A prominent US scholar of India who was arrested after allegations of retaining classified documents and meeting Chinese officials is denying the charges against him, his lawyers said Wednesday.Ashley Tellis, 64, who held senior positions under former president George W. Bush and remained an unpaid advisor to the State Department, was arrested Saturday and faces up to 10 years in prison.”Ashley J. Tellis is a widely respected scholar and senior policy advisor,” his lawyers, Deborah Curtis and John Nassikas, said in a statement.”We will be vigorously contesting the allegations brought against him, specifically any insinuation of his operating on behalf of a foreign adversary,” they said.A criminal affidavit made public Tuesday said that Tellis went into the State Department late on September 25 and appeared to print from a secret document on US Air Force techniques.It alleged that Tellis met repeatedly with Chinese officials at a restaurant in the Washington suburb of Fairfax, Virginia, and that at one dinner he appeared to leave a manila envelope.The charges announced by the Justice Department relate to improper handling of documents rather than the meetings, with an FBI special agent saying a search found more than 1,000 pages of top-secret or secret documents in his house.Tellis has been a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a leading Washington think tank, which said Wednesday that he has been put on administrative leave.Tellis, a naturalized American originally from India, helped negotiate the Bush administration’s civil nuclear cooperation deal with India, a landmark step to closer relations between the world’s two largest democracies.But Tellis in recent years has emerged as a leading contrarian in Washington about India, saying that New Delhi’s interests were not aligned on a host of issues including Ukraine.

United Airlines reported a slight dip in profits Wednesday as operating expenses ticked higher, adding that a strengthening demand outlook would boost fourth-quarter results.The big US carrier reported third-quarter profits of $949 million, down 1.7 percent from the year-ago level, as growth in operating expenses edged out the increase in revenues of 2.6 percent to $15.2 billion.The company estimated fourth-quarter profits of between $3.00 and $3.50 per share, better than Wall Street estimates. United is poised for a “strong” fourth quarter “as the demand environment strengthens,” said a United press release.The outlook echoes bullish commentary about consumer appetite earlier this month from Delta Air Lines.Both carriers have billed themselves as able to provide a premium-travel experience that emphasizes better onboard amenities in addition to reliable operations in an effort to strengthen brand loyalty. United’s press release emphasized perks such as Apple TV on board, increased investment on food quality and the introduction of Starlink Wi-Fi on flights, which is scheduled to launch on Thursday in a flight from Newark to Houston.The company promises Starlink on “every plane by 2027,” said United CEO Scott Kirby. “Our customers value the United experience, making them increasingly loyal to United.”Shares of United fell 1.8 percent in after-hours trading.

Flawed engineering and inadequate testing contributed to the catastrophic implosion of a private submersible during a 2023 expedition to the Titanic wreckage, the US National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday.Its report comes after a US Coast Guard investigation in August outlined a litany of issues with operator OceanGate’s conduct, as well as design flaws in its Titan submersible, that led to a “preventable tragedy” in which all five passengers were killed.”We found that OceanGate’s engineering process for the Titan was inadequate and resulted in the construction of a carbon fiber composite pressure vessel that contained multiple anomalies and failed to meet necessary strength and durability requirements,” NTSB’s report said.”Because OceanGate did not adequately test the Titan, the company was unaware of the pressure vessel’s actual strength and durability, which was likely much lower than their target.”Additionally, OceanGate’s analysis of Titan pressure vessel real-time monitoring data was flawed, so the company was unaware that the Titan was damaged and needed to be immediately removed from service” after a previous dive, it added.OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush was joined on the doomed expedition by British explorer Hamish Harding, French deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani-British tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman.Seats on the submersible cost $250,000 per person.Communications were lost with the SUV-sized submersible about an hour and 45 minutes into its dive on June 18, 2023, kicking off a dramatic search that briefly captivated the world.Debris was found a few days later on the ocean floor, about 1,600 feet (500 meters) from the bow of the Titanic, and human remains were recovered when the sub was brought to the surface.Shortly after the tragedy, OceanGate halted all operations.Last year, the family of Nargeolet sued OceanGate for $50 million, accusing the US-based company of gross negligence.The wreckage of the Titanic sits 400 miles (644 kilometers) off the coast of Newfoundland and has become a lure for nautical experts and underwater tourists since its discovery in 1985.The ship hit an iceberg and sank in 1912 during its maiden voyage from England to New York, with 2,224 passengers and crew on board. More than 1,500 people died.

A federal judge on Wednesday “reluctantly” dismissed a lawsuit brought by young Americans accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of threatening their constitutional right to life and liberty through its aggressive fossil-fuel push.Judge Dana Christensen said that while the plaintiffs had presented “overwhelming” evidence that the government’s actions would worsen climate change and harm them, the case to overturn them “must be made to the political branches or to the electorate.””With this understanding in mind, the Court reluctantly concludes…that it cannot grant Plaintiffs the relief they seek,” he wrote.Trump, who received hundreds of millions of dollars from Big Oil in the runup to the 2024 election, has made expanded fossil fuel extraction the centerpiece of his energy policy, while curbing permits for solar and wind farms and ending tax credits for renewables. In a filing earlier this year, 22 plaintiffs — including several minors and represented by the nonprofit Our Children’s Trust — asked the court to block three executive orders they said violated their inalienable rights by seeking to “unleash” more drilling.They also accused the administration of eroding federal climate science, leaving the public less informed about mounting dangers.Julia Olson, the youths’ lead lawyer, vowed to swiftly appeal.”We will definitely appeal and get it up to the Ninth Circuit as quickly as we can so that they can correct this injustice, and give these young people their right to be heard in the federal courts,” she told AFP. The Ninth Circuit is a higher court.She called the decision “completely wrong” and an “anathema to the entire US Constitution and the entire purpose of the separation of powers among the three branches of government,” adding it places fossil fuel interests “above the health and safety of children.”- Emotional testimony -During a two-day hearing last month in Christensen’s packed courtroom in Missoula, Montana, the youths described in vivid testimony how global warming had reshaped their lives.Among them was Joseph Lee, an undergraduate from California who suffered a life-threatening heat stroke, and Jorja McCormick of Livingston, Montana, who said she was traumatized by wildfires that forced her family to flee their home.Christensen, an Obama appointee known for previous environmental rulings, listened intently and frequently engaged with witnesses as the plaintiffs called experts in climate science, energy economics, politics and law and children’s health.Those included climatologist and Nobel Peace Prize co-winner Steve Running, and John Podesta, a former senior White House official who testified about the legal nature of executive orders.Government lawyers, on the other hand, did not call their own witnesses and did not focus on disputing the reality of climate change.Instead, they argued that the lawsuit was fundamentally undemocratic and echoed Juliana v. United States — a similar youth-led case that featured some of the same plaintiffs and wound through the courts for nearly a decade before the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal last year, closing it out.While lawyers for the youths contended the case differed from Juliana in key ways, Christensen disagreed and concluded that his hands were tied by the precedent set by that case.”Plaintiffs have presented overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing at a staggering pace, and that this change stems from the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, caused by the production and burning of fossil fuels,” Christensen wrote.He added that they had also shown “overwhelming evidence that implementation of the Challenged EOs will increase the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, thereby exacerbating the harms Plaintiffs experience from an already-warming climate.”But he ruled their injuries could not be redressed by a court, saying he was troubled by being asked to reset national energy policy to its state before Trump’s second term — and by the idea of having to monitor every climate action by the government if he sided with the plaintiffs.