NEW YORK: A New York City sightseeing helicopter broke apart and crashed into the Hudson River near the New Jersey shoreline, killing the pilot and a Spanish family of five who were on board.
Pieces of the aircraft could be seen floating in the river on Friday as divers searched for clues about what caused the Thursday crash. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating. It’s the latest in a series of recent aircraft crashes and close calls that have left some people worried about the safety of flying in the US
Here’s what we know so far:
How did it happen?
Witnesses described seeing the helicopter’s tail and main rotor breaking away and smoke pouring from the spinning chopper before it slammed into the water.
The helicopter took off from a downtown heliport at around 3 p.m. and flew north along the Manhattan skyline before heading south toward the Statue of Liberty. Less than 18 minutes into the flight, parts of the aircraft were seen tumbling into the water.
Rescue boats circled the submerged aircraft within minutes of impact, and recovery crews hoisted the mangled helicopter out of the water just after 8 p.m. using a floating crane.
The bodies were also recovered from the river, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said.
Who were the victims?
The victims included passengers Agustin Escobar, 49, his wife, Mercè Camprubí Montal, 39, and their three children, Victor, 4, Mercedes, 8, and Agustin, 10. Mercedes would have turned 9 on Friday, officials said.
Escobar, an executive at Siemens, was in the New York area on business, and his family flew in to meet him for a few days, Steven Fulop, mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey, wrote in a post on X. Photos on the helicopter company’s website show the couple and their children smiling just before taking off.
In a statement posted on the social platform X on Friday night by Joan Camprubí Montal, Montal’s brother, family members said there were “no words to describe” what they are experiencing.
“These are very difficult times, but optimism and joy have always characterized our family. We want to keep the memory of a happy and united family, in the sweetest moment of their lives,” he said. “They have departed together, leaving an indelible mark among all their relatives, friends, and acquaintances.”
The pilot was Seankese Johnson, 36, a US Navy veteran who received his commercial pilot’s license in 2023. He had logged about 800 hours of flight time as of March, Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters Friday.
In the summer of 2023, Johnson announced on Facebook that he was flying a helicopter to fight fires for a Montana-based firm. In March this year, he changed his profile to an image of him piloting a helicopter with a view of One World Trade Center and the Manhattan skyline in the background.
His father, Louis Johnson, told The New York Times his son had moved to New York this year for “a new chapter in his life.”
What may have caused the crash?
Hemendy said the NTSB would not speculate on the cause of the crash so early in the investigation.
The main and rear rotors of the helicopter, along with its transmission, roof and tail structures had still not been found as of Friday, she said.
“We are very factual, and we will provide that in due course,” she said.
Justin Green, an aviation lawyer and former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, said videos of the crash suggest that a “catastrophic mechanical failure” left the pilot with no chance to save the aircraft. It is possible the helicopter’s main rotors struck the tail boom, breaking it apart and causing the cabin to free fall, Green said.
Michael Roth, who owns the helicopter company, New York Helicopter, told The New York Post that he doesn’t know what went wrong with the aircraft.
“The only thing I know by watching a video of the helicopter falling down, that the main rotor blades weren’t on the helicopter,” he said, noting that he had never seen such a thing happen in his 30 years in the business, but that, “These are machines, and they break.”
What do we know about the helicopter company?
In the last eight years, the New York Helicopter has been through a bankruptcy and faces ongoing lawsuits over alleged debts. Phones rang unanswered at the company’s offices Friday.
In 2013, one of the company’s helicopters suddenly lost power in midair, and the pilot maneuvered it to a safe landing on pontoons in the Hudson.
FAA data shows the helicopter that crashed Thursday was built in 2004. According to FAA records, the helicopter had a maintenance issue last September involving its transmission assembly. The helicopter had logged 12,728 total flight hours at the time, according to the records.
How common are such crashes?
At least 38 people have died in helicopter crashes in New York City since 1977. A collision between a plane and a tourist helicopter over the Hudson in 2009 killed nine people, and five people died in 2018 when a charter helicopter offering “open door” flights went down into the East River.
Thursday’s crash was the first for a helicopter in the city since one hit the roof of a skyscraper in 2019, killing the pilot.
Recently, seven people were killed when a medical transport plane plummeted into a Philadelphia neighborhood. The crash in January happened two days after an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter collided in midair in Washington in the deadliest US air disaster in a generation.
On Friday, three people were killed when a small plane crashed in South Florida near a major highway.
What we know about the New York City helicopter crash that killed 6 people
https://arab.news/m9ujv
What we know about the New York City helicopter crash that killed 6 people
- Pieces of the aircraft could be seen floating in the river Friday as divers resumed searching for clues as to the cause of Thursday’s crash
- The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating. In addition to the pilot, those killed included a family of five from Spain
South Korea’s former president Yoon Suk Yeol denies insurrection at criminal trial
- Yoon Suk Yeol was formally stripped of office earlier this month
- He became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested
SEOUL: South Korea’s former president Yoon Suk Yeol denied he had committed insurrection Monday, as the impeached leader appeared in court on the first day of his criminal trial over his martial law declaration.
Yoon was formally stripped of office earlier this month, after being impeached and suspended by lawmakers over his December 3 attempt to subvert civilian rule, which saw armed soldiers deployed to parliament.
He became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in January in connection to the criminal case against him, although he was later released on procedural grounds.
Yoon attended the trial at Seoul Central District Court on Monday morning and was asked by the justices to state his name, date of birth and other personal information, according to pool reports.
Yoon is accused of insurrection over his abortive martial law declaration, but his legal team denied all the charges, with the former president then taking to the stand to defend himself.
“To frame an event that lasted only a few hours, was non-violent, and immediately accepted the dissolution request from the National Assembly as insurrection... strikes me as legally unfounded,” Yoon told the court.
Yoon, himself a former prosecutor, asked the court to display the prosecution’s presentation on a courtroom monitor, and proceeded to rebut their opening statement point by point, according to pool reports.
The prosecution argued that Yoon “planned to incite an uprising with the intent to subvert the constitutional order.”
They gave evidence including Yoon’s planning of the martial law in advance and his deployment of the military to the parliament, with orders to break windows and cut the power.
The court will hear witness testimonies from two military officers called by prosecutors, including one officer who claims he was instructed by top commanders “to drag out the lawmakers gathered in the National Assembly to lift the martial law.”
Lawmakers defied armed soldiers and climbed over fences in order to gather in parliament and vote down Yoon’s martial law declaration, forcing him to backtrack in a matter of hours.
Experts say his criminal trial is likely to be a lengthy one.
“The first verdict is likely to be delivered around August, but the case involves around 70,000 pages of evidence and numerous witnesses. So if deemed necessary by the court, the trial may be extended,” lawyer Min Kyoung-sic said.
Former president Park Geun-hye, for example, was impeached in December 2016 — but it wasn’t until January 2021 that the Supreme Court finalized her sentence for influence peddling and corruption.
If found guilty, Yoon would become the third South Korean president to be found guilty of insurrection – after two military leaders in connection to a 1979 coup.
“Legal experts say that the precedent coup could be applied in the current case, as it also involved the coercive deployment of military forces,” said Min.
For charges of insurrection, Yoon could be sentenced to life in prison or the maximum penalty: the death sentence.
But is it highly unlikely that sentence would be carried out. South Korea has had an unofficial moratorium on executions since 1997.
Billionaire tech leaders’ move toward Trump has created a split with workers in Silicon Valley
- Trump has filled a number of his administration’s posts with billionaires and his support from wealthy tech leaders led Democratic President Joe Biden to warn that the US risked becoming an oligarchy ruled by elite
SAN JOSE, California: Like many in the tech industry, Jeremy Lyons used to think of himself as a relatively apolitical guy.
The only time he had participated in a demonstration before now was in the opening days of Donald Trump’s first presidential term, when he joined fellow Google workers walking out of the company’s Silicon Valley campus to protest immigration restrictions. Google’s co-founder and its chief executive officer joined them.
Last weekend was Lyons’ second, also against Trump, but it had a very different feel.
The man directing thousands of marchers with a bullhorn in downtown San Jose on April 5 was another tech worker who would not give his full name for fear of being identified by Trump backers. Marchers were urged not to harass drivers of Tesla vehicles, which have gone from a symbol of Silicon Valley’s environmental futurism to a pro-Trump icon. And no tech executives were anywhere to be seen, only months after several had joined Trump at his January inauguration.
To Lyons, 54, the change says as much about what’s happened to Silicon Valley over the past quarter-century as it does about the atmosphere of fear surrounding many Trump critics nowadays.
“One of the things I’ve seen over that time is a shift from a nerdy utopia to a money first, move fast and break things,” Lyons said.
Political gap seen between tech leaders and their workforce
The tech industry’s political allegiances remain divided. But as some in the upper echelons of Silicon Valley began shifting to the right politically, many of the tech industry’s everyday workers have remained liberal — but also increasingly nervous and disillusioned. Their mood is in stark contrast to the prominent tech leaders who have embraced a conservative populist ideology.
“I think you’re seeing a real gap between the leadership elite here in Silicon Valley and their workforce,” said Ann Skeet, who helps run a center at Santa Clara University studying the ethics of the tech industry.
“The shift hasn’t been for a lot of people,” said Lenny Siegel, a former mayor of Mountain View and longtime liberal activist in the valley. “It’s a handful of people who’ve gotten the attention.”
The biggest example of that is Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and CEO of the world’s best-known electric car company who has taken on a prominent role slashing federal agencies in Trump’s administration. Musk has been joined by several tech billionaires, including investor David Sacks, who helped fundraise for Trump’s campaign and became the White House’s artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency czar, and venture capitalist Marc Andreesen. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also attended Trump’s inauguration in Washington.
Zuckerberg began praising Trump after the then-candidate, angered over money Zuckerberg steered toward local election offices in some states in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, threatened last summer to imprison him. Zuckerberg also donated $1 million to the president’s inauguration fund and co-hosted an inauguration reception for billionaire Republican donors.
Trump has filled a number of his administration’s posts with billionaires and his support from wealthy tech leaders led Democratic President Joe Biden to warn that the United States risked becoming an oligarchy ruled by elites. During Trump’s first term, the valley and its leaders were a bulwark of resistance to the Republican, especially over immigration, given that the industry draws its workforce from around the globe.
It’s against that backdrop that thousands of people attended the recent rally at a downtown San Jose park to protest the actions of Trump and Musk.
Even as tech industry has changed, Silicon Valley has leaned Democratic
Santa Clara County, which comprises most of Silicon Valley, swung 8 percentage points toward Trump in November election against Democrat Kamala Harris, matching the shift across California. Even with that swing, the county voted 68 percent to 28 percent for the then-vice president and remains a Democratic stronghold.
“We’re still in the belly of the beast,” said Dave Johnson, the new executive director of the Santa Clara GOP, who said the party has gained some new members in the county but few from the tech industry. “If the lake was frozen, there’s a little glimmer on top. I would not say there are cracks in the ice.”
The valley has long leaned Democratic, but with an unusual political mix: a general dislike of getting too involved in Washington’s business coupled with an at-times contradictory mix of libertarian individualism, Bay Area activism and belief in the ability of science to solve the world’s problems.
That has persisted even as the tech industry has changed.
The tech boom was fueled by scrappy startups that catered to their workers’ dreams of changing the world for the better. Google’s motto was “don’t be evil,” a phrase it removed from its code of conduct by 2018, when it and other companies such as Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, had grown into multinational behemoths. The companies have had layoffs in recent years, a shock to an industry that not long ago seemed poised for unlimited growth.
Entrepreneurs once dreamed of building startups that would change the world, said Jan English-Lueck, a San Jose State University professor who has been studying Silicon Valley culture for more than 20 years.
“Now,” she said, “if you’re part of a startup, you’re hoping you’ll be absorbed in a way that’s profitable.”
Discontent among some in the tech industry about where it’s headed
Even before some prominent tech leaders shifted toward Trump, there was mounting discontent among some in the industry over its direction. IdaRose Sylvester runs a business promoting a Silicon Valley-style approach to entrepreneurs in other countries.
“I feel sick to my stomach now,” she said.
Sylvester was already disenchanted with the growing inequality in the valley and the environmental cost of all the energy needed to power crypto, AI and data centers. She took part in protests against Trump in 2017, but felt that energy fade once he lost the 2020 election to Biden.
“I saw a lot of people get out of politics once Biden won. There was a feeling it was all OK,” Sylvester said. “It was not all OK.”
It is worse now, she said. She helped organize one of several demonstrations across the valley last weekend during a national day of protests against the new administration.
At first glance, the one in downtown San Jose could have been a typical anti-Trump protest anywhere. A large crowd of largely middle-age and older people carried signs against the president and Musk while chanting against oligarchs.
But it was clearly a Silicon Valley crowd, one still reeling not only from Trump’s challenges to the country’s system of checks and balances but also from the actions of the valley’s top executives.
“The money is all shifting to the wealthiest, and that terrifies me,” said Dianne Wood, who works at a startup. “Unfortunately, you’ve got the Zuckerbergs and Elon Musks of the world who are taking that over.”
“Just coming here, everyone’s saying turn off the facial recognition on your phone,” Wood added. “We’re all scared.”
Kamal Ali, who works in AI, said he felt betrayed by that shift.
“The trust is broken. A lot of employees are very upset by what’s going on,” he said. “It’s going to be different forever.”
Trump says Russian strike on Ukraine ‘a horrible thing’
- “They made a mistake... you’re gonna ask them,” Trump told reporters without specifying who or what he meant
- The Sumy strike came two days after US envoy Witkoff traveled to Russia to meet Putin and push Trump’s efforts to end the war
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Sunday said a Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy that killed at least 34 people was “a horrible thing.”
“I think it was terrible. And I was told they made a mistake. But I think it’s a horrible thing. I think the whole war is a horrible thing,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One while headed back to Washington.
Asked to clarify what he meant by a “mistake,” Trump said that “they made a mistake... you’re gonna ask them” — without specifying who or what he meant.
The American leader’s National Security Council (NSC) had earlier Sunday called the Russian strike “a clear and stark reminder of why President Donald Trump’s efforts to try and end this terrible war comes at a crucial time.”
Neither Trump nor the White House named Moscow as the perpetrator of the attack, though Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier offered condolences to the “victims of today’s horrifying Russian missile attack on Sumy.”
The Sumy strike came two days after US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin and push Trump’s efforts to end the war.
Zelensky on Sunday urged the US president to visit his country to better understand the devastation wrought by Russia’s invasion.
“Please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead,” the Ukrainian leader said in an interview broadcast on US network CBS.
Amnesty urges halt to Ethiopia evictions for urban development
- PM Abiy Ahmed's “corridor project”, which aims to renovate and widen streets, has seen homes, shops, and offices razed in Addis Ababa and at least 58 other cities since its launch in December 2022
ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia is conducting forced evictions on an “unprecedented” scale, Amnesty International said on Monday, urging authorities to “immediately pause” urban renewal projects.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, in power since 2018, is spearheading a “corridor project” in which streets in the capital and in cities across the country have been renovated and widened.
Launched in December 2022, the project has seen homes, shops, and offices razed in Addis Ababa and at least 58 other cities, leaving parts of the capital resembling a giant building site.
Ethiopian authorities have “failed to adequately consult with affected communities, provided insufficient notice, and none of the people reported receiving compensation,” Amnesty said in their report.
The international NGO urged a pause in evictions and suspension of the project “until a human rights impact assessment is conducted.”
Authorities did not respond to AFP’s requests for comment.
The scale of the evictions is “unprecedented in Ethiopia,” the report said, describing a climate of fear among residents, who are “uncertain if they will be the next to be displaced.”
The NGO interviewed 47 families who were evicted in Addis Ababa between January and February of this year. All requested anonymity, citing security reasons.
Family members told Amnesty that only a week after a public meeting, local officials came to their doors, “asking them to leave their homes within three days and warning them that their homes would be demolished.”
“The 47 respondents stated that their homes were demolished within 24 to 72 hours after officials delivered the door-to-door notice,” Amnesty said, with families forced into rental properties on the city’s outskirts.
“My child is suffering because his school is now too far,” said one parent, saying they were grappling with mental health issues as their social lives had been “ruined.”
“Life has also gotten expensive due to additional transport and house rent costs,” another said.
Two journalists contacted by Amnesty also said they were “victims of harassment” when they attempted to report on the corridor work. They did not provide further details.
International partners “should engage Ethiopian authorities to end forced eviction with no further delay,” Amnesty researcher Haimanot Ashenafi told AFP.
Authorities in Ethiopia, home to some 130 million people, are regularly criticized by global organizations and NGOs for human rights abuses and the repression of dissenting voices.
Indian shrimp industry sails in troubled waters after Trump tariffs
- Farmers are seeing demand dry up amid the uncertainty as exporters have cut offer prices by a tenth since the tariffs
GANAPAVARAM, India/GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador: Turbulence unleashed by President Donald Trump’s tariffs could rock global shipments of shrimp to the United States, with exporters in biggest supplier India saying they endanger 2,000 containers packed with the frozen delicacy.
But Ecuador, thousands of kilometers nearer to the United States faces a lower tariff rate and stands to benefit, the exporters say, as shrimp is its most important export after oil.
India’s shrimp industry is staring at a tariff of 26 percent under Trump’s July plan, which threatens a thriving $7-billion seafood export market heavily reliant on US supermarket chains such as Walmart and Kroger as buyers look to renegotiate rates.
Farmers are seeing demand dry up amid the uncertainty as exporters have cut offer prices by a tenth since the tariffs.
“We are suffering huge losses,” said S.V.L. Pathi Raju, 63, standing by the aquaculture pond where he feeds and grows shrimp in India’s southern coastal state of Andhra Pradesh.
“We don’t know who can resolve our price issues,” added Raju, one of several families in the state’s remote village of Ganapavaram grappling with dwindling sales to exporters.
Many also face high payments for shrimp feed and rentals for the land where the saline ponds have been set up.
“I am not sure how I will sustain prices,” said another farmer, 60-year-old Uppalapati Nagaraju, adding that he had been entirely unaware of the concept of tariffs.
“Had I known, I would not have started my cultivation.”
In the face of erratic demand from exporters, he now regrets having begun shrimp cultivation just 15 days before the tariff news. Although Trump has delayed the 26 percent rate until July, even the current rate of 10 percent has made exporters skittish.
The United States and China are among India’s major markets for seafood exports that touched $7.3 billion last year, on a volume of 1.8 million metric tons that was an all-time high.
Shrimp formed the major component, with the 300,000 farmers of Andhra Pradesh contributing the most to industry supplies, accounting for 92 percent of India’s seafood exports of $2.5 billion last year to its biggest market, the United States.
Industry representatives have joined a state government panel weighing the impact of tariffs and looking for ways to boost exports to other countries, such as China.
But the exporters fear Ecuador’s competitive edge from Trump’s planned lower tariff rate of 10 percent for the South American nation, particularly since it is much closer to the United States, its second biggest market for shrimp.
Yet Ecuadorean producers, with $1.55 billion in shipments in 2024, are less optimistic.
Although US consumers have fueled growth in the area of processed shrimp, Ecuador has yet to attain the capacity to replace India’s production, said Jose Antonio Camposano, president of its National Chamber of Aquaculture.
India “will be obliged to look for other markets where Ecuador is selling, like China and the European Union, so we’ll have more pressure in other markets,” Camposano added.
JOURNEY OF 40 DAYS
Reuters visited one Indian factory where shrimp was washed and machine sorted automatically by size before a manual quality check by workers in masks and gloves. Then a conveyor belt whisked the seafood away to be quick-frozen.
Thousands of tons of frozen shrimp leave Andhra Pradesh each year on a voyage that usually takes 40 days to arrive at ports in New York, Houston and Miami, en route to restaurants and the shelves of retailers such as Safeway and Costco.
The chief of India’s seafood exporters group, G. Pawan Kumar, said he was worried about shipping containers already packed with frozen produce at previously agreed rates now set to be renegotiated by US buyers following the tariffs.
“Ten percent is high, we exporters operate on a 3 percent to 4 percent margin,” said Kumar, president of the Seafood Exporters Association of India, which is pushing the government to win the industry exemptions in trade talks with the United States.
“It’s game over” for the Indian industry if the tariff rate of 26 percent takes effect in July, said one shrimp exporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
He was in talks with US clients who did not want to fully absorb the 10 percent tariff, he said, pointing to the risk of earning no profit if he had to sell 130 shipping containers already packed.
In Texas, the seafood section at a Walmart supermarket was piled high with packs of frozen shrimp, among them a “jumbo” variant labelled a product of India and priced at $7.92, under Walmart’s own “Great Value” brand.
“We have built long-lasting and deep relations with suppliers over the years,” said Latriece Watkins, the chief merchandising officer for Walmart in the United States. “We expect that to continue, going forward.”
