Business
Who Are the Victims in the D.C. Plane Crash?
Sixty-four people were inside the American Airlines regional jet carving a path through the evening sky from Wichita, Kan., to Washington D.C., on Jan. 29.
A four-person flight crew. A lawyer eager to celebrate her 33rd birthday, seven hunting buddies and a Kansas farming couple visiting their daughter. Twenty-eight people returning from an elite figure skating camp, including skaters, their parents and coaches.
As the plane, Flight 5342, was preparing to land, it collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying three soldiers, creating a fireball above the Potomac River and killing all aboard both aircraft.
These are many of the victims of the crash, identified by The New York Times through interviews with their families, employers and friends, and official statements.
Asra Hussain, 26
via Columbia Public Health
Business Travelers
Work drew several of the passengers to Wichita, the largest city in Kansas and a Midwestern hub of manufacturing and aviation. Two analysts for Moody’s were on the plane, the company said.
Two women on the plane were colleagues from Wilkinson Stekloff, a Washington, D.C., law firm, and had traveled to Kansas for a deposition.
Ms. Keys, who turned 33 on the day of the crash, was worried their meetings would run long and force them to stay overnight. But things wrapped up, and they made their way to the Wichita airport that afternoon to catch their flight to Reagan National Airport.
“We were super excited she was able to take that flight back,” said David Seidman, Ms. Keys’s longtime partner. “She was coming home.”
They traded a last text before the flight took off: “Safe flight. I love you.”
The Kansans
The only nonstop flight each day between Wichita and the capital was Flight 5342, operated by American Eagle.
Bob Schrock, 58
Danielle Davidson, via DTN
The Schrocks regularly made the trip. Their roots and large farm were in Kiowa, Kan., but after their daughter, Ellie, moved east for college, the Schrocks bought a home in Maryland and began splitting their time between the Plains and the coast, friends said.
“They flew back a dozen times a year or so,” said Michael Simpson, who had known the Schrocks for 20 years.
He said the couple were devoted to their Catholic faith and to fitness. They were regulars at Sunday services and also at a local weight room, where they would pull up together in their turquoise Jeep for morning workouts.
“They loved the Lord,” Mr. Simpson said. “They loved their community.”
Grace Maxwell, 20
via Cedarville University
Ms. Duggins grew up and attended college in Wichita before heading east to Harvard Law School and starting a career as a civil rights lawyer. She returned to Kansas often to see her parents and visit old friends and professors, who remembered her as a “beacon of light” who was passionate about tackling inequalities and abuses in the criminal justice system.
“She was going to conquer the world,” said Dorothy Harpool, a senior marketing educator at the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University, where Ms. Duggins earned undergraduate degrees in international business, economics and Spanish.
The Flight Crews
Flying was both a job and a passion for the two pilots and two crew members aboard the nonstop flight from Wichita that had been operating for just a year. The flight crew included:
Mr. Campos had wanted to fly since he was a toddler, said his aunt, Beverly Lane.
“I think he wanted to be free, and be able to fly and soar like a bird,” she said.
Mr. Lilley was engaged to be married in the fall.
“I was so proud when Sam became a pilot,” his father, Timothy Lilley, wrote on Facebook after the crash. “Now it hurts so bad I can’t even cry myself to sleep.”
The three aviators from the helicopter who were identified by the Army:
Skaters, Parents and Coaches
The plane carried talented and ambitious young skaters from around the country. They had been in Wichita for a development camp hosted by U.S. Figure Skating that followed last month’s national championships.
Many of the young skaters dreamed of competing at the Olympics, and Wichita was a place to make lasting impressions on coaches with U.S. Figure Skating. Edward Zhou, a high school junior from Fairfax, Va., had been on the cusp of qualifying for the U.S. national championships and both gleefully and masterfully performed routines at the camp, according to coaches there. Both his parents died in the crash.
Edward Zhou, 16, Kaiyan Mao, 52, and Yu Zhou, 60
Another teenager from Northern Virginia, Cory Haynos, nailed the triple axel in Wichita and was thrilled to show off his new jump. In December, he had landed that axel for the first time.
“I’d been watching him work on it all week, just fighting to do it,” said Mark Mitchell, one of the U.S. Figure Skating coaches at the camp. “So when I saw him, I just said, ‘Oh, my gosh! Cory just landed the triple axel!’ And he was so happy, just so happy.”
Cory’s parents were accompanying their son.
Olivia Eve Ter excelled on the ice. She was a powerful jumper and had started traveling out of state to compete, propelled by dreams of becoming an Olympian. Her mother, Olesya Taylor, was born in Ukraine and grew up in northern Russia, and believed in taking advantage of every opportunity available to her children in the United States, her husband, Andrey Ter, said. The mother and daughter were on the flight together, returning home to Virginia.
“My wife had no rest,” Mr. Ter said. “She moved so fast, and it all stopped on Wednesday.”
The Skating Club of Boston, in Norwood, Mass., confirmed that two of its coaches were killed in the crash, along with two of their skating students and the mothers of the skaters.
Yevgeniya Shishkova, 52, and Vadim Naumov, 55
Stewart Fraser/Colorsport, via Shutterstock
Jinna Han, 13
The Skating Club of Boston
Spencer Lane, 16
The Skating Club of Boston
Most of the young skaters on the plane had been in the top group at the camp. They were the “very best young skaters,” Sam Auxier, interim chief executive of U.S. Figure Skating, said, adding, “A key part of the young skating family is gone.” Among them were Sean Kay and Angela Yang, an ice dancing pair from Delaware that had been undefeated in the juvenile division this year. Both 11 and traveling with their mothers and their coach, they were two of the youngest passengers on the plane.
Sean Kay, 11, and Yulia Kay, 42
Sasha Kirsanov, 46
Stephen Dunn/Getty Images
Some of the athletes loved skating so much that their parents could hardly keep them off the ice. In addition to hours of training for U.S. Figure Skating events, the Livingston sisters, Everly and Alydia, performed for the public in outdoor events on some weekends and holidays. “Some competitors didn’t want to skate on outdoor rinks, but the girls were always up for having fun,” said Tara Modlin-Maurizi, a skating agent who produced some of those performances. The girls had traveled to Wichita with their parents, and the four were on their way home to Northern Virginia when the plane crashed.
Alydia Livingston, 11, and Everly Livingston, 14
Donna Smojice Livingston, 48, and Peter Livingston, 48
Brielle Beyer survived cancer when she was just a baby and grew into a tough skater, her coach, Kalle Strid, said. “Sometimes she would get mad at me if we didn’t try the more difficult things,” he said. “She was an extraordinary talent.”
Justyna Magdalena Beyer, 42
The Hunters
Duck hunting season was almost over in Kansas when the group from Southern Maryland arrived at Fowl Plains, a hunting outfitter that offers guided trips.
The men, many who worked in plumbing and steamfitting, were thrilled to be there, eager to hunt ducks and geese. Some had known each other since childhood, part of a tight-knit community south of Washington.
Mr. Stovall was a steamfitter by trade, a Baltimore Orioles fan and an avid outdoorsman, hunter and snowboarder. His Facebook page was full of photos from his adventures with his wife, son and friends.
Mr. Pitcher knew the men through work, his father, Jameson Pitcher, said.
The elder Mr. Pitcher said his son owned a plumbing business and had been married just over a year. Jesse Pitcher and his wife, Kylie, were in the process of building a new house.
“He was just getting started with life,” his father said.
From Abroad
The flight also carried passengers from other countries.
Pergentino Malabed Jr., 51
A colonel in the Philippines National Police, Mr. Malabed had been on a work trip to test out armored vests. His wife, Rio, recalled how their 3-year-old daughter had been crying as she held her father’s hand outside the Manila airport. His wife said he had kissed the girl and told her, “I’ll see you soon.”
Layoffs have continued with another tech company saying it was cutting people to enable it to use more artificial intelligence.
Groupon announced in a security filing this month that it will cut up to 400 jobs, or nearly 25% of its worldwide workforce, as part of a broader restructuring plan to make the platform AI-native. The Chicago company plans to carry out the layoffs in the coming months.
Earlier the company’s Chief Executive Officer Dušan Šenkypl had said the company “fell short of our expectations” last quarter.
Since 2022, more than 800,000 tech workers have been laid off, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts.
The surge in pink slips started in 2023, when companies that had gone on hiring sprees during the COVID-19 pandemic began to cut back. From January to April this year, U.S. tech employers announced 85,411 job cuts, up 33% from the same period last year, according to global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Groupon said in the filing that the decision to shift toward an AI-based company is to “better deliver on our mission, serving both customers and merchants.”
The company said the layoffs will cost it as much as $13 million, but save it more than $20 million per year.
This announcement comes as many e-commerce companies are shifting their business models to AI to reduce costs by automating many roles.
Artificial intelligence has also triggered fierce competition for top talent and is also fueling tens of thousands of layoffs this year. The result is that the class divide is widening in Silicon Valley as a tiny group of employees are landing unprecedented packages for AI skills, while many others struggle to find work.
The have-nots are doing everything that used to guarantee great jobs — refreshing resumes, optimizing LinkedIn profiles and doing interviews — but companies are much more picky these days. The tech jobless are rethinking their lives. Some are taking pay cuts, while others are leaving tech. Some are going back to study or launch startups. Some have retired.
Groupon shares, which have fallen 27% over the last 12 months, slipped 1% on Thursday to $21.20.
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC has filed renewal applications with the Federal Communications Commission “under protest” after an order mandating a years-early review of the network’s eight television station licenses.
The criticism was part of the network’s applications for the FCC review, which were filed ahead of a deadline Thursday. In an objection to the early renewal, Disney’s New York station WABC called the FCC order “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional” and said it was “legally indefensible.”
“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” the station wrote in its filing. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”
The licenses for the eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031.
The FCC order came shortly after ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow” days before a gunman tried to breach the White House Correspondents’ Assn. gala last month that President Trump attended.
Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he is unhappy with their coverage, but the order is the first time the government has acted on his wishes, sparking anger from free speech advocates. The FCC has said the order is part of an investigation into whether Disney’s diversity and inclusion policies violate federal law and the agency’s rules against “unlawful discrimination.”
In its response, WABC said the “only plausible reason” to issue the order was to “punish the station for speech the government does not like.”
“The ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company. It is to the public,” WABC wrote. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement Thursday that Disney filed its applications to renew its broadcast licenses only after the company was told its previous answers were “disingenuous, deficient and improper.”
“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”
FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, the panel’s only Democrat who has backed Disney in its fight, cheered the Burbank media and entertainment company’s filing, saying in a post on X that she was “glad to see them expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
Andrew here. Warning: If you bet on prediction markets about things you could know about from your work, it may be insider trading. That’s the lesson from new charges against an employee of Google.
Also, Jamie Dimon is thinking about spending $20 billion on acquisitions; we go through some possible targets. And take our quiz about the U.F.C. fight scheduled to take place at the White House.
Gaming prediction markets
In the public’s view, prediction markets are a way to bet on the N.B.A. playoffs, the Texas Senate race or what Costco executives will say on their next earnings call.
They’re also often seen as a hive of insider trading, a view reinforced by charges filed on Wednesday against a Google employee who made more than $1 million on Polymarket. The case raises more questions about how these platforms are policed — and who should do the policing.
What happened: The Google employee, Michele Spagnuolo (who used the handle AlphaRaccoon), was accused of betting on what people were searching for on Google — wagers he was sure to win because he had access to internal search data.
“Spagnuolo correctly predicted virtually all of the outcomes on these positions,” the Commodity Futures Trading Commission wrote in its complaint.
A Google representative said in a statement that using confidential information for making these kinds of bets was “a serious breach of our policies.”
Spagnuolo isn’t the only person charged with insider trading on Polymarket. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan last month accused Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a U.S. Special Forces soldier, of betting on the capture of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, an operation he participated in.
Insider trading is an increasing problem for prediction markets. Polymarket has faced significant scrutiny because its unregulated offshore platform has long made it easy to bet anonymously. (Kalshi, which is regulated in the U.S., has also suffered from insider trading.)
Polymarket has started clamping down on that practice, according to The Information — though some longtime users have chafed at those efforts. “Polymarket will go down the drain if they make KYC mandatory,” one user wrote on the company’s Discord discussion forum, referring to “know your customer” practices.
What are policymakers doing? Critics have accused the C.F.T.C., the primary American regulator of prediction markets, of failing to adequately police the industry. (Mike Selig, the commission’s chairman, told ABC News that his agency actively patrolled for wrongdoing.)
Some lawmakers are seeking to crack down on insider trading, including Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who leads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and several bipartisan groups of senators.
Why it matters: Prediction markets have become big businesses. (Kalshi was most recently valued at $22 billion.) But a growing perception that they’re rife with cheating could threaten their popularity.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to fund U.S. drone companies. Shares in Unusual Machines, a drone start-up in which Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and advisory board member, are soaring in premarket trading after The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported on the potential investments. (The Times hasn’t independently confirmed the report.) The deals, aimed at bolstering domestic production, are still in the negotiation stage — equity stakes are a possibility — as the Pentagon vets the companies, The Journal adds.
Investors brace for Thursday’s inflation data. The Personal Consumption Expenditures report for April, which will be closely watched by the Fed, is expected to show on Thursday that headline inflation hit a three-year high of 3.9 percent. The wartime energy spike is a big culprit, and that’s likely to tie the Fed’s hands on interest rates. Lisa Cook, a Fed governor whom President Trump has tried to fire, is the latest policymaker to say that there’s even a rate increase in the cards.
Jensen Huang reportedly agrees to join the board of a Chinese university. Huang, the Nvidia C.E.O., is expected to be the latest U.S. business leader to join the advisory board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, The Financial Times reports. Tim Cook, Apple’s departing C.E.O., is the chairman, and Michael Dell and Elon Musk are members. (Nvidia is trying to jump-start business in China as the Washington-Beijing trade war continues.) Laura Loomer, a right-wing agitator, quickly seized on the Huang news, calling it “a massive scandal!!!!” on social media, and a national security risk.
What might Dimon buy?
Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, is sitting on a pile of cash and says he’s open to a deal. He even put a number on it: up to $20 billion.
While that’s not a big sum relative to the bank’s assets, it got us thinking: Where could JPMorgan, whose last major acquisition was First Republic during the 2023 regional-banking crisis, go fishing for a company to buy? Brian O’Keefe asked Mike Mayo, a banking analyst at Wells Fargo.
Here are three possibilities:
Wealth management. Driven by solid margins and lucrative high-net-worth customers, this area of finance has experienced an M.&A. boom in recent years. (The First Republic deal already bolstered JPMorgan’s wealth-advisory ranks.) Such a move would tick a lot of boxes, Mayo said, adding, “It could be a high-end private bank, it could be kind of a mass-affluent brokerage firm, it could be wealth advisory.”
-
Mary Erdoes, who runs JPMorgan’s wealth management division, told analysts in February that her unit had reviewed 25 potential deals last year and passed on all of them.
Payments. JPMorgan has invested heavily in new payment platforms, including in JPM Coin, a digital token it has tested with Coinbase and Mastercard. The bank handles between $5 trillion and $10 trillion in transactions daily, Mayo said. “There could be more opportunities to enhance the efficiency, the effectiveness, the timeliness or the geographic reach in the payments area,” he added.
Digital banking. Dimon recently singled out Revolut, the British banking app that is plotting expansion into the U.S., as an emerging competitive threat. “To the extent that an acquisition could help JPMorgan become the next Revolut outside the United States, that would seem to be attractive,” Mayo noted.
There are some big asterisks to consider. Because of its size, JPMorgan would most likely be barred from buying another U.S. lender on antitrust grounds. For that reason, Mayo thinks that a deal, if there is one, would probably happen abroad.
Dimon himself is being coy. The bank may have amassed ample capital for acquisitions, but “it’s not burning a hole in our pocket at all,” Dimon said on Wednesday at an investor conference. “If it sits there for a while, no problem,” he added.
Dimon did not suggest any potential targets on Wednesday.
Here are some guesses:
-
Aberdeen Group, Invesco or Julius Baer in wealth management?
-
Revolut is too big, but how about Wise or Toast in payments?
-
Or what about Monzo or Bunq, fintech banks that have grown rapidly in Europe?
Meta will charge for its chatbot
Meta will begin charging customers for access to its A.I.-powered chatbot, a big change for a company best known for its free products — and the latest sign that even deep-pocketed companies are wrestling with the enormous cost of artificial intelligence.
On Wednesday, we looked at how companies were reining in the costs of consuming A.I., including by switching to cheaper models. Meta’s move shows that the companies supplying A.I. models are also reckoning with ballooning costs, and seeking revenue to make up for those losses.
Meta is spending a fortune on A.I. Last month the company increased its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to as high as $145 billion, and Meta’s C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, said it would spend at least $600 billion on A.I. infrastructure in the next few years.
Some investors have looked skeptically on that plan. The company’s stock is down 2.3 percent this year.
Meta will use paid subscriptions to offset some of its A.I. investment. The basic tier of the chatbot, Meta One Plus, will be $7.99 per month. A premium version, Meta One Premium, will cost $19.99. From Bloomberg, which reported the subscription news earlier:
Meta has long argued that its A.I. investments are already paying off in the form of highly targeted and efficient advertising, which is improved thanks to A.I. models. But the company is also looking for other ways to recoup its A.I. spending, and consumer chatbot subscriptions have become popular with several other A.I. competitors, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI. Both rivals offer similarly priced subscription tiers.
The company has sought to expand its subscription business, testing plans for WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. It has also tried to cut costs in other corners of its business. This month, Meta laid off 10 percent of its employee base, about 8,000 workers.
Investors, eager to see revenue gains from A.I., cheered Meta’s subscription-chatbot plan. The company’s stock price was up 3.7 percent at the market close on Wednesday.
-
Elsewhere, shares in the software maker Snowflake are soaring in premarket trading on Thursday after it reported strong quarterly results that suggested that A.I. agents weren’t clobbering its core subscription business. Salesforce’s analyst call on Wednesday, however, renewed fears that this sector was still vulnerable to A.I. disruption.
Quiz: U.F.C. on the South Lawn
This question comes from a recent Times article. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.)
President Trump is getting ready to celebrate his 80th birthday — and America’s 250th — with an evening of mixed martial arts. Preparations are underway to host Ultimate Fighting Championship matches in an octagon on the White House’s South Lawn on June 14. Construction of the temporary arena, along with a 90-foot-tall arch known as “The Claw,” featuring LED lights and audio equipment, began this week.
U.F.C. plans to spend around $60 million on the event, said Mark Shapiro, the president and chief operating officer of TKO Group Holdings, U.F.C.’s parent company, on a recent earnings call. (He added that U.F.C. would lose about $30 million on the event but that it would be “an investment for the long term.”)
The expenses include about $700,000 to repair the lawn after the fight, Dana White, the U.F.C. president and chief executive, told Sports Business Journal.
How many people will the temporary arena hold for the U.F.C. event at the White House?
THE SPEED READ
Deals
-
“SpaceX-Tesla Merger Is ‘Only a Matter of When,’ Early Investor Says” (Bloomberg)
-
Shares in the European food-delivery company Delivery Hero are down sharply on Thursday after Uber, which is pursuing a takeover bid for the company, raised its stake to nearly 37 percent. (WSJ)
Politics, policy and regulation
-
The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey subpoenaed FIFA over soaring World Cup ticket prices. (WSJ)
-
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said he would impose a 100 percent tax on payouts to state residents from the $1.8 billion fund tied to the Justice Department’s settlement with President Trump. (Politico)
Best of the rest
We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
-
Technology3 minutes agoFake grant email promises $4.5 Million but could steal your identity
-
Business9 minutes ago
Another tech company says it will cut hundreds of jobs amid pivot to AI
-
Entertainment15 minutes agoThis Puerto Rican filmmaker honored his family with an unconventional movie called ‘TheyDream’
-
Lifestyle21 minutes agoL.A. Affairs: I went on 53 first dates in one summer. Here’s a look at my spreadsheet
-
Politics27 minutes agoTrump holds Situation Room meeting to decide on Iran deal
-
Science33 minutes agoOxnard man smuggled baby crocodiles, among 1,700 reptiles, gets 5 years
-
Sports39 minutes agoA new board game mocks Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for ‘foul baiting.’ He wants it destroyed
-
World51 minutes agoIsrael, Russia among new additions on UN sexual violence ‘blacklist’
