s Outer Banks, seawater washed over highway 12 at a motel near Buxton.
Flooding was reported as widespread in Georgetown county in South Carolina, where several motorists had to be rescued when rising water; in Charleston, many downtown streets were closed because of rising waters; and in Myrtle Beach, heavy rain overwhelmed that city’s stormwater system.
“Please be safe and stay home, if possible,” Myrtle Beach officials posted on Facebook.
As the storm moved up to the coast, all of New Jersey was placed under a state of emergency. The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, issued a similar declaration for eight southern counties, urging people to monitor forecasts and avoid travel.
The National Weather Service placed New York City, Long Island and southern Westchester county under a coastal flood warning and wind advisory through at least Monday afternoon.
The emergency declaration, which included the five boroughs of New York City and Westchester county, forced the cancellation of the annual Columbus Day parade in Manhattan, news outlets reported.
Among the areas hardest hit were coastal areas of suburban Long Island, where up to 3in of rain and winds packing peak gusts of 45 to 50 mph inland away from the shore, and 55 to 60 mph on the coast.
“Those are starting to come down,” National Weather Service meteorologist Dave Stark, told Newsday early Monday.
Police in Nassau and Suffolk counties said they had received calls about downed tree limbs but no reports of injuries or any significant road closures. Freeport Mayor Robert Kennedy said the village received nuisance flooding and experienced extra high tides.
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Video: Diane Keaton, Oscar-Winning Actress, Dies at 79

new video loaded: Diane Keaton, Oscar-Winning Actress, Dies at 79
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Diane Keaton, Oscar-Winning Actress, Dies at 79
Diane Keaton, the vibrant and sometimes unconventional actress, author and filmmaker, has died. Representatives have not said where or when Ms. Keaton died or cited a cause.
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Look, look what’s happened to us, Mike. My God, look what’s happened to our son, Michael. Oh, oh, God, Annie. Well. Oh, well. La-dee-da. La-dee-da. La-la. I don’t think about my film legacy. I’m just lucky to have been here at all in any way, shape or form. I’m just fortunate. I don’t see myself anything other than that.
October 12, 2025
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Vance says administration will keep fighting to send National Guard to Chicago

Runners participate in the Chicago Marathon on Sunday.
Nam Y. Huh/AP
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Nam Y. Huh/AP
After an appeals court again blocked the government’s attempt to deploy the National Guard in the Chicago area, Vice President JD Vance says the Trump administration will “litigate this as much as we can.”
His comments came one day after a federal appeals court in Illinois ruled that the Trump administration can keep federalized National Guard members in the state of Illinois but cannot deploy them for now.

“We’re obviously going to litigate this as much as we can,” Vance said on ABC’s This Week Sunday. “We think that we have the authority to provide proper safety to our citizens all over the United States, but particularly in Chicago.”
The ruling Saturday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is the latest development in the administration’s ongoing push to deploy National Guard members to a number of Democratic cities and states across the U.S., including Chicago and Portland, Oregon.
Trump and other administration officials have claimed that federal forces are necessary to control crime and protect federal agents, while leaders in those cities and others say there is no need for National Guard troops and accuse the Trump administration of overstepping its authority.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat who’s sparred with Trump over the National Guard deployment, said no troops are on the streets of Chicago thanks to the multiple judicial rulings. “We’ve got to rely on the courts to do the right thing,” he told ABC’s This Week.
Most of the 500 National Guard members from Texas and Illinois were based at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, Illinois, while a smaller group was sent to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Broadview, according to the Associated Press.
The legal back-and-forth rolls on as the country’s third-largest city hosts the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Sunday, which organizers say will draw more than 53,000 runners and 1.7 million spectators to city streets.
There had been some question about whether the race would be a target of the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts in the Chicago area, also known as “Operation Midway Blitz.”
But ICE told the Chicago Sun-Times in a statement that it “does not conduct operations at sensitive locations, such as public events, unless there are exigent circumstances.” The Chicago Park District said in a social media post that it had not received any information about ICE agents at the marathon, “contrary to a post circulating on social media.”

Enrique Rivera, organizer of the predominantly Latino running club Venados, told member station WBEZ that he was less concerned for runners during the race itself than while they were preparing for it.
“I’m more afraid of individuals that are out there trying to do this in a group of three, a group of four, right?” Rivera said. That’s where you know something can happen, and your family won’t find out for days.”
Along with Portland, Chicago has been a national flashpoint in recent weeks for the Trump administration’s national immigration crackdown.
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge April Perry of the Northern District of Illinois blocked the government from federalizing and deploying National Guard troops in the state. Perry said descriptions of recent protests around Chicago offered by Trump administration attorneys were “simply unreliable” and issued the 14-day order, though it was partially overturned by an appeals court just two days later.
Still, clashes between protesters and federal agents have continued in the Chicago area. On Friday a journalist with Chicago’s WGN television station, Debbie Brockman, was detained by law enforcement agents and later released. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Brockman “threw objects at border patrol’s car” but no charges have been filed, the Guardian reported.
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