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Kenyan official confirms six fatalities in Amref plane crash in Nairobi
Six people have been killed after a light aircraft belonging to a medical charity crashed in Kenya’s capitol, Nairobi, according to a local official.
Charity Amref Flying Doctors said the Cessna plane took off from Wilson airport on Thursday afternoon and was en route to Hargeisa in Somalia when it crashed and burst into flames at a residential building in Nairobi’s Githurai area.
Kiambu County Commissioner Henry Wafula said four people on the plane were killed, including doctors, nurses and the pilot – as well as another two people on the ground, while two others were seriously injured.
Investigators have been despatched to the scene of the crash to establish its cause.
The plane lost both radio and radar contact with air traffic control just three minutes after take off, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority said.
There were four crew and Amref staff on board, the charity said.
“At this time, we are cooperating fully with relevant aviation authorities and emergency response teams to establish the facts surrounding the situation,” Amref CEO Stephen Gitau said in a statement.
The Kenya Defence Forces and the National Police Service have been deployed to the scene to conduct search and recovery operations.
Patricia Kombo, an eyewitness, told the BBC that she was in a cab with her friends heading to Githurai when they heard a loud bang and a red flash ahead of them.
“Before I could take my phone to record the flash was gone and smoke was billowing. We then heard people screaming and running and so we ended our trip.
“We then discovered it was a plane crash and saw the sunken hole the crash had created in the ground,” she said.
In a separate incident, a train and a bus collided at a railway crossing near Naivasha town, central Kenya, killing at least four people, according to Reuters news agency citing a Red Cross worker.
The Kenya Pipeline Company, whose bus was involved in the incident, said it was carrying staff finishing their morning shift at one of its training centres and that all injured staff had been taken to hospital for treatment.
New Yorker in her mid-twenties gains 40,000 TikTok followers while exploring all of the city’s museums
Museums throughout New York City were just reopening in the wake of the COVID pandemic when Jane August launched what seemed like a straightforward plan: She would travel to every single museum in the city, producing a short video log of each one. She figured it would take three years at most.
But with 136 museums documented since 2021, she still has about 64 to go by her estimation. And with new museums opening and some old ones changing so dramatically that they deserve a revisit, the 26-year-old now says she’s realistically aiming to complete the project before she’s 30.
“At first, I started the project for myself to safely get out of my house and experience culture in the city again,” said August, who grew up in Arizona and has lived in New York for nine years. She said she wasn’t a big museum person before starting the project, and had only been to around seven at the time.
But as she began, the plan quickly evolved.
“I decided TikTok would be a cool way to document this so my friends could keep up with my journey and maybe discover something new,” August said. Her audience has since far expanded with about 40,000 followers across social platforms.
Museums big and small, Manhattan and beyond
Visiting its museums has sparked a new appreciation for New York City, she said, as well as for the sheer breadth of what’s on offer, particularly for those willing to explore smaller museums and those in the boroughs beyond Manhattan.
And yes, she has favorites.
“I love Poster House. It’s the first poster museum in the country, has great programming and is free on Fridays,” she says of the largely unsung museum at 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue, which features graphic design and advertising posters ranging from Art Nouveau to political propaganda.
Others on her list of favorites include the Tenement Museum in lower Manhattan and the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, as well as three Brooklyn museums: the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum, the New York Sign Museum and the Red Hook Pinball Museum. She also has a soft spot for The Paley Center for Media NYC in midtown Manhattan.
“They have archives with every TV show you could possibly think of. It’s amazing,” she said of The Paley Center.
Staten Island offerings are worth the ferry ride
As for the city’s smallest borough, the ferry ride to Staten Island (free, with views of the Statue of Liberty along the way) is well worth the trip for museum-goers, she said.
The borough features the Newhouse Center of Contemporary Art, as well as the Alice Austen House, a Victorian Gothic house important to LGBTQ+ history. It was the home of one of the country’s earliest and most prolific female photographers, famous for documenting the city’s immigrant communities.
“You wouldn’t imagine that Staten Island had one of the gayest museums in New York, dedicated to a queer photographer, but it does,” August said.
Staten Island is also home to the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art and the Chinese Scholar’s Garden, which claims to be one of only two authentic classical outdoor Chinese gardens in the United States.
“It’s so peaceful and quiet, and I love riding the ferry,” August said.
Taking advantage of free days and slow hours
While museums can be expensive, she said she makes good use of museum passes at her local library, and that many museums have days or times when they are free.
And because her “day jobs” tend to be at night — she works at different venues in ticketing and production, and also bartends — she’s able to visit museums in the middle of weekdays, when they tend to be less crowded.
August recently became a licensed New York City tour guide, and she says it’s given her a renewed appreciation both of the city and its visitors.
She’s also seen a few trends take hold, like the rise in museum programming aimed at younger audiences and the trend away from chronological exhibits, which she says make return visits less enticing.
“So many of us are desperate for third spaces,” she said, referring to a place distinct from both home and work where people can relax or socialize. “For a lot of us, we have a hunger to come back and visit again, especially when it’s free.”
Although big museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art can certainly be crowded, August says New York isn’t facing nearly the level of overcrowding as in European cities like Paris.
And at peak times and seasons, like summer, it’s nice to know there are plenty of smaller museums to visit.
Seeing the whole city
“I think this is especially important for the lesser-known museums that don’t often get press or social media features,” she said. “There are some small museums that get a huge bump in attendance and press after I have posted my videos so it’s exciting to be able to play a small role in that success.”
As for her motivation to continue the project, she said “it boils down to the people. I get to connect with fascinating and passionate people who are making these museums what they are and I get to connect with enthusiasts who want to find something fun to do with their weekend.”
For anyone interested in giving something like this a go for themselves, she says it takes a lot of endurance.
“Be prepared to go to corners of the city you never considered — I’m talking edges of the Bronx and middle of Staten Island,” she said. “But if you’re up for the challenge, you’ll probably gain a lot of insight on not just the museums and their content, but also the communities they serve.”
France Battles to Control Largest Blaze in Decades
new video loaded: France Struggles to Contain Largest Fire in Decades
By Monika Cvorak•
The blaze, which has grown to nearly 40,000 acres, was the country’s biggest since 1949, the civil defense chief said.
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SM Entertainment’s Second Quarter Revenue in 2025 Increases by 19% to $218 Million; CEO Teases China Expansion Following Tencent Partnership
South Korean entertainment giant SM Entertainment reported a 19.3% YoY jump in consolidated revenue for the second quarter of 2025, driven by surging album sales and strong merchandise performance.
The agency, home to K-pop acts such as RIIZE, NCT 127, aespa, and NCT DREAM, booked 302.9 billion South Korean won (approx. USD $218 million) in Q2 consolidated revenue, up from 253.9 billion won ($183m) a year earlier, according to its quarterly earnings report published Wednesday (August 6).
Of the total, revenue at parent company SM Entertainment surged 26.5% YoY to 220.3 billion won ($159m), driven primarily by strong growth in album and digital music revenue, which jumped 37.9% YoY to 99.0 billion won ($71m).
The surge in album revenue came as “new album sales volume increased by over 1.9 million copies YoY,” SM Entertainment CFO Jeongmin Jang told analysts during an earnings call.
RIIZE’s debut full album ODYSSEY led sales with 1.93 million copies, followed by NCT WISH‘s second mini album poppop with 1.34 million copies and aespa’s single Dirty Work with 900,000 units sold. Additional releases from Mark and Doyoung brought total new release sales to 5.79 million copies for Q2.
SM Entertainment CEO Cheol-hyuk Jang said: “These achievements across our artist lineup continue to deepen our IP portfolio and enrich global fan experiences with even greater diversity.”
Concert revenue in Q2 slipped 1.9% YoY to 33.6 billion won ($24.0m), with major performances including TVXQ!‘s three Tokyo Dome concerts celebrating their 20th anniversary in Japan, NCT 127‘s six shows across Japan and Macau, and SMTOWN 30th Anniversary concerts in London, LA, and Mexico City.
MD/licensing revenue surged 39.6% YoY to 63.9 billion won ($46m), boosted by strong concert merchandise sales and successful pop-up events including NCT WISH’s exhibition pop-up and RIIZE’s character pop-up.
Operating profit jumped 92.4% YoY to 47.6 billion won ($34m), while net profit nearly tripled to 30.9 billion won ($22m) from 8.4 billion won ($6m).
Meanwhile, revenue from SM’s major subsidiaries climbed 25.4% YoY to 141.5 billion won ($102m). SM Entertainment Japan posted strong growth of 38.6% YoY to 26.0 billion won ($19m) driven by expanded concert activity, while SM Brand Marketing rose 38.2% to 19.5 billion won ($14m) on increased album and merchandise sales.
However, SM C&C continued its decline, falling 24.2% YoY to 21.1 billion won ($15m) due to reduced advertising revenue, while KEYEAST plunged 81.7% YoY to 3.0 billion won ($2m) amid fewer drama broadcasts.
The newly consolidated superfan app operator DearU contributed 20.2 billion won ($14m) in Q2 revenue following its acquisition.
Looking ahead, SM has a packed release schedule for the remainder of 2025. July releases included SUPER JUNIOR‘s 12th full album marking their 20th anniversary and NCT DREAM’s fifth album Go Back To The Future. Q3 will see new mini albums from aespa and NCT WISH, while Q4 releases include a Taeyeon full album, NCT DREAM mini album, WayV mini album, Hearts2Hearts mini album, and a RIIZE single.
The company’s touring lineup for H2 2025 features RIIZE’s first solo tour RIIZING LOUD with 20 shows across Asia, NCT DREAM‘s THE DREAM SHOW 4, WayV’s upcoming tour, and aespa’s third concert tour 2025 SYNK: aeXIS LINE.
In his CEO message following the release of the Q2 results, Jang highlighted SM’s partnership with Tencent Music Entertainment. In March, SM rival HYBE agreed to sell its entire 9.38% stake in SM to Tencent Music, which acquired 2.21 million shares for 243.35 billion won ($176m).
Jang said: “Through this alliance, we have established a practical and wide-ranging partnership that extends beyond music distribution to include content planning, fan data analysis, and concert execution in the China market.”
Tencent has over 550 million monthly active users across its platforms including QQ Music, Kugou, and Kuwo.
“In the long term, we aim to create a comprehensive idol success model that combines SM Entertainment’s global production capabilities with Tencent Music Entertainment’s local marketing and distribution power — bridging global and local strengths.”
Cheol-hyuk Jang, SM Entertainment
The CEO added: “In the long term, we aim to create a comprehensive idol success model that combines SM Entertainment’s global production capabilities with Tencent Music Entertainment’s local marketing and distribution power — bridging global and local strengths.”
Through the Tencent partnership, Jang said: “SM has taken a preemptive step in securing a robust infrastructure for content production, marketing, and distribution within China. This is expected to accelerate the localization of our new IPs and open up tangible monetization opportunities based on China’s fandom ecosystem.”
Music Business Worldwide
Report: Israeli Mass Surveillance of Palestinians Utilizes Microsoft Cloud Technology | Israel-Palestine Conflict News
Israel’s elite cyber-intelligence unit stored vast volumes of intercepted Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft’s cloud servers, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call.
The surveillance system, operational since 2022, was built by Unit 8200, the Israeli military’s secretive intelligence branch. It enables the unit to collect and retain recordings of millions of daily phone calls from Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The revelations initially reported on Wednesday stem from leaked Microsoft documents and testimonies from 11 sources, including from Israeli military intelligence and the company.
According to the leaks, a large amount of the data appeared to be stored on Microsoft’s Azure servers located in the Netherlands and Ireland, the Guardian reported.
Three sources from Unit 8200 said that the cloud-based system helped guide deadly air strikes and shaped operations across the occupied Palestinian territories.
Microsoft said that CEO Satya Nadella, who met with Unit 8200’s commander Yossi Sariel in 2021, was unaware of the nature of the data to be stored. The company has said an internal review found “no evidence to date” that Azure or its artificial intelligence (AI) tools were “used to target or harm people”.
The revelations come after the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, issued a report mapping the corporations aiding Israel in its occupation and war on Gaza.
The report noted that Microsoft, which has operated in Israel since 1991, has built its largest hub outside the US in Israel and began integrating its technologies across the country’s military, police, prisons, schools, and settlements.
Since 2003, the company has deepened ties with Israeli defence, acquiring surveillance and cybersecurity start-ups and embedding its systems in military operations. In 2024, an Israeli colonel called cloud technologies such as those offered by Microsoft “a weapon in every sense”.
The Guardian reported that internal records at Microsoft showed that Nadella offered support for Sariel’s aim to move large volumes of military intelligence into the cloud.
A Microsoft statement cited by the Guardian said it “is not accurate” to say he provided his personal support for the project.
Microsoft engineers later worked closely with Israeli intelligence to embed security features within Azure, enabling the transfer of up to 70 percent of Unit 8200’s sensitive data to the platform.
While Israeli officials claim the technology helps thwart attacks, Unit 8200 sources said the system collects communications indiscriminately, which are often used to detain or blackmail Palestinians. “When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason … that’s where they find the excuse,” one source was cited as saying.
Some sources alleged the stored data had been used to justify detentions and even killings.
The system’s expansion coincided with a broader shift in Israeli surveillance, moving from targeted tracking to bulk monitoring of the Palestinian population. One AI-driven tool reportedly assigns risk scores to text messages based on certain trigger words, including discussions of weapons or martyrdom.
Sariel, who resigned in 2024 after Israel’s intelligence failure on October 7, 2023, had long championed cloud-based surveillance.
As Israel’s war on Gaza continues, with more than 61,250 Palestinians killed, including 18,000 children, the surveillance programme remains active. Sources said the existing data, combined with AI tools, continues to be used in military operations.
Microsoft claimed it had “no information” about the specific data stored by Unit 8200.
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Adrian de Wet walks out of court as he becomes a state witness
South Africa’s state prosecutor has officially withdrawn charges against one of the farm workers accused of killing two black woman and feeding their bodies to pigs.
Adrian de Wet was one of three men facing murder charges after Maria Makgato, 45, and Lucia Ndlovu, 34, were killed while allegedly looking for food on a pig farm near Polokwane in South Africa’s northern Limpopo province last year.
Their bodies were then alleged to have been given to the animals in an apparent attempt to dispose of the evidence.
Mr De Wet, 20, turned state witness when the trial started on Monday and says farm owner Zachariah Johannes Olivier shot and killed the two women.
Mr De Wet, a supervisor on the farm, will testify that he was under duress when he was forced to throw their bodies into the pig enclosure, according to both the prosecution and his lawyer.
William Musora, 50, another farm worker, is the third accused. He and Mr Olivier, 60, are yet to enter a plea and remain behind bars.
Mr De Wet’s lawyers say he has truthfully disclosed what transpired on the night Ms Makgato and Ms Ndlovu were killed in August 2024.
Shortly after court adjourned on Wednesday, he walked out of the court as a free man and was whisked away by his lawyers, while Ms Makgato’s brother Walter Makgato sobbed outside the court building.
He told the BBC that the release of one of the men allegedly involved in the killing of his sister means justice will not be served.
Mr De Wet will be taken into protective custody until the end of the trial.
The case has caused widespread outrage across South Africa which has exacerbated racial tension between black and white people in the country.
This is especially rife in rural areas of the country, despite the end of the racist system of apartheid 30 years ago.
Most private farmland remains in the hands of the white minority, while most farm workers are black and poorly paid, fuelling resentment among the black population, while many white farmers complain of high crime rates.
The trial is set to resume on 6 October.
Despite volume challenges, Ecovyst Q2 2025 presentation shows a 9.5% increase in sales with maintained guidance
Ecovyst Q2 2025 presentation: Sales up 9.5% despite volume challenges, guidance maintained
Aaron Shackell Secures #2 Spot on Team USA’s Pan Pacs Roster with Impressive 400 Free Swim of 3:45.03
By Charlotte Wells on SwimSwam
2025 U.S. Summer Championships
- Tuesday, August 5 – Friday, August 8, 2025
- Irvine, California
- William Woollett Aquatics Center
- Start Times
- Prelims: 9:00 am local / 12:00 pm ET
- Finals: 5:00 pm local / 8:00 pm ET
- LCM (50 meters)
- Meet Central
- Psych Sheets
- Live Results
- Live Stream Info (Available on USA Swimming Network App)
- Live Recaps
The second finals session of the 2025 U.S. Summer Championships is underway, and it is already off to an exciting start as athletes look ahead to next summer’s competitions.
This meet serves as a qualifying opportunity for swimmers to make the U.S. National Team roster for the 2026 Pan Pacific Championships, with tonight’s finals providing the first major shake-up to the projected roster that we have seen so far.
Carmel Swim Club’s Aaron Shackell posted a stellar performance in the men’s 400 free tonight, racing into the wall in a best time of 3:45.03 to claim the championship title. His race marks the 2nd-fastest time in the country this season, putting him in a provisional spot on Team USA’s Pan Pacs roster.
Shackell shaved .42 off of his previous best time of 3:45.45 from the Paris Olympics last summer and overtook Luka Mijatovic for the priority two ranking in the event. His time was .68 faster than Mijatovic’s 3:45.71 at the U.S. Nationals in June, bumping Mijatovic down to the priority four ranking in the event.
The Pan Pacs rosters can hold a maximum of twenty-six men and twenty-six women, and only the swimmers with the two fastest times in any event (besides the 100 and 200 free) within the qualifying period are eligible to be named to the roster.
Longhorn Aquatics’ Rex Maurer currently has a firm grip on the #1 roster spot in this event, having posted a 3:43.33 at the U.S. National Championships in June.
New Men’s 400 Freestyle Rankings:
- Rex Maurer – 3:43.33
- Aaron Shackell– 3:45.03
- Luka Mijatovic – 3:45.71
- Kieran Smith– 3:45.73
- Ryan Erisman – 3:46.01
- David Johnston – 3:47.10
- Kieran Smith – 3:47.17
- Luke Hobson – 3:47.47
Shackell got off to a fast start in the 400 tonight, going out in 53.66 to take a commanding lead of over a second at the 100 mark. He was 1:50.42 at the 200, over two seconds ahead of runner-up Kieran Smith, who split 1:52.62 at the halfway mark. Shackell managed to hold on through the back half, posting a 1:54.61 on his second 200 to fend off Smith, who came close to chasing him down with a 1:53.11 on the back half.
In addition to logging a new lifetime best and landing himself on the Pan Pacs roster, Shackell bumped himself up to 11th in the world this season. He now ranks just behind Bulgaria’s Petar Mitsin (3:45.01).
The U.S. Summer Championships mark the fourth of five qualifying competitions for the 2026 Pan Pacific Championships, so it is getting down to the wire for swimmers to turn in a performance that could land them on Team USA’s roster for next summer. With one more meet to go before the roster can be finalized, there is still a chance that Shackell could be bumped from his priority two ranking in the 400 free, but he looks to be safely in the #2 spot for Pan Pacs at the moment.
Read the full story on SwimSwam: Aaron Shackell Swims 3:45.03 400 Free to Snag #2 Spot on Team USA’s Pan Pacs Roster