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The global economy is bracing for impact as US President Donald Trump’s deadline to impose sweeping tariffs on the three largest US trading partners — Canada, Mexico and China — draws near.Trump said shortly after taking office that he planned to introduce 25 percent tariffs on neighbors Canada and Mexico on February 1, unless they cracked down on illegal migrants crossing the US border and the flow of deadly fentanyl.He is also eyeing an additional 10 percent duty for Chinese goods on Saturday, similarly over fentanyl.While Trump has not specified tools for the new tariffs, analysts have suggested he could tap emergency economic powers — which allow the president to regulate imports during a national emergency. But this could be hindered by lawsuits.On Thursday, he reiterated commitment to levies on all three countries, while re-upping threats of 100 percent tariffs on BRICS nations — a bloc including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — if they create a rival to the US dollar.Fentanyl, many times more powerful than heroin, has been responsible for tens of thousands of overdose deaths a year.Beijing has rebuffed claims of its complicity in the deadly trade, while Canada has countered that below one percent of undocumented migrants and fentanyl entering the United States comes through its northern border.JPMorgan analysts believe tariffs are “a bargaining chip” to accelerate the renegotiation of a trade deal between the United States, Mexico and Canada.”However, potentially dismantling a decades-long free-trade area could be a significant shock,” said a recent JPMorgan note.One lesson from Trump’s first term was that policy changes could be announced or threatened on short notice, it added.Tariffs are paid by US businesses to the government on purchases from abroad and the economic weight can fall on importers, foreign suppliers or consumers.Another looming deadline is April 1, by which Trump has called for reviews including on trade deficits.- Recession risk -Wendong Zhang, an assistant professor at Cornell University, said Canada and Mexico would suffer the most under 25 percent US tariffs and with proportional retaliations.”Canada and Mexico stand to lose 3.6 percent and two percent of real GDP respectively, while the US would suffer a 0.3 percent real GDP loss,” he added.Blanket US tariffs and Ottawa’s response in kind could cause Canada to fall into a recession this year, Tony Stillo of Oxford Economics told AFP, adding that the United States also risks a shallow downturn.Mexico could face a similar situation, Tim Hunter of Oxford Economics added.It is unclear if there could be exceptions. Trump said he expected to decide Thursday whether to include crude oil imports in the new levies.Canada and Mexico supplied more than 70 percent of US crude oil imports, said a Congressional Research Service report.Stillo noted that heavy oil is “exported by Canada, refined in the US, and there aren’t easy substitutes for that in the US.”US merchandise imports from both countries largely enter duty free or with very low rates on average, said the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).A tariff hike would shock both industrial buyers and consumers, cutting across everything from machinery to fruits, PIIE added.Canadian officials said Ottawa would provide pandemic-level financial support to workers and businesses if US tariffs hit, vowing their readiness to respond.Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she was confident her country could avoid the levy.But Trump’s commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick said Wednesday “there will be no tariff” if Canada and Mexico acted on immigration and fentanyl.- ‘Grand bargain’ -Trump is also mulling more tariffs on Chinese goods.White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week: “The president has said that he is very much still considering that for February 1st.”Beijing has vowed to defend its “national interests,” and a foreign ministry spokeswoman previously warned that “there are no winners in a trade war.”On the election campaign trail, Trump raised the idea of levies of 60 percent or higher on Chinese imports.Isaac Boltansky of financial services firm BTIG expects “incremental tariff increases” on Chinese goods, with consumer goods likely to face lower hikes.”Our sense is that Trump will vacillate between carrots and sticks with China, with the ultimate goal being some sort of grand bargain before the end of his term,” he said in a recent note.

The US Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure accelerated for a third month in a row in December, according to government data published Friday, while underlying inflation was unchanged.The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 2.6 percent in the 12 months to December, up from 2.4 percent in November, the Commerce Department said in a statement. Inflation rose 0.3 percent from a month earlier. This was in line with the median forecasts from economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.Stripping out volatile food and energy costs, the so-called core index rose by 0.2 percent from a month earlier, and by 2.8 percent from a year ago. “The report showed slightly higher inflation, but it was in line with expectations, meaning it won’t disrupt the narrative of a potential Fed rate cut in the first half of the year,” Jochen Stanzl, Chief Market Analyst at CMC Markets wrote in a note to clients.”This reinforces the Fed’s reluctance to give clear signals on when it will lower rates and highlights the prudence of maintaining a strict, wait-and-see approach,” he added.- Moving away from 2% -Headline inflation has been moving away from the Fed’s long-term target of two percent since September, causing issues for policymakers at the US central bank. The Fed has a dual mandate to tackle inflation and unemployment, and does so mainly by raising and lowering short-term lending rates, which then trickle through into consumer and producer borrowing costs. On Wednesday, the Fed voted unanimously to pause rate reductions following three consecutive cuts, holding the bank’s benchmark lending rate at between 4.25 and 4.50 percent.It did so despite calls from President Donald Trump to “immediately” cut rates shortly after he was sworn into office earlier this month. While inflation continues to accelerate, economic growth has been strong, and the labor market has remained resilient, with the unemployment rate ticking down to 4.1 percent last month.”There’s still more work to be done to bring inflation closer to our two percent goal,” Fed governor Michelle Bowman told a conference in New Hampshire on Friday.”I would like to see progress in lowering inflation resume before we make further adjustments to the target range,” added Bowman, who is a permanent voting member of the Fed’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee FOMC).”The last thing you’re going to want to do is cut rates now, if inflation is being stubborn, going the wrong way, still above two percent,” Allianz Trade senior North America economist Dan North told AFP earlier in the week.And personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income eased slightly to 3.8 percent in December from 4.1 percent in November, indicating that consumers saved less of the money they earned last month.”From the Fed’s perspective, these data confirm the FOMC’s story that the pace of progress back to the two percent inflation target has slowed,” economists at High Frequency Economics wrote in a note to clients published Friday. 

A South Carolina man convicted of murder is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Friday, the first execution in the United States this year.Marion Bowman Jr, 44, was sentenced to death in 2002 for the murder the previous year of Kandee Martin, 21, a high school friend.Martin was shot to death and her body placed in the trunk of her car, which was set on fire.Bowman, who was 20 years old at the time, has acknowledged that he sold drugs to Martin but denied any involvement in her murder.”I am so sorry for Kandee and her family, but I did not do it,” he said in a statement posted online by his lawyer. “I just don’t want to be executed or imprisoned for life for a crime that I didn’t commit.”Bowman has filed numerous appeals seeking to put off his execution including a claim that the attorney who defended him at trial “held racist attitudes.”Bowman is Black. Martin was white.Bowman’s attorneys also argued that two witnesses who testified against him and received plea deals suffered from “credibility issues.”Bowman has also sought to halt his execution because of the possibility of complications stemming from his body size — he weighs nearly 400 pounds (180 kilograms).This exposes him to the danger of a “potentially torturous execution process,” his lawyers said.Bowman’s appeals have all been denied and he is to be put to death at 6:00 pm (2300 GMT) at a prison in Columbia, the state capital.The judge who denied Bowman’s appeal over concerns about lethal injection said he could have opted for the electric chair or the firing squad instead.There were 25 executions in the United States last year. Three used the controversial method of nitrogen gas while the rest relied on lethal injection.Four more executions are scheduled over the next two weeks, including two in Texas.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while six others — Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee — have moratoriums in place.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and on his first day in the White House he called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

Investigators on Thursday recovered the black boxes from a passenger plane that collided mid-air with a military helicopter over Washington’s Potomac River, killing all 67 people, as rescuers pulled bodies from the freezing water.US President Donald Trump launched a political attack blaming diversity and inclusion policies championed by his Democratic predecessors for causing the incident.Trump’s politicization of the tragedy came as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it had recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier jet operated by an American Airlines subsidiary that collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter late Wednesday.”The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation,” the agency said in a statement to AFP.According to a New York Times report, staffing was thin in the control tower at Reagan National Airport, where the airliner was about to land when the collision occurred. One controller, rather than the usual two, was handling both plane and helicopter traffic, the Times quoted a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report as saying.A fireball erupted in the night sky and both aircraft tumbled into the icy Potomac, leaving rescue crews to search for victims in the dark and cold.Over 40 bodies had been recovered as of Thursday evening, according to US media reports.The passenger plane was carrying 64 people and the Black Hawk had three aboard.- Trump politicizes crash -The collision — the first major crash in the United States since 2009 — occurred as American Eagle Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas came in to land.Reagan National is a major airport located a short distance from downtown Washington, the White House and the Pentagon. The airspace is extremely busy, with civilian and military aircraft a constant presence.Just 24 hours before the collision, another plane coming in to land at Reagan National had to make a second approach after a helicopter appeared near its flight path, The Washington Post and CNN reported, citing an audio recording from air traffic control.Trump, who took office 10 days ago, turned a press conference on the disaster into a platform for his crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI — a series of often decades-old measures meant to combat racism and sexism across the United States.Accusing his Democratic predecessors Joe Biden and Barack Obama of having kept good employees out of the aviation agency in pursuit of DEI, he claimed: “They actually came out with a directive: ‘too white.’ And we want the people that are competent.”Trump aimed criticism directly at Biden’s openly gay transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.”He’s run it right into the ground with his diversity,” Trump said.The message was hammered home as Vice President JD Vance and new defense secretary Pete Hegseth took turns at the podium to repeat — without evidence — the hard-right theory that diversity measures keep capable Americans out of responsible jobs.Asked again by reporters whether he was blaming workplace diversity for the crash, Trump answered: “It could have been.”Buttigieg responded on X, calling Trump “despicable.””As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” he said.Democratic Senator Chris Murphy posted that Trump’s comments “blaming the FAA’s hiring of women and black people for the crash — was disgusting.””He’s in charge. This happened on his watch,” Murphy said.Trump later issued an official memo directing the government to investigate “deterioration in hiring standards” under Biden and “replacement” of anyone unqualified.- Skaters among victims -Among those on the airliner were several US skaters and coaches, US Figure Skating said. Officials in Moscow also confirmed the presence of Russian couple Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the 1994 world pairs title.Two Chinese citizens were also among the victims of the crash, state news agency Xinhua reported, citing the Chinese embassy.A Filipino police officer was also on board, Philippine police said.The force of the collision made it clear early on that survivors were unlikely.”I just saw a fireball and it was gone,” one air traffic controller was heard telling a colleague after communication with the helicopter was cut.Transport officials said both aircraft were on standard flight patterns on a clear night with good visibility.And Hegseth said the chopper had “a fairly experienced crew that was doing a required annual night evaluation.”

Music’s biggest stars including Beyonce and Taylor Swift will vie for top awards at Sunday’s Grammys gala, a glitzy ceremony proceeding despite devastating wildfires in Los Angeles.The shell-shocked entertainment capital is still reeling after the deadly blazes razed entire neighborhoods, leaving the music and film industries — vital to the city’s economy — grappling with how to navigate the coming awards season.Many annual Grammy week functions were scrapped, including prominent parties organized by top labels and companies like Spotify.But Harvey Mason Jr, the head of the Recording Academy behind the Grammys, said the gala would go on as planned at Crypto.com Arena “in close coordination with local authorities” — and with an eye towards raising money for wildfire relief.The fires have lent prominence to the Recording Academy’s philanthropic arm MusiCares, which says it has already distributed several millions of dollars in emergency aid.On Friday, MusiCares will host its annual pre-Grammy gala — this year honoring psychedelic jam band rockers The Grateful Dead — bringing together top industry figures where relief efforts and honoring firefighters is set to take precedence.The night before, major event promoters Live Nation and AEG Presents will hold FireAid benefit concerts featuring A-listers like Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, Dave Matthews and John Mayer.The Recording Academy is “thrilled that so many artists in our community are banding together at this time to show support for their fellow music makers and others impacted by the recent wildfires,” said Mason.- Beyonce paradox -Beyonce and her groundbreaking “Cowboy Carter” album that vaunted Black cowboy culture lead this year’s Grammy hopefuls, with 11 chances at a prize.The megastar is already the most nominated and most decorated Grammy winner, but also the most conspicuously snubbed: she’s never won the gala’s most prestigious Album and Record of the Year trophies.”Cowboy Carter” is her fifth studio album vying for the top prize (she also was shortlisted as a featured artist on Lady Gaga’s “The Fame Monster”), with Swift — who has won it a record four times — among her rivals.Though her sprawling double album “The Tortured Poets Department” left critics wanting, Swift — who just wrapped her record-setting Eras Tour — enters the night with six chances at Grammys gold.Eilish, another perennial contender, has seven nominations, while a buzzy group of artists including pop sensations Charli XCX (eight nods), Sabrina Carpenter (six) and Chappell Roan (six) are all in the running for major prizes.Hip-hop laureate Kendrick Lamar — whose dig-heavy rap battle with Drake spawned “Now Like Us,” one of the year’s most viral songs — scored seven nods, and the shapeshifter Post Malone, who recently worked with both Beyonce and Swift, scored eight. Both are featured in the top categories.The paradox of Beyonce never winning the big prizes has revived frequent criticism that the Recording Academy sidelines the work of Black artists.”Cowboy Carter” is a rowdy, wide-ranging homage to her southern heritage that took to task the country industry, which has long promoted a rigid view of the genre that is overwhelmingly white and male.Beyonce’s at-times tense relationship with the Grammys “has really illustrated the fault lines in how organizations think about style and think about genre, especially around race and gender lines,” said musicologist Lauron Kehrer.”I think that it would behoove the Grammys to show a little more engagement outside of a white pop sphere” in the top categories, the academic told AFP.The Recording Academy has made moves to expand and diversify its voter pool in recent years, developments Kehrer said hopefully means “we have more perspectives weighing in.”- Performance-heavy night -The closely watched Best New Artist contest features favorites Carpenter and Roan, who both skyrocketed into the mainstream over the past year.Also in contention is Shaboozey, whose hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” topped the US hot songs chart for weeks and is up for the top Grammy honoring songwriting.Shaboozey is also vying for the melodic rap award with Beyonce — whom he will also compete against in the country categories, in a sign that the Academy might be reading the room when it comes to songs and artists that defy categorization.A tiny fraction of the 94 Grammys are handed out in the marquee televised portion of the gala, with most of the space carved out for performance.Artists including Eilish, Roan, Charli XCX and Carpenter are due to take the stage, along with several more Best New Artist contenders like Doechii, Raye, Teddy Swims and Benson Boone.Legends Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock and John Legend will also appear during the gala, which will pay tribute to legendary late producer Quincy Jones.

Two longstanding US city newspapers, including one immortalized in “The Sopranos,” will vanish from newsstands leaving Jersey City without printed news as the media struggles against headwinds nationwide.Across the river from New York, the rapid demise of New Jersey’s Star-Ledger — read by fictional mob boss Tony Soprano — and The Jersey Journal has left locals without a physical paper and some journalists, paperboys and printers without jobs.”I’m heartbroken,” said Margaret Doman, at the foot of a cluster of mushrooming buildings in Jersey City, within eyesight of Manhattan.”I use The Jersey Journal for a lot of things — not just to read the news, but to post information, and to get in tune with what’s going on around the town,” said the long-time resident and community activist.”The Jersey Journal ceasing publication is like losing an old friend,” said one letter to the editor.In the thick of Journal Square, named for the daily founded in 1867, “Jersey Journal” in giant red letters adorns the building that once housed the newsroom, long since displaced.With 17 employees and fewer than 15,000 copies sold daily, the Jersey Journal could not withstand the body blow that was the closure of the printworks it shared with The Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest daily, which goes all-digital this weekend.The Star-Ledger’s president Wes Turner pointed to an op-ed on NJ.com that stated the closure was forced by “rising costs, decreasing circulation and reduced demand for print.”The newspaper, which featured in the iconic New Jersey mafia TV series, won the coveted Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for a series of articles on the political upheavals of then-governor Jim McGreevey.But the scoops did not save the daily, as sales plummeted and the title went through several rounds of painful buyouts.With the switch to all-digital, even its editorial board will be abolished, announced one of its members, Tom Moran.- ‘Tangible consequences’ -The decline of the local press has been a slow, painful death across the United States. According to the latest report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, more than one-third of newspapers — 3,300 in all — have gone out of print since 2005. They have been victims of declining readership and the consolidation of titles into a handful of corporate masters.”When a newspaper disappears, there’s a number of tangible consequences,” said the report’s director, Zach Metzger.”Voter participation tends to decline. Split-ticket voting tends to decline. Incumbents are reelected more often. Rates of corruption can increase. Rates of police misconduct can increase.” Fewer local papers and the domination of major national issues in the news cycle are also often given as reasons for the rampant polarization of American society between left and right.Steve Alessi, president of NJ Advance Media — which owns The Jersey Journal and The Star-Ledger — wrote on NJ.com that the termination of print “represents the next step into the digital future of journalism in New Jersey” and promised new investment for the website, which claims over 15 million unique monthly visitors.He touted several flagship investigative projects on political extremism, as well as mismanagement in the region’s private schools, the production of podcasts, and newsletters to attract new readers.”There is still a digital divide across the country… My concern is for people who are not digitally acclimated, they still go to their public libraries or a newsstand to see a physical copy of the paper,” said Kenneth Burns, president of New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists. “There are not a whole lot of outlets keeping tabs on local affairs already,” he said, calling The Star-Ledger an “institution.”

The US Senate on Thursday confirmed Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department, a role that oversees the nation’s vast public lands and waters that are vital to the president’s agenda of expanding drilling.Former North Dakota governor and 2024 presidential candidate Doug Burgum was confirmed in a 79-18 vote, with the majority of Democrats joining their Republican colleagues.Trump has also tapped Burgum to lead a newly created National Energy Council, a role which does not require Senate confirmation.Unlike Trump, who has derided human-caused climate change as a hoax, Burgum accepts it is a scientific reality, and led ambitious plans to make North Dakota carbon-neutral as governor.But he also has close ties to the fossil fuel industry — leasing his own farm land for oil and gas production, according to his financial disclosure forms.He also reportedly played a key role in setting up an infamous meeting between Trump and oil executives last April when then-candidate Trump was said by media to have asked them to raise $1 billion in exchange for loosening regulations. Industry groups reacted to the confirmation with delight. “We look forward to working with him to implement a pro-American energy approach to federal leasing, starting with removing barriers to development on federal lands and waters and developing a new five-year offshore program,” said the American Petroleum Institute’s Mike Sommers.The confirmation comes amid sweeping moves by Trump to reshape US environmental policy.On his first day in office, Trump announced he was removing the United States from the Paris climate accord for a second time, declared a “national energy emergency” to expand drilling, and signed executive orders to slow the transition to electric vehicles and halt offshore wind farms.

Intel reported a fourth-quarter loss on Tuesday, but better than expected revenue as the US chip giant continues to struggle to stake its place in the artificial intelligence revolution.The company posted a net loss of $126 million for the quarter ending December 28, compared to a profit of $2.67 billion in the same period last year. Revenue declined seven percent to $14.3 billion, which was slightly better than expected by analysts. The company’s share price rose two percent in after-hours trading following the earnings release.”While Intel’s revenue decline remains concerning, the overall results came in ahead of the most pessimistic forecasts, possibly propped by broader market and geopolitical factors,” said Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne.For the full year 2024, Intel recorded a substantial net loss of $18.8 billion, compared to a profit of $1.7 billion in 2023, largely due to restructuring charges and challenging market conditions.Intel is one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic companies, but its fortunes have been eclipsed by Asian powerhouses TSMC and Samsung, which dominate the made-to-order semiconductor business. The company was also caught by surprise with the emergence of Nvidia, a graphics chip maker, as the world’s preeminent AI chip provider.Last month, Intel’s Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger was forced out after the board lost confidence in his plans to turn the company around. His abrupt departure came after the company in August vowed to cut more than 15,000 jobs in a draconian cost reduction plan, and paused or delayed construction on several chipmaking facilities.Intel’s shares fell 60 percent last year, and its market valuation is about $90 billion, just a fraction of Nvidia, which makes the premium chips that are fueling the AI boom.- DeepSeek -Despite the losses, interim co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus highlighted positive developments. “The fourth quarter was a positive step forward as we delivered revenue, gross margin and EPS above our guidance,” she said.Holthaus told analysts during an earnings call that Intel could find opportunities to capitalize on buzz generated this week by Chinese startup DeepSeek, with its powerful new chatbot developed at a fraction of the cost of its US competitors.”Because if we’ve seen anything this week, when there are constraints put on customers, they figure out different ways to deploy technology,” Holthaus said when asked about DeepSeek.Intel has chips and other assets it can “leverage” to win over customers looking to power AI without having to resort to premium Nvidia GPUs, Holthaus argued.”That’s a great opportunity, and something that I’m looking at to see if there are ways that we can be disruptive there,” Holthaus said.The company’s Client Computing Group, which includes PC chips, saw revenue fall 9 percent to $8 billion in the fourth quarter. However, Intel reported strong momentum in AI components for personal computers, saying it’s on track to ship more than 100 million AI PCs by the end of 2025.Intel has been engaged with the new presidential administration of Donald Trump and “feels good” about the effort to promote chipmaking in the United States, according to co-chief executive David Zinsner.”This is a very positive sign, obviously, for us,” Zinsner said.The earnings report came as Intel continues its search for a permanent CEO.

US President Donald Trump — speaking as the bodies of 67 people were being pulled from Washington’s Potomac River — launched a political attack Thursday blaming diversity hires for the midair collision between an airliner and a military helicopter.Trump’s politicization of the tragedy came as investigators warned they needed time to unpick how the Bombardier jet, operated by an American Airlines subsidiary, and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter could smash into each other late Wednesday.But a key step in the probe occurred Thursday, as the National Transportation Safety Board said the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder — commonly known as the black boxes — were recovered from the site.”The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation,” the agency told AFP.According to a New York Times report, staffing was thin in the control tower at Reagan National Airport, where the airliner was about to land when the collision occurred. One controller, rather than the usual two, was handling both plane and helicopter traffic, the Times quoted a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report as saying.A fireball erupted in the night sky and both aircraft tumbled into the icy Potomac, leaving rescue crews with the grim, difficult task of searching for bodies in the dark and cold.Washington Fire Chief John Donnelly said 28 corpses had been recovered so far.- Trump politicizes crash -Trump, who took office 10 days ago, turned a press conference on the disaster into a platform for his crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI — a series of often decades-old measures meant to combat racism and sexism across the United States.Accusing his Democratic predecessors Joe Biden and Barack Obama of having kept good employees out of the aviation agency in pursuit of DEI, he claimed: “They actually came out with a directive: ‘too white.’ And we want the people that are competent.”The passenger plane was carrying 64 people and the Black Hawk had three aboard.The collision — the first major crash in the United States since 2009 when 49 people were killed near Buffalo, New York — occurred as American Eagle Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas came in to land.Reagan National is a major airport located a short distance from downtown Washington, the White House and the Pentagon. The airspace is extremely busy, with civilian and military aircraft a constant presence.Trump opened his White House press conference by speaking of the nation’s anguish.However, he then launched into an extended broadside against DEI, aiming directly at Biden’s openly gay transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.”He’s run it right into the ground with his diversity,” Trump said.The message was hammered home as Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, and new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, took turns at the podium to repeat — without evidence — the hard-right theory that diversity measures keep capable Americans out of responsible jobs.Asked again by reporters whether he was blaming workplace diversity for the crash, Trump answered: “It could have been.”Buttigieg responded on X, calling Trump “despicable.””As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” he said.Democratic Senator Chris Murphy posted that Trump’s comments “blaming the FAA’s hiring of women and black people for the crash — was disgusting.””He’s in charge. This happened on his watch,” Murphy said.Trump doubled down, however, later issuing an official memo directing the government to investigate “deterioration in hiring standards” under Biden and “replacement” of anyone unqualified.- Skaters among victims -Among those on the airliner were several US skaters and coaches, US Figure Skating said. Officials in Moscow also confirmed the presence of Russian couple Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the 1994 world pairs title.Two Chinese citizens were also among the victims of the crash, state news agency Xinhua reported Friday in Beijing, citing the Chinese embassy.The force of the collision soon made it clear that survivors were unlikely.”I just saw a fireball and it was gone,” one air traffic controller was heard telling a colleague after communication with the helicopter was cut.Transport officials said both aircraft were on standard flight patterns on a clear night with good visibility.And Hegseth said the chopper had “a fairly experienced crew that was doing a required annual night evaluation.”

The midair collision between an American Airlines jet and a US Army Blackhawk helicopter in Washington has puzzled experts, given the perfect flying conditions and strict controls in one of the world’s busiest air corridors.It “shouldn’t have happened,” Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said.”That was as routine a (commercial) flight as it gets,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic.”I’ve been on it many times. Many people in Washington who go to Kansas have been on it,” he told AFP.President Donald Trump echoed this, commenting on Truth Social, that the flight, arriving at Reagan National Airport from Wichita, Kansas, “was on a perfect and routine line of approach.”The collision occurred in congested but tightly controlled airspace over a city that has not seen a major aviation tragedy since the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda attack. The previous accident was in 1982.According to Flightradar24’s Ian Petchenik, the collision occurred at approximately 300 feet (90 meters), mere seconds before landing. “The runway threshold is at the river’s edge. The Kansas flight was ready to touch down,” he told WUSA-TV in DC.The airspace around Reagan Airport regularly accommodates dense helicopter traffic, including military flights between the Pentagon and nearby bases, Coast Guard patrols, and Marine Corps helicopters serving the White House.Commercial aircraft like the one involved are equipped with TCAS (Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System), designed to alert pilots to nearby aircraft and provide last-minute collision avoidance instructions.Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and FAA air crash investigator and head of Guzzetti Aviation, noted that Washington’s busy airspace allows civilian and military aircraft to “mix it up.” Despite clear conditions, he said investigators would examine “human ability to perceive objects at night,” considering factors like night vision goggles and streetlight interference.- ‘Whatever can happen’ -Retired British Army Air Corps Major George Bacon, who has flown military helicopters in US air space, said night vision goggles could have been a factor in the crash.”Although extremely good because it makes it almost look like daylight, they have a sort of ‘tunnel effect'” or can suffer interference from street lights, he said.Captain Sully Sullenberger, known for safely landing his commercial plane in the Hudson River, told CBS that Reagan National was “considered a special airport that requires a bit more study to operate there safely, because of the short runways because of the proximity of other airports.”While mid-air collisions “occur annually or biennially,” commercial aircraft involvement is rare, according to Syracuse University professor and aviation safety expert Kivanc Avrenli. The last fatal commercial mid-air collision in the US occurred on April 9, 1990, when Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2254 collided with a Cessna in Alabama.If confirmed as an accident, Wednesday’s crash will be Washington’s most serious since the 1982 Air Florida Flight 90 disaster, when a Boeing 737 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge during severe winter weather, killing 74 people. That tragedy sparked significant changes in aviation safety regulations, particularly regarding de-icing procedures.Sullenberger cautioned that catastrophic events can still occur when “all the dominoes line up in the wrong way.” “Given enough time, given enough flights, given enough flight hours, eventually whatever can happen will happen unless we work very hard to prevent every incident from turning into an accident.”