Pence plane slides off track; no injuries
NEW YORK — Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence’s campaign plane slid off a runway during a rainstorm at New York’s LaGuardia Airport late Thursday, tearing up concrete before coming to rest on a patch of grass.
Mr. Pence was fine, though, and no one had been injured.
The plane was coming to New York from Fort Dodge, Iowa, where it had made a hard landing but stayed on the runway earlier Thursday afternoon.
Upon arriving at LaGuardia, after a bumpy approach, the Boeing 737 Eastern Airlines charter landed roughly, making first contact with the runway concrete. The pilot slammed on the brakes and the plane began to slide sideways.
Lawyer accuses justice
An Alaska lawyer said Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas groped her at a dinner party in 1999, a claim that Justice Thomas said is “preposterous,” the National Law Journal reported Thursday.
The publication said Moira Smith posted on Facebook about the alleged incident Oct. 7, the night of the disclosure of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s taped boasts about grabbing women.
The allegation comes as Justice Thomas marks his 25th anniversary on the Supreme Court. His confirmation in 1991 was rocked by the claims of a former employee, Anita Hill, that he had verbally sexually harassed her. Those hearings riveted the nation.
Amtrak to pay $265M
Amtrak will pay $265 million to settle claims related to a crash last year that killed eight and injured more than 200 others when a speeding train derailed on a curve under a settlement approved Thursday.
Amtrak had previously taken responsibility for the May 2015 crash in Philadelphia of the Northeast Regional train traveling from Washington, D.C., to New York.
Federal investigators have concluded the engineer was distracted by word that a nearby train had been hit by a rock and didn’t realize where he was when he accelerated to 106 mph instead of slowing down for the curve’s 50 mph speed limit.
Release request denied
The Guantanamo parole board has rejected a plea for release from the war-on-terror captive known as Abu Zubaydah, the guinea pig in the CIA’s post- 9/11 interrogation program.
In doing so, the Periodic Review Board declared 28 of the detention center’s last 60 captives as indefinite detainees, or forever prisoners in the war on terror.
10 officers on leave
ELKTON, Md. — Ten law enforcement officers have been placed on administrative leave after shooting and killing a couple wanted on gun and drug charges who authorities say refused to drop their weapons after being cornered at a motel.
Police later determined the suspects were holding pellet guns.
Also in the nation …
The Coast Guard says it has suspended a search for Guo Chuan, an oceangoing Chinese adventurer who set off on a trimaran from San Francisco last week . ... Two correctional officers and eight inmates were sent to hospitals, and at least a dozen more prisoners were treated for injuries, after fights broke out Tuesday in a maximum security division of Cook County Jail in Chicago … The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first clinical trial to test a Cuban drug in the U.S., a lung cancer vaccine developed in Havana.