No survivors after plane carrying 62 people crashes in Brazil, authorities say
Aline Salvi
(CASCAVEL, Brazil) — There are no survivors after a Voepass flight carrying 62 people crashed in Brazil on Friday, according to authorities.
The passenger plane was traveling from Cascavel, Brazil, and was bound for Guarulhos Airport, near Sao Paulo, the airline said.
The plane had 58 passengers and four crew members on board, the airline said. All died in the crash, State of Sao Paulo firefighters confirmed to ABC News.
There is no confirmation of how the accident occurred, the airline said.
Flight 2283 took off without any operational restrictions, with all systems capable of carrying out the flight, Voepass said.
The crash was reported to military police at 1:28 p.m. local time.
The 14-year-old two-engine ATR 72 model aircraft was flying at 17,000 feet when it began its rapid descent, according to FlightRadar24.
The plane fell close to a residential building in Vinhedo outside the city of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo federal police said.
One resident was injured, police said.
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, at an event Friday asked the crowd to observe one minute of silence for the victims of the crash.
Footage of the incident captured the plane falling in a spiral out of the sky followed by a large fireball.
The governor of Sao Paulo is heading back from Vitoria to manage the situation, officials said.
Brazil’s civil aviation agency said in a statement they will be investigating.
ATR, the aircraft manufacturer, said its specialists are “fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer.”
“Our first thoughts are with all the individuals affected by this event,” the company said in a statement.
Thomas Niedermueller/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
(VIENNA, Austria) — Security measures have been increased for Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna, Austria, this week after two suspects were arrested for allegedly plotting a terror attack, authorities said.
A 19-year-old Austrian citizen was arrested Wednesday morning and a second suspect was arrested in the afternoon, according to Franz Ruf, director-general for public safety in the Ministry of the Interior.
The suspects allegedly radicalized themselves online, Ruf said at a press conference. The 19-year-old suspect allegedly pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State in the beginning of July, Ruf said.
Vienna was a target of their planned attack and the 19-year-old suspect had a particular focus on Swift’s Vienna concert, Ruf said.
The pop star has concerts in Vienna this Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The shows are expected to draw 65,000 concertgoers per day, with an additional 10,000 to 15,000 fans outside of the area, police said.
Swift kicked off the massively successful “Eras Tour” in Glendale, Arizona, on March 18, 2023.
In October 2023, the pop star released a concert film chronicling the record-breaking tour, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” that went on to break records of its own and earn a Golden Globe nomination.
At the 100th stop of the tour this summer in Liverpool, England, the 14-time Grammy winner told the audience the tour “has definitely been the most exhausting, all-encompassing, but most joyful, most rewarding, most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life thus far.”
The “Eras Tour” will end in Vancouver, Canada, on Dec. 8.
ABC News’ Carson Blackwelder contributed to this report.
Police officers and forensic personnel put up a fence on Hart Street in Southport, northwest England, on July 29, 2024, following a knife attack. (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Police investigating the deadly attack on a children’s music event in a seaside town of Southport, United Kingdom, said they would interview the 17-year-old suspect as they searched for a motive.
“The investigation is in its early stages and the motivation for the incident remains unclear,” Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy said on Monday.
Officers responded just before noon local time to reports of a stabbing at a property on Hart Street in Southport, a seaside town about 20 miles north of Liverpool, according to Merseyside Police.
Two children were killed and nine others were injured in a stabbing attack at an event at a dance school in the seaside town, police said. Six of the wounded children were in critical condition, along with two adults, who were also stabbed, police said.
“We believe that the adults who were injured were bravely trying to protect the children who were being attacked,” Kennedy said Monday.
The children had been attending a Taylor Swift-themed event, police said.
The “horror” of the attack was “washing over me continuously,” Swift said in a post on Instagram. She said she was “completely in shock.”
“The loss of life and innocent, and the horrendous trauma inflicted on everyone who was there, the families and first responders,” she said. These were just little kids at a dance class. I am at a complete loss for how to even convey my sympathies to these families.”
A 17-year-old boy from Banks, a coastal village in Lancashire, just outside Southport, was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, police said.
The suspect, whose name was not released, was born in Cardiff, Wales, police said.
The “full circumstances” were still being investigated, police said, adding that the attack wasn’t being investigated as terror-related. Police were not searching for additional suspects, they said.
A red giant star and white dwarf orbit each other in this animation of a nova similar to T Coronae Borealis. (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)
(NEW YORK) — Stargazers should have their eyes fixed on the skies, as astronomers say a “once-in-a-lifetime” view of an astronomical explosion is expected any night.
T Coronae Borealis, also known as the “Blaze Star,” is actually a pair of stars located 3,000 light-years away. The star system is a recurring nova, with Earth-visible explosions every 79 to 80 years, according to NASA.
The last recorded outburst from T Coronae Borealis — which includes a hot, red giant star and a cool, white dwarf star — was in 1946, according to the space agency, which forecasts it will do so again before September 2024.
The star system is located in the Northern Crown, a horseshoe-shaped curve of stars west of the Hercules constellation, according to NASA, which reports viewers can look for it in between the bright stars of Vega and Arcturus.
When the explosion comes into Earth’s view, “it’s going to be one of the brightest stars in the sky,” Louisiana State University physics and astronomy professor Bradley Schaefer, told ABC News, encouraging the public to go outside and view the explosion as soon as it’s in view.
The exact day and time of the explosion are “unknown,” according to Schaefer, but looking at the star system’s historical behavior and current “pre-eruption dip” indicate the view of the explosion is imminent.
A pre-eruption dip is a sudden decrease in brightness that some celestial objects experience about a year before erupting, according to the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), which announced T Coronae Borealis had faded in March 2023.
T Coronae Borealis, which is normally located at magnitude +10, which NASA reports is “far too dim to see with the unaided eye,” will jump to magnitude +2 during the explosion.
Schaefer has been studying T Coronae Borealis for decades, saying the chance to see the explosion from Earth with the naked eye will be “magnificent.”
“It’s a way of humbling ourselves for the titanic forces that are happening, fortunately, very far away, that’s happening above our heads,” he said, likening the power of the explosion to a hydrogen bomb.
“It really actually is a hydrogen-fusion bomb just like in the movie Oppenheimer,” Schaefer said.
The difference between nova and supernova events, according to NASA, is in a recurring nova, the dwarf star stays intact during the explosion. In contrast, a supernova occurs when a dying star is destroyed in one final eruption.
“There are a few recurrent novas with very short cycles, but typically, we don’t often see a repeated outburst in a human lifetime, and rarely one so relatively close to our own system,” Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a June press release.
T Coronae Borealis is one of just 10 recurring novas known in the Milky Way that erupt on time scales of less than a century, according to NASA.
“It’s incredibly exciting to have this front-row seat,” Hounsell added.
The agency says during the event, the star system will be similar in brightness to the North Star, Polaris, and may shine this bright for days or a week after first appearing.
“Typically, nova events are so faint and far away that it’s hard to clearly identify where the erupting energy is concentrated,” Dr. Elizabeth Hays, chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory at NASA Goddard said in the press release. “This one will be really close, with a lot of eyes on it, studying the various wavelengths and hopefully giving us data to start unlocking the structure and specific processes involved. We can’t wait to get the full picture of what’s going on.”
The exact date and time of the astronomical explosion is unknown, but once it happens, Hounsell says the once-in-a-lifetime event is sure to inspire the next generation of skywatchers.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create a lot of new astronomers out there, giving young people a cosmic event they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions, and collect their own data,” Dr. Hounsell said in the release, adding, “It’ll fuel the next generation of scientists.”
