A man who died after being pulled into an MRI machine in New York was wearing a large weight-training chain around his neck, his wife has said.

Keith McAllister, 61, entered a room at the Nassau Open MRI clinic while a scan of his wife’s knee was under way.

The machine’s strong magnetic force drew him in by the 9kg metal chain around his neck, according to Nassau County Police.

His wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, said she had called out to her husband to help her off the table.

“I yelled out Keith’s name, [shouting] Keith, come help me up,” she said in an interview with News 12 Long Island.

She said her husband entered the room wearing the chain, which he uses for weight training.

“I saw the machine snatch him around and pull him into the machine,” Ms Jones-McAllister said as tears streamed down her face. “He died, he lost, he went limp in my arms.”

Police said that the accident last Wednesday “resulted in a medical episode” and left Mr McAllister in a critical condition in hospital.

Ms Jones-McAllister said her husband had suffered a series of heart attacks after he was freed from the MRI machine. He was later pronounced dead.

MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The machines use strong magnetic fields and radio waves to create detailed images of the inside of the body.

Due to the magnetic fields, “very powerful forces” are exerted on objects made of iron, some steels, and other magnetic materials, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering says.

It says the forces are “strong enough to fling a wheelchair across the room”.

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Sky News’ US partner network NBC New York reported that MRI accidents are rare but can be fatal.

It is not the first time someone has been killed by an MRI machine in New York.

In 2001, six-year-old Michael Colombini died at the Westchester Medical Centre when an oxygen tank flew into the chamber, drawn in by the MRI’s 10-ton electromagnet.

Alaska Airlines has grounded its planes following an IT outage.

The carrier said it experienced the outage impacting its operations at around 8pm Pacific time on Sunday (4am Monday UK time).

It did not specify the nature of the outage.

“We requested a temporary, system-wide ground stop for Alaska and Horizon Air flights until the issue is resolved,” the Seattle-based airline said in a statement.

Horizon Air is the regional subsidiary operating Alaska Airlines flights.

Alaska Airlines apologised for the ground stop of its flights and warned of “residual impacts to our operation throughout the evening”.

“Please check the status of your flight before leaving for the airport,” it added.

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Alaska Air Group maintains an operational fleet of 238 Boeing 737 aircraft and 87 Embraer 175 aircraft, according to its website.

In June, Hawaiian Airlines, which is also owned by Alaska Air Group, said some of its IT systems were disrupted by a hack.

The firm said it was still trying to determine the financial impact of the incident.

Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch, two Wall Street Journal reporters and the publication’s owner, News Corp.

The US president has accused the named individuals of defamation, claiming they acted with malicious intent and caused him overwhelming financial and reputational harm.

The lawsuit, which was filed in Miami, seeks at least $10bn (£7.5bn) in damages.

In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump called the lawsuit “historic legal action” which was filed on behalf of himself and all Americans who he said will “no longer tolerate the abusive wrongdoings of the Fake News Media”.

“I hope Rupert and his ‘friends’ are looking forward to the many hours of depositions and testimonies they will have to provide in this case,” he wrote.

It comes after Mr Trump claimed that a letter he allegedly wrote to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was “fake” and said he would sue the “ass off” Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which first published the story.

The publication had said Mr Trump wrote the letter as part of a collection Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, planned to give him as a 50th birthday present in 2003.

It claimed the message, allegedly from Mr Trump, featured several lines of typewritten text, concluding with: “May every day be another wonderful secret.”

The text was framed by what appeared to be a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman, the WSJ claimed. The letter is also said to have featured the signature “Donald”.

Mr Trump immediately denied writing the letter when the WSJ report was published on Thursday night.

“The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein,” he wrote on Truth Social.

“These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper.”

Mr Trump ignored questions about Epstein as he signed a cryptocurrency bill at the White House earlier on Friday.

The president’s lawsuit comes as the US government filed a motion to unseal grand jury transcripts related to Epstein, who took his own life while awaiting trial in 2019.

In a Manhattan federal court filing, the Department of Justice said the criminal cases against Epstein and Maxwell are a matter of public interest, justifying the release of associated grand jury transcripts.

Earlier on Friday, Mr Trump said attorney general Pam Bondi had been asked to release the transcripts because of “the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein”.

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The justice department previously said it had around 200 documents relating to Epstein and that the FBI had thousands more.

It is unknown how much of this is grand jury testimony, which is typically kept secret under US law.

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The president has faced increased scrutiny over his alleged friendship with Epstein since his administration’s U-turn on the so-called ‘Epstein files’.

Mr Trump pledged to release files on Epstein during his presidential campaign, as his MAGA movement accused the Biden administration of suppressing the extent of Epstein’s paedophilia, predatory behaviour and his so-called “client list” – thought to contain names of the rich and famous who conspired with him in his child sex trafficking operation.

But after a review of the evidence the US government has, the Justice Department recently determined that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted”.

Venezuela releases jailed Americans in prisoner swap

The Trump administration said on Friday that it had negotiated an exchange with Venezuela, resulting in the release of 10 jailed Americans.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the prisoners, who had been held in the South American country, were “on their way to freedom”.

In return, 252 Venezuelan migrants being held in El Salvador have been freed, the Venezuelan government said.

They had been held in the notorious maximum security CECOT prison after being deported by the US.