Putin Apologizes For ‘Tragic Incident’ But Stops Short of Saying Azerbaijani Plane Was Shot Down

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologized to his Azerbaijani counterpart for what he called a “tragic incident” following the crash of an Azerbaijani airliner in Kazakhstan that killed 38 people, but stopped short of acknowledging that Moscow was responsible.

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Putin’s apology came as allegations mounted that the plane had been shot down by Russian air defenses attempting to deflect a Ukrainian drone strike near Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya.

An official Kremlin statement issued Saturday said that air defense systems were firing near Grozny airport as the airliner “repeatedly” attempted to land there on Wednesday. It did not explicitly say one of these hit the plane.

The statement said Putin apologized to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev “for the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace.”

The readout said Russia has launched a criminal probe into the incident, and Azerbaijani state prosecutors have arrived in Grozny to participate. The Kremlin also said that “relevant services” from Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are jointly investigating the crash site near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.

The plane was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, to Grozny when it turned toward Kazakhstan, hundreds of kilometers (miles) across the Caspian Sea from its intended destination, and crashed while making an attempt to land. There were 29 survivors.

According to a readout of the call provided by Aliyev’s press office, the Azerbaijani president told Putin that the plane was subject to “external physical and technical interference,” although he also stopped short of blaming Russian air defenses.

Aliyev noted that the plane had multiple holes in its fuselage and that the occupants had sustained injuries “due to foreign particles penetrating the cabin mid-flight.”

He said that a team of international experts had begun probing the incident at Azerbaijan’s initiative, but provided no details. Earlier this week, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s office confirmed that investigators from Azerbaijan are working in Grozny.

On Friday, a U.S. official and an Azerbaijani minister made separate statements blaming the crash on an external weapon, echoing those made by aviation experts who blamed the crash on Russian air defense systems responding to a Ukrainian attack.

Passengers and crew who survived the crash told Azerbaijani media that they heard loud noises on the aircraft as it was circling over Grozny.

Dmitry Yadrov, head of Russia’s civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia, said Friday that as the plane was preparing to land in Grozny in deep fog, Ukrainian drones were targeting the city, prompting authorities to close the area to air traffic.

Yadrov said that after the captain made two unsuccessful attempts to land, he was offered other airports but decided to fly to Aktau.

Earlier in the week, Rosaviatsia had cited unspecified early evidence as showing that a bird strike led to an emergency on board.

In the days following the crash, Azerbaijan Airlines blamed “physical and technical interference” and announced the suspension of flights to several Russian airports. It didn’t say where the interference came from or provide any further details.

If proven that the plane crashed after being hit by Russian fire, it would be the second deadly civil aviation accident linked to fighting in Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed with a Russian surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 people aboard, as it flew over the area in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in 2014.

Russia has denied responsibility, but a Dutch court in 2022 convicted two Russians and a pro-Russia Ukrainian man for their role in downing the plane with an air defense system brought into Ukraine from a Russian military base.

Following Wednesday’s suspension of flights from Baku to Grozny and nearby Makhachkala, Azerbaijan Airlines announced Friday that it would also halt service to eight more Russian cities.

Several other airlines have made similar announcements since the crash. Kazakhstan’s Qazaq Air on Friday said it would stop flying from Astana to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains for a month.

Turkmenistan Airlines, the Central Asian country’s flagship carrier, on Saturday halted flights to Moscow for at least a month, citing safety concerns. Earlier this week, Israel’s El Al carrier suspended service from Tel Aviv to the Russian capital, citing “developments in Russia’s airspace.”

source https://time.com/7203973/putin-comment-tragic-incident-azerbaijani-plane/

What Critics Get Wrong About the Ivy League

Barely a day passes without colleges scolded in the headlines over admissions or athletics and endowments or education and expression. Schools have become scapegoats for both good and bad reasons. Prominent commentators and populist political leaders from both the far left and far right now target higher education as a common enemy.

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In fact the current fight over the meritocracy vs charges of elitism which would not characterize other fields such as sports or entertainment have torn open a seam on the right between Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk in favor of selectivity and merit on one side and Laura Loomer and Matt Goetz on the other.  Ramaswamy declared that American culture has  “venerated mediocrity over excellence” launching what is termed a “civil war” within the MAGA movement. 

Both extremes have arrived on shared areas of concern that include admissions criteria; tolerance of thought on campus; institutional voice; faculty bias in research and education; personal safety; academic integrity; donor influence; curriculum focus; government funding; financial viability, and administrative efficiency. Increasingly, universities, especially selective universities, have been labelled as elitist, self-interested, out-of-touch with societal needs, and lacking accountability.  

What is new is the convergence of a shared populist spirit of elements of the MAGA movement on the right and todays’ self-styled progressives on the left. Together, they find common cause in the skepticism of societal pillars from Wall Street financiers to college educators and politicians. These critiques have corroded public opinion on the value of U.S. higher education, just as the rest of the world treasures the real contributions to the economy, quality of life, scientific knowledge, and cultural enrichment provided by American colleges. The Edelman Trust Barometer shows a steady decline of confidence in all pillars of society from public officials and the media to clergy and colleges. At the 2024 Yale Higher Educational Leadership Summit, fully 97% of the college presidents expressed concern over the loss to public confidence in higher education. 

This summer, the Pew Foundation researchers found roughly half the American public surveyed believe it’s less important to have a four-year college degree today to obtain a well-paying job than it was 20 years ago even as facts show the opposite is true: a significant wage gap still favors those with college degrees.  Similarly, a Gallup survey this summer showed a large drop in overall US confidence in higher education from almost 60% in 2015 to almost half that. Now Americans are roughly equally divided among those who have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence (36%), some confidence (32%), or little or no confidence (32%) in higher education.  

In taking a closer look at the Gallup survey, three issues have risen to the top in the public mind: the political climate on our campuses, questions about whether a traditional liberal arts education best prepares our graduates for success in this tech-fueled world and the cost of higher education as represented by a sticker price that is rapidly approaching $100K per year.

What critics miss in the value of a liberal arts education

Increasingly, people across the political spectrum question whether a traditional liberal arts education, as delivered to most undergraduates by the Ivy and other leading institutions, is the best training for leadership in today’s workplace.  Indeed, the elite schools do not have a stranglehold on certain sectors. In a study of 628 U.S.-born tech founders from 287 different universities, 81%  did not come from Ivy-plus schools. What mattered most in explaining the success of founders was that they graduated from a college.  The success of dropouts like Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Apple’s Steve Jobs, and Facebook/Alphabet’s Marc Zuckerberg were exceptions to such findings.  

Paradoxically, the drop in American public confidence in the liberal arts comes just as the prestige of US universities around the world is at an all-time high and the number of international students studying in the US has climbed to a record 1.1 million a year. And innovation for the public good is alive and well at America’s at the leading institutions. Over a third of US research universities have venture funds spinning out anywhere from 30 to 80 new business a year employing millions of US workers and serving as a source of economic development to communities around the nation. Higher education is the most globally competitive of all US sectors. The US is home to the most top 100 universities by far (36).

Research by the National Bureau of Economic Research has shown impressive individual attainment from Ivy League schools in particular. While less than half of one percent of Americans attend the eight Ivy League colleges, Chicago, Duke, MIT, and Stanford (known as Ivy Plus schools), these universities contributed more than 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs, a quarter of U.S. Senators, half of all Rhodes scholars, and three-fourths of Supreme Court justices appointed in the last half century. Roughly 22% of all Nobel Prizes winners, selected by judges from around the world, were affiliated with Ivy Leagues schools. This scholarship has contributed mightily to the advance of science and industry. The renowned corporate research labs of General Electric (Menlo Park), AT&T (Bell Labs), Xerox (Palo Alto Research Center) have largely disappeared with diminished research even at major chemical and pharmaceutical companies. Most of the great advances in material sciences, agricultural science, drug development, public health, environmental safety, and computer science and the internet originate in the university world.

It must be noted, however, that the value of higher education should be appreciated for more than winning awards and creating wealth but also for quality of life. A decade ago, former Duke President Richard Brodhead co-chaired the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.  In summarizing their findings, Brodhead stated, that value of higher education is not to be measured merely by income earned by colleges graduates.

“Its value is that it supplies enrichment to personal lives, equips students to be thoughtful and constructive social contributors, and prepares them to participate fully and creatively in the dynamic, ever-changing world that awaits them after college.  It’s easy to see why people might get anxious about something so difficult to calculate, and might want a straighter line to the payoff. But the fruits of such education can only be reckoned over long time-horizons, as they enable people to rise to challenges and seize opportunities they could not foresee at first. The lives of successful people almost never involve continuing to do what they prepared for. As their lives unfold, they find that by drawing on their preparation in unexpected ways, they’re able to do things they hadn’t intended or imagined.”

Concerns about the cost of higher education

Probably no issue about American higher education has received as much attention over a sustained period of time than its cost.  And while some of the increase in the sticker price of leading universities can be explained by investments in need-based financial aid even the costs net of financial aid have risen between 1 and 2 percent above any reasonable measure of inflation for decades. Studies show levels of student debt rising at alarming rates.  And while much of the focus has been on undergraduates, levels of student loan debt among those receiving master’s degrees is a more severe issue.  Concerns about student loan debt are exacerbated by the fact that six-year graduation rates for undergraduates across all of higher education are less than 60%.  So, too many students find themselves in the worst possible situation – a boatload of debt and no degree to show for it.

In speaking about cost, the political right characterizes elite higher ed institutions as inefficient organizations choking on administrative bloat.  The political left laments their high cost saying that the sticker price alone turns off prospective students from low socio-economic backgrounds.  Both sides note the explosive growth in endowment values and want endowments to be tapped to reduce costs.

The Ivy Plus institutions counter by noting their impressive investments in financial aid, the fact that they have six-year graduation rates in excess of 95% and the inherently high cost of the bundle of educational experiences that today’s students and their families expect.  At these schools with strong endowments, roughly 50 to 70 percent has their tuition bill covered by need-based financial aid.

Indeed, the more selective schools not only offer a challenging curriculum delivered through small classes with abundant academic support, but also house and feed students, offer them primary health care, undergraduate research and entrepreneurial activities, intramural and varsity athletics, artistic and performance opportunities, study abroad and much more.  The cost of delivering all this is in excess of $100K per student per year at many institutions.   

These expenditures not only enrich the student experience but also enhance their local economies.  American universities employ over 4 million people adding $40 billion annually to the GDP and their technology transfers have contributed over $600 billion to the nation’s GOP in the last twenty years.  

Still, criticisms of the cost of American higher education have merit.  Indeed, too many institutions have lost sight of the fact that their core missions are teaching, learning and discovery and those elements of their core mission should be prioritized in their budget decisions. Administrative staffing costs have been shown to have soared disproportionately, in fact geometrically, compared to faculty staffing costs which only increased arithmetically, alongside only modest student enrollment increases. 

Academic leaders must also demand that administrative and support functions operate as efficiently as possible with new programs funded through internal reallocation.

Critics of leading institutions overstate their case

Many of these critiques are based in legitimate concerns and point to areas where the leading institutions of higher education can do better.  However, they often overstate their case and present outlier examples. 

For example, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a study countering the suggestion that liberal bias plays a meaningful role in tenure decisions.  Indeed, their study concluded that professors were more likely to be dismissed for liberal thought.

And it is incorrect to still label higher education a self-perpetuating caste system. Looking at roughly a century of Harvard data, as an example of elite universities, its student profile has shifted from 100% males to roughly 50/50; 27% of Mayflower/Social Register “Colonial” lineage to less than 6%; less than 2% underrepresented minorities to over 10% ; 0.4% Asian to 19%; 24% from elite prep schools to 4%. Plus, the report card on the impact of upward wealth mobility of these prestigious schools is much more encouraging that the critics from the left and the right acknowledge. Researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research studied intergenerational income mobility at each college in the United States using data for over 30 million college students from 1999-2013 and found the students from low-income families and high-income families, had comparable incomes, when matched by the school they attended. Thus, the school had an uplifting impact on the wealth of low-income students.

Furthermore, this research found, “The colleges that channel the most children from low- or middle-income families to the top 1% are almost exclusively highly selective institutions, such as UC–Berkeley and the Ivy Plus colleges. No college offers an upper-tail (top 1%) success rate comparable to elite private universities – at which 13% of students from the bottom quintile reach the top 1% – while also offering high levels of access to low-income students.”  Interestingly, the critics of elite schools, indirectly but selectively cite from this research cherry picking around the upward mobility case for elite educational institutions.

Similarly looking at Yale’s current first year class, most college students benefit from some form of financial aid, thanks to the healthy endowments, 88% with zero debt and the 13% who do have debt, owe less than $15,000, hardly a crushing burden. Thanks to a half billion dollars raised from alumni during their recent capital campaign, Dartmouth leaders were able to declare that “The Class of 2028 is the most socioeconomically diverse class in Dartmouth’s history,” with roughly 20% students from low income families receiving Pell Grants, over half of the class receiving financial aid, and no parental financial contributions for families earning less than $125,000 a year roughly 22% of the class.

Despite such facts, Columnist David Brooks wrote in The Atlantic a piece entitled “How The Ivy League Broke America” where he echoes himself in a series of similar pieces he wrote in the New York Times such as one titled The Strange Failure of the American Elite and The ‘Diploma Divide’ and the 2024 Election, both which said elites were leaving others behind.  His newest piece in this month’s Atlantic concluded strangely that “a large mass of voters has shoved a big middle finger in the elites’ faces by voting for Donald Trump.” Of course, Brooks misses the irony that if this anti-Ivy League resentment drove voters, then is drove them to vote for the GOP ticket of two Ivy Leaguer grads, Donald Trump from Penn and J.D. Vance from Yale, and not the Democratic ticket of state school grads.  

Brooks joins a chorus of others who say that the meritocracy overrated. He cites Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits, the author of The Meritocracy Trap charging that applicants whose families come from the top 1 percent of wage earners were 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League-level school than students from families making below $30,000 a year. Brooks adds that elite schools generally admit more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60. Then he joins Markovits in pronouncing the academic gap between the rich and the poor larger than the academic gap between white and Black students in the final days of Jim Crow.

Brooks’s remedies include circumvention of new court barriers to affirmative action diversity goals, reducing the reliance upon standardized testing, emphasizing more humanistic qualities, substituting AI for analytic rigor, improving the colleges’ marketing of their own value, and that “we should aim to shrink the cultural significance of school in American society.” Missing from this list is any concern for the spreading caution of overexercising voice under the cloak of “institutional neutrality.” These practices romanticize the actual selective practices of the University of Chicago and similar schools which purported to limit presidents from showing the same periodic moral responsibility, patriotic duties, and institutional voice of other pillars of American society. 

The risk of ignoring these critiques

Should Ivy Plus leaders even care about public support?  After all, they are highly successful, highly selective institutions that are the envy of the world.  Our answer is that these leaders should care about the erosion of public trust – a lot.  To ignore this growing public distrust is to not only invite more public shaming by government officials as we saw in the House hearings this past year but potentially court more governmental actions such as endowment taxes, bans on DEI programs at public universities and similar interventions.

Although the Ivy Plus institutions seem secure at the moment, one already sees the impacts of the loss of public trust across much of American higher education, significant reductions over the last 25 years in per-capita, inflation-adjusted state appropriations, the expansion of students wanting three-year, no-frills, degrees, employers seeking micro-credentialling rather than a bachelor’s degree, on-line course sharing among institutions to lower costs and ultimately lower enrollments. 

Certainly, higher education must address the ideological orthodoxy of political correctness which has diverted tolerance for original thought.  Towards that end, we see newly emerging efforts to promote dialogue around difficult societal issues on a number of campuses.  Similarly, universities do not do a great job with administrative efficiency with mushrooming overhead along with programs and departments that live on in perpetuity.

Higher education has long been the target of satire from the Marx Brothers to Rodney Dangerfield’s “Back to School.”  All institutions need constructive feedback to respond to changing societal needs, but the ideologically driven attacks on schools have lost their grounding, not to mention their humor, and risk promoting an age of ignorance. 

source https://time.com/7203960/what-critics-get-wrong-about-the-ivy-league/

Trump Asks Supreme Court to Delay TikTok Ban So He Can Weigh in After He Takes Office

President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the issue.

The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by Jan. 19 while the government emphasized its position that the statute is needed to eliminate a national security risk.

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“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case,” said Trump’s amicus brief, which supported neither party in the case and was written by D. John Sauer, Trump’s choice for solicitor general.

The argument submitted to the court is the latest example of Trump inserting himself in national issues before he takes office. The Republican president-elect has already begun negotiating with other countries over his plans to impose tariffs, and he intervened earlier this month in a plan to fund the federal government, calling for a bipartisan plan to be rejected and sending Republicans back to the negotiating table.

He has been holding meetings with foreign leaders and business officials at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida while he assembles his administration, including a meeting last week with TikTok CEO Shou Chew.

Trump has reversed his position on the popular app, having tried to ban it during his first term in office over national security concerns. He joined the TikTok during his 2024 presidential campaign and his team used it to connect with younger voters, especially male voters, by pushing content that was often macho and aimed at going viral.

He said earlier this year that he still believed there were national security risks with TikTok, but that he opposed banning it.

The filings Friday come ahead of oral arguments scheduled for Jan. 10 on whether the law, which requires TikTok to divest from its China-based parent company or face a ban, unlawfully restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment. The law was was signed by President Joe Biden in April after it passed Congress with broad bipartisan support. TikTok and ByteDance filed a legal challenge afterwards.

Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the statute, leading TikTok to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

The brief from Trump said he opposes banning TikTok at this junction and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.”

In their brief to the Supreme Court on Friday, attorneys for TikTok and its parent company ByteDance argued the federal appeals court erred in its ruling and based its decision on “alleged ‘risks’ that China could exercise control” over TikTok’s U.S. platform by pressuring its foreign affiliates.

The Biden administration has argued in court that TikTok poses a national security risk due to its connections to China. Officials say Chinese authorities can compel ByteDance to hand over information on TikTok’s U.S. patrons or use the platform to spread or suppress information.

But the government “concedes that it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so,” TikTok’s legal filing said, adding that the U.S. fears are predicated on future risks.

In its filing Friday, the Biden administration said because TikTok “is integrated with ByteDance and relies on its propriety engine developed and maintained in China,” its corporate structure carries with it risk.

source https://time.com/7203951/trump-supreme-court-delay-tiktok-ban/

The Lost Art of Eye Contact

If the title of this article caught your eye, that’s a good start—it might even help you reflect on where your eyes typically focus and where they don’t. Eye contact, once a cornerstone of human connection, is becoming increasingly rare in our screen-dominated lives. The beeps, alerts, and endless digital distractions have shifted our gaze away from the eyes of others and into the glow of our devices.

And it’s not just adults who are losing touch with this fundamental skill. A recent survey revealed that 62% of educators believe children are worse at making and maintaining eye contact than in years past. This decline reflects a cultural shift away from face-to-face engagement, one that has profound implications for how we communicate and connect.

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It’s hard to overestimate the seismic changes screens have wrought in our day-to-day, from the minor to the massive. Our attention spans, tolerance for boredom, and curiosity about the real world around us have been hijacked by the digital revolution. 

But devices are only one of the challenges surrounding this lost art.

Let’s say we manage to put our phones aside for a moment and truly engage with our listener. What’s the next barrier? It begins with the very term we use: “eye contact.” This phrase frames eye contact as a static object, something you either “have” or “don’t.” We often hear it described in these terms: “She has great eye contact” or “He has poor eye contact.” But this view oversimplifies the concept, reducing it to a mere possession rather than recognizing it as a dynamic and interactive process that requires intention and awareness.

Eye contact is not a possession; it’s an activity. It’s not something you simply “have” or “don’t have.” In fact, one can experience both good and bad eye contact at any given moment. Viewing it as a static attribute is reductive, and it ironically shifts the focus onto the speaker, rather than the interaction itself.

Read More: Making Eye Contact With a Baby Changes Both Your Brain Waves, Study Says

Instead, I suggest we consider eye contact as an art form. Great artists—no matter their medium—are tasked with honing their sensitivity to the world around them in order to interpret and reveal it. They use all their senses to absorb information and deepen their connection with their environment. Similarly, your eyes give you an opportunity to connect more deeply and vividly with those around you, allowing you to notice the subtleties of human interaction that enrich your day-to-day experiences.

Is it really that simple? Yes! Eye contact is the result of earnestly and actively trying to decipher the communication of the other person and ensure that your communication is received.

But executing is far from simple sometimes. It’s a snap to have great eye contact when you’re completely at ease and engrossed in a thrilling topic with a fascinating partner.

But what about when the tables have turned and self-consciousness rears its ugly head?

When you’re feeling self-conscious, just the mindset shift of striving to focus on the other person may not be enough. In those situations, you need to be able to draw on muscle memory from effective practice. Which reveals the third culprit that prevents people from unlocking powerful eye contact: not knowing how to improve it.

In 15 years leading a communication training firm and coaching everyone from presidential candidates to high school freshmen, I have helped thousands of people cultivate better eye contact —even when feeling self-conscious—by doing physical exercises that rely on embodied cognition to unleash positive behaviors.

To start, try a fun exercise I developed called “Silent Storytelling.” As the name suggests, you’ll tell a story—but without sound. Think of it like lip-syncing: you’ll mouth the words expressively, but you cannot vocalize. Recruit a friend or two and use your eyes, face, hands, and body to convey your message. The goal is for your audience to fully understand the story, even without hearing a word. Keep in mind, this isn’t charades; you’re not acting out individual words. Instead, focus on expressing your narrative as vividly as needed to make it clear.

Pay close attention to your audience’s reactions—raised eyebrows, widening eyes, or nodding—these subtle cues will indicate whether they’re following along. What you’ll discover is that “good eye contact” comes naturally when you need to gauge their understanding without the help of sound. This exercise trains you to observe reactions and engage with others in a deeper, more intentional way, even when the experience feels unfamiliar.

The second exercise involves a ball. To start, gather a couple of audience members and practice speaking to each person one at a time. Begin by sharing one idea with the first person, and at the end of that idea, toss them the ball. They should hold it briefly before tossing it back to you. Once you’ve received the ball, look to the next person and share your next idea, passing the ball to them once you’re done.

As you alternate between speaking to each person, you’ll quickly realize why you must maintain eye contact: you need to ensure they’re ready to catch the ball. If you’re not looking at them, you risk them missing the catch. This simple exercise trains you to make purposeful eye contact to gauge your audience’s readiness, reinforcing the importance of connection in communication.

These exercises are incredibly effective because they make eye contact feel natural and even enjoyable, rather than a chore. Rather than fixating on whether you have “good” or “bad” eye contact, these techniques help you tap into the skills you already possess but may not yet be fully aware of. Through practice, you can build muscle memory for confident, meaningful eye contact that doesn’t require perfection, just presence. So, let go of the self-criticism and embrace the fun of improving your communication—one glance at a time.

source https://time.com/7202499/eye-contact-lost-art-essay/

Investigation into Deadly Azerbaijan Plane Crash Begins. Here’s What We Know So Far

Thursday is an official day of mourning in Azerbaijan as an investigation is underway to determine what caused an airplane carrying 67 passengers to crash on Christmas Day in Kazakhstan, killing 38 and leaving at least 29 survivors.

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Video posted by CNN shows the plane crash-landing, exploding into a fireball and plumes of black smoke.

Here’s what to know about the devastating accident and the latest on the possible causes.

The victims

Passengers on the Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer operated flight 190 included 37 Azerbaijani nationals, 16 Russians, six Kazakh citizens and three Kyrgyz nationals, according to the New York Times. The flight was heading from Azerbaijani capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny when the crash occurred. The plane crashed while trying to make an emergency landing at the Aktau airport in Kazakhstan.

Among the 29 survivors were two children.

Footage of the rubble published by the Russian state news outlet Ria Novosti shows some passengers lying on the ground and others being able to walk away from the debris. 

Some mobile phone footage shows passengers pulling each other out of the wreckage. 

The cause of the crash

The exact cause of the crash was not immediately known.

Russia’s aviation authority initially theorized that a collision with a flock of birds could have played a part in the crash. There were also other reports that the plane may have encountered significant fog, and that the flight had changed course midway due to worsening weather conditions but it’s still unclear if this was a major factor in the crash, according to the AP.

“The information provided to me is that the plane changed its course between Baku and Grozny due to worsening weather conditions and headed to Aktau airport, where it crashed upon landing,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Reuters reported that investigators are looking into whether the plane was shot down accidentally by Russian air defense systems, based on interviews with four unnamed sources with knowledge of the preliminary findings of Azerbaijan’s investigation into the crash. Nearly three years into the Russia-Ukraine war, Russian air defense systems are regularly triggered by Ukrainian military drones aiming for targets in southern Russia. Russian authorities are not confirming that, but Russian President Vladimir Putin dispatched emergency resources to the crash site.

A spokesman for Putin, Dmitry Peskov, said Thursday that “it would be incorrect to make any hypotheses before the investigation comes to conclusions,” adding that “no one should do it.”

Azerbaijan suspended flights between Baku and Grozney until investigators can determine the official cause of the crash.

source https://time.com/7203919/7203919/

What to Know About the Death of a Woman Set on Fire on New York Train

NEW YORK — The man accused of lighting a woman on fire on a New York City subway and fanning the flames as she burned to death made his first appearance in court this week, while authorities were yet to publicly identify the victim.

Sebastian Zapeta, 33, was arraigned on murder and arson charges on Tuesday afternoon in a Brooklyn court, where he was remanded back to custody. He did not enter a plea and his lawyer did not speak to reporters assembled inside the courthouse. His next court date is scheduled for Friday.

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Authorities allege Zapeta, who federal immigration officials say is a Guatemalan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally, calmly approached the woman aboard a stationary F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn on Sunday morning and set her clothing ablaze.

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch on Sunday described the case as “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another human being.”

Here’s the latest:

What do we know about the suspect?

Zapeta was taken into custody on Sunday, hours after police disseminated images of a suspect in the woman’s death.

Police said three high schoolers called 911 after recognizing the person in the image, and officers found him on another subway train in the same gray hoodie, wool hat, paint-splattered pants and tan boots.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Jeff Carter said Zapeta is a Guatemalan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally after he had been previously deported to Guatemala in 2018. It is unclear when and where he reentered the U.S., Carter said.

Zapeta was arraigned in Brooklyn criminal court on Tuesday. He appeared before a judge in a white jumpsuit and did not speak.

Assistant District Attorney Ari Rottenberg, during Tuesday’s court hearing, alleged Zapeta lit the woman’s clothing on fire and fanned the flames using a shirt.

Rottenberg added that under interrogation Zapeta claimed he didn’t know what happened, noting that he consumes alcohol. But he alleged that Zapeta identified himself to interrogators in images of the attack.

A Brooklyn address for Zapeta released by police matches a service center for Samaritan Daytop Village, which provides housing and substance abuse support. The organization did not respond to a request for comment.

What do we know about the victim?

The victim had not been publicly identified as of Thursday, an NYPD spokesperson confirmed. Police have described her only as a woman.

Tisch said at a press conference on Sunday that the victim was “in a seated position” at the end of the train car when she was set on fire. Joseph Gulotta, the department’s chief of transit, added that police don’t believe the suspect and the victim knew each other and that they did not interact before or during the incident.

What kind of police presence is there on the subway?

Police patrol the New York City subways, and there is a vast network of cameras in stations and all subway cars.

But the sheer size of the subway system — 472 stations with multiple entry points and millions of riders each day — makes policing it logistically difficult.

On Sunday, officers were at the station but were patrolling a different platform. They responded after seeing and smelling smoke coming from the fire.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this year directed members of the state’s National Guard to assist with random bag checks at certain stations.

Is crime up on the subways?

Violent incidents on the subway and in stations often put people on edge, partly because many New Yorkers take the train multiple times a day and often have their own experiences with uncomfortable interactions in the system.

Broadly, crime is down in the city transit system this year compared to the same period in 2023. Data compiled by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority shows a 6% decline in what the agency calls major felonies between January and November of this year and 2023.

At the same time, murders in the transit system are up, with nine killings this year through November compared to five in the same time frame last year.

High-profile incidents on the train often attract national attention and further unnerve passengers. Daniel Penny, a military veteran who placed an agitated subway rider in a chokehold, was acquitted of homicide this month.

“When you have these incidents, it overshadows the success and it plays on the psyche of New Yorkers,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams in a Monday interview on PIX 11, noting that many high-profile incidents in the transit system involve people with mental health issues.

source https://time.com/7203912/new-york-subway-fire-death/

Baby Freezes to Death in Gaza as Israel and Hamas Trade Accusations of Ceasefire Delays

A baby girl froze to death overnight in Gaza, while Israel and Hamas accused each other of complicating ceasefire efforts that could wind down the 14-month war.

The 3-week old baby was the third to die from the cold in Gaza’s tent camps in recent days, said doctors. The deaths underscore the squalid conditions, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crammed into often ramshackle tents after fleeing Israeli bombardment and offensives.

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Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza have killed over 45,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count.

The offensive has caused widespread destruction and displaced some 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are packed into tent camps along the coast as the cold, wet winter sets in. Aid groups have struggled to deliver food and supplies and say there are shortages of blankets, warm clothing and wood for fires.

Israel has increased the amount of aid it allows into the territory, reaching an average of 130 trucks a day so far this month, up from around 70 a day in October and November. Still, the amount remains well below than previous months and the U.N. says it is unable to distribute more than half the aid because Israeli forces deny permission to move within Gaza or because of rampant lawlessness and theft from trucks.

The father of 3-week-old Sila Mahmoud al-Faseeh wrapped her in a blanket to try and keep her warm in their tent in the Muwasi area outside Khan Younis, but it wasn’t enough, he told The Associated Press. Mahmoud al-Faseeh, said the tent was not sealed from the wind and the ground was cold, as temperatures Tuesday night dropped to 9 degrees Celsius (48 degrees Fahrenheit.) Muwasi is a desolate area of dunes and farmland on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast.

“It was very cold overnight and as adults we couldn’t even take it. We couldn’t stay warm,” he said. Sila woke up crying three times overnight and in the morning they found her unresponsive, her body stiff, he said.

“She was like wood,” said al-Faseeh. They rushed her to a field hospital where doctors tried to revive her, but her lungs had already deteriorated. Images of Sila taken by the AP showed the little girl with purple lips, her pale skin blotchy.

Ahmed al-Farra, director of the children’s ward at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, confirmed that the baby died of hypothermia. He said two other babies – one 3 days old, the other a month old – had been brought to the hospital over the past 48 hours after dying of hypothermia.

Meanwhile hopes of a ceasefire looked complicated Wednesday with Israel and Hamas trading accusations of delaying an agreement.

In recent weeks, the two sides appeared to be inching toward a deal that would bring home dozens of hostages being held in Gaza, but differences have emerged.

Although Israel and Hamas have expressed optimism that progress was being made toward a deal, sticking points remain over the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, people involved in the talks say.

On Wednesday, Hamas accused Israel of introducing new conditions related to the withdrawal from Gaza, the prisoners and the return of displaced people, which it said was delaying the deal.

Israel’s government accused Hamas of reneging on reneging on understandings that have already been reached.” Still, both sides said discussions are ongoing.

Israel’s negotiating team, which includes members from its intelligence agencies and the military, returned from Qatar Tuesday evening for internal consultations, following a week of what it called “significant negotiations.”

During its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, Hamas and other groups took about 250 people hostages and brought them to Gaza. A previous truce in November 2023 freed more than 100 hostages, while others have been rescued or their remains have been recovered over the past year.

Israel says about 100 hostages remain in Gaza — at least a third of whom it believes were killed during the Oct. 7 attack or died in captivity.

Sporadic talks have taken place for a year, but in recent weeks there’s been a renewed push to reach a deal.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office next month for his second term, has demanded the immediate release of Israeli hostages, saying on social media that if they’re not freed before he is sworn in, there will be “HELL TO PAY.”

Families of the hostages are becoming increasingly angry, calling on the Israeli government for a ceasefire before Trump is sworn in.

After Israel’s high-level negotiation team returned from Doha this week, hostage families called an emergency press conference in Tel Aviv, pleading for a ceasefire and a complete end to the war.

Shir Siegel, the daughter of Israeli-American Keith Siegel, whose mother was released after more than 50 days in captivity, said every delay could endanger their lives. “There are moments when every second is fateful, and this is one of those moments,” she said.

The agreement would take effect in phases and include a halt in fighting, an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, and a surge in aid to the besieged Gaza Strip, according to Egyptian, Hamas and American officials. The last phase would include the release of any remaining hostages, an end to the war and talks on reconstruction.

source https://time.com/7203894/gaza-baby-dies-israel-hamas-war/