Donald Trump has linked a diversity drive at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) under previous governments to a deadly plane crash in Washington DC.

Sixty-seven people were killed when an American Airlines jet and a military helicopter collided mid-air on Wednesday night.

Speaking at the White House, the new US president suggested the diversity efforts had made air travel less safe.

He said: “We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas.”

Read the latest on the crash in Washington

Later Sky’s US partner NBC news said staffing at Reagan Washington National Airport, where air traffic controllers were guiding the flights, was “not normal”, according to an initial FAA report.

The tower normally has a controller who focuses specifically on helicopter traffic.

But at the time of Wednesday night’s crash, a source said, one controller at DCA was overseeing both plane and helicopter activity.

FAA guidelines do allow for this position to be combined.

At his briefing Mr Trump blamed his predecessor, former president Joe Biden, for lowering standards for air traffic controllers.

“We have to have our smartest people,” he said. “They have to be naturally talented geniuses.”

He added: “The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.”

Mr Trump criticised Mr Biden and another Democrat former president Barack Obama for putting “policy over safety” when it came to US aviation.

“I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary,” Mr Trump said.

He said that after being sworn in last week, he signed an executive order which “restored the highest standards of air traffic controllers”.

Read more:
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Mr Trump also said: “When I left office and Biden took over he changed them [standards for those who work in aviation system] back to lower than ever before, I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level.”

At a later briefing he was asked if gender or race played a role. He answered: “It may have, I don’t know. Incompetence may have played a role.”

Authorities have said the rescue operation for passengers on board the jet and the Black Hawk helicopter shifted to a recovery one as they believe there are no survivors.

A total of 28 bodies, including 27 from the jet and one from the helicopter, have been recovered from the Potomac river.

“This was a dark and excruciating night in our nation’s capital and in our nation’s history and a tragedy of terrible proportions as one nation, we grieve for every precious soul that has been taken from us so suddenly,” Mr Trump said.

The American Airlines jet was carrying 60 passengers and four crew when it crashed with the military helicopter, carrying three soldiers, shortly before 9pm local time on Wednesday.

Flight 5342 was preparing to land on runway 33 at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when it collided with the helicopter.

The crash is the country’s worst civil aviation disaster since 2009.

Mr Trump also said “the people in the helicopter should have seen where they were going” and that the crash involved a “confluence of bad decisions”.

The Pentagon and US army are investigating the crash, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said on X.

Three Israeli and five Thai hostages have been freed under a phased ceasefire deal that has halted fighting in Gaza.

But after a chaotic release that saw crowds swarm sections of the handover, Israel temporarily delayed the freeing of 110 Palestinians expected in exchange.

The first hostage, 20-year-old female Israeli soldier Agam Berger, was released in northern Gaza.

Hours later, footage from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis showed a stunned and scared-looking Arbel Yehoud being led through a crowd, flanked by armed, masked Palestinian militants.

Gaza ceasefire latest

The Israeli civilian was at the centre of a dispute between Israel and Hamas last weekend.

It’s suspected she was being held by Islamic Jihad, another militant group in Gaza.

A third Israeli, civilian Gadi Mozes, 80, was also released on Thursday.

Israeli military identified the five Thai nationals as Thenna Pongsak, Sathian Suwannakhan, Sriaoun Watchara, Seathao Bannawat and Rumnao Surasak.

In return for the release of the Israeli hostages, Israel is expected to set free 110 Palestinians detained in prisons, including children, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

Among them are a 61-year-old held since 1992 and 30 teenagers, the youngest a 15-year-old boy.

Their release was pausedafter the Israeli PM condemned the “shocking” scenes of the handovers to the Red Cross.

Benjamin Netanyahu said Palestinian detainees would be held until the safe exit of Israeli hostages was guaranteed in future.

He said later that he had received such a commitment, and Israeli media reported the releases of Palestinians would go ahead.

The war has devastated much of Gaza’s infrastructure, including homes, roads, sanitation and communications networks.

The latest planned exchange is part of a fragile truce – mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt – that began on 19 January and has so far held, aimed at winding down the deadliest war ever fought between Israel and Hamas.

In the first round, Hamas released three Israeli soldiers, including British-Israeli Emily Damari, in return for 90 Palestinians, including a teacher who said she had been held for seven months.

Among the roughly 250 people taken from Israel during Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack which ignited the conflict, some have died in captivity in Gaza, while others have been released or rescued.

More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, according to Hamas-run authorities in Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

On Monday, hundreds of thousands of Gazans traversed rubble and dirt to return to what was left of their homes in the north of the Gaza Strip.

But joy was tempered by grief as many discovered shattered or looted homes, no running water in the vicinity and dire shortages of basic supplies.

On Thursday, a new Israeli law came into effect banning the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) from Israeli territory.

It raised fears of a shutdown of its schools, medical facilities and other services in east Jerusalem – and possibly more in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where UNRWA is the biggest provider of aid.

British MP Sarah Champion, who chairs the International Development Committee of MPs, called the ban “devastating”.

“Food, water, education, even rubbish collection will all be affected,” she said.

“In the strongest possible terms, I urge the UK government to do everything it can to get all parties round the table and ensure that UNRWA can fulfil its UN-mandated work. The success of the current ceasefire hangs in the balance if not.”

The European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed it is closely monitoring an asteroid the size of a football pitch that could hit the Earth in a little over seven years.

The asteroid, called 2024 YR4, is estimated to have a one in 83 chance of a direct hit, causing “severe damage to a local region”, according to ESA.

The space rock, which measures 100m by 40m, is currently at a distance of around 27 million miles and moving away from the planet. But its path will cross the Earth’s orbit on 22 December 2032.

Most likely there would be a near miss, with the asteroid passing within a few thousand miles.

The Space Mission Planning Advisory Group, which is chaired by ESA, will discuss the latest observations of the asteroid at a meeting in Vienna next week.

If the impact risk is confirmed it will make official recommendations to the United Nations and work may begin on options for a “spacecraft-based response to the potential hazard”, the agency said in a statement.

Dr Simeon Barber, a space scientist at the Open University, told Sky News: “We shouldn’t be overly worried – at least not just yet.

“That’s because our early detection systems quite often overestimate the likelihood of an impact with Earth.

“In the early stages, we can’t determine its trajectory very accurately, and so the probability of impact has to take into account this uncertainty.

“It’s likely that as our technologies for detecting Earth-bound objects improve, we may see an increasing number of alerts such as this.

“It’s important that we find the right balance between treating the threat seriously, but not over-reacting in these early stages of discovery when the trajectory is still not well-defined.”

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‘Protect our home planet’

Just over two years ago NASA smashed a spacecraft into the 160m-wide asteroid Dimorphos and successfully changed its orbit.

At the time NASA administrator Bill Nelson said: “All of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet. After all, it’s the only one we have.”

Near-Earth Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first spotted by a telescope in Chile. Since the start of January, astronomers have been tracking the asteroid to gauge its size and movement.

The asteroid is expected to fade from view within the next few months as it moves further from the Earth. Increasingly powerful telescopes will be trained on the rock to gather as much data as possible on its trajectory.

Once it disappears it won’t come back into view until 2028.

How much damage would such an impact do?

The Earth takes a direct hit from an asteroid of that size only once every few thousand years.

In 1908, a slightly smaller asteroid – thought to have measured 60m across – exploded over Siberia. It flattened 80 million trees over an area of 830 square miles.