LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas: Five employees of an environmental consulting firm died when a small airplane they were traveling in crashed near a Little Rock factory on Wednesday shortly after taking off, authorities said.
The twin-engine plane crashed outside an industrial area in Little Rock, a couple of miles south of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport, Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Lt. Cody Burk said. The Federal Aviation Administration said five people were on board the plane.
The Beech BE20 had departed the Little Rock airport and was headed to John Glenn Columbus International Airport in Columbus, Ohio, the FAA said.
Burk did not immediately release the names or ages of the people on the plane. The FAA said it and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.
CTEH, an environmental consulting firm based in North Little Rock, said the five people on board the plane — including the pilot — were its employees. A company spokesman said the employees were responding to an explosion at an Ohio metals plant this week that killed one worker and sent more than a dozen to the hospital.
“We are incredibly saddened to report the loss of our Little Rock colleagues,” Paul Nony, senior vice president of CTEH, said in a statement released by the company. “We ask everyone to keep the families of those lost and the entire CTEH team in their thoughts and prayers.”
The crash occurred as a line of thunderstorms that the National Weather Service said included wind gusts of 40 mph (64 kph) moved through the Little Rock area. Burk said it would be up to investigators to determine if weather was a factor.
Nearby residents said they saw an intense fire from the crash.
Dennis Gordon told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette he was standing on a street nearby the crash when he heard the wind pick up and then an explosion. Gordon told the paper that several smaller explosions followed, and then a huge fire.
“It was just red, then it starts turning black, and there’s this burnt smell,” Gordon told the paper.
5 die in small airplane crash near Little Rock factory
https://arab.news/jw2rw
5 die in small airplane crash near Little Rock factory
- The crash occurred as a line of thunderstorms that the National Weather Service said included wind gusts of 40 mph (64 kph) moved through the Little Rock area
TikTok finalizes deal to form new American entity
- American TikTok users can continue using the same app
TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new American entity, avoiding the looming threat of a ban in the United States that has been in discussion for years.
The social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX to form the new TikTok US joint venture. The new version will operate under “defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for US users,” the company said in a statement Thursday. American TikTok users can continue using the same app.
Adam Presser, who previously worked as TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety, will lead the new venture as its CEO. He will work alongside a seven-member, majority-American board of directors that includes TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew.
The deal marks the end of years of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed — and President Joe Biden signed — a law that would ban TikTok in the US if it did not find a new owner in the place of China’s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law’s January 2025 deadline. For a several hours, it did. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration sought an agreement for the sale of the company.
In addition to an emphasis on data protection, with US user data being stored locally in a system run by Oracle, the joint venture will also focus on TikTok’s algorithm. The content recommendation formula, which feeds users specific videos tailored to their preferences and interests, will be retrained, tested and updated on US user data, the company said in its announcement.
Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX are the three managing investors, who each hold a 15 percent share. Other investors include the investment firm of Michael Dell, the billionaire founder of Dell Technologies. ByteDance retains 19.9 percent of the joint venture.
