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A jet with 60 passengers and four crew members collided with an Army helicopter Wednesday while approaching the Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington. The aircraft plummeted into the Potomac River, and multiple people were killed.The crash occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over three miles (five kilometers) south of the White House and the U.S. Capitol.Here are some things to know about the collision: The crash The midair crash happened around 9 p.m. when a regional jet at the end of a flight from Wichita, Kansas, collided with a military helicopter on a training exercise, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.A few minutes before the jet was to land, air traffic controllers asked American Airlines Flight 5342 if it could land on a shorter runway, and the pilots agreed. Controllers cleared the jet to land and flight tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway.Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked a helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later: “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.” There was no reply. Seconds after that, the two aircraft collided.The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the Potomac. Emergency response Authorities were conducting a massive search-and-rescue operation. Inflatable boats were launched into the river and first responders set up light towers from the shore to illuminate the area. Helicopters from law enforcement agencies across the region also flew over the scene in a methodical search for bodies and survivors. Passengers and fatalities There was no official death toll announced at an early Thursday news conference, but a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press there were multiple fatalities. The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas hinted that the number killed will be high. “When one person dies it’s a tragedy, but when many, many, many people die it’s an unbearable sorrow,” he said. Russian figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were aboard the plane, along with other Russian nationals, according to the Kremlin. Coaches, skaters, and others had been in Wichita for the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which concluded Sunday, and a development camp.Shishkova and Naumov were married and won a 1994 world championship in pairs figure skating. Airport Located along the Potomac River, just southwest of Washington, Reagan National is a popular choice because it’s much closer to the city than the larger Dulles International Airport.All takeoffs and landings from Reagan Airport were halted. It will reopen at 11 a.m. Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced. Investigation Investigators will try to piece together the aircraft’s final moments before their collision, including contact with air traffic controllers as well as a loss of altitude by the passenger jet. Aircraft involved The helicopter was a UH-60 Black Hawk based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, according to the U.S. Army. A crew of three soldiers were on board the helicopter, an Army official said.The other aircraft was a Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet and was manufactured in 2004. It can be configured to carry up to 70 passengers. History of fatal aircraft crashes Fatal crashes of commercial aircraft in the U.S. have become a rarity. The last was in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. All 45 passengers and the four crew members were killed when the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane crashed into a house. One person on the ground also was killed.The incident Wednesday recalled the crash of an Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac on January 13, 1982, killing 78 people. That crash was attributed to bad weather. Hallie Golden, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
The employees of bankrupt retailer Big Lots have had to live with a lot of uncertainty ever since the company announced in mid-December that it was going out of business and closing all its stores. Just over a week later, Big Lots announced that it had struck a deal with Gordon Brothers Retail Partners to transfer some Big Lots assets to Variety Wholesalers and other retailers. According to the announcement, that meant some Big Lots locations, between 200 and 400 stores, would stay open and operating, potentially saving thousands of jobs. Unfortunately, theres yet no word on which Big Lots locations will continue to operate, leaving many Big Lots workers uncertain about their future employment. In mid-January, Gordon Brothers published a list of Big Lots leases that it was putting up for sale, suggesting that the stores on that list wouldnt be among those saved. Now, Gordon Brothers has updated that list to include more stores, giving a little more insight into which locations are closed or going to close for good. Phase 2 of Big Lots lease sales A few weeks ago, Gordon Brothers published a list titled New Market Locations Phase 1. That list included hundreds of Big Lots locations with leases for sale. When a stores lease is sold, the owner is looking for a buyer to move into the store’s location, freeing it from its rental obligations. The list included locations in 47 states, with Florida, New York, and Texas among the states with the most leases for sale. Now Gordon Brothers has released an updated list, titled New Market Locations Phase 2. The Phase 2 list includes many of the stores from the Phase 1 list but adds nearly 150 new locations, suggesting that these locations, too, will not be among the locations saved via the deal with Variety Wholesalers and other retailers. Among the states with the most additional stores marked for sale of their leases include Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. When will the saved Big Lots stores be revealed? While the Phase 1 and Phase 2 lists give us a good indication that the stores on them will not be among those that are saved, many Big Lots employees and customers are anxiously awaiting information on which stores will pull through. Unfortunately, we may not have a definitive list for some time yet. As Fast Company previously reported, in a January bankruptcy court filing, Big Lots revealed that all parties were working expeditiously to determine which [locations] can drive additional value to the estates or comprise the group of continuing Big Lots stores. However, the parties understandably require additional time to complete this analysis. Big Lots asked the court to give it until April 7 to develop a list of stores that will continue to operate.
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E-Commerce
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he will order the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare a migrant detention facility at Guantanamo Bay for as many as 30,000 migrants. The U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, already houses a migrant facility separate from the high-security U.S. prison for foreign terrorism suspects that has been used on occasion for decades, including to hold Haitians and Cubans picked up at sea. Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said later on Wednesday that the administration would expand the already existing facility and that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency would run it. “Today I’m also signing an executive order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000 person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay,” Trump said at the White House. He said the facility would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo. This will double our capacity immediately, right? And, tough.” Soon after, Trump signed a memorandum, which did not have a number of migrants in it but called for “additional detention space” at the expanded facility. Speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Homan said the center would be used for the “worst of the worst.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, asked how much money would be required for the facility, said the administration was working on it with reconciliation and appropriators in Congress. ‘ACT OF BRUTALITY’ The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay was set up in 2002 by then-U.S. President George W. Bush to detain foreign militant suspects following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. There are 15 detainees left in the prison. Trump’s two Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, sought to shut down the Guantanamo prison and were only able to reduce its inmate population, but Trump has vowed to keep it open. The jail has long been condemned by human rights groups for indefinite detention and came to symbolize the early excesses the U.S. war on terror because of harsh interrogation methods that critics say amounted to torture. The facility for migrants is separate from the detention center on the base. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel called Trump’s plan “an act of brutality.” Pro-refugee groups have called for the Guantanamo migrant facility to be closed and for Congress to investigate alleged abuses there. The International Refugee Assistance Project said in a 2024 report that detainees described unsanitary conditions, families with young children housed together with single adults, a lack of access to confidential phone calls, and the absence of educational services for children. On Tuesday, the U.S. military said that it would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain migrants at Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado. The decision comes on top of U.S. military deportation flights of migrants out of the country and the deployment of just over 1,600 active-duty troops to the U.S. border with Mexico following Trump’s emergency declaration on immigration last week. Jeff Mason, Idrees Ali and Ted Hesson, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
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