More stories

  • in

    Small Plane Crashes Into Nebraska River, Killing 3

    The plane was traveling along the Platte River when it crashed into the water south of Fremont, Neb., on Friday night, officials said.A small plane crashed into a river in eastern Nebraska on Friday night, killing three people on board, officials said.The plane was traveling along the Platte River when it crashed into the water south of Fremont, which is about 40 miles northwest of Omaha, just after 8 p.m., Sgt. Brie Frank of the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office said at a news conference late Friday night.All three bodies were recovered from the crash site with help from agencies that responded, including with airboats, Sergeant Frank said.The identities of the victims were not immediately known. It was not immediately known where the plane was headed or from where it departed.The National Transportation Safety Board said the plane was a Cessna 180 and that an investigator was expected to arrive at the crash scene Saturday afternoon.The board said that once the investigator documented the scene and examined the aircraft, the plane would be taken to a secure facility for further evaluation.The Federal Aviation Administration will also investigate, Sergeant Frank said.Local news reports showed parts of the plane still in the water on Saturday morning.The crash was the latest in a string of small plane crashes across the United States, including in Florida, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania. More

  • in

    Israeli Attacks Kill Dozens in Gaza, Health Ministry Says

    Israel was keeping up its intense bombing campaign in the enclave, which has exacted a heavy price on civilians struggling to find safe places to shelter.The latest round of Israeli attacks in a renewed military offensive in Gaza has killed dozens of Palestinians, the territory’s health ministry said on Saturday.The ministry said that 92 dead and 219 wounded people had arrived at hospitals over the past 48 hours. Gaza health officials do not differentiate between civilians and combatants in casualty counts.Since the collapse last month of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s military has embarked on a major bombing campaign and seized territory in Gaza. Israeli officials have said that the military is targeting militants and weapons infrastructure in a bid to compel Hamas to release more hostages held in the enclave.More than 1,700 people have been killed in Gaza since the cease-fire fell apart, and more than 51,000 people have been killed since the war began in October 2023, according to the health ministry.Israel’s renewed offensive has exacted a heavy price on civilians struggling to find places to shelter and reinforced a feeling among Palestinians in Gaza that nowhere is safe.On Friday, the Israeli military told The New York Times that Mawasi, a narrow strip of coastal land in southern Gaza, was no longer considered a “humanitarian zone.” Earlier in the war, the Israeli military repeatedly instructed Palestinians to go to Mawasi, which it had described at the time as a “humanitarian zone.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    3 Drown After Boat Crash During Fishing Tournament in Alabama

    The men were thrown overboard when two boats collided in Lewis Smith Lake on Wednesday morning, the authorities said.Three people were killed and multiple others were injured Wednesday morning when two fishing boats collided in a lake in northwest Alabama during a fishing competition, the authorities said.At around 7 a.m., Joey M. Broom, 58, of Altoona, Ala., John K. Clark, 44, of Cullman, Ala., and Jeffrey C. Little, 62, of Brandon, Miss., were on a center console boat in Lewis Smith Lake in Cullman County when it collided with a bass boat, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said.The three men were thrown overboard and drowned, the law enforcement agency said. Their bodies were found in the Miller Flats area on the eastern side of the lake — a sprawling reservoir with long fingers and jagged inlets about an hour north of Birmingham.The number of injuries and their severity was not known. The coroner for Cullman County did not immediately respond to an email seeking additional information about the causes of death.The crash occurred at the beginning of the second day of the Tackle Warehouse Invitational, a competition promoted by the organization Major League Fishing. It also involved Flint Davis, a competing angler from Leesburg, Ga., the organization said. His condition was not known.The final day of the tournament, which had been scheduled for Thursday, was canceled, Major League Fishing announced.Competitors in the Tackle Warehouse Invitational try to catch the biggest bass. They are vying for a top prize of up to $115,000 as well as points to qualify for the championship invitational in September, Major League Fishing said. More

  • in

    At Least One Dead After Private Plane Crashes in Upstate New York

    The plane, a Mitsubishi MU-2B carrying two passengers, went down Saturday in the town of Copake close to the Massachusetts border, according to the authorities.A plane crashed in a field on Saturday near the town of Copake, N.Y., leaving at least one dead, according to the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office.The plane, a Mitsubishi MU-2B bound for Columbia County Airport near Hudson, N.Y., was carrying two passengers and crashed a little after noon, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.The aircraft went down near Two Town Road and did not damage any structures, Undersheriff Jacqueline Salvatore told reporters at a news conference on Saturday afternoon. Ms. Salvatore did not say how many people had been killed or if there were any survivors. The two passengers have not been identified.A private plane of the same model departed Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., shortly after 11:30 a.m., flying north toward Hudson before turning east at about noon, according to the tracking site Flightradar24. Minutes later, the craft disappeared from the site near Copake, a small town bordering Taconic State Park near the Massachusetts border.That plane was registered to a company based outside Boston, according to F.A.A. records.Ms. Salvatore said that, in addition to officers from the sheriff’s department, personnel from the New York State Police and a local fire department responded to the scene. Law enforcement officials received a 911 call about the crash at around noon, she said.At that time, the weather in the area was mostly mild, with overcast skies and wind gusts up to 26 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service.Snow and moisture on the ground were hampering response efforts, Ms. Salvatore said.“It’s in the middle of a field and it’s pretty muddy, so accessibility is difficult,” she said.It was not immediately clear Saturday afternoon what had caused the plane to crash, Ms. Salvatore said, but local law enforcement planed to conduct interviews in the neighborhood to learn more.The F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board are also investigating the crash, according to the aviation agency’s statement.In November of last year, a small plane carrying a pilot and four rescue dogs crashed roughly 50 miles west of Copake, in a remote area of the Catskill Mountains. In June, five members of a family were killed about 40 miles northeast of Binghamton, N.Y., when their small plane crashed en route from Cooperstown to Georgia. More

  • in

    Charter Company in Fatal Helicopter Crash Had Prior Mechanical Failures

    The firm that operated the helicopter that crashed in the Hudson River on Thursday, killing all six people aboard, has a long history of flying excursions around New York City, some of which have encountered safety problems.In 2013, one of the helicopters operated by the company, New York Helicopter Charter, was carrying a family of four on a sightseeing tour when it suddenly lost power. It was forced to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River near the Upper West Side of Manhattan.About two years later, another of its helicopters crashed while hovering 20 feet off the ground after taking off in northern New Jersey.In that episode, the pilot reported that the helicopter had started to spin out of control before he put it down for a “hard landing.” An investigation found that the aircraft had previously been involved in a hard landing in Chile in 2010 and that a drive shaft that was “unairworthy” was installed on the aircraft, according to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board.The investigation found that the faulty drive shaft had been painted by a previous owner, making it impossible to tell whether it had been part of the helicopter during the earlier hard landing.The investigators found that the probable cause of the crash was “deliberate concealment and reuse” of the faulty component “by unknown personnel.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    Helicopter Crashes Into Hudson River, Killing Six

    An executive from Spain, his wife and three children died in the crash, along with the helicopter’s pilot, officials said.A sightseeing helicopter tumbled out of the sky and plunged into the Hudson River across from Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, killing all six people aboard, including three children, officials said.Video footage showed the helicopter falling end over end and crashing into the water just off Jersey City, N.J., at high speed at about 3:15 p.m. Witnesses reported hearing a loud bang and seeing the helicopter hit the river without at least one of its rotor blades.Two adults and three children from Spain — Agustín Escobar, an executive with the technology company Siemens, and his family — were pulled from the helicopter or the frigid river but none survived, a senior law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the crash. The pilot was also killed.Two of the passengers were alive when divers pulled them from the water but later died, New York City’s police commissioner, Jessica S. Tisch, said at a news conference.“Six innocent souls have lost their lives, and we pray for them and their families,” Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said.It was the deadliest helicopter crash in New York City in at least seven years.The helicopter, a Bell 206, was operated by New York Helicopter, which runs sightseeing tours for several hundred dollars a flight. The company’s chief executive, Michael Roth, said he did not know what had happened to the aircraft, which he had leased from a company in Louisiana. The National Transportation Safety Board was leading the investigation into the crash.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    RFK Jr. Offers Qualified Support for Measles Vaccination

    In an interview with CBS, the health secretary also suggested he wasn’t familiar with massive cuts to state funding for public health.In a rare sit-down interview with CBS News, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, recommended the measles vaccine and said he was “not familiar” with sweeping cuts to state and local public health programs.The conversation was taped shortly after his visit to West Texas, where he attended the funeral of an 8-year-old girl who died after contracting measles. A raging outbreak there has sickened more than 500 people and killed two young children.In clips of the discussion released Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy offered one of his strongest endorsements yet of the measles vaccine. “People should get the measles vaccine, but the government should not be mandating those,” he said.A few moments later, however, he raised safety concerns about the shot, as he has previously: “We don’t know the risks of many of these products because they’re not safety tested,” he said.For months, Mr. Kennedy has faced intense criticism for his handling of the West Texas outbreak from medical experts who believe that his failure to offer a full-throated endorsement of immunization has hampered efforts to contain the virus.Moreover, he has promoted unproven treatments for measles, like cod liver oil. Doctors in Texas believe its use is tied to signs of liver toxicity in some children arriving in local hospitals.Throughout the outbreak, Mr. Kennedy has often paired support for vaccines with discussions of safety concerns about the shots, along with “miraculous” alternative treatments.Over the weekend, he posted on social media that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine was “the most effective way” to prevent the spread of measles — a statement met with relief from infectious disease experts and with fury from his vaccine-hesitant base.That night, he posted again, this time applauding “two extraordinary healers” who he claimed had effectively treated roughly 300 measles-stricken children with budesonide, a steroid, and clarithromycin, an antibiotic.Scientists say there are no cures for a measles infection, and that claiming otherwise undermines the importance of a vaccination.Later in the CBS interview, Mr. Kennedy was pressed on the administration’s recent move to halt more than $12 billion in federal grants to state programs that address infectious disease, mental health and childhood vaccinations, among other efforts.(A judge has temporarily blocked the cuts after a coalition of states sued the Trump administration.)Mr. Kennedy said he wasn’t familiar with the interruptions, then asserted that they were “mainly D.E.I. cuts,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion programs that have been targeted by the Trump administration.Dr. Jonathan LaPook, CBS’s medical correspondent, asked about specific research cuts at universities, including a $750,000 grant to researchers at the University of Michigan to study adolescent diabetes.“I didn’t know that, and that’s something that we’ll look at,” Mr. Kennedy said. “There’s a number of studies that were cut that came to our attention and that did not deserve to be cut, and we reinstated them.” More

  • in

    3 Are Killed in Shooting Near Fredericksburg, Va., Authorities Say

    Three others were injured in the shooting, which occurred on a suburban street in Spotsylvania County, about 60 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.Three people were killed and three others were wounded in a shooting on a residential street just outside Fredericksburg, Va., on Tuesday, the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office said.The authorities said that the shooting may have been carried out by more than one attacker, and that no one had been taken into custody. A motive was not immediately clear, but a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office said that the shooting had not arisen from a domestic dispute.The shooting was reported around 5:30 p.m. on Olde Greenwich Circle, a street of modest townhouses in Spotsylvania County about 60 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., the sheriff’s office said. People in the immediate area were urged to stay indoors, and others were told to avoid the area.The ages of the victims were not known. The injured victims were taken to area hospitals, the sheriff’s office said in a statement. A bystander’s video showed what appeared to be two bodies covered in white sheets several yards apart on the pavement outside a row of houses.“We still have an active, ongoing investigation with no suspects in custody,” Major Scott said. Residents who live on or near Olde Greenwich Circle were urged to stay indoors.Fredericksburg City Public Schools said the start of classes would be delayed by two hours on Wednesday, citing “the profound impact this incident has had on members of our school community.”Reports of the shooting drew a heavy police response. A video posted on social media showed officers marching through a wooded area with their guns drawn.Andrea Staples, a receptionist at Strictly Ballroom, a dance studio in a shopping plaza near Olde Greenwich Circle, said a student had called at around 6:30 p.m. after leaving class to alert them to the shooting and the shelter-in-place advisory.“I locked the door and went and checked the back,” Ms. Staples said.A class was in session at the time, she said, and the students sheltered in place until about 8 p.m.“We will be here all night until we find the suspects,” Major Scott said. More