Quarterback Aaron Rodgers, making his debut with the New York Jets, was carted off the field after suffering a left Achilles injury on just his fourth play in the team’s Monday Night Football game against the Buffalo Bills and will miss the rest of the 2023 NFL season.

Jets head coach Robert Saleh told reporters on a media call Tuesday: “He’s out for the year. He needs surgery.”

Saleh said he didn’t have information on the four-time Most Valuable Player’s surgery schedule and recovery process. At 39, Rodgers is the second oldest player in the league, and this was to be his 19th season.

Saleh told reporters, “We know it’s torn. That’s been confirmed.”

The Jets indirectly referenced the bleak outlook of the injury on social media, posting on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Not the way any of us wanted it to go, but we know the commitment you’ve made to this team will continue to impact us moving forward. Get well soon, Aaron Rodgers.”

The injury occurred when Rodgers was sacked by Bills edge rusher Leonard Floyd.

The 39-year-old hobbled up for a few moments before going back down to the ground. He was attended to by Jets medical staff before being helped off the field at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

After being looked at in the blue medical tent on the sidelines, the 39-year-old was taken to the locker room on a cart, and he missed the rest of the game.

Saleh said he spoke to Rodgers on Tuesday.

“As you guys can imagine, he’s … down, you know,” the coach said, adding he didn’t talk with the quarterback about his future. “I’ll let him answer those questions.”

Rodgers’ back-up, Zach Wilson, came in to fill the quarterback void and led the team to a 22-16 overtime victory over the Bills after undrafted rookie wide receiver Xavier Gipson returned a punt 65 yards for a walk-off touchdown.

Rodgers’ most meaningful action of the evening turned out to be running out onto the field before the game holding the US flag in a tribute to the September 11 terrorist attacks, with the game being held 22 years after the incidents which saw 2,977 people killed in New York City, Washington, DC and outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The reaction to Rodgers’ injury on social media was filled with emotion, with many Jets fans mourning the loss of the player they thought might be a final piece in a Super Bowl-winning team. ESPN host and Jets fan Mike Greenberg said on Tuesday that the emotional rollercoaster of the last six months makes this such a painful moment.

“I want more than anyone to be furious today, but the reality is, sometimes things just happen. There really isn’t anybody to be mad at,” Greenberg said on ‘Get Up.’ “Football is inherently a violent and dangerous game, injuries are going to take place 100% of the time and you just have to hope that yours is not the team, if you are a fan, whose season is destroyed by an injury.

“Half the contenders in the league at a minimum would have their contention taken away if their quarterback went down. Half the teams in the league could not overcome an injury like this. The Jets built absolutely everything in their team, in their season, the entire organization shaped around Aaron Rodgers and he deserved it.

“From the moment they got him, he has been invested beyond anyone’s wildest dreams … The idea that his season would be over in four plays never entered my mind.”

“We all wanted to see Aaron Rodgers out there, one of the greatest players to ever play the game,” Wire said Tuesday morning. “Four-time league MVP and this was supposed to be the moment where he comes and brings the Jets back to their glory, which happened about 55 years ago when Broadway Joe (Namath) … that was their only Super Bowl title.”

The Jets edged the Bills, who are considered a Super Bowl contender – with a late touchdown Monday night and Wire thinks the New York team could still win a lot of games.

Before being traded in the offseason, Rodgers had spent the first 18 seasons of his NFL career with the Green Bay Packers, where he led the team to a 31-25 victory in Super Bowl XLV in 2011.

Rodgers won MVP awards in 2011, 2014, 2020 and 2021, while setting numerous records for his accuracy and deadliness over the years.

Fake grass controversy

Saleh downplayed speculation about the role the new field turf at MetLife Stadium played in Rodgers’ serious injury.

“If it was a noncontact injury, I think that’d be something to discuss obviously, but that was kind of a forcible – I think that was trauma-induced,” Saleh said at the news conference. “I do know the players prefer grass and there’s a lot invested in those young men.”

Green Bay Packers offensive lineman and Rodgers’ former teammate, David Bakhtiari, called out the NFL on the artificial turf in the league after Rodgers’ injury.

“Congrats @nfl. How many more players have to get hurt on ARTIFICIAL TURF??! You care more about soccer players than us. You plan to remove all artificial turf for the World Cup coming up. So clearly it’s feasible,” Bakhtiari’s post, which drew thousands of replies, said on social media site X on Monday. “I’m sick of this..Do better!”

Data from from the past eight years shows there is no difference in the rate of Achilles injuries on natural grass and synthetic surfaces, Jeff Miller, NFL executive vice president of communications, public affairs and policy, and health and safety, said during a virtual news conference Tuesday.

“Because an injury happens on a surface doesn’t mean that it’s actually caused by that surface and in this case, we haven’t seen a data difference for Achilles injuries,” Miller said. “There’s a lot more work to do. We don’t want those injuries in the game. We want to prevent those that we can, especially major injuries like those.”

When asked what message it sends to league players that a few stadiums change their surfaces from artificial to grass for soccer and revert back to the synthetic field for football, Miller said, “If there was one, that’s fine. We do spend a lot of time thinking about surfaces and their injury rates and how those relate to how our game is played in the particular use cases for football.”

Miller said certain natural grass surfaces have a lower injury rate than synthetic surfaces and some synthetic surfaces that have a lower injury rate than natural grass. The league will study what role different surfaces might or might not play in injuries, he said.

The Atlantic hurricane season typically reaches its peak this week, but record-warm ocean temperatures are fueling a hyperactive season that experts say shows no signs of slowing.

The average hurricane season starts June 1 and runs through November 30, but its statistical peak is on September 10. So far this year, hurricane activity has been above average in every respect, according to Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University.

Record-warm water fuels an active season

Some fast facts on 2023 hurricanes so far:

Before it started, forecasters predicted an average season, but warned of more uncertainty than usual because of a climatic battle between a burgeoning El Niño and warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures. El Niños tend to produce more wind shear – upper-level winds that can rip storms apart – but warm water can fuel their growth.

Then, as the season started, ocean warmth skyrocketed to record levels and forecasters warned of explosive tropical development and a more active season, something that has come to fruition.

“We saw how hot the Atlantic was and said, ‘Alright, we gotta go for it,’” said Klotzbach, whose research group creates seasonal hurricane forecasts.

“Thankfully, we have a strong El Niño,” Klotzbach said, because if there was no El Niño, the season would “probably be tracking 200% of normal instead of 130% of normal.”

But Klotzbach said this El Niño, which by all measures is considered strong, isn’t affecting the western Atlantic like it normally would.

The extreme ocean heat and low wind shear are having some major effects on the season, Klotzbach said. More storms are able to form than would otherwise be possible in a typical El Niño year. Even the storms that have been weakened by moderate shear – like hurricanes Franklin and Lee – were able to stay alive and restrengthen once they found more favorable conditions.

“If we leave a storm out there long enough, eventually it’s going to find somewhere where the shear isn’t that strong” and it can strengthen, Klotzbach said.

More frequent rapid intensification and more major hurricanes are also byproducts of this season’s ripe conditions. Idalia, Franklin and Lee all rapidly intensified in water running well above normal.

“Warm water is not the only thing you need, but it does kind of load the dice toward these high-end rapid intensification events,” Klotzbach said. “You look at the water Lee was tracking over, it should have been at 28 degrees Celsius instead they’re 30 (degrees Celsius) – it’s like rocket fuel.”

The season isn’t over yet – 90% of hurricane season activity happens from mid-August until mid-October – and Klotzbach said the next two weeks still look like they could produce more storms.

Beyond that point, it’s anyone’s guess, Klotzbach said, but an Atlantic tinderbox has already proven full of surprises this season.

“At the end of the day we’ve learned even in a strong El Niño, if you get the Atlantic warm enough it can hold its own,” Klotzbach said.

Massachusetts cities devastated by floodwater could face new perils as more rain is on the way and officials wonder whether a “very sensitive” dam will hold up.

The state has seen “catastrophic flooding” since Monday, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said Tuesday from North Attleborough.

About a dozen homes in the town were completely under water Tuesday, said Chris Coleman, North Attleborough’s fire and emergency management chief.

And about 200 homes were damaged in and around North Attleborough after a storm Monday quickly dumped about 5 inches of rain on ground already saturated from a weekend storm, officials said.

“It was really scary, the amount of water that fell in just a short amount of time and the incredible devastation that it caused,” the governor said.

No civilian injuries have been reported from the North Attleborough flooding, but a firefighter was injured overnight and was in stable condition, Coleman said Tuesday.

She also said the massive flooding that hit various regions of Massachusetts “severely impacted” two dams, damaged railroad tracks and forced a number of seniors to be evacuated by boats in the middle of the night.

“One of those dams has been shored up already and the other will be shored up by the end of the day,” said Healey, who toured the damage on Tuesday.

Leominster was another city in Massachusetts to face a torrential downpour this week. The city got pummeled by roughly 11 inches of rain in just six to seven hours, Mayor Dean Mazzarella said Tuesday.

Some basements in Leominster “probably have feet of water inside of them,” Mazzarella said.

“We have several homes where the water washed out … you can see the foundation of the home.”

While no serious injuries have been reported, the mayor said, “We had to evacuate people last night … with hovercrafts and boats to get people out to safety.”

Leominster was quickly inundated not just by torrential downpours, but also from water gushing downhill.

“Leominster is about 26 square miles. We have 12 hills, and obviously from those hills comes the water,” the mayor said. “And with 11 inches of rain, it just adds to the … water (going) downhill.”

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency has urged some residents to evacuate due to “a potential issue at the Barrett Park Pond Dam,” MEMA said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“This particular dam is one that we’re actually about to replace,” Mazzarella said. “It is very sensitive. It’s water saturated. And we’re worried about that downstream. So, we’ve put out a code red and notified everyone along that stream bank, along that river base … to evacuate.”

And it’s not clear when children in Leominster will be able to go back to school.

“Our schools are closed” Tuesday, the mayor said. “We have a couple of schools that experienced severe damage and flooding. And the other schools are open for shelters.”

The deluge has also washed away roads and created a large sinkhole, Mazzarella said.

“That was the road … it’s gone,” the mayor said in a Facebook video showing the massive sinkhole.

MEMA staff have been on-scene in #Leominster since last night supporting the local flood response & coordinating requests for assistance, including 3,000 sandbags, additional shelter staff, traffic sign boards & shelter equipment to support residents with disabilities. #ThisIsEM pic.twitter.com/uQbmYQhlUQ

— MEMA (@MassEMA) September 12, 2023

Videos posted on social media showed vehicles submerged by dark floodwater covering a highway. Other footage shows emergency vehicles trying to navigate a street overtaken by rapidly moving water as rain keeps falling. Another video shows water filling a gaping sinkhole in the middle of a street lined with houses.

The torrent was so intense that a packed, 8-foot by 8-foot dumpster traveled down a local river and ended up in the middle of a riverwalk trail, Mazzarella said. Officials have no idea where the dumpster came from.

While the rain has largely subsided in Leominster, “it’s going to take a while for the rivers to reach their peak,” Mazzarella said Tuesday morning.

While the area gets a reprieve from heavy rain Tuesday, but another round of storms could move through Wednesday.

Most of the Northeast – including central Massachusetts – faces a slight risk of excessive rainfall late Wednesday and early Thursday, according to the Weather Prediction Center.

And more rain could thrash Massachusetts and eastern New England this weekend, depending on the track of Hurricane Lee.

The governor said local and state agencies are working to address damages in zones impacted by the storms and that her office is preparing an emergency declaration that will be issued later Tuesday.

Hurricane Lee grew even larger on Tuesday and triggered a tropical storm watch for Bermuda as the cyclone’s potential impacts begin to come into focus for the island and beyond.

Lee, a Category 3 hurricane Tuesday afternoon, was centered about 535 miles south of Bermuda with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.

The storm has been growing in size since the weekend and hurricane-force winds now extend 125 miles from Lee’s center, according to the 5 p.m. ET hurricane center update. Tropical storm-force winds extended 240 miles from its core late Tuesday, having grown 55 miles in 12 hours.

Lee is expected to remain quite strong through Tuesday night, but will lose some intensity Wednesday into Thursday as it moves over slightly cooler waters churned up by Hurricane Franklin earlier this month.

But while Lee loses some strength this week, the hurricane will simultaneously continue to grow in size and begin to move faster.

A larger storm could impact a more widespread area, even if its winds no longer reach monster hurricane levels. A larger Hurricane Lee, then, is more likely to affect the Eastern Seaboard – even if not through a direct landfall.

Tropical storm-force winds could extend over 300 miles from Lee’s center later this week, National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan said in a Monday storm briefing.

This means potentially-damaging wind gusts could still impact portions of the northeastern US at the end of the week, even if the Lee’s center stays a couple hundred miles off the coast, out over the Atlantic Ocean. Tropical storm-force wind gusts could arrive for portions of Connecticut and eastern Massachusetts Friday night when Lee’s center is expected to be about 250 miles to the southeast.

The exact timing and extent of Lee’s winds and rainfall in the US and Canada could still fluctuate with lingering uncertainty over its track. But the hurricane’s track may come into better focus once it turns to the north Wednesday.

Regardless of its final track, the storm will send big waves to a growing area of the East Coast throughout the week as it tracks northward. This will cause coastal erosion, dangerous surf and life-threatening rip currents at beaches.

Dangerous surf was already happening along the southeastern US coast from Florida through the Carolinas and on many of the far eastern Caribbean islands as well as the British and US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas and Bermuda.

A high risk of rip currents was in effect through at least Wednesday night for coastal areas from Florida northward to Massachusetts. Rip currents have already killed 71 people in the US this year, preliminary National Weather Service data shows. Three people in New Jersey died in rip currents kicked up in the wake of Hurricane Franklin last week.

Lee to sideswipe Bermuda before approaching US, Canada

Lee is expected to take a turn to the north on Wednesday and pick up its pace. The hurricane is set to make its closest approach to Bermuda Thursday into Friday and unleash strong winds and rain as well as dangerous surf and rip currents.

Late Tuesday morning, the Bermuda Weather Service Issued a tropical storm watch for the island, meaning tropical storm conditions are possible there in the next 48 hours.

Tropical storm-force wind gusts are likely to whip across Bermuda from Thursday morning into Friday as Lee passes to the west. Rain could also fall heavily at times during this period and may cause localized flash flooding.

Seas around the island will become hazardous with large waves as Lee approaches.

It’s one thing standing in line to watch the blockbuster film “Oppenheimer.” It’s another thing entirely queueing up in a remote desert to experience the location of the film’s most pivotal scene.

But if you’re a fan of atomic history and can swing central New Mexico this October, your pilgrimage through the Jornada del Muerto (Dead Man’s Journey) will be so worth the effort.

Saturday, October 21, presents a rare opportunity to visit not just one but two scientifically significant and movie-famous destinations on the same day – each occupying opposite ends of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Trinity Site is the national historic landmark that’s home to mankind’s first nuclear blast on July 16, 1945, where plutonium gamma rays lit up the night sky. It hosts only two open house events each year.

And while you’re in the area, an extraordinary bonus is a second, free-of-charge open house aimed specifically at Trinity Site adventurers who are willing to drive another 100 miles to take in a second mind-bending experience.

It’s the Very Large Array Radio Observatory (VLA), which was dramatized in the 1997 alien-life movie “Contact.” The VLA telescope can spread wider than New York City, able to capture the whispers of distant radio waves as they undulate across our cosmos.

Rare access to Trinity Site

Trinity Site opens only two Saturdays a year. Once in April, and lucky for “Oppenheimer” enthusiasts, again in October.

The exact dates are announced in advance each year by the US Army.

The site is a secure military installation within the forbidding White Sands Missile Range, where live weapons are regularly tested. The terrain is high desert plateau, dotted with creosote brush and not much else.

In our everyday crush of crowds, traffic and strip malls, the Land of Enchantment’s sheer miles of open landscape and soul-nourishing cobalt vistas inspire. Buzz Aldrin’s impression of the moon’s surface parallels Trinity Site, a “magnificent desolation.”

When J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist known as the “father of the atomic bomb,” led his Manhattan Project team to Trinity, it wasn’t just for the isolation. He had history with New Mexico, attending summer boys’ camps during his youth. Because of the popularity of the movie “Oppenheimer,” a surge of visitors is expected on October 21.

The open house event, hosted by the US Army, is free but limited to the first 5,000 guests, on a first-come, first-served basis.

How to get there

From Albuquerque International Sunport airport, your best bet is a rental car for the two-hour drive south. It’s easy to get disoriented while navigating, so stick to the Army’s directions, as GPS instructions can be wonky. Take screen photos of the route mapped on your phone – as you may lose cell service – and have an actual roadmap as backup.

Aim to arrive at Trinity’s Stallion Gate before 8 a.m., when the gate opens. There will already be a line. Be early, and you’ll still have plenty of time for the day’s second adventure. Army officials will check your ID at the gate, and from there it’s a 17-mile (27-kilometer) drive to a parking lot located a quarter-mile walk from the reason you came – Ground Zero.

Trinity Site’s atmosphere during an open house is reminiscent of a small-town carnival from a bygone era. Vendors selling souvenir trinkets. Kids in strollers. Dogs wagging tails. Porta Potties. That’s until you notice the pop-up tent displaying Geiger counters. And another with radioactive Trinitite, the mysterious green-glass rock that rained down from the bomb’s blast.

Ominous fence signs remind guests that it’s against the law to remove any pieces of Trinitite they spy on the ground because ingested fragments retain enough radioactivity to be dangerous.

The famed 1918 McDonald adobe ranch house, where the bomb’s critical plutonium core was assembled in the master bedroom, survived the shock wave two miles away mostly intact. Buses shuttle visitors back and forth free of charge from the Trinity parking lot to the McDonald house.

Venture in farther to stand next to a life-size replica of Fat Man, the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945.

Visitors can pose for photos inside Jumbo, the 216-ton steel cylinder scientists contemplated detonating the bomb – nicknamed the Gadget – within to contain its plutonium core if the full detonation failed.

Experiencing Ground Zero

The moment arrives to approach Ground Zero, marked simply by a black stone obelisk that’s 12 feet (3.66 meters) high.

Step back in time to the pre-dawn of July 16, 1945. Glance north, west and south where Oppenheimer’s team hunkered down in three bunkers, five miles away. You stand where the course of humanity shifted. Where the boundaries of physics and possibility stretched.

Picture the 100-foot-high steel tower that stood where the obelisk stands now. A few feet away only nubs of the tower remain, the bulk annihilated in the blast.

See in your mind the mattresses hauled in and stacked high to cushion the fall should the chains snap as they winched the heavy Gadget high into the air. And young scientists rotated throughout the night babysitting the bomb as crackles of lightning threatened to strike.

Oppenheimer wrote the poem “Crossing” two decades before Trinity. His words contained the prophetic passage, “…in the dry hills down by the river, half withered, we had the hot winds against us.” He could not have imagined the heat to come.

Now close your eyes.

Ignore what you do see to imagine the history you cannot see.

The storms over the mountains. New Mexico Gov. John Dempsey is at home asleep, oblivious to when the blast will occur. Finally, the mists of rain clear. The countdown to fission begins. There’s a sense of dread, however remote, that Earth’s atmosphere might ignite in a cataclysmic chain reaction.

And finally, the detonation.

Man’s first nuclear genie shatters its bottle, unleashing the ferocity of the atom, with an explosion 10,000 times hotter than our sun. Thirty-seven minutes later, the wounded sky brightens again, to the dawn of man’s first atomic sunrise.

Reflect on the glaring omission that while the area surrounding Trinity was remote, it was not unpopulated.

Civilians termed “downwinders,” subjected to radioactive fallout fluttering down from the sky, were assured that the flash and fury some saw and heard was an ammunition explosion at nearby Alamogordo Air Base. After atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki the following month, they realized the stark truth.

Jim Eckles, an Army historian who oversaw decades of Trinity open house events, shared the site’s significance: “The ‘Oppenheimer’ movie resurrected concerns we’ve lost sight of. That thousands of nuclear warhead missiles are still out there, able to launch. We need clever intelligent people to deal with the sequence that began at Trinity.”

Journeying on to the fringes of the galaxy

After experiencing Trinity’s solemn inner journey, it’s time to regroup and explore outward — to the hope-filled fringes of the galaxy.

The world’s most impressive radio telescope – the Very Large Array – is also free of charge to October 21 guests.  

Take Highway 380 back to Interstate 25 and the route to the VLA, 50 miles west of Socorro, is well-marked.

Along the way, you can stop for lunch at the same watering hole frequented by Oppenheimer’s crew, the Owl Bar & Café in San Antonio. New Mexico recently designated the sweet scent of roasted green chiles as an official state aroma, and you can savor the taste smothered on their famous Owl burgers.

Driving west past Socorro, the elevation rises. The VLA sits 7,000 feet high on the Plains of San Agustin, ringed by a fortress of mountains to block the radio interference of civilization, as astronomers search deep into the sky.

“People find the first glimpse of antennas on the sweeping desert plain awe inspiring,” said Patricia Henning, director of the VLA.

Each of the 27 colossal dishes measure 82 feet (25 meters) across and are motorized to swivel and tilt. Railroad-track mounted, they can spread out over miles in their iconic “Y” shape. According to Henning, the wider the array stretches its arms, the bigger its eye grows to zoom in.

Most people are familiar with traditional light-collecting telescopes. But the VLA collects radio waves that occur naturally from objects in space, billions of times fainter than broadcast radio waves, and then electronically transforms them into images.

It’s the most widely used radio telescope in the world, mapping the cosmos from our solar system and Milky Way galaxy to distant gas clouds and plasma ejections from supermassive black holes.

“The array studies the universe, so our main driver is not looking for intelligent life,” explained Henning. “SETI – the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence – piggybacks astronomy conducted at the VLA and then combs through copies of data looking for techno signatures.”

What’s a techno-signature? Intelligence.

As SETI scientists download the music of the universe, analyzing radio waves for signs of a composer behind the notes, you can’t help but wonder: If extraterrestrial life saw Earth’s nuclear glow, what techno-signature assessment would they make of us?

If you can’t make the October 21 open houses, don’t despair.

The VLA welcomes visitors most days, excluding major holidays. Admission is $6 for adults. And on April 6, 2024, Trinity Site again opens for a single day. Millions of colorful New Mexico wildflowers will bloom fleetingly, a contrast to Trinity’s mushroom cloud that bloomed only once but whose impact may eternally define 20th-century mankind.

The air traffic controller shortage will continue to cause travel disruptions not only next year, but for at least the next five years, airline industry executives said Tuesday.

”It will take five to seven years [of hiring] to break even if all goes well,” Airlines for America chief Nick Calio said at the Global Aerospace Summit held by the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington, DC.  “Do we need five to seven years of further disruption on a daily basis?  I don’t think so.”

Calio, whose organization represents the major airlines, said even if the Federal Aviation Administration hired the maximum number of controllers who can progress through its single certification academy, it is “not going to be enough” for a rapid recovery.

He proposed allowing universities with air traffic controller programs to provide the certification courses, as he said other countries do.

He said major US airlines would also encourage the Federal Aviation Administration to lower flight levels at major New York-area airports – the region where the FAA is most severely understaffed – again next summer.

In the spring, the FAA asked airlines to dial back summer flights by 10% at airports such as Newark, John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia. Last month, the FAA extended the policy into October.

Executive: Give us more heads up

JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes said that more advance warning about the FAA’s plans would help the airline shift its resources to operate at other airports. He also said a reduction of 10% might not be enough.

Peter Ingram, CEO of Hawaiian Airlines, said better technology would improve air traffic controller services, but first the agency must “staff for the technology we have today.”

Hayes and United Airlines’ Scott Kirby both said the controller shortage is especially evident when airlines try to recover from weather disruptions.

The same weather that in the past we could have managed through now can cause hundreds of delays, or hundreds of even cancelations

Scott Kirby, United Airlines

“The same weather that in the past we could have managed through now can cause hundreds of delays, or hundreds of even cancelations,” Kirby said.

The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its staffing levels and the executives’ concerns.

Robert Isom, who runs American Airlines, said the system needs more than just the airlines dialing back flying.

“If you were pleased with this summer in terms of air transportation, it’s going to get a lot tougher, and if you weren’t pleased, it’s going to be a lot worse as we look forward.”

Kim Jong Un attended a “paramilitary parade” with his daughter to mark the 75th anniversary of North Korea’s founding on Saturday, the country’s state media have reported.

Paramilitary forces and industrial workers marched down Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang as part of the parade, the Korean Central News Agency reported.

Kim attended the parade with his daughter, who is believed to be called Kim Ju Ae, and received congratulatory letters from China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, according to KCNA.

A Chinese delegation, led by Vice Premier Liu Guozhong, and visiting members of the Russian Army Academic Ensemble Alexandrov were in attendance, KCNA said, adding that diplomatic envoys stationed in Pyongyang had also been invited.

In Putin’s letter, according to KCNA, the Russian leader wrote that relations between the two countries have “invariably developed on the principle of friendship, good neighborliness and mutual respect,” adding that he believes they will “expand the bilateral ties in all respects in a planned way by pooling efforts.”

“This fully conforms with the interests of the peoples of our two countries and will contribute to ensuring security and stability in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia,” Putin wrote, according to KCNA.

In Xi’s letter, according to KCNA, the Chinese leader said his country was “ready to strengthen the strategic communication, deepen the working-level cooperation and promote the China-DPRK relations” with Pyongyang.

Houston Rockets guard Kevin Porter Jr. was arrested Monday on suspicion of assaulting a 26-year-old woman in New York, according to the New York City Police Department.

Porter, 23, was taken into custody on the scene and the woman was taken to a hospital, according to the spokesperson. He was held on preliminary charges of second-degree assault and strangulation, NYPD said.

Neither Porter’s representative nor the Rockets have responded to requests for comment.

Porter was selected in the first round of the 2019 NBA Draft out of University of Southern California by the Milwaukee Bucks. He would later end up with the Cleveland Cavaliers after being traded twice.

Porter has played four seasons in the league – one with the Cavaliers and the past three with the Rockets. Last season he averaged 19.2 points per game.

The Rockets announced in October that the team had signed Porter to a multiyear contract extension reportedly worth over $80 million.

Quarterback Aaron Rodgers, making his debut with the New York Jets, was carted off the field after suffering an ankle injury on just his fourth play in the team’s NFL game against the Buffalo Bills on Monday night.

The injury occurred during the team’s first drive in the first quarter when Rodgers was sacked by Bills edge rusher Leonard Floyd.

The four-time Most Valuable Player hobbled up for a few moments before going back down to the ground. He was attended to by the Jets’ medical staff before being helped off the field at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

After being looked at in the blue medical tent on the sidelines, the 39-year-old was taken to the locker room on a cart, and he missed the rest of the game.

Jets head coach Robert Saleh told reporters in the postgame news conference, “(We’re) concerned with his Achilles (tendon). MRI’s probably going to confirm what we think is already going to happen with his Achilles, so prayers tonight. But, it’s not good.”

Rodgers’ X-rays “were negative,” the team posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Backup quarterback Zach Wilson entered the game for the injured Rodgers.

“I hurt for Aaron, and how much he’s invested in all of this,” Saleh said. “I’m still going to say a prayer. I’m still going to hold out hope.”

Before being traded in the offseason, Rodgers had spent the first 18 seasons of his NFL career with the Green Bay Packers, where he led the team to a 31-25 victory in Super Bowl XLV in 2011.

Rodgers won MVP awards in 2011, 2014, 2020 and 2021 while setting numerous records for his accuracy and deadliness over the years.

Olga Carmona, the Spanish soccer star who scored the winning goal in the Women’s World Cup final, said it made her “angry” that Luis Rubiales’ unwanted kiss on teammate Jennifer Hermoso overshadowed the team’s historic victory.

Following weeks of fierce criticism, Rubiales resigned from his position as president of the Spanish soccer federation (RFEF) on Sunday, saying that he “won’t contribute anything positive [to RFEF or Spanish soccer]” were he to remain in the role.

Speaking to Spanish late-night talk show El Hormiguero on Monday, Carmona said that she felt “most angry” about the fact that Rubiales had kissed her teammate Hermoso on “a day that was not appropriate.”

The 46-year-old previously apologized and described the kiss as “mutual,” though Hermoso denied that claim, saying she did not consent and was not respected.

“It is obviously sad that we achieved something historic, something that really takes a lot of work to achieve and that it was overshadowed because of what we all know happened,” Carmona said.

“Yes, it does make me angry and I think that hopefully from now they’ll talk about how we are world champions.”

When asked if she had spoken with Hermoso, Carmona confirmed she had not.

“We do have a close relationship, but I understand what she’s going through, so I haven’t talked to her,” the Real Madrid star added. “I understand that it’s a difficult situation. No one likes getting attention for having something like that happen.”

Carmona was one of more than 80 Spanish soccer players to sign a letter supporting Hermoso, which said that the players would not return to the national team “if the current leaders continue” in their posts.

Carmona said that she was still undecided if she would return now that Rubiales has resigned and head coach Jorge Vilda has been sacked – being replaced with Montse Tomé, the first woman to ever hold the role – as part of the shake-up in Spanish soccer.

“Well, there’s been more than Rubiales’ resignation, there’s also been other changes, we have a new coach,” Carmona said. “First of all, we have to wait for the call list and see if I’m on it or not and see what happens from there.

“Rubiales’ resignation is still very recent, it only happened last night, and so we have to discuss as a group and see what happens.”

On Monday, European soccer governing body UEFA released a statement acknowledging Rubiales’ resignation and the “the public discourse” surrounding him and his recent actions. It also thanked Rubiales for his many years of service to European football.

UEFA’s statement was released hours after the governing body hosted a group of women, including two-time Ballon d’Or Féminin winner Alexia Putellas, in a conference designed to create “an institutional yet independent voice of experience and expertise” on subjects including player welfare.

The board for women’s soccer was meeting for the first time since being created earlier this year.

Rubiales could still face charges for his actions at the Women’s World Cup final, and on Monday, Spain’s National Court admitted the complaint made against him by Spanish prosecutors for “the crimes of sexual assault and coercion.”

The admittance of the prosecutor’s complaint – part of the Spanish legal process – allows the court to begin gathering evidence, which it said involves requesting videos of the incident from news outlets.