A tsunami warning was issued for New Zealand and Tonga after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the coast of the Kermadec Islands at 7:03 a.m. local time Thursday (3:03 p.m. ET Wednesday.)
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) initially reported the quake had a magnitude of 7.9, but that was later downgraded to a magnitude of 7.7. The depth was revised from 48 km to 1 km.
Hawaii and the continental U.S. were not placed under a tsunami alert.
A train carrying ethanol through Minnesota derailed and caught fire, forcing local residents to evacuate.
CNN reports that the derailment occurred at approximately 1 a.m. on Thursday morning in Raymond Minnesota.
Multiple cars on the train promptly caught on fire, and officials told people living in nearby homes to evacuate as a precautionary measure.
There have been no reported injuries as a result of the derailment.
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Train derailments have been in the national spotlight recently after a derailment in the town of East Palestine, Ohio led to an environmental catastrophe resulting from toxic chemicals being spilled into local water sources.
Pope Francis, who is in hospital for treatment for a respiratory infection, admitted last year he needed to slow down faced with his age -- now 86 -- and increasing health issues.
Here are some of the medical problems the pontiff has had during his life, from an operation in his youth to remove part of a lung, to the knee issues that have forced him to use a wheelchair.
When he was 21, the then Jorge Bergoglio almost died after developing pleurisy, an inflammation of the tissues that surround the lung.
According to biographer Austen Ivereigh, surgeons removed three pulmonary cysts and a small part of his upper right lung in an operation followed by a long and painful recovery.
In an interview about his health with Argentinian journalist and doctor, Nelson Castro, he insisted however that he had made "a complete recovery... and never felt any limitation since then".
The pope has complained in the past of a "troublesome guest", sciatica, a chronic nerve condition that causes back, hip and leg pain that has occasionally forced him to cancel official events.
He has a distinctive limp -- he has described it as "walking like a broody chicken" -- but this is caused by a flat foot, Francis told Castro for his book "The Health of Popes".
As archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was treated by a Chinese acupuncturist for his back pain, Ivereigh wrote in The Tablet Catholic weekly in 2021.
Around the end of 1979, early 1980, he also suffered "an almost fatal" infection of the gallbladder and had a "brief" issue with his heart in 2004 after a slight narrowing of an artery, the biographer said.
Problems with a "fatty liver" were overcome through changes to his diet.
Francis, who was head of the Jesuit order in the 1970s during Argentina's brutal military dictatorship, has also previously sought mental health support.
He spoke with "a great woman psychologist" once a week for six months during the dictatorship, he told Castro, to help him with anxiety.
Nowadays he deals with it by listening to Bach or sipping "mate", a popular Argentinean herbal drink.
The pontiff is reported to go to bed at 9pm and read for an hour before going to sleep for six hours and waking at 4am every day. Lunch is invariably followed by a 45-minute nap.
In July 2021, Francis spent 10 days in hospital after undergoing surgery to address symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon.
The condition causes potentially painful inflammation of the diverticulum, a pocket that can form on the colon walls and which tend to multiply with age.
Patients with diverticulitis may experience lower abdominal pain, fever or rectal bleeding.
Francis underwent a left hemicolectomy, in which the descending colon -- the part attached to the rectum -- is removed.
He said a year later that he was still feeling the effects of six hours spent under anaesthetic during the operation.
In an interview in January this year, he said the diverticulitis had returned.
He has also visibly put on weight over the past year.
Francis has repeatedly said he would consider stepping down if his health required it.
His predecessor Benedict XVI shocked the world in 2013 by becoming the first pope since the Middle Ages to resign, citing his declining physical and mental health.
Ivereigh has noted "how freely and transparently Francis discusses his various conditions, physical and psychological".
"How far we are from the Vatican refusing to confirm the Parkinson's everyone could see in the face of John Paul II," he wrote in The Tablet.
In August 2022, the pope named Massimiliano Strappetti, a Vatican nurse, as his personal healthcare assistant.
© 2023 AFP
Panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" burst into laughter at Donald Trump's latest campaign riff.
The former president has been testing out some new patter for his rallies where he gives supporters permission to disdain their own children, and he even recorded a video telling farmers they weren't obligated to leave their land to their ungrateful offspring.
"I made farmers happy and rich again, and they're doing a fantastic job," Trump says in the dimly lit video. "You know what? Someday, it'll become time for them to leave this beautiful earth. They'll be able to leave their farm without taxes to their children. I got rid of the debt tax on farms so that when you do pass away, on the assumption that you love your children, you can leave it to them and they won't have to pay tax. But if you don't love your children so much, and there are some people that don't, and maybe deservedly so, it won't matter because, frankly, you don't have to leave them anything. Thank you very much. Have fun."
Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were bewildered.
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"Man, I'll tell you what," Scarborough said, slipping into a mockery of Trump's oddly sing-song cadence. "'If you don't love your children, some of them deservedly so, you don't have to leave them anything. Thank you very much. Have fun.'"
"'Have fun' is the kicker," said political analyst John Heilemann, as other panelists cracked up. "That wasn't on the teleprompter."
"Somebody is obviously concerned about kids not working for the campaign," Scarborough said.
"Someone's cut off," Brzezinski added.
"You have the notion of, but if you don't happen to love your children -- just that concept, as a presidential candidate -- but if you don't love your children, you can screw them," Heilemann chimed in. "By the way, you might not love them for good reason."
Scarborough marveled that Trump still enjoyed widespread support among so-called "family values" voters.
"Here's the thing, when we start doing this, you know, evangelicals and everybody else goes, 'Oh, he is Jesus' only son, he is Jesus' representative on earth,'" Scarborough said. "You just sit and watch all this crazy stuff, all this hating stuff, you just say, come on. This is the best you've got? Have you ever seen anything like this? It isn't like, 'Oh, he's a disrupter.' It's like, he's out of his mind."
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