📌Global Travel Disrupted, Risky FBI Cuts, More

London’s Heathrow Airport has shut down all day today due to a “significant power outage” due to a large fire nearby.

“Due to a fire at an electrical substation supplying the airport, Heathrow is experiencing a significant power outage,” Heathrow Airport said in a statement on X. “To maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues, Heathrow will be closed until 23h59 on 21 March.

“We expect significant disruption over the coming days and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens,” the airport said in a statement, adding that they “do not have clarity on when power may be reliably restored.”

A transformer at an electrical substation in Hayes, a London suburb located just a few miles from the airport, caught fire Thursday night, the London Fire Brigade said. The cause is not yet known, and firefighters were still working to extinguish the blaze as of early Friday morning.

The brigade said it evacuated 150 people from the area. More than 16,000 homes lost power, according to utility supplier Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks — with Britain’s National Grid “working at speed” to restore power.

The shutdown could affect tens of thousands of travelers. Heathrow was the world’s fourth-busiest airport in 2023, with 83.9 million passengers passing through last year.

The FBI has cut staffing focused on domestic terrorism and has scrapped a tool used to track such investigations, a report says.

The shift could undermine law enforcement’s ability to counter white supremacists and anti-government extremists, said sources familiar with the matter. They said the moves indicate domestic terrorism investigations may be less of a priority under FBI Director Kash Patel, a prominent critic of the effort.

Sources said the changes reduce the FBI’s ability to monitor threats posed by white supremacists and militia groups. The moves come despite repeated warnings from US officials in recent years that domestic violent extremists present some of the most significant security threats to the US.

The FBI did not directly address questions about the changes but said it is committed to “protecting the US from many threats including terrorism, violent crime, drug trafficking, and cyberattacks.”

FBI leadership recently transferred agents and intelligence analysts from its Domestic Terrorism Operations Section, which supports investigations in 55 field offices, said five sources briefed on the moves.

Former officials said that it is not unusual for the FBI to shift resources based on changing threats. Patel has previously vowed to streamline operations at the FBI's Washington headquarters.

The sea rose at a rate 35% over the expected level due to ocean warming and meltwater from land-based ice, said NASA.

While global average levels rose by just 0.23 inches in 2024, that was above the expected rate of 0.17 inches and comes when coastal communities in many parts of the US have been dealing with accelerating rates far higher than the global average.

Sea levels from Texas to North Carolina have risen by 6 inches or more since 2010. “Evidence suggests the sea level along the US coastline will rise 10–12 inches by 2050 — as much as the rise measured from 1920–2020,” reported the Environmental Protection Agency.

Galveston, TX, is where seas are rising the fastest in the US, rising 8 inches over the past 14 years, a 2024 study found. In Jacksonville, Fla., it rose by 6 inches, tide gauge data showed. Another 9 inches is possible for much of Florida by 2050, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported.

Completing the top five are Charleston, S.C., Miami Beach, Fla., and Savannah, Ga. “Every year is a little bit different, but what’s clear is that the ocean continues to rise, and the rate of rise is getting faster and faster,” said Josh Willis, a sea level researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will install a device at 74 airports by the end of 2026 to help detect runway incursions.

The Runway Incursion Device, a memory aid for air traffic controllers that indicates when a runway is occupied, is operational at four airports and will be installed at another 70 airports over the next 19 months.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he plans to announce in the next few days a plan to overhaul the US air traffic control system to replace aging technologies. Duffy said last week that he plans to ask Congress for tens of billions of dollars to reform air traffic control.

The Government Accountability Office says the FAA must take urgent action to address aging air traffic control systems, saying that one-third are unsustainable. The FAA said in October that it was opening an audit into runway incursion risks at the 45 busiest US airports.

A persistent shortage of controllers has led to many working mandatory overtime and six-day weeks. A series of troubling near-miss incidents and the Jan. 29 fatal Army helicopter and American Airlines regional jet collision have raised concerns about US aviation safety.

A study has discovered traffic noise is changing the behavior of birds in the Galápagos Islands, making them more aggressive.

The research examined the impact of vehicle noise pollution on Galápagos yellow warblers, a songbird widespread on the archipelago, 500 miles off the coast of Ecuador. The islands have seen human population growth alongside a rise in tourism — the permanent population is increasing by over 6% per year.

The study involved researchers playing bird songs from a speaker, simulating an intruder, accompanied by recorded traffic noise at 38 locations populated by Galápagos yellow warblers on the islands of Floreana and Santa Cruz — 20 sites sites were within 50 meters of the nearest road and 18 were over 100 meters away.

The researchers then measured the song the birds typically use to ward off intruders and physical, aggressive behavior such as approaching the speaker closely and making repeated flights across it. The researchers found that those warblers living in roadside territories showed increased aggression.

Warblers on the more populous island of Santa Cruz increased the duration of their song when confronted by traffic noise. They also increased the minimum frequencies of their songs during the noise experiments, helping to reduce any overlap of their songs with the low-frequency traffic noise. Co-author Dr. Caglar Akcay, senior lecturer in Behavioral Ecology at Anglia Ruskin University, said, "If external noise such as traffic interferes with the [birds’] signaling, effectively blocking this communication channel, increasing physical aggression would be an appropriate response.”

A recommendation for evaluating 68 bridges across 19 states with a “vulnerability assessment” was given on Thursday.

The National Transportation Safety Board identified the bridges built before 1991 that don't have a current assessment to determine their risk of collapse if involved in a vessel collision in the wake of last year's deadly collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.

The recommendations were issued to 30 owners of the bridges across the country. Some of the bridges include the Golden Gate Bridge in California, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City and the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Florida.

The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District said that the Golden Gate Bridge is “in full compliance with all state and federal regulations” and that it hired a consultant this year to “conduct an assessment of the South Tower fender system's structural capacity for ship collisions.”

The NTSB noted its recommendation does not suggest that the 68 bridges will collapse but that the bridge owners evaluate whether the bridges meet the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials' acceptable risk.

From Turkey comes the story of an annual spring reunion that has captivated the hearts of a nation for 14 years.

It involves a simple rural fisherman, Adem Yilmaz, waiting in his boat for the return of a dear friend: a white stork named Yaren. Casting his lines and nets upon the beautiful Uluabat Lake near Yilmaz’s home of Eskikaraagac Village in the Bursa region, he has waited patiently and eagerly for the white stork’s arrival.

“Yaren generally comes at the beginning of the month, and when it didn’t show up, I feared something had happened to it,” Yilmaz said. “I spent a week in sorrow, thinking it might have faced danger on the way. But thankfully, Yaren has returned. This morning, it came to my boat and ate the fish I had brought for it.”

It is the 14th year that Yaren has come to the lake to perch on the prow of Yilmaz’s rowboat after making a 2,500-mile journey from the species’ winter breeding grounds in sub-Saharan Africa. The white stork flies this route via the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey every year before returning in spring to nest and raise its young.