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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Authorities are focusing on the wreckage of a plane that crashed off western Alaska as they try to determine what caused the small commuter aircraft to go down in the icy Bering Sea, killing 10 people.

The single-engine turboprop plane was traveling from Unalakleet to the hub community of Nome when it disappeared Thursday afternoon.

Crews on Saturday succeeded in recovering the remains of those killed in the Bering Air crash from a drifting ice floe before the anticipated onset of high winds and snow. By the end of the day, the wreckage was taken by helicopter to a hangar in Nome.

Here are things to know about the plane crash, which is one of the deadliest in the state in 25 years.
The plane was reported missing near Nome

Officials said contact with the Cessna Caravan was lost less than an hour after it left Unalakleet on Thursday. Authorities said the flight was a regularly scheduled commuter trip, and the aircraft went missing about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of Nome.

The wreckage was found Friday by rescuers who were searching by helicopter. Local, state and federal agencies scoured large stretches of icy waters and miles (kilometers) of frozen tundra before finding the plane.

Nine passengers and the pilot were killed.

Unalakleet is a community of about 690 people about 150 miles (about 240 kilometers) southeast of Nome and some 395 miles (640 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage. The village is on the Iditarod trail, route of the world’s most famous sled dog race.

Nome is just south of the Arctic Circle and is known as the ending point of the 1,000-mile (1,610-kilometer) Iditarod.
The cause of the crash is under investigation

Radar data provided by the U.S. Civil Air Patrol indicated the plane rapidly lost elevation and speed, but it is unclear why that happened, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Benjamin McIntyre-Coble said he was unaware of any distress signals from the aircraft. If a plane is exposed to seawater, an emergency locating transmitter sends a signal to a satellite, which then relays that message to the Coast Guard. No such messages were received by the Coast Guard.

National Transportation Safety Board Jennifer Homendy said Sunday that the plane was flying in an area where moderate icing was possible between 2,000 feet (610 meters) and 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) and where the weather could be hazardous to light aircraft. However, she said the plane, which was last spotted on radar at 3,400 feet (1,036 meters), had an anti-icing system on its wings and tail, which will be examined as part of the investigation.

She stressed that investigators were not leaning toward any cause for the crash at this point.

“Right now it’s really a focus on the wreckage and we’ll see where that takes us,” she said.
Flying is an important mode of transportation in the largest U.S. state

Alaska’s vast landscape and limited infrastructure makes traveling by plane commonplace. Most communities are not connected to the developed road system that serves the state’s most populous region.

Some high school teams fly to sporting events against rival high schools, and goods are brought to many communities by barge or by air.
Who was on the plane?

Authorities on Saturday identified the crash victims, who ranged in age from the 34-year-old, Nome-based pilot to a 58-year-old passenger, also a resident of Nome.

Also among those killed were Rhone Baumgartner and Kameron Hartvigson of Anchorage, ages 46 and 41, respectively. They had traveled to Unalakleet to service a heat-recovery system vital to the community’s water plant, according to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

Talaluk Katchatag, 34, of Unalakleet, was also among those lost. Known as TK, he was described by his older sister in an online fundraiser as a soft spoken and strong man who was wise beyond his years.

“His soul was genuine, and he lived life so matter of factly,” AyyuSue Katchatag wrote of her brother.

The flight operator, Bering Air, said it had set up telephone hotlines staffed with specialists to provide emotional support and updates to people who had loved ones on the flight.

“At this time, our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of those affected by this tragedy,” the company said on its website. “We recognize the profound loss this has caused, and we want to extend our sincerest condolences to everyone impacted.”
Other recent U.S. plane crashes are also under investigation

The Alaska plane’s crash marks the third major U.S. aviation mishap in eight days.

A commercial jetliner and an Army helicopter collided near the nation’s capital on Jan. 29, killing 67 people.

A medical transportation plane crashed in Philadelphia on Jan. 31, killing the six people on board and another person on the ground.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he is firing members of the board of trustees for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and naming himself chairman.

He also indicated that he would be dictating programming at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions, specifically declaring that he would end events featuring performers in drag.

Trump’s announcement Friday came as the Republican president has bulldozed his way across official Washington during the first weeks of his second term, trying to shutter federal agencies, freeze spending and ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the government.

“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN. I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” Trump wrote on his social media website.

“We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”

In a statement later on its website, the Kennedy Center said it was aware of Trump’s post. “We have received no official communications from the White House regarding changes to our board of trustees,” the statement said. “We are aware that some members of our board have received termination notices from the administration.”

The statement continued: “Per the Center’s governance established by Congress in 1958, the chair of the board of trustees is appointed by the Center’s board members. There is nothing in the Center’s statute that would prevent a new administration from replacing board members; however, this would be the first time such action has been taken with the Kennedy Center’s board.”

Drag artists accused Trump of targeting them because of who they are in a country where freedom of expression is guaranteed by the Constitution.

“This is about who gets to exist in public spaces and whose stories get to be told on America’s stage,” said Blaq Dinamyte, president of Qommittee, a national network of drag artists and allies. “Banning an entire art form is censorship, plain and simple. Americans don’t have to agree on everything, but we should be able to speak our minds and perform our art without bans, retaliation, or intimidation.”

Unlike Democratic President Joe Biden and other presidents through the decades, Trump did not attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors ceremonies during his first term.

Shortly after Trump’s post, the Kennedy Center website began experiencing technical difficulties. Visitors got a message reading “We are experiencing high traffic” and were redirected to a “waiting room” that listed how many hundreds of people were trying to access the site ahead of them.

Trump suggested in his post that he would be implementing some changes to the center’s performance schedule, noting that last year “the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP.”

According to its website, the center in July hosted a preshow titled “A Drag Salute to Divas” and a November “Drag Brunch.”

In his post, Trump did not clarify which board of trustee members he would terminate besides the current chairman, philanthropist David Rubenstein. The board often features political powerbrokers and major donors, and is currently made up of members from both sides of the aisle.

Rubenstein was first elected to the post in 2010 and reelected each year since that time. He was originally appointed to the Kennedy Center board by Republican President George W. Bush and subsequently reappointed by Democratic President Barack Obama and Biden.

The current board features Biden’s White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, as well as Mike Donilon, Biden’s longtime ally, and Stephanie Cutter, a former Obama adviser. The treasurer of the center’s board of trustees is television producer Shonda Rhimes, who hosted fundraisers for Biden before he abandoned his reelection bid last summer.

But the current board also features Trump allies, including Pam Bondi, his recently confirmed attorney general, and Lee Greenwood, whose song “God Bless the USA,” was the unofficial anthem of Trump’s presidential campaigns.

During his first term in 2019, Trump announced that he was tapping actor Jon Voight, a longtime supporter, to the board, along with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is Trump’s second-term pick to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday dealt President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk their first big setback in their dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, ordering a temporary halt to plans to pull thousands of agency staffers off the job.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, also agreed to block an order that would have given the thousands of overseas USAID workers the administration wanted to place on abrupt administrative leave just 30 days to move families and households back to the U.S. on government expense.

Both moves would have exposed the U.S. workers and their spouses and children to unwarranted risk and expense, the judge said.

Nichols pointed to accounts from workers abroad that the Trump administration, in its rush to shut down the agency and its programs abroad, had cut some workers off from government emails and other communication systems they needed to reach the U.S. government in case of a health or safety emergency.

The Associated Press reported earlier that USAID contractors in the Middle East and elsewhere had found even “panic button” apps wiped off their mobile phones or disabled when the administration abruptly furloughed them.

“Administrative leave in Syria is not the same as administrative leave in Bethesda,” the judge said in his order Friday night.

In agreeing to stop the 30-day deadline given USAID staffers to return home at government expense, Nichols cited statements from agency employees who had no home to go to in the U.S. after decades abroad, who faced pulling children with special needs out of school midyear, and had other difficulties.

The judge also ordered USAID staffers already placed on leave by the Trump administration reinstated. But he declined a request from two federal employee associations to grant a temporary block on a Trump administration funding freeze that has shut down the six-decade-old agency and its work, pending more hearings on the workers’ lawsuit.

Nichols stressed in the hearing earlier Friday on the request to pause the Trump administration’s actions that his order was not a decision on the employees’ request to roll back the administration’s swiftly moving destruction of the agency.

“CLOSE IT DOWN,” Trump said on social media of USAID before the judge’s ruling.

The American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees argue that Trump lacks the authority to shut down the agency without approval from Congress. Democratic lawmakers have made the same argument.

Trump’s administration moved quickly Friday to literally erase the agency’s name. Workers on a crane scrubbed the name from the stone front of its Washington headquarters. They used duct tape to block it out on a sign and took down USAID flags. Someone placed a bouquet of flowers outside the door.

The Trump administration and Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have made USAID their biggest target so far in an unprecedented challenge of the federal government and many of its programs.

Administration appointees and Musk’s teams have shut down almost all funding for the agency, stopping aid and development programs worldwide. They have placed staffers and contractors on leave and furlough and locked them out of the agency’s email and other systems. According to Democratic lawmakers, they also carted away USAID’s computer servers.

“This is a full-scale gutting of virtually all the personnel of an entire agency,” Karla Gilbride, the attorney for the employee associations, told the judge.

Justice Department attorney Brett Shumate argued that the administration has all the legal authority it needs to place agency staffers on leave. “The government does this across the board every day,” Shumate said. “That’s what’s happening here. It’s just a large number.”

Friday’s ruling is the latest setback in the courts for the Trump administration, whose policies to offer financial incentives for federal workers to resign and end birthright citizenship for anyone born in the U.S. to someone in the country illegally have been temporarily paused by judges.

Earlier Friday, a group of a half-dozen USAID officials speaking to reporters strongly disputed assertions from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the most essential life-saving programs abroad were getting waivers to continue funding. None were, the officials said.

Among the programs they said had not received waivers: $450 million in food grown by U.S. farmers sufficient to feed 36 million people, which was not being paid for or delivered; and water supplies for 1.6 million people displaced by war in Sudan’s Darfur region, which were being cut off without money for fuel to run water pumps in the desert.

The judge’s order involved the Trump administration’s decision earlier this week to pull almost all USAID workers off the job and out of the field worldwide.

Trump and congressional Republicans have spoken of moving a much-reduced number of aid and development programs under the State Department.

Within the State Department itself, employees fear substantial staff reductions following the deadline for the Trump administration’s offer of financial incentives for federal workers to resign, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. A judge temporarily blocked that offer and set a hearing Monday.

The administration earlier this week gave almost all USAID staffers posted overseas 30 days, starting Friday, to return to the U.S., with the government paying for their travel and moving costs. Diplomats at embassies asked for waivers allowing more time for some, including families forced to pull their children out of schools midyear.

In a notice posted on the USAID website late Thursday, the agency clarified that none of the overseas personnel put on leave would be forced to leave the country where they work. But it said that workers who chose to stay longer than 30 days might have to cover their own expenses unless they received a specific hardship waiver.

Rubio said Thursday during a trip to the Dominican Republic that the government would help staffers get home within 30 days “if they so desired” and would listen to those with special conditions.

He insisted the moves were the only way to get cooperation because staffers were working “to sneak through payments and push through payments despite the stop order” on foreign assistance. Agency staffers deny his claims of obstruction.

Rubio said the U.S. government will continue providing foreign aid, “but it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest.”