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Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific airline apologizes for in-flight “Family Guy” episode with Tiananmen Square scene
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific airline has apologized for offering passengers an episode of the American show “Family Guy” to watch that includes a scene and a joke referencing the notorious 1989 crackdown on protesters in the Chinese capital’s Tiananmen Square.
The episode, from the first season of the American animated series, shows father figure Peter Griffin standing next to the “Tank Man” in a recreation of an infamous photograph depicting a lone resistor to China’s military forces as they moved in to disperse a days-long pro-democracy protest. As the tanks approach, the cartoon dad says: “Ah screw this, I just came over to buy some fireworks,” before fleeing.
A spokesperson for Hong Kong‘s flagship airline told the South China Morning Post on Tuesday that it had apologized to customers after someone complained on social media about the episode being offered in-flight.
Jeff Widener/AP
“We emphasise that the program’s content does not represent Cathay Pacific’s standpoint and have immediately arranged to have the program removed as soon as possible,” the airline was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
On June 4, 1989, Chinese soldiers ordered in by Communist Party hardliners opened fire on thousands of protesters who had occupied Beijing’s central Tiananmen Square.
The enduring “Tank Man” image has come to symbolize the bloody crackdown, which Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to erase from history since it happened. CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer visited the square 30 years after the crackdown, in 2019, and found nothing there to commemorate the events, and when she showed photos of the crackdown, including the “Tank Man” picture, to young Chinese passers-by, none of them recognized the images.
After unprecedented pro-democracy protests swept across Hong Kong in 2019, authorities in the semi-autonomous Chinese region cracked down on dissent, rounding up hundreds of opposition and civil society figures and quickly adopting new national security legislation cementing Beijing’s control.
In November, a Hong Kong court charged 47 people, including some prominent pro-democracy activists, over their involvement in an unofficial primary to pick opposition candidates.
Cathay Pacific said it consistently briefs the third party company responsible for its in-flight entertainment to make sure the content offered meets airline standards, according to the South China Morning Post.
Washington — President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, is showing defiance amid misconduct allegations as support for his confirmation appeared to be in doubt. There are now several candidates under consideration to replace him as Trump’s intended nominee, sources familiar with the transition tell CBS News, among them, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst.
But the embattled former Fox News host on Wednesday pushed back on reports that Trump is considering other candidates for defense secretary. On Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning, as he continued to visit Republican members of Congress, Hegseth told CBS News that he does not intend to withdraw his name from consideration. He also said he spoke with Trump Wednesday morning, and the president-elect encouraged him to keep fighting.
“I spoke to the president-elect this morning. He said, ‘Keep going, keep fighting. I’m behind you all the way,'” Hegseth said. “Why would I back down? I’ve always been a fighter. I’m here for the fighters. This is personal and passionate for me.”
In an interview with conservative commentator Megyn Kelly on Wednesday, Hegseth said he had spoken with Trump earlier in the day and that the incoming president had told him, “I’ve got your back.” On reports of the possibility that DeSantis could replace him as defense chief nominee, he told Kelly, “It’s all the president’s choice. I spoke to the president this morning. He said, I’m his guy.”
Despite the acrimony between DeSantis and Trump during the primary campaign, the Florida governor is interested in the job, according to two sources familiar with DeSantis’ thinking. His second and final term as governor ends in January 2027. Trump has already announced a series of Cabinet nominees who hail from Florida, including Sen. Marco Rubio, for secretary of state. Although serving as defense secretary would pose some political risk, DeSantis believes it would position him well for a presidential run in 2028, the source said.
Hegseth, a former “Fox & Friends” weekend co-host and Army veteran, has been meeting with Senate Republicans in recent weeks to build support for his confirmation. But reports in recent days that detailed alleged sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement at veterans’ charities, repeated intoxication and infidelity appeared to be softening his support. Some Senate Republicans have called the allegations “disturbing” and said they came as a surprise.
Still, Hegseth on Wednesday told reporters at the Capitol his meetings with Senate Republicans have been “a wonderful process.” In his interview with Kelly, Hegseth said, “No one has looked me in the eye and said, ‘I have concerns and I can’t vote for you.’ In fact, most have said, ‘Let’s take a picture, and I’m behind you all the way.”
Hegseth also defended himself in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday. Amid reports about his removal as the head of a veterans’ charity over allegations of financial mismanagement, intoxication, sexual misconduct and fostering a toxic work climate, Hegseth wrote of his work for that organization, Concerned Veterans for America.
“We fought entrenched interests and mobilized veterans and patriotic Americans across the country,” he said, denying reports of any misconduct and accusing the media of publishing falsehoods.
“We had hundreds of employees and thousands of volunteers—yet based on the anonymous accusations of a few disgruntled employees, the legacy media has made it sound as if we ran a college frat house,” he wrote. “That’s just untrue.”
Hegseth also said that he left CVA over “an internal difference of opinion about its future. I wanted to engage in foreign policy; our donors didn’t.” And he added that the group’s leadership “wrote me a glowing letter when I left.”
In his interview with Kelly, Hegseth addressed the sexual assault allegation that emerged in late November. He responded “absolutely not” when asked if he had raped a woman in a Monterey, California, hotel in 2017. He admitted that it would have once been a fair characterization to call him a “serial cheater” but says he has changed. “I may have been drinking, but I was cognizant enough to remember every single detail. And I’m not here to say that my conduct was good,” he said. “Being in a hotel room with someone that’s not the person you’re with is not OK. I own up to that, and I’ve had to own up to that, and that’s been difficult.”
He said he paid his accuser “because I had to — or at least I thought I did at the time.” He explained that he was newly married, was under consideration for a role in the first Trump administration and wanted to protect his family and his Fox News job.
He also responded to reporting by NBC News that cited current and former Fox News employees who said that “on more than a dozen occasions” while Hegseth was a “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host, “they smelled alcohol on him before he went to air,” and appeared on TV “after they’d heard him talk about being hungover as he was getting ready or on set.” The report said “[t]hree current employees said his drinking remained a concern up until Trump announced him as his choice to run the Pentagon, at which point Hegseth left Fox.”
But in the op-ed, Hegseth did not directly address allegations about his alcohol consumption. “I’ve been at Fox News—where I saw my work as a continuation of my mission to fight for America. Again, the legacy press has used anonymous sources to try to discredit even that,” and he referred readers to his X feed for statements of support from professional colleagues. He did tell Kelly, “I’ve never had a drinking problem.”
North Dakota GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer is scheduled to meet with Hegseth Wednesday afternoon and told reporters earlier in the day, “The allegations are very, very serious. They can’t be trivialized. And I just want to know that, that he’s redeemed, and going forward, he’s going to be better.”
Cramer also added, “I think the mood of the conference is one of the pretty serious, really, really serious about it, and serious about how these things affect his ability to do the job, the ability of the troops to look up to him.”
He suggested the Republican conference was watching for signals from the Trump transition team about Hegseth.
“There’s the mood of the conference, and then there’s the mood of the Trump transition team itself,” he said. “So we’ll see what kind of messages and signals we hear throughout the course of the day. As you can tell, these things have been breaking pretty fast and furious.”
Cramer said of Ernst that she would be “easy to confirm, and I think she’d be great,” and in fact, “if she wanted it, she’d be my first pick.”
“I have never backed down from a fight and won’t back down from this one,” Hegseth wrote, adding, “I look forward to an honest confirmation hearing with our distinguished senators—not a show trial in the press.”
Hegseth has continued to meet with the Republican senators who will weigh in on his nomination. But one prominent Republican, Sen. Josh Hawley, told reporters Wednesday afternoon that Hegseth canceled their upcoming meeting.
“I was supposed to sit down with him tomorrow, but they canceled that meeting,” Hawley said.
“I don’t know where things stand at the moment,” he said of Hegseth’s expected nomination and added, “It’s not 100% clear to me who [Trump] wants as secretary of defense right now.”
Hegseth told Kelly he planned to keep meeting with senators to earn their support, but he acknowledged that there’s a possibility he may not be confirmed. “That’s the president’s call,” he said when asked whether he would withdraw from the process.
Jim Defede, Cristina Corujo contributed to this report.
,
Nikole Killion and
contributed to this report.
NEW YORK – The woman accused of sneaking onto a Delta Air Lines flight from New York City to Paris last week is on her way back to New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport Wednesday.
The suspect, identified by two people familiar with the matter as Svetlana Dali, boarded a Delta flight to return to New York from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. She’s being escorted by French law enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents.
Dali, 57, is expected to be arrested when she lands Wednesday evening on trespassing and theft of service charges, a person familiar with the matter told CBS News. So far, there are no plans to charge her with a federal crime, a person familiar with the matter told CBS News.
The Philadelphia resident initially managed to sneak past airport security and board a Delta flight to Paris on Nov. 26 without a boarding pass. TSA officials said the woman used a group of passengers to bypass the ID check at JFK before entering the TSA checkpoint. She went through a body scanner, and her bag was flagged during screening for having two bottles of water, which she discarded.
She was discovered as a stowaway while the plane was still in midair and was taken into custody when she landed in Paris and refused entry to France.
CBS News confirmed she created a disruption on her return flight Saturday when authorities initially attempted to take her to the States. She was removed from that flight by French law enforcement, causing a delay of more than two hours.
Kris Van Cleave and
contributed to this report.
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