The News

 Punxsutawney Phil may get skewered for his iffy weather predictions, but his parties don't miss.

• I left Pittsburgh for Punxsutawney on a frigid Saturday night to mingle with a legion of fellow Phil fanatics and watch as he declared six more weeks of winter.

Zoom in: The legendary woodchuck ascends from his stump around 7:30am on Groundhog Day to give his forecast, but true believers poured into Gobbler's Knob at 3am when it opens. Some lined up for shuttles as early as 9pm the night before.

• Those who didn't want to wait hours for a shuttle to Gobbler's Knob — located two miles uphill from Punxsutawney — made the trek on foot through residential neighborhoods brimming with Phil inflatables and patient homeowners.
• Hotels in the area booked up six months to a year in advance, and the closest I could find last minute was 40 miles southwest of Punxsutawney.
• The festival includes fireworks, live music, costumes and rowdy chants of "Phil! Phil! Phil!" The crowd is diverse, ranging from tipsy college students to international visitors.

What they're saying: Alex Kearney and his girlfriend, Amy Owen, drove 15 hours from Kansas and waited nearly three hours for a shuttle, just to catch a glimpse of Phil. "We don't regret a minute of it," said Kearney, proudly wearing a groundhog onesie and a crown. "He's worth so much more."

• "We don't even have a hotel," Owen added. "We slept in our car. It was on a Sunday so it just made sense to come this year."
• Other travelers pulled all-nighters, noting they hadn't slept in 24 hours by the time Phil saw his shadow Sunday morning.

Zoom out: The festival spans several days starting with the Groundhog Ball, a formal soirée where tourists can rub elbows with the rodent's Inner Circle.

• The event exploded in popularity after the 1993 premiere of the Bill Murray blockbuster "Groundhog Day," with tens of thousands of people traveling to the borough of about 5,600 permanent residents each year.

The intrigue: Punxsutawney Groundhog Club members insist there has only been one Phil since the tradition began nearly 140 years ago — at least 15 times the typical lifespan of a groundhog raised in captivity.

• His supposed longevity comes from an "elixir of life" that's apparently not shared with his wife, Phyllis, or their two pups.

Fun facts: Phil has some political clout — his handlers say he's met former presidents Reagan and Carter, and three sitting Pennsylvania governors have attended the annual Groundhog Day ceremony.

• During the Prohibition era, he reportedly threatened to impose more than a year of winter on the community if he wasn't permitted a drink — implying he not only predicts the weather, but controls it.

The bottom line: He's often imitated, but a few hours with his devoted fans proves Phil is still top hog.

 Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the now-retired captain known for his heroic role in the “Miracle on the Hudson,” let out a deep sigh when asked Thursday about President Donald Trump’s remarks on the midair collision that left 67 people dead in Washington, D.C., this week.

“Not surprised. Disgusted,” said Sullenberger after several seconds of silence when MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell asked about the president and cautioned that he didn’t want to draw the pilot into “politics.”

The reaction from Sullenberger, who safely landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in 2009, saving the lives of all 155 people aboard, comes after Trump blamed diversity hiring at the Federal Aviation Administration for the deadly collision.

Sullenberger, in a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post encouraging voter participation in the midterm elections, noted that he was a registered Republican “for the first 85 percent of my adult life” but added that he’s “always voted as an American.”

He’d go on to endorse Joe Biden in his 2020 campaign and, in an ad with VoteVets and the anti-Trump GOP group The Lincoln Project later that year, declared that Trump “failed us so miserably” in the “highest calling of leadership.”

“Now it’s up to us to overcome his attacks on our very democracy, knowing nearly a quarter million Americans won’t have a voice, casualties of his lethal lies and incompetence,” he said in the 2020 ad.

He’d later go on to serve as the U.S. representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization under Biden.

On Thursday, Sullenberger told O’Donnell he was “immediately devastated” when he heard the “shocking” news of the D.C. crash.

“It hit me deeply, intensely. The loss of those lives, those precious lives,” he said.

“I can imagine the families of those who are lost and the grief they must feel and they’re looking for some reason, some explanation that has yet, is not available to us, one day will be,” he added.

Sullenberger, who referred to the National Transportation Safety Board as the “gold standard” of accident investigation, said the probe is a “long process,” as he noted that it took 16 months for the final report on the 2009 Hudson River incident to be written.

He added that the NTSB investigation may require listening to a cockpit voice recorder, looking at a digital flight data recorder or “old-fashioned detective work.”

“But they will follow the truth, they will follow the facts wherever they lead,” he said of the NTSB.

“And we can have great confidence that the results will be found, they will be made public, and as we always do after such a tragedy, the entire industry will learn these terrible lessons that we learned at great cost,” Sullenberger added.

 On Friday night the team was involved in a major WNBA trade that saw 2020 No. 2 overall pick Satou Sabally traded to the Phoenix Mercury from the Dallas Wings in a three-team deal, according to a report from ESPN. The Wings will receiver point guard Ty Harris and the rights to Kiki Herbert Harrigan from Phoenix, in addition to 2022 No. 2 overall pick NaLyssa Smith from the Fever and the team's 2025 No. 8 pick.

As for the Fever, Caitlin Clark's newest running mate will be guard Sophie Cunningham while the team also landed the 2025 No. 19 pick from Phoenix.

It won't be the first time the duo shared the court together after playing again each other during the 2024 season. They also shared a moment together during All-Star weekend when they shared a hug on the court.

Fans want the inside scoop from the moment between the two.

"Please your first interview with Sophie ask her about that moment," one fan said.

"Need to know what CC said to make them all laugh haha," said another.

Cunningham took to social media to share a photo of the two together.

During the 2024 regular season, Cunningham averaged 8.4 points, 3.9 rebounds, two assists and one steal per game.

 The beginning of February means the start of the road to WrestleMania.

WWE's first premier live event of the year will set up the company's most important timeframe on the calendar with one of its iconic nights: the Royal Rumble.

One of the most well-known stipulations in wrestling, the annual Royal Rumble men's and women's matches will each have 30 competitors enter the ring and throw each other over the top rope. The last one standing in each match will get a championship bout at WrestleMania, which could be a career-changing match for a young talent or put two major stars against each other on the biggest stage.

The titular matches won't be the only action on Saturday. The WWE Tag Team Championship will be on the line in a two-out-of-three-falls count match, and Cody Rhodes will again defend his Undisputed WWE Championship against Kevin Owens.

Here's what to know for the 2025 Royal Rumble.

When is Royal Rumble 2025?

Royal Rumble 2025 is Saturday, Feb. 1 at 3 p.m. ET.

Where is Royal Rumble 2025?

The 2025 Royal Rumble will be at Lucas Oil Stadium − home of the NFL's Indianapolis Colts − in Indianapolis, Indiana.

How to watch Royal Rumble 2025

The event can be streamed on Peacock, but you must have their premium or premium-plus subscription to watch. Internationally, it will be available on Netflix in most markets.

Royal Rumble 2025 match card

Matches not in order

• Men's Royal Rumble match
• Women's Royal Rumble match
• Ladder match for Undisputed WWE Championship: Cody Rhodes (c) vs. Kevin Owens
• Two-out-of-three falls match for WWE Tag Team Championship: #DIY (Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa) (c) vs. Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin)

 This week, the Trump administration instructed all federal agencies to remove information from their websites pertaining to "gender ideology." On Friday, a flurry of reports indicated that exact thing was happening.

In a Wednesday memo, Office of Personnel Management Acting Director Charles Ezell instructed agencies to comply by Friday at 5 p.m. ET with an executive order that says its aim is "defending women from gender ideology extremism."

That memo laid out "steps to end federal funding of gender ideology." Among those was the instruction to "Take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology."

As of late Friday, attempting to reach the Census Bureau's 2020 Results page returned a message that that part of the site was down for maintenance. Similarly, its page on sexual orientation and gender identity was down, along with other pages including information on those topics.

The examples proliferated on social media, with academics, journalists and activists noting that basic information had disappeared from government websites. The CDC's HIV surveillance data disappeared, as noted by Aaron Richterman, a scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Similarly, the CDC's Youth Risk Survey data is no longer accessible, which KFF's Cynthia Cox pointed out.

"OPM sent guidance to agencies to remove gender ideology-related content from their websites by 5 pm today as part of the efforts to defend women and uphold the truth of biological sex against the radical claims of gender activists," OPM communications director McLaurine Pinover said in a statement Friday evening. "This may have been misinterpreted to mean we would shut down government websites who weren't able to comply but that is not the plan for continuing to implement this important effort."

While "gender ideology" is sharply defined, Trump and other transgender rights opponents have used the phrase to argue against the idea that people can identify with a gender that does not match the sex they were assigned at birth.

Indeed, the executive order calls it a "false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa."

Many who support transgender rights oppose using the phrase "gender ideology," as it implies that being transgender is a belief system, as opposed to an identity. Nearly 2 million Americans identify as trans or transgender, according to 2023 polling from KFF and Washington Post.

This week's "gender ideology" memo wasn't the only order from the Trump administration to remove information from websites. In another memo implementing an executive order aimed at "ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs," Ezell instructed agencies to "Take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) of DEIA offices." DEIA stands for "diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility" in this order.

 A 5-year-old boy is dead after a hyperbaric chamber he was inside exploded at a medical facility Friday in Troy, Michigan, police and fire officials said. 

The unidentified victim was inside the chamber, a pressurized container that contains 100% oxygen, when it suddenly exploded just before 8 a.m. at The Oxford Center, located at 165 Kirts Blvd.

The explosion caused a fire to break out inside the chamber's room. It is unclear what sparked the explosion and the subsequent fire did not spread to the rest of the facility, police and fire officials said.

The scene outside The Oxford Center on Friday (Fox 2 Detroit)

Police and fire officials said that the boy, from Royal Oak, was dead inside the chamber when they arrived on the scene. 

His mother, who was inside the room, suffered injuries to her arm, police said. 

Troy Police Lt. Ben Hancock described the explosion as a "very sad incident" and said that such an incident is rare.

A hyperbaric chamber at General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pictured in 2006. A similar one is used at The Oxford Center. (REUTERS/Allegheny General Hospital/Handout)

"We’re not familiar with responding to one of these recently," Hancock said. "Again, [a] horrible, tragic incident, that we don't want to ever respond to."

A hyperbaric chamber contains 100% oxygen, which is three to five times the amount of oxygen compared to a normal room, the officials said. 

"The presence of such a high amount of oxygen in a pressurized environment can make it extremely combustible," Lt. Keith Young from the Troy Fire Department said. "Our initial research shows that this is not a common incident, and the scene remains under active investigation."

It is unclear what condition the boy had that necessitated him to be inside the chamber, which is used to provide hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). A typical chamber holds one person and requires the patient to lie down in a tube-shaped device that looks like an MRI machine and breathe oxygen.

HBOY is well known for treating scuba and deep-sea divers affected by the rapid change in pressure around them, according to the FDA. The devices are also used to treat a variety of other health problems, including carbon monoxide poisoning, diabetic foot ulcers, cerebral palsy, anemia, infection of the skin and bone, as well as vision loss.

Such devices require FDA clearance to ensure that they are approved to be used as intended and are safe and effective.

The scene outside The Oxford Center on Friday (Fox 2 Detroit)

In a statement to the Detroit Free Press, The Oxford Center spokesman Andrew Kistner wrote that the cause of the explosion is unknown.

"This morning, a fire started inside of a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. The child being treated in that chamber did not survive and the child’s mother was injured," the statement reads.