The death toll from a cargo plane crash in the southern US state of Kentucky rose to 12 on Wednesday, with investigators saying the accident was caused by one of the engines catching fire and detaching during takeoff.The McDonnell Douglas MD-11, operated by package delivery giant UPS and bound for Hawaii, crashed at 5:15 pm (2215 GMT) Tuesday, shortly after departing from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport.It exploded into flames as it plowed into businesses adjacent to the airport, killing multiple people on the ground. A three-person crew was aboard.”I’m deeply saddened to share that the death toll has risen to 12, with several individuals still unaccounted for,” Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said on X.Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear called the tragedy “heartbreaking” and “unimaginable.”The National Transportation Safety Board sent teams to Louisville to investigate the accident. NTSB member Todd Inman told reporters that investigators had reviewed closed-circuit airport footage “which shows the left engine detaching from the wing during the take-off roll.”While the plane crashed and destroyed or damaged multiple buildings, leaving a fiery debris field nearly half a mile (800 meters) long, its left engine remained “on the airfield,” Inman said.He added that the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, known as a plane’s black boxes, have been identified and will be sent to Washington for analysis.Tuesday’s crash reportedly was the deadliest in the global package delivery giant’s history. Its main hub, Worldport, is in Louisville, where it employs thousands of people.UPS has halted package sorting operations at its facility. – 38,000 gallons of fuel -Video shared by WLKY showed the left engine ablaze as the aircraft tried to lift off.By early Wednesday, Greenberg said on X that aviation officials had reopened a runway.Airport spokesman Jonathan Bevin said the cargo flight “went down three miles (five kilometers) south of the airfield” after taking off.The plane, filled with some 38,000 gallons of fuel for the long-haul flight to Hawaii, narrowly missed a major Ford vehicle assembly plant that employs some 3,000 people, adjacent to the UPS Worldport facility.”It could have been significantly worse,” Beshear said of the tragedy.Aerial footage of the crash site showed a long trail of debris as firefighters blasted water on the flames, with smoke billowing from the area.Beshear said the aircraft hit a petroleum recycling facility “pretty directly.”According to NTSB, the plane was built in 1991 and was modified into a cargo aircraft. McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1996. Boeing, the US aviation giant which has experienced multiple fatal crashes and safety incidents in the past decade, said in a statement that “we stand ready to support our customer and have offered technical assistance to the NTSB.”UPS travels to more than 200 countries via nearly 2,000 daily flights, with a fleet of 516 aircraft. It owns 294 of those planes and hires the rest.The crash comes amid the longest government shutdown in US history with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warning of “mass chaos” due to a lack of air traffic control staff.”You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers,” Duffy told reporters Tuesday.NTSB member Inman said the agency was not aware of any staff shortages at Louisville’s airport at the time of the crash, although a full investigation into all aspects of the crash including air traffic control staffing has been launched.In January, an American Eagle airliner hit a military helicopter outside Washington’s Ronald Reagan National airport, killing all 67 people on both aircraft.That crash, which ended the country’s 16-year streak of no fatal commercial air crashes, has added to concerns about the US air traffic control system, which some regard as an understaffed operation beset by aging equipment problems.

In a parallel reality, Donald Trump reigns as king, fighter pilot, and Superman, and his political opponents are cast as criminals and laughingstocks — an unprecedented weaponization of AI imagery by a sitting American president.Trump has ramped up his use of artificial intelligence-generated content on his Truth Social channel since starting his second White House term, making his administration the first to deploy hyper-realistic fake visuals as a core communications strategy.Trump, no stranger to conspiracy theories and unfounded claims, has used the content in his breathless social media commentary to glorify himself and skewer his critics — particularly during moments of national outrage.Last month, he posted a fake video showing himself wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet labeled “King Trump” that dumps what appears to be excrement on crowds of protesters.The clip — accompanied by singer Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone” — was posted the same day as nationwide “No Kings” protests against what critics called his authoritarian behavior.In another post, the White House depicted Trump as Superman amid fevered social media speculation about his health.”THE SYMBOL OF HOPE,” the post said.”SUPERMAN TRUMP.”- ‘Distort reality’ -Trump or the White House have similarly posted AI-made images showing the president dressed as the pope, roaring alongside a lion, and conducting an orchestra at the Kennedy Center, a venerable arts complex in the US capital.The fabricated imagery has deceived social media users, some of whom questioned in comments whether they were authentic.It was unclear whether the imagery was generated by Trump himself or his aides. The White House did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.Wired magazine recently labeled Trump “America’s first generative AI president.””Trump peddles disinformation on and offline to boost his own image, attack his adversaries and control public discourse,” Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the advocacy group Free Press, told AFP.”For someone like him, unregulated generative AI is the perfect tool to capture people’s attention and distort reality.”In September, the president triggered outrage after posting an apparent AI-generated video of himself promising every American access to all-healing “MedBed” hospitals.MedBed, a widely debunked conspiracy theory popular among far-right circles, refers to an imaginary medical device equipped with futuristic technology. Adherents say it can cure any ailment, from asthma to cancer.Trump’s phony clip — later deleted without any explanation — was styled as a Fox News segment and featured his daughter-in-law Lara Trump promoting a fictitious White House launch of the “historic new health care system.”- ‘Campaigning through trolling’ -“How do you bring people back to a shared reality when those in power keep stringing them along?” asked Noelle Cook, a researcher and author of “The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging.”Trump has reserved the most provocative AI posts for his rivals and critics, using them to rally his conservative base.In July, he posted an AI video of former president Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and appearing behind bars in an orange jumpsuit.Later, he posted an AI clip of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries — who is Black — wearing a fake mustache and a sombrero.Jeffries slammed the image as racist.”While it would in many ways be desirable for the president of the United States to stay above the fray and away from sharing AI images, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he sees his time in office as a non-stop political campaign,” Joshua Tucker, co-director of the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics, told AFP.”I would see his behavior more as campaigning through trolling than actively trying to propagate the false belief that these images depict reality.”Mirroring Trump’s strategy, California Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday posted an apparent AI video on X lampooning Republicans after Democrats swept key US elections.The clip depicted wrestlers inside a ring with superimposed faces of Democratic leaders knocking down their Republican opponents, including Trump. The post read: “Now that’s what we call a takedown.”

Tech firms are floating the idea of building data centers in space and tapping into the sun’s energy to meet out-of-this-world power demands in a fierce artificial intelligence race.US startup Starcloud this week sent a refrigerator-sized satellite containing an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) into orbit in what the AI chip maker touted as a “cosmic debut” for the mini-data center.”The idea is that it will soon make much more sense to build data centers in space than it does to build them on Earth,” Starcloud chief executive Philip Johnston said at a recent tech conference in Riyadh.Along with a constant supply of solar energy, data centers are easier to cool in space, advocates note.Announcements have come thick and fast, the latest being Google this week unveiling plans to launch test satellites by early 2027 as part of its Suncatcher project.That news came just days after tech billionaire Elon Musk claimed his SpaceX startup should be capable of deploying data centers in orbit next year thanks to its Starlink satellite program.Starcloud’s satellite was taken into space by a SpaceX rocket on Sunday.- Junk and radiation -Current projects to put data centers into orbit envision relying on clusters of low Earth orbit satellites positioned close enough together to ensure reliable wireless connectivity.Lasers will connect space computers to terrestrial systems.”From a proof concept, it’s already there,” University of Arizona engineering professor Krishna Muralidharan, who is involved with such work, said of the technology.Muralidharan believes space data centers could be commercially viable in about a decade.Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the tech titan behind private space exploration company Blue Origin, has estimated it might take up to twice that long.Critical technical aspects of such operations need to be resolved, particularly harm done to GPUs by high levels of radiation and extreme temperatures as well as the danger of being hit by space junk.”Engineering work will be necessary,” said University of Michigan assistant professor of engineering Christopher Limbach, contending that it is a matter of cost rather than technical feasibility.- Sun synched -The big draw of space for data centers is power supply, with the option of synchronizing satellites to the sun’s orbit to ensure constant light on solar panels.Tech titans building AI data centers have ever-growing need for electricity, and have even taken to investing in nuclear power plants.Data centers in space also avoid the challenges of acquiring land and meeting local regulations or community resistance to projects.And advocates argue that data centers operating in space are less harmful overall to the environment, aside from the pollution generated by rocket launches.Water needed to cool a space data center would be about the same amount used by a space station, relying on exhaust radiators and re-using a relatively small amount of liquid.”The real question is whether the idea is economically viable,” said Limbach.An obstacle to deploying servers in space has been the cost of getting them into orbit.But a reusable SpaceX mega-rocket called Starship with massive payload potential promises to slash launch expenses by at least 30 times.”Historically, high launch costs have been a primary barrier to large-scale space-based systems,” Suncatcher project head Travis Beals said in a post.But project launch pricing data suggests prices may fall by the mid-2030s to the point at which “operating a space-based data center could become comparable” to having it on Earth, Beals added.”If there ever was a time to chart new economic paths in space — or re-invent old ones — it is now,” Limbach said.