United Airlines flight sees engine fire after takeoff due to apparent rabbit strike
Scott Olson/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A United Airlines flight experienced an engine fire shortly after takeoff that was apparently caused by a rare rabbit strike.
United Flight 2325 had departed Denver International Airport en route to Edmonton, Alberta, on Sunday when the incident occurred.
LiveATC audio documents the flight crew asking that the plane be inspected for an engine fire and being told that it was a rabbit that apparently got sucked into an engine.
“Rabbit through the number 2, that’ll do it,” the pilot responded.
The Boeing 737-800 was carrying 153 passengers and six crew members.
“There was a loud bang, and a significant vibration in the plane,” passenger Scott Wolff told “Good Morning America.”
The plane proceeded to climb, Wolff said.
“Every few moments there was a backfire coming from the engine, a giant fireball behind it,” he said. “Everyone in the plane then started to panic.”
Wyatt McCurry saw the flames from the ground at the Denver airport.
“My stomach dropped and I just thought, ‘I’m going to see a plane go down,'” he told “Good Morning America.”
The flight safely headed back to Denver.
“Our flight from Denver to Edmonton (UA2325) returned safely to Denver to address a possible wildlife strike,” United said in a statement.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane returned around 8:05 p.m. local time on Sunday “after the crew reported striking an animal while departing.”
The passengers continued to Edmonton on a new aircraft, the airline said.
The FAA is investigating.
In general, wildlife strikes are fairly common, with the FAA reporting more than 20,000 in the United States last year.
Among those, there were only four rabbit strikes reported, including one at the Denver International Airport, according to the FAA. The vast majority are bird strikes.
Michele Jokinen, Minnesota House Public Information Services
(CHAMMPLIN, Minn.) — Two days after a man in a mask knocked on their door, identified himself as a police officer and opened fire on them, Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, are recovering and “both incredibly lucky to be alive,” their family said.
“We continue our healing journey and are humbled by the outpouring of love and support our family has received from across the state and our nation,” the family said in a statement obtained by ABC News.
Early Saturday morning, the gunman knocked on the Hoffmans’ door in Champlin, Minnesota, identified himself as a police officer and then went in the house and shot the couple, according to court documents.
At 2:05 a.m., the Hoffmans’ child called 911 to report their parents had been shot, according to court documents.
John Hoffman was shot nine times and Yvette was shot eight times, Yvette said, according to a message released by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
Vance Boelter, who was arrested early Monday, is accused of shooting and wounding the Hoffmans and then shooting and killing Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.
After the Hoffmans were shot, officers proactively went to Hortman’s house in the nearby town of Brooklyn Park.
“When officers arrived at approximately 3:35 a.m., they saw the Ford SUV with police-style lights and immediately saw Defendant, still dressed as a police officer, shoot an adult man … through the open door of the home,” according to court records.
“We are devastated by the loss of Melissa and Mark, and our hearts go out to all those who knew and loved them both,” the Hoffmans said in their statement.
“There is never a place for senseless political violence and loss of life,” they said.
The Hoffmans also said they had “deep and profound” gratitude for the work of law enforcement officials who tracked down the suspect.
Boelter has been charged with two counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder, with the second set of charges related to the shooting at the Hoffmans’ house. He’s due in court on Monday.
ABC News’ Darren Rynolds and Jessica Gorman contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Warming waters are causing the colors of the ocean to change — a trend that could impact humans if it were to continue, according to new research.
Satellite data shows that ocean waters are getting greener at the poles and bluer toward the equator, according to a paper published Thursday in the journal Science.
The change in hue is being caused by shifting concentrations of a green pigment called chlorophyll, which is produced by phytoplankton, Haipeng Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper, told ABC News.
Phytoplankton are photosynthetic marine organisms. As algae, phytoplankton has photosynthetic pigments, which absorb green light and cause the waters around it to appear primarily green, Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the paper, told ABC News. Where phytoplankton are absent, the water appears blue.
The researchers analyzed satellite data on the open ocean collected from 2003 to 2022 by a NASA instrument that combs through the planet every two days to measure light wavelength, according to the paper.
The presence of chlorophyll in open ocean is a proxy for concentrations of phytoplankton biomass. The colors indicate how chlorophyll concentration is changing at specific latitudes, in which the subtropics are generally losing chlorophyll, and the polar regions — the high-latitude regions — are greening, the researchers said.
Green areas became greener, especially in the northern hemisphere, and blue regions “got even bluer,” according to a press release by Duke University.
“We borrowed concepts from economics called the Lorenz curve and the Gini index, which together show how wealth is distributed in a society,” said Nicolas Cassar, the Lee Hill Snowdon Bass chair at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, in a statement. “So, we thought, let’s apply these to see whether the proportion of the ocean that holds the most chlorophyll has changed over time.”
The researchers examined how the patterns they observed were affected by variables like sea surface temperature, wind speed, light availability and mixed layer depth.
Warming seas correlated with changes in chlorophyll concentration, they found. The other variables did not show any significant associations to chlorophyll concentration.
However, the findings cannot be solely attributed to climate change, the authors said.
The study period was too short to rule out the influence of recurring climate phenomena, Lozier said.
“We haven’t been able to observe the ocean for decades and decades, just because the satellite technology is pretty new,” Lozier said.
After focusing his Ph.D. on regional studies in high-latitude oceans, Zhao said he was inspired to dive deeper to see whether oceans were transforming in color throughout the rest of the world.
“The ocean has been warming, so there’s a big question then about, what are the biological consequences of the ocean warming?” Lozier said.
Several studies since the 1990s have documented enhanced greening on land, attributed to average leaf color increasing due to rising temperatures and other factors, according to the researchers. However, documenting such changes in the ocean has proven to be more difficult.
The satellite images provide data on the chlorophyll production at the surface, but the picture is still incomplete, the researchers said.
If the trend continues, marine food webs could be impacted, the researchers said. Since phytoplankton are at the base of the food chain, it can be used to determine the presence of fish, too, Lozier said.
A persistent decline in phytoplankton near the equator could cause a redistribution of the location of fisheries, the authors said. This could be especially impactful in low to middle-income nations, such as the Pacific Islands, that rely on commercial fishing for food and economic development, the authors said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes, a federal judge said on Thursday.
In an 82-page order, U.S. District Judge Landya McCafferty in New Hampshire partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.
“Ours is a nation deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned,” Judge McCafferty wrote, adding the “right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is…one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.”
“In this case, the court reviews action by the executive branch that threatens to erode these foundational principles,” she wrote.
The judge stopped short of issuing a nationwide injunction, instead limiting the relief to any entity that employs or contacts with the groups that filed a lawsuit challenging the DOE’s memo, including the National Education Association and the Center for Black Educator Development.
The education groups sued the Department of Education in February after the agency warned all educational institutions in a letter to end discrimination based on race or face federal funding consequences.
The lawsuit criticized what it said was an unlawful “Dear Colleague” letter which will “irreparably harm” schools, students, educators, and communities across the country.
“This vague and clearly unconstitutional memo is a grave attack on students, our profession and knowledge itself,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement at the time.
In justifying her preliminary injunction Thursday, Judge McCafferty called out the DOE for taking a position on DEI that flatly contradicts its own policies from a few years ago.
“Prior to the 2025 Letter, the Department had not indicated a belief that programs designed to promote diversity, equity, or inclusion constituted unlawful discrimination. Nor had it taken the position that schools necessarily behave unlawfully when they act with the goal of increasing racial diversity. In fact, the Department had taken the opposite position,” the judge wrote.
In addition to finding the policy is likely unconstitutional and illegal, Judge McCafferty also criticized the Department of Education for making funding conditional on DEI programming, though the judge said the memo “does not even define what a DEI program is,” pointing to “vague and expansive prohibitions” in the DOE’s letter from February.
