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COVID Christmas getaway: One million fly on Friday as holiday travel season kicks off amid pandemic - while 'overrun' California hospitals prepare to ration care and nation sees another 202K cases and 2,814 deaths

The Christmas travel season has begun, even as the nation grapples with a surge in the COVID-19 pandemic that threatens to overrun ICUs in California and has hospitals considering rationing care. On Friday, 1,066,747 passed through Transportation Security Administration airport checkpoints, the agency said, in the first time the number of airline passengers topped one million since the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It is only the sixth day since the pandemic struck the U.S. in March that air travel exceeded one million passengers, and comes despite dire warnings from the CDC urging Americans to skip Christmas travel and remain at home. Meanwhile, an additional 249,709 Americans tested positive for the virus and another 2,814 died on Saturday, according to data from Johns Hopkins. The number of people currently hospitalized nationwide fell slightly below record levels, to 113,929, according to the COVID Tracking Project. California reported more than 43,000 new cases on Saturday, with 272

Two women are injured including elderly pedestrian after van ploughed into crowd near shopping centre in Wiltshire town

Two women were injured after a van ploughed into them as they walked near to a shopping centre in Wiltshire today. According to eyewitness reports, the collision happened just after 12.30pm close to The Shires Shopping Centre in Trowbridge, injuring two people, including an elderly woman. Emergency services closed off Bythesea Road for an hour while paramedics attended to the pedestrians. A van collided with two women, including an elderly pedestrian, close to The Shires Shopping Centre in Trowbridge on Sunday afternoon (file pic) A statement from Wiltshire Police said: 'We were called by the ambulance service to a road traffic collision involving a van and two female pedestrians at just after 12.30pm today. 'Both women were treated by paramedics at the scene and conveyed to the Royal United Hospital. Their injuries are not thought to be life threatening. The two women, who did not have life threatening injuries, were taken to Royal United Hospital in Bath (file pic) 'The r

Ghislaine Maxwell's jail torture – or a pack of lies to get $30m bail by Christmas? Socialite's friend says she's been in solitary for 168 days, she's lost 24lb and her hair's falling out

Sitting on the cold concrete cell floor, legs crossed, prisoner 02879-509 carefully balances the laptop on her knees as she sets to work reading the latest tranche of legal documents.  For up to 13 hours each day she sits, her back propped up against the steel toilet, and scrolls through an astonishing 2.5 million pages of evidence that will decide whether she returns to her life of unbridled luxury – or spends the rest of her days behind bars. Today marks Day 168 of Ghislaine Maxwell’s incarceration in solitary confinement inside New York’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center. Last night, as her high-powered legal team fought to have the 58-year-old former socialite released on $28.5 million (£21 million) bail in time for Christmas, one of Maxwell’s close friends opened up to The Mail on Sunday about the reality of her life behind bars. ‘Ghislaine’s being treated worse than a terrorist or murderer,’ claimed the friend. ‘She’s lost 24 lb, her hair is falling out and she hasn’t exer

Obscure neo-Nazi Satanist group Order of Nine Angles becomes latest domestic terror threat: CIA and FBI fear extremely violent group is making inroads among supremacists'

The National Counterterrorism Center has raised the alarm about an obscure neo-Nazi Satanist group which intelligence officials believe could have a growing influence over violent extremist movements.   A recent internal NCC report obtained by Yahoo News describes the Order of Nine Angles (O9A) as 'a largely decentralized group that advocates a violent extremist interpretation of Satanism' and promotes white supremacist ideologies.   The report warns that O9A could be 'exacerbating' conflicts among racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists , increasing the likelihood of violence by those groups.    It followed an October assessment from the Department of Homeland Security which concluded that violent white supremacists pose the 'most persistent and lethal threat' to the United States.  Some experts have criticized the NCC for its newfound focus on O9A, citing a lack of reliable information about the group.   The National Counterterrorism Center has rai

Microsoft discovers SECOND hacking team dubbed 'Supernova' installed backdoor in SolarWinds software in March - as Feds say first Russian 'act of war' cyber attack struck at least 200 firms and US federal agencies

Microsoft researchers say a second unidentified hacking team installed a backdoor in the same SolarWinds network software that facilitated a massive cyber espionage campaign, as the number of victims in the attack rose to 200. The second backdoor, dubbed SUPERNOVA by security experts, appears distinct from the SUNBURST attack that has been attributed to Russia, raising the possibility that multiple adversaries were attempting parallel attacks, perhaps unbeknownst to each other. It comes after President Donald Trump contradicted members of his own administration to suggest that China may be behind the sprawling attack, which compromised key federal agencies. 'The investigation of the whole SolarWinds compromise led to the discovery of an additional malware that also affects the SolarWinds Orion product but has been determined to be likely unrelated to this compromise and used by a different threat actor,' Microsoft said in a security blog on Friday. The second backdoor is a piec