{"id":380952,"date":"2026-04-04T02:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T02:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/380952\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T02:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T02:38:10","slug":"this-week-has-been-far-from-normal-for-several-reasons-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/380952\/","title":{"rendered":"This week has been far from normal – for several reasons | US News"},"content":{"rendered":"

“There is nothing normal about this.”<\/p>\n

Words spoken from the furthest humanity has gone in half a century.<\/p>\n

In their first live broadcast, Commander Reid Wiseman and his fellow astronauts on the Artemis II mission<\/a> described their view of Earth as “spectacular”.<\/p>\n

From outer space, they watched the polarising politics of their home planet fade into the distance.<\/p>\n

\"Pic:<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Pic: NASA<\/p>\n

But reflecting on the past week, it could equally be said of the White House under Donald J Trump<\/a>: there is nothing normal about this.<\/p>\n

Monday brought debate about potential war crimes, with the president having threatened to bomb Iran’s power and water desalination plants.<\/p>\n

His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the US always operated within the law, “but” would continue to pursue its objectives “unabated”.<\/p>\n

Iran war – latest updates<\/a><\/p>\n

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\n Trump: Iran negotiations going ‘extremely well’\n <\/p>\n

By Tuesday, he was threatening to pull the US out of NATO, again, and singling out the UK, in particular.<\/p>\n

“Go get your own oil!” he blasted on Truth Social.<\/p>\n

An insult juxtaposed with confirmation that the King and Queen’s state visit<\/a> to the United States will go ahead as scheduled this month.<\/p>\n

The insults continued on Wednesday, with Donald Trump mocking Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron during an Easter reception.<\/p>\n

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\n Trump makes remark about Macron’s wife\n <\/p>\n

He depicted them as weak, while his spiritual adviser, Paula White, depicted Trump as Christ-like.<\/p>\n

“You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Saviour showed us,” she said.<\/p>\n

“They call me king now. Can you believe it?” Trump interjected, while reading about Palm Sunday.<\/p>\n

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\n ‘Core war aims near completion,’ says Trump\n <\/p>\n

A few hours later, he was delivering the vaguest presidential address to the nation in living memory.<\/p>\n

Heavily billed as “an important update on the war”, it brought more confusion than clarity.<\/p>\n

A quiet Maundy Thursday? Not a chance. That turned out to be Attorney General Pam Bondi’s last supper.<\/a><\/p>\n

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\n Why Trump sacked Pam Bondi\n <\/p>\n

The president fired another high-profile woman from his cabinet, this one over her handling of the Epstein files, and for not pursuing his opponents more aggressively.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the US lost an F-15 fighter jet to Iranian fire, one of the two crew quickly plucked to safety.<\/p>\n

During efforts to find the second, a second US plane and two US Blackhawk helicopters were also hit.<\/p>\n

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\n US correspondent Mark Stone analyses setbacks to the American military\n <\/p>\n

A daring search and rescue mission in enemy territory, in the shadow of a daring lunar mission that has captivated humanity.<\/p>\n

Christina Koch, the first woman in history to travel around the moon as part of the Artemis II mission, described seeing all of Earth through “one single pane”.<\/p>\n

An “absolutely phenomenal” view, she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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\n US correspondent Mark Stone analyses setbacks to the American military\n <\/p>\n

From tens of thousands of miles away, the planet is a fragile luminous sphere without borders, where human quarrels seem small.<\/p>\n

But in the context of an unconventional White House, the potential for a much larger war in the Middle East looms large.<\/p>\n

The one drawback of flying to the moon is that you might not want to come back again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“There is nothing normal about this.” Words spoken from the furthest humanity has gone in half a century.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-380952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}