President Joe Biden
’s baffling suggestion that his uncle might have been eaten by cannibals after a plane crash off Papua New Guinea
during World War II
has, unsurprisingly, not gone over great with the people who actually live there or have carefully studied the region’s history.
The Democrat made the comments Wednesday while discussing the fate of Ambrose Finnegan, whom he affectionately referred to as “Uncle Bosie.” “He got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be—there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” Biden said
.
The comments immediately drew scrutiny as, for one thing, they seemed to be a major departure from the Pentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
’s version of what happened to Finnegan. The war records say his plane went down for “unknown reasons” on May 14, 1944, during a courier flight heading to New Guinea.
Donald Trump
kicked off Day 4 of his criminal hush-money trial in a familiar fashion: with the airing of grievances.
“They’ve taken away my constitutional rights to speak and that includes speaking to you,” the former president told reporters as he arrived at Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday.
He insisted Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order—which bars him from taking shots at prosecutors, jurors, court staff, and their families—“has to come off.”
Tesla
is recalling thousands of its Cybertrucks
over a problem with the accelerator pedal, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced Friday.
The auto safety regulator said
the pedals in certain Cybertruck vehicles have a pad that “may dislodge and become trapped by the interior trim,” in turn causing the truck to “accelerate unintentionally, increasing the risk of a crash.” A total of 3,878 Cybertrucks are being recalled to fix the issue.
Part of a safety recall report
said the fault on Cybertrucks manufactured between November 2023 and April 2024 said the accelerator pad can become dislodged when “high force” is applied to the pedal. If the pad then becomes trapped in the interior trim, “the performance and operation of the pedal will be affected, which may increase the risk of a collision.”
Israel
’s retaliatory attack against Iran
early Friday came despite President Joe Biden
’s stringent warnings against doing just that to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
, with the leaders appearing to become increasingly at odds about how Israel should respond against its enemies.
Iran has so far played down the significance of the attack, with state media
portraying the incident as involving a few drones that were taken down without causing damage. American sources, however, have suggested
the strike involved missiles—though the severity of the damage caused by the attack is not yet clear.
What is clear is that the U.S. fears the retaliatory strike could cause Americans to be put in harm’s way. The U.S. Embassy in Israel on Friday issued a security alert
restricting the personal travel of American government employees and their families outside of specific areas. The advisory specifically cited “reports that Israel conducted a retaliatory strike inside Iran” as the motive for the restrictions.
With Taylor Swift
fans already delirious with anticipation about the release of her new album, the singer proceeded to send them stratospheric early Friday by revealing that The Tortured Poets Departmentis a double album.
Following the release of the new record’s first 16 songs at midnight, a mysterious countdown
to 2 a.m. E.T. appeared hidden on her Instagram. “It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album,” Swift wrote in a post when the fateful moment finally arrived.
“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs,” she added. “And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.”
