The Daily Moth 2-17-2025
It is Monday, February 17, 2025. Here are today’s top stories.
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Delta plane overturns after landing in Toronto
This afternoon, a Delta Air Lines flight overturned after landing at the Toronto Pearson International Airport. The plane was arriving from Minneapolis. Reports said eight people were injured and that all passengers and crew have been accounted for. A video of the scene showed people exiting the overturned plane in a snowy environment with crews spraying what looks like a flame retardant on the plane. The incident caused all arrivals and departures at the airport to be shut down. It is not clear what caused the plane to overturn. I’ll update in tomorrow’s news.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/17/americas/toronto-airport-delta-plane-intl-latam/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/world/canada/delta-toronto-plane-crash.html
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Deadly flooding in Kentucky
Several areas in Kentucky were impacted by very severe flooding that tragically caused at least eleven people to die, including a mother and her 7-year-old child in a car that was swept away by rising waters. Most of the deaths were due to similar scenarios where motorists tried to drive over flooded areas.
Kentucky Gov. Beshear has been doing press briefings and provided an interpreter.
[Clip]
First responders said they rescued over 1,000 people. The governor said there would be freezing weather coming to Kentucky, which will complicate things.
Severe weather also hit other southern states, such as flooding in Tennessee with one area impacted by a levee failure, tornadoes in Alabama and Mississippi, and tornado watches in Florida and Georgia. One person in Atlanta died when a large tree fell on a home.
https://www.nbcnews.com/weather/winter-weather/flooding-us-southeast-leaves-1-dead-rcna192385
https://www.wdrb.com/news/death-roll-reaches-11-in-kentucky-from-flooding-gov-beshear-says/article_540b9870-ed45-11ef-8ad7-27403abd92a8.html
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U.S. beats Canada 3-1 in hockey tournament
The U.S. defeated Canada 3-1 in their matchup in the 4 Nations Face-Off hockey tournament on Saturday night. There were three fights in the first nine seconds and the game was action packed with the score 2-1 until the last two minutes, which is when the U.S. scored on an empty net. The players were among the NHL’s top players.
American player Dylan Larkin said it was one of the best experiences of his life and that it was a great night for the sport of hockey and for the rivalry between the U.S. and Canada.
The U.S. is guaranteed to play in the championship game on Thursday night. Canada will play against Finland tonight and has to win if they want to have a chance to play in the championship and have a rematch against the U.S. The fourth country in this tournament is Sweden, who plays the U.S. tonight.
There are a few scenarios and tiebreakers on who gets to play the U.S.
https://apnews.com/article/us-canada-4-nations-score-1aad2277f10e7ec0797b0f61051fffbf
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U.S. meets with Russia to discuss Ukraine war
U.S. Sec. of State Marco Rubio is meeting with Russian officials today in Saudi Arabia to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.
ABC News said Ukrainian officials are not expected to be a part of this meeting despite calls from Ukrainians and across Europe for Ukraine to be a part of this meeting.
The incoming Trump administration has been very friendly with Russia and it’s a big contrast from the Biden administration, who shut off relations after Russian President Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said it would be dangerous if Trump and Putin were to meet without Ukraine’s involvement. He said Russia is not a country that wants peace. Zelenskyy also warned that he has intelligence that says Russia plans to send troops to neighboring Belarus and become a threat to NATO and Europe.
The Trump administration and conservative politicians have, in recent months, become increasingly weary and critical of the billions of dollars in aid that has been given to Ukraine for their defense. That’s what is driving the change in attitude from the U.S. towards Ukraine.
President Trump has floated the idea of making an economic deal with Ukraine to own or retrieve valuable minerals to cover and reimburse the costs of U.S. aid. Now, this is an important detail – the Russian invasion has given Russia control of some of the most mineral-rich areas in Ukraine that is worth tens of trillions of dollars. The minerals include titanium, iron ore, lithium, and coal. News reports said there was a proposal for the U.S. to own 50% of Ukraine’s valuable minerals, but Zelenskyy rejected it because he didn’t feel the deal had enough protections for Ukraine.
So, you have a situation where the Trump administration is warmly engaging in dialogue with Putin, who has invaded some of the most valuable lands in Ukraine, while not including Ukraine. What kinds of deals do you think are proposed?
https://abcnews.go.com/US/live-updates/trump-2nd-term-live-updates-white-house-employees/?id=118887140
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/10/ukraine-russia-energy-mineral-wealth/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/zelenskyy-tells-aides-reject-trump-pitch-ukraine-mineral-reserves-rcna192426
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Many recently-hired federal employees laid off
News reports said the Trump administration has laid off thousands of recently-hired federal employees who are on their probationary periods as a part of the Trump/Elon Musk vision of reducing the size of the federal government.
Employees on probationary periods are those who were hired within the past one to two years and can more easily be terminated.
“Schedule A” employees, who are disabled (including deaf) employees that are hired without going through a competitive process, have to be on probation for two years, so they’re far more vulnerable.
A report from “Government Executive” said over 2,000 people in the Department of Agriculture and over 2,000 people in the Interior Department were fired. The Veterans Affairs Department fired 1,000 people. The report said about 400 were fired from the Environmental Protection Agency and another 400 from the FAA and many others were fired from multiple other agencies. The news reports keep on coming up.
Two rounds of layoffs are especially controversial - 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration were terminated. Some of the employees worked on the nation’s nuclear weapons – very important jobs. Most of them ended up getting their jobs back. The second round is the firings of about 300 FAA employees. This is especially controversial because of the recent helicopter/plane collision in D.C. The FAA was thought to be understaffed, so now there’s even less staff.
Some of those who were fired said it’s upended their lives and they are worried about their financial security. Some said they felt that a federal government job was a way to serve the country and to have a good, stable job with great benefits, but that’s no longer true.
https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/02/see-which-federal-agencies-are-firing-new-hires/403033/
https://www.barrons.com/articles/federal-employees-fired-doge-probation-email-96e52132
https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federal-916e6819104f04f44c345b7dde4904d5
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/hundreds-faa-employees-let-go-trumps-mass-layoffs-continue-rcna192458
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Drama in NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case
There is drama surrounding New York City Mayor Eric Adams and his criminal case. What is going on? I’ll give a recap.
In September, federal prosecutors / the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Mayor Adams with accepting bribes from the Turkish government and of defrauding New York City by stealing public funds. Adams denied the allegations. Naturally, this means the case would go to a trial.
After Donald Trump’s election victory, Adams met with Trump administration officials in December and discussed plans to collaborate to remove “violent undocumented immigrants.” A few days later, Trump said he would consider pardoning Adams. Trump said both of them were “persecuted” by prosecutors in New York. Adams then attended Trump’s inauguration and there was speculation that he asked for a pardon.
Last week, the DOJ’s acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, who was Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, ordered federal prosecutors to drop charges. Bove said he hasn’t assessed the strength of the evidence but said the case needs to be dropped because of two main reasons: it looked like Adams was punished for criticizing the Biden administration’s immigration policies and because the prosecution has restricted the mayor’s ability to crack down on illegal immigration.
After this order, the lead prosecutor on the case and three other top officials in the DOJ resigned. One said this was an improper “quid pro quo” between Adams and the Trump administration. The lead prosecutor said only a fool or a coward would obey the Trump administration’s directive.
After the resignations, Bove asked the judge overseeing the case, Judge Dale E. Ho, to dismiss the case. The New York Times explained that he can decide that Bove’s request to dismiss the case is politically motivated, but that will likely be appealed.
Adams said he never broke the law and never did anything improper. See this clip, which includes an interpreter.
[Clip]
So, that’s the recap. We’ll see how Judge Ho rules. It’s an important case because it concerns a president intervening in a criminal case surrounding a mayor of the most populous city in the U.S.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/14/us/doj-resignations-trump-adams.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/nyregion/judge-dale-ho-eric-adams-case.html
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mayor-eric-adams-meets-trump-border-czar-talk/story?id=116739472
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/nyregion/judge-dale-ho-eric-adams-case.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/new-york-city-eric-adams-corruption-case-department-of-justice-brad-lander/
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That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.