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The company planning a successor to Concorde makes its first supersonic test

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The company planning a successor to Concorde makes its first supersonic test

Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 breaks the sound barrier on Jan. 28.

Boom Supersonic


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Boom Supersonic

A private company aiming to build the first supersonic airliner since the Concorde retired more than two decades ago achieved its first sound-barrier-busting flight over California’s Mojave desert on Tuesday.

Denver-based Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 demonstrator plane, with Chief Test Pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg at the controls, hit Mach 1.122, or 750 mph, at an altitude of about 35,000 feet. Brandenburg brought the plane to a successful landing at the end of the approximately 34-minute flight.

Founder and CEO Blake Scholl described the flight as “phenomenal.”

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“We’re ready to scale up. We’re ready to build the passenger supersonic jet that will pick up where Concorde left off and ultimately allow the rest of us to fly supersonic,” Scholl said.

The Mach 1 milestone was reached on the 12th test flight of the XB-1. The company says it plans to incorporate what it learns from the XB-1 into a supersonic passenger jet known as Overture that can carry up to 80 passengers. The new passenger plane is designed to maintain a cruising speed of Mach 1.7, or roughly twice as fast as current commercial jet airliners.

According to Boom, United, American and Japan Airlines have all expressed interest in purchasing the Overture. In a statement emailed to NPR, United Airlines said that in 2021, it “reached a conditional, non-binding purchase agreement” with the company to buy 15 of the airliners, with “options for up to an additional 35 aircraft.”

Boom says it expects Overture to be ready for commercial flights by 2030. The plane is expected to be capable of transoceanic flights at altitudes up to 60,000 feet — much higher than conventional jet airlines, “high enough to see the curvature of the earth below,” according to the company. “Flying at supersonic speeds tends to be smoother than subsonic flight because at 60,000 feet, you’re flying above most turbulence,” it says.

Unlike Concorde, which proved uneconomical to operate, Boom says airlines should be able to make a profit selling seats on Overture at fares similar to those for first and business class seats on current commercial airliners.

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“The biggest problem with Concorde was it was just simply too expensive to operate,” Scholl said. “So the single most important problem to solve is not to break the sound barrier, but to break the economic barrier.”

Concorde made its first operational flight from London to Washington, D.C., in 1976. Developed jointly by Britain and France, Concorde was operated for nearly three decades by Air France and British Airways.

However, the jet was criticized for its inefficiency. Compared to a Boeing 747, the delta-wing Concorde guzzled four times as much fuel and carried only one-fifth as many passengers — around 100. The plane was also the subject of complaints about noise from its loud turbojet engines and its sonic booms.

Scholl says Concorde had very loud, converted military engines, but Overture will be “dramatically quieter, and that means around an airport, Overture will be no louder than the subsonic airplanes that are flying today.”

In 1996, Concorde set a speed record of just 2 hours, 52 minutes, and 59 seconds between New York and London. In 2000, a Concorde was involved in a fiery crash shortly after takeoff from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport that killed all 100 passengers and nine crew aboard France Air Flight 4590. The supersonic planes were grounded but eventually returned to service. Always a money-loser, the Concorde was eventually retired in 2003.

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Hamas frees more Israeli hostages in Gaza as fragile ceasefire holds

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Hamas frees more Israeli hostages in Gaza as fragile ceasefire holds

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Hamas freed two Israeli hostages on Saturday, as the fourth exchange of a fragile ceasefire in Gaza got under way.

The Israeli military said the two men — Yarden Bibas and Ofer Kalderon — had been handed over to Israeli forces in Gaza, and returned to Israel. A third Israeli hostage is also expected to be released as part of Saturday’s exchange. In return, Israel is due to free 183 Palestinian prisoners.

In a further milestone in the two-week old ceasefire, a group of wounded Palestinians is expected to leave Gaza later on Saturday through the Rafah crossing point to Egypt, which has been closed since Israeli forces seized control of it during their offensive in the enclave last May.

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The six-week truce is the first part of a complex three-stage deal thrashed out by US-led mediators that has raised hopes of an end to the 15-month war in Gaza, which has become the deadliest round of fighting in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Bibas, 35, and Kalderon, 54, were both seized with family members from the kibbutz of Nir Oz, which lies less than two kilometres from Gaza, during the shock October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that triggered the war.

Two of Kalderon’s children, Erez and Sahar, who were kidnapped with him, were freed during the war’s only previous truce in late 2023. However, Bibas’s wife Shiri and their two children, Ariel and Kfir, have not been returned.

At just nine months old, Kfir Bibas was the youngest hostage to be seized, and footage of Shiri clinging to him and his four-year-old brother Ariel as the family was kidnapped has become one of the enduring images in Israel of Hamas’s attack.

Hamas claimed early in the war that the three had been killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza. Israeli officials have consistently said they could not verify the claim, but have expressed grave concern over their fate.

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In total, Hamas militants killed 1,200 people on October 7, according to Israeli officials, and seized 250 hostages.

Israel responded with a devastating assault on Gaza that has killed more than 47,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, reduced most of the enclave to rubble and stoked a humanitarian catastrophe.

About 100 hostages were freed during the previous truce in 2023, while a handful have been rescued by Israeli forces. Israel has also retrieved the bodies of several hostages. Before Saturday’s exchange, 82 hostages — at least half of whom are believed to be dead — remained in Gaza.

In total, Hamas was due to release 33 hostages in exchange for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners under the first stage of the deal. But Israeli officials said this week that Hamas had informed it that eight of the 33 — which include women, children, the sick and the elderly — were dead.

During the second phase — over which Israel and Hamas are due to start negotiating in the coming days — Hamas is meant to release all remaining living hostages in exchange for hundreds more Palestinian detainees, the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and a permanent end to the war.

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The third and final phase will involve the return of the remaining bodies of hostages who have died and the reconstruction of Gaza.

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Video Mother and son remember family friends who died in tragic DC plane crash

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Video Mother and son remember family friends who died in tragic DC plane crash

Mother and son remember family friends who died in tragic DC plane crash

ABC News’ Phil Lipof spoke to family friends of Donna and Peter Livingston, and their daughters Everly and Alydia, all of whom perished when flying home from the U.S. Figure Skating event in Kansas.

February 1, 2025

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Trump envoy to meet Venezuelan leader Maduro on migrant deal

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Trump envoy to meet Venezuelan leader Maduro on migrant deal

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Donald Trump’s crisis negotiator has flown to Venezuela to discuss a deal on migrants with its authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro, sparking alarm among the country’s embattled opposition.

Richard Grenell, the US president’s envoy for special missions, arrived in Caracas on Friday to press Maduro to potentially accept thousands of Venezuelan deportees “without condition”, according to US officials.

Grenell’s visit comes just before Secretary of State Marco Rubio embarks on his own trip to Latin America aimed at demonstrating renewed US interest in the western hemisphere.

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Grenell, a close confidant of Trump’s, made the trip after Venezuela’s authoritarian Maduro signalled his willingness to talk with Trump’s team, sources said. Russia, one of Maduro’s backers, sent a government plane to Caracas that landed 15 minutes before Grenell’s arrival on Friday.

“He is there on a special mission,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, the US state department special envoy for Latin America. “President Trump expects Nicolás Maduro to take back all of the Venezuelan criminals and gang members that have been exported to US, and to do so unequivocally and without condition.”

Richard Grenell is a close confidant of Donald Trump’s © Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

Details of the discussions with Washington remain unclear. But a deal could involve an easing of US sanctions on Venezuela and dropping a US reward offered for Maduro’s capture in return for Caracas taking back thousands of Venezuela migrants from the US, shipping more oil to American Gulf Coast refineries and releasing US nationals held in Caracas.

Maduro, a close ally of Russia and Iran, has been shunned by the West and much of Latin America after claiming victory in a presidential election last July, whose result was widely regarded as fraudulent. The Biden administration and the European parliament recognised the main opposition candidate, Edmundo González, as “president-elect”.

Rubio and Claver-Carone are both Cuban-American hawks who have strongly opposed a deal with Maduro in the past. However it is not clear whether their view will prevail with Trump.

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Claver-Carone stressed that the US demands were not part of a diplomatic haggle and said Maduro would be pressed to release US “hostages” in the country. “This is not a quid pro quo, this is not a negotiation in exchange for anything. President Trump himself has made very clear, we don’t need Venezuelan oil,” he said.

If Maduro did not heed Grenell’s demands and the proposal he offered, “there will be consequences”, said Claver-Carone, who insisted that the Trump administration remained committed to democratic change in Venezuela.

It is unclear how many US citizens are being held in Venezuela, though officials there have mentioned at least nine in public statements, with most accused by Maduro’s regime of terrorism and coup-plotting.

Grenell tweeted on January 20 that “diplomacy is back”, saying he had held “multiple conversations with Venezuelan officials” and that “talking is a tactic”. He held a private meeting with Maduro’s top political operator Jorge Rodríguez in Mexico in 2020 in the final days of the first Trump administration.

González this week urged Trump not to cut a deal with Maduro and the Venezuelan opposition has been alarmed by meetings it held with him before Grenell travelled to Caracas.

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“Grenell’s nonchalance and lack of concern for democracy and human rights has left everyone very concerned,” said an opposition source. The opposition fears that business interests will lobby Trump to cut a deal giving the US more access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, the world’s biggest.

Trump’s own position on Venezuela is unclear. He has said little about the country during the election campaign or since taking office, beyond accusing Maduro of ruining the country and saying on January 20 that “we don’t have to buy their oil” — remarks interpreted by some as a negotiating tactic to put pressure on Maduro.

A former official who worked in Trump’s first administration said the US president was mainly concerned about migration. “He’s just revoked temporary protected status for 600,000 Venezuelan (migrants) in the US and there are easily twice that number there illegally,” the former official said. “Trump has got to get rid of them all from the US.”

During the first Trump administration, the president imposed “maximum pressure” sanctions on Maduro’s government and recognised then-opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate president. But the strategy failed to dislodge Maduro, who remained in power with the help of Russia, China and Iran, while Guaidó eventually fled to Florida.

“Trump regards the opposition as losers,” the former official said. “He gave them a lot and they failed. There is no way he is going back down that road again.”

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