Two bodies recovered after Amazon cargo plane crashes into Texas bay

Atlas Air Worldwide has been operating Boeing 767 freighters on behalf of Amazon following a 2016 deal. (Reuters)
Updated 25 February 2019
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Two bodies recovered after Amazon cargo plane crashes into Texas bay

  • The search continues for the third person as well as the plane’s black boxes
  • ‘Our team continues to work closely with the NTSB, the FAA and local authorities on the ground in Houston’

NEW MEXICO: Two bodies have been recovered from the wreckage of an Amazon Prime Air cargo plane that nosedived into a bay outside Houston on Saturday, and a search was ongoing for a third victim, authorities said.
All three people aboard the Boeing 767 cargo jetliner operated by Atlas Air Worldwide died in the crash as it approached Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Atlas and Boeing Co. said in statements on Sunday.
Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne told a news conference on Sunday that two bodies had been recovered and the search continued for the third person as well as the plane’s black boxes.
The sheriff’s office released a video showing fragments of the aircraft and cargo littering mudflats after the tide went out in the bay, exposing more of the crash site.
US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairman Robert Sumwalt said the agency obtained about five seconds of security video from a local jail that showed the crash.

“The aircraft is in the video as it’s descending in a steep descent, a steep nose down attitude,” Sumwault told the press briefing, adding that there was no distress call.
Asked by a reporter if the incident was “anything more than a plane crash,” Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Perrye Turner said, “that’s what we have right now.”
The plane crashed at the north end of Trinity Bay near the small city of Anahuac, about 32 kilometers southeast of the airport around 12.40P.M. after taking off from Miami.
“This is a sad time for all of us,” Bill Flynn, Atlas Air’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Our team continues to work closely with the NTSB, the FAA and local authorities on the ground in Houston.”
Atlas Air Worldwide has been operating Boeing 767 freighters on behalf of Amazon following a 2016 deal.
Boeing said in a statement that it had sent a team to provide technical assistance to the NTSB as it conducted its investigation.


Police target Ukrainians and Russian in ransomware probe

Updated 3 sec ago
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Police target Ukrainians and Russian in ransomware probe

BERLIN: Police have carried out raids against two members of a ransomware group known as “Black Basta” in Ukraine, and issued an arrest warrant for its Russian head, German prosecutors said Thursday.
The group is accused of using malware to encrypt systems and then demanding money to restore them.
Between March 2022 and February 2025, its members extorted hundreds of millions of euros from around 600 companies and public institutions around the world, the prosecutors said in a statement.
The victims were mainly “companies in Western industrialized nations” but also included hospitals and other public institutions.
As part of a coordinated operation between Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine and Britain, police searched the homes of two Ukrainian suspects and seized evidence, the prosecutors said.
Investigators have also identified and issued an arrest warrant for a Russian citizen accused of being the founder and head of the group, they said.
German police named the suspect as Oleg Evgenievich Nefedov, 35.
Nefedov “decided on targets, recruited employees, assigned them tasks, participated in ransom negotiations, managed the proceeds and used them to pay the members of the group,” the police said.
The searches in Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv were directed against suspected members of the group accused of so-called hash cracking, a method of guessing passwords.
Ukrainian officials also searched the home of another member of the group near Kharkiv in August, whose job was allegedly to help ensure the malware was not detected by antivirus programs.
Black Basta extorted some 20 million euros ($23 million) from around 100 companies and institutions in Germany alone, the prosecutors said.