Sick astronaut, rest of crew to undock from ISS, NASA says
Crew-11 mission astronauts walk out of the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building before heading to pad 39A for launch to the International Space Station (ISS) at the Kennedy Space Center on August 1, 2025 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Paul Hennessy/Anadolu via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The NASA International Space Station (ISS) crew that includes a sick astronaut are on track to return to earth Thursday morning.
On Jan. 8, NASA said it was ending the current the ISS mission out of abundance of caution because of a medical situation involving one of the astronauts on board.
“I’ve come to the decision that it’s in the best interest of our astronauts to return Crew-11 ahead of their planned departure,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during a press conference on Jan. 8.
Crew-11 is scheduled to undock from the ISS at 5:05 p.m. ET Wednesday before splashing down off the coast of California around 3:41 a.m. Thursday, according to NASA.
On Tuesday, the crew prepared by packing cargo, reviewing return-to-Earth procedures and transferring hardware aboard the ISS, the agency said.
They will return to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon Endeavor — the same spacecraft that brought them to the station.
An emergency evacuation was not ordered because the astronaut was stable, Dr. James “JD” Polk said during the Jan. 8 conference. The astronaut remains in stable condition, NASA said.
The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which partners with private companies to deliver humans to and from the ISS.
Crew-11 includes two American astronauts, a Japanese astronaut and a Roscosmos cosmonaut. They traveled to the ISS on Aug. 1 and were scheduled to stay until mid-to-late February.
It is the “11th crew rotation mission of SpaceX’s human space transportation system and its 12th flight with astronauts,” according to NASA.
In November, the crew marked a historic milestone for the ISS — the 25th anniversary of the first crew that arrived at the station.
NASA did not say which astronaut was impacted nor did it describe the individual’s condition or symptoms due to privacy concerns.
It was the first time in 25 years that a medical evacuation was necessary, Polk said.
The unprecedented moves comes after NASA announced it had postponed planned spacewalk with the two American astronauts scheduled for the morning of Jan. 8.
The sun sets on midtown Manhattan in New York City, Nov. 28, 2025. (Gary Hershorn/ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — New York City has tied its record for the longest stretch without a homicide in recorded history.
The city went 12 calendar days — Nov. 25 to Dec. 7 — without a homicide, according to New York Police Department data.
That stretch — which ties a record set in 2015 — was ended when a 38-year-old man was shot and killed in the stairwell of a city-run apartment building in the Bronx on Sunday night.
During the first 11 months of the year, New York City saw its lowest number of shooting incidents (652) and shooting victims (812) in recorded history, according to NYPD data.
For the month of November, murders were also at the lowest level ever, with 16 murders, tying the previous record set in 2018.
“Right strategy. Great execution. That’s how you set record after record,” NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a statement. “Thank you to the members of the NYPD who have sacrificed so much this year to drive down violent crime to record lows.”
The record-tying milestone comes after the Trump administration considered sending members of the National Guard to New York City streets.
Lindsey Halligan, attorney for Donald Trump, looks on during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House, on March 31, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — In an 11-page court filing, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Acting U.S. attorney Lindsay Halligan blasted a federal judge Tuesday for what they called an “inquisition” against Halligan for continuing to represent herself as U.S. attorney for Eastern District of Virginia, after another judge found she was not legally allowed to serve in the role.
Halligan, a former White House aide who was appointed interim U.S. attorney by President Donald Trump, secured indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, only to have them thrown out when U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie determined in November that she had been unlawfully appointed without being either Senate confirmed or appointed by the federal judiciary.
Last week, U.S. District Judge David Novak ordered the Justice Department to explain why Halligan was still using the title after her office issued an indictment in which she was identified as U.S. attorney in the document’s signature block.
In their court filing on Tuesday, Bondi, Blanche and Halligan slammed Judge Novak’s order.
“The Court’s thinly veiled threat to use attorney discipline to cudgel the Executive Branch into conforming its legal position in all criminal prosecutions to the views of a single district judge is a gross abuse of power and an affront to the separation of powers,” the filing said. “The bottom line is that Ms. Halligan has not ‘misrepresented’ anything and the Court is flat wrong to suggest that any change to the Government’s signature block is warranted in this or any other case.”
“Contrary to this Court’s suggestion, nothing in the Comey and James dismissal orders prohibits Ms. Halligan from performing the functions of or holding herself out as the United States Attorney,” said the filing. “Although Judge Currie concluded that Ms. Halligan was unlawfully appointed under Section 546, she did not purport to enjoin Ms. Halligan from continuing to oversee the office or from identifying herself as the United States Attorney in the Government’s signature blocks.”
The DOJ officials said Judge Novak had a “fixation” on Halligan’s signature block, which was “untethered from how federal courts actually operate.”
They argued that the court has no authority to strike her signature from the block.
(NEW YORK) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee appears set to amend the childhood immunization schedule, including potentially changing recommendations on a shot given to newborns.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is meeting Thursday and Friday. A draft agenda posted online on Monday provides little detail on what materials will be presented or which speakers will give presentations, but does mention a discussion about the hepatitis B vaccine on the first day as well as “votes.”
Although it’s not clear what will be voted on, past comments from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and ACIP members indicate the universal hepatitis B vaccine dose given just after birth will be at issue.
The ACIP may vote to remove the birth dose recommendation or delay vaccination to a later age.
Public health experts told ABC News there is no evidence to suggest the hepatitis B vaccine is unsafe and that vaccinating babies at birth has been key to virtually eliminating the virus among children.
What is the hepatitis B vaccine?
The hepatitis B vaccine is typically a three-shot series. The CDC recommends the first dose given within 24 hours of birth, the second dose between 1 month and 2 months, and the third dose between 6 months and 18 months.
In addition to all infants, the vaccine is recommended for all children and adults aged 59 and younger as well as adults aged 60 and older with risk factors for hepatitis B.
The ACIP previously recommended that only babies screened and found to be high risk for hepatitis B receive a vaccine, but experts found that screening missed many hepatitis B-positive cases.
“Hepatitis B vaccine was initially recommended for older groups and eventually then for children, but not for newborns,” Dr. Susan Wang, a former CDC hepatitis B virus and vaccine expert, told ABC News. “We have learned over decades now of both the safety and the impact of the vaccine, and it was a very specific decision to move it, not just to infancy but … within 24 hours of birth.”
The ACIP recommended that infants begin receiving the vaccine within hours of birth in 1991 as part of strategy to stop hepatitis B transmission within the U.S.
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, told ABC News vaccination is important because if a pregnant person is hepatitis B-positive at the time of birth, the infant has an 85% chance of developing an infection.
If the infant develops a hepatitis B infection, they have a 90% chance of developing chronic hepatitis B, which can predispose them to chronic liver disease, cirrhosis and liver cancer.
What effect has the vaccine has on hepatitis B cases?
During a Senate hearing earlier this year, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician, said that before the recommendation was put in place in 1991, as many as 20,000 babies every year contracted hepatitis B from their mothers in utero or during birth.
Today, fewer than 20 babies every year get hepatitis B from their mother, Cassidy said.
Schaffner, who was part of the 1991 ACIP committee that recommended the universal birth dose, called it a “brilliantly successful program.”
“Both from a clinical perspective and a public health perspective, this has been a program that is successful beyond the imaginings of us when we sat around that ACIP room debating this in 1991,” he said. “The cases are just coming down astoundingly.”
Schaffner said if the ACIP votes to delay the recommendation, he is worried some parents will never get their children vaccinated.
“A vaccine postponed is often a vaccine never received, that is sure to happen,” he said. “There will be some children born to hepatitis B-positive mothers who, because they don’t get their birth dose, will slip through the system. They will become infected and, when they get older, they will transmit the infection to others, and we won’t be able to interrupt the transmission of this virus in our population.”
What has RFK Jr., CDC panel said about the hepatitis B vaccine?
During a June interview on The Tucker Carlson Show, Kennedy falsely claimed the hepatitis B vaccine was associated with an increased risk of autism.
Numerous existing studies have examined whether vaccines, or their ingredients, cause autism and have failed to find any such link.
Kennedy and other federal public health officials, such as Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, have claimed hepatitis is mostly transmitted through sexual contact or needle sharing, and therefore babies don’t need a vaccine to protect against the infection.
They have suggested pregnant people be tested for hepatitis B and that only the babies of infected patients receive the shot at birth.
During an ACIP meeting in June, then-chair Martin Kulldorff, a former Harvard Medical School professor, questioned whether it was “wise” to administer shots “to every newborn before leaving the hospital.”
Wang said there are a few reasons why a testing-only strategy doesn’t work, the first being that even if every pregnant person were tested before delivery and only babies born to positive patients were vaccinated, the unvaccinated babies would be unprotected against the virus, which is highly contagious.
Another reason is that not all pregnant people get tested or, if they do, they don’t get tested in time or have receive their results quickly enough, Wang said. Under a testing-only strategy, this could prevent a newborn from getting a vaccine when they need it.
“The hepatitis B vaccine is inexpensive, extremely safe, and has a high value in terms of effectiveness,” she said. “There’s no downside. And again, this has been after decades of studying this and globally, millions and millions of infants getting vaccinated. So, the value and the benefit of it is so far outweighs any possible issue.”
What if the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose recommendation is changed?
Wang compared removing the universal hepatitis B vaccine birth dose to taking a seat belt off in a car.
“The purpose of having the seat belt there is to protect you from the risk of injury and death when you’re in a moving vehicle,” she said. “It’s the same thing with the vaccine.”
Wang explained that the vaccine is given early as a post-exposure prophylaxis in case an infant is infected from their mother, but they can also contract the virus from anyone who is infected, either around the infant or taking care of them.
She added that if an infant is exposed during their first 12 months of life, the risk of chronic hepatitis B infection is substantially higher than if they are exposed during adolescence or adulthood
“If you don’t interrupt transmission, if you don’t cut it off at the pass, namely, at birth, we’ll have hepatitis B-positive people in the next generation, who, when they get into their teenage and young adults and older adult years, will pass it on sexually to others, and we will maintain this virus in our population,” Schaffner said.
Additionally, insurers often rely on ACIP recommendations to determine what they will and won’t cover, experts told ABC News.
If certain vaccines aren’t recommended by the ACIP, it may lead to parents or guardians facing out-of-pocket costs if their children receive the shot. It could also mean the shots aren’t covered by the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, a federally funded program that provides no-cost vaccines to eligible children.
