A small plane crashed in the Austrian Alps, killing all 4 people on board
The crash happened near the town of Wald im Pinzgau in Salzburg province around 12:45 p.m. local time, the Austria Press Agency (APA) reported, citing police.
Police said the aircraft, a propeller plane, appeared to have caught fire after it went down. All four people three men and one woman died in the crash.
The passengers are believed to be German nationals, though their identities have not yet been officially confirmed.
According to AP, the plane had taken off from Oberschleissheim, a small airfield near Munich, for a round-trip flight.
There is no immediate information about what caused the crash, and authorities are continuing to investigate.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News18
8 hours ago
- News18
How Orthodox Jewish families finding ways to support their trans children
Massachusetts (US), Aug 16 (AP) Ziva Mann remembers how joyful and smiley her daughter was as a child — the family even gave her the nickname 'Giggles." 'She was just sunshine," Mann said. That changed around second grade, when her joy began to fade. 'She got sadder and sadder," Mann recalled. 'It was like watching someone disappear." Mann later realised that her child's growing sadness was connected to a struggle to reckon with her gender identity. Her daughter came out as transgender at home in Massachusetts four years ago. 'Mom, I'm a girl," Mann remembers hearing her say. Though she was surprised by the news, she quickly came to admire her daughter's bravery. Since then, the family has striven to find the best ways to support Ellie within their modern Orthodox community, where tradition and strict gender roles shape daily life. They've managed to find emotional and spiritual resources close to home at a time when transgender rights are under attack nationwide. Raising a trans child in Orthodox Jewish communities Two of the three biggest branches of Judaism in the US — Reform and Conservative — support the rights of transgender people, but it can still be challenging for trans youth to find an inclusive congregation. Schools in Orthodox Jewish communities are typically divided by gender, and most synagogues have separate seating sections for men and women — sometimes on different floors. 'Orthodoxy today is just binary," said Myriam Kabakov, co-founder and executive director of Eshel, an organisation supporting LGBTQ+ people in Orthodox environments. 'You're either male or you're female. So if a trans person is in between transitioning, very often they will be asked not to come to synagogue." She said even after someone has fully transitioned, rabbis should allow them to sit where they feel comfortable. But that acceptance is not guaranteed. To connect parents and trans children with inclusive synagogues, Eshel developed a program called 'Welcoming Shuls," where people can confide in spiritual leaders who will treat them with respect. According to Kabakov, about 300 rabbis and 160 families with trans members have joined their listings. Deslie Paneth is among them. She lives on Long Island and has travelled far to find support for Ollie, her transgender son. 'One night, I said to my husband I need help, I don't know how to navigate this,'" Paneth said. 'Without Eshel, I don't know how this would have turned out for any of us." Balancing tradition and change Mann defines herself as modern Orthodox, meaning she strives to uphold Jewish law while embracing the values within her family. 'The only time we break the rules is to save someone's life," she said. 'Because a life is more important than all of the rules." Respecting her daughter's identity felt akin to saving her life, so Mann didn't feel the need to talk to God about it. She said that who her daughter is as a person mattered more than the gender she thought she had. Mann has heard of families with trans children who were asked to leave their synagogue, but this didn't happen to her. Before discussing Ellie's identity with other relatives, Mann reached out to her rabbi. He assured her that her daughter would be treated with dignity and respect. 'He offered us a blessing," Mann said. 'The strength, the love and the grace to parent a child who's walking a difficult path." Finding a place to belong Mann feels lucky to have found support, both in religious spaces and among family members, which has helped Ellie be her joyful self again. Some Orthodox families have faced a tougher process. Paneth recalled that her son, before starting his transition around 2017, was deeply religious, and they enjoyed sitting together at synagogue. 'He tells me still today that, especially around the holiday times, it hurts him that he can't sit next to me in temple," Paneth said. 'He's probably my child who has the strongest commitment to Judaism from an emotional connection." A rabbi told Paneth that Ollie is welcome to come to services, but he would now be expected to sit among the men. This is part of the reason why Ollie has not returned to synagogue since his transition. Faith and identity at a crossroads Ollie believes that his relationship with religion splintered as a student in an all-girls Orthodox Jewish high school. As he started raising questions about gender equality, none of the answers sufficed. 'I'm still convinced that if I weren't trans, I would still be a religious Jew," the 27-year-old said. He initially told his parents he was a lesbian. But since attending a secular college, making LGBTQ+ friends and feeling trapped during the pandemic, he decided to speak with them again. 'If I was going to survive this, I had to come out with my parents as trans and start medically transitioning." He had top surgery in 2022 and soon after met his girlfriend at JQY, a program for Jewish LGBTQ+ teens. The couple now lives together in New York. Ollie doesn't think of himself as Orthodox and says he would like to find a new path toward God. Paneth understands and still includes him in the Jewish holidays. Ollie appreciates it. Because he first connected to God as a girl, it doesn't feel natural to him to embrace traditions that are typical for Jewish men, like wearing a kippah. 'I don't do any of the tasks that men do religiously because I'm the same person I always was," he said. 'Even though I look different, my relationship to God didn't change." Making synagogues more inclusive Kabakov said many LGBTQ+ Jews eventually decide to leave Orthodoxy, but for those who wish to remain, Eshel and some spiritual leaders offer support. Rabbi Mike Moskowitz, who works at an LGBTQ+ synagogue in New York, thinks of his job as helping people understand how they can be their authentic selves and still feel accepted by their religion. 'It's not that Judaism is the problem," he said. 'Orthodoxy, the people, are the problem." The counselling he provides for trans children and their parents is specific to each person, but in general, he offers fresh interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. 'Those who want to be transphobic say the Bible says you can't wear misgendered clothing," Moskowitz said. 'I think a response is that trans folks are not wearing misgendered clothing. They're wearing gender-affirming clothing." He, like Kabakov, believes there's a trend in Orthodoxy toward more inclusivity, but there's more work to do. 'Discrimination is unholy," he said. 'Unity is coping through kindness and being able to replace the weight of oppression with the elevation of love." (AP) SKS RD RD (This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - PTI) view comments First Published: August 16, 2025, 19:00 IST News agency-feeds How Orthodox Jewish families finding ways to support their trans children Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Hindustan Times
George Steinmetz: 'The Indian bureaucracy is really quite impressive! '
'There are parts of our food system that some people don't want us to see.' You say that in your author note. What was the most invisibilised part of the food chain that you photographed? George Steinmetz (Courtesy the subject) Animal operations are quite sensitive to get access to. People get really touchy because there's been -- especially in the industrialized world -- a lot more concern about animal rights and farmers get criticized a lot for it. Then, there's large scale agriculture. People in the corporate world are very cautious. When you go to a private farmer who has five acres of land and you want to photograph them harvesting their stuff, there's no issue. But when you get into corporations, they get nervous and the lawyers get involved and it gets all very closed. I also looked at fishing quite a bit and it's difficult getting onto fishing boats. Squid boats can be at sea for six months at a time. I wasn't volunteering for that. The other thing that's really complicated are illegal activities, whether it's illegal fishing or immigrant labour. In the United States, for example, close to half of the food is harvested by undocumented workers. And lastly, the government things. In India, there's a huge government food corporation which sells large amounts of food to the poor at subsidized prices. There's a lot of waste in those warehouses. But India, as you know, has a lot of bureaucracy. You try to get into those warehouses, and it's extremely difficult. The bureaucracy is really quite impressive! What does your research look like? Well, it's complicated. Let's say, I was looking at sugar. I was told that Brazil has the biggest sugar plantations in the world. And you do Google searches, and all of a sudden India starts popping up as the biggest sugar producer. There's such a big market, mostly for internal consumption. In India, I worked with Saurabh Tripathi. I would give him a general idea of what I was looking for. And then he would do a lot of picture research and statistical research. And it's better to have somebody do those searches in that market. I had somebody work for me in China, in Brazil, and in German-Italian-speaking Europe. In California, I was out in the lettuce fields with the pickers, and then I went back to the packing house and a guy said you've got to go to Bakersfield where one building produces about 40 percent of the carrots in the United States. It looks like rivers of orange; it's incredible. But they had never let anybody photograph in there before. There's an old saying in journalism that no is not an answer. It's just kind of a bad beginning. And so, you have to find another way. Sometimes you don't succeed, but often you can. 255pp, ₹6327; Harry N Abrams Inc What was it like to contrast industrial livestock supply chains and an artisanal butchery, like you photographed in Belgium? I'm not a pig whisperer, obviously. I can't talk to pigs, you know, but you go and you look and you can see the animals are stressed. They're going into the kill chute and they're resisting. I saw that with pigs. And they're much more intelligent than the chickens or the cows. It's really quite disturbing to watch. But in the small butchery I went to in Belgium, they were doing a really good job. And the pigs didn't really know they were about to go down. They would be killed instantly. It's interesting in that small butcher shop, their prices were only 20% more than they would be in the supermarket, which is actually really good for the small-scale operation. And he had producers who raised animals just for him. He was doing really high-quality work for very little extra cost, with the efficiency of proximity. I also went to the biggest slaughterhouse in Brazil for cattle and they were pretty good. I didn't see cows that missed the shot and were maimed. In India, I went to the biggest buffalo slaughterhouse and it was really fascinating. It was all Muslims and they had to kill them halal. It was quick. They were doing a good job. I didn't see people abusing animals. There's no incentive for a farmer to abuse animals. I'm sure it exists somewhere. But I didn't go looking for it and I didn't see it. What do you think about the current politics globally on the role of migrants? The people at the top don't really understand the reality of what is going on, who's actually providing the work. In the US, less than 2% of the population is involved in food production. So, there's this huge disconnect. They go to the market and a little piece of meat comes in a little foam tray and they have no idea. Go to the dairy farmers in the United States, they can't get American workers. It's physically tiring. It's very repetitive. It's kind of boring. And they just don't want to do it. But they can get undocumented workers to do that kind of work at a reasonable price. And if you paid American workers $50 an hour, they might do that. But Latino workers will do that for $10 an hour and they'll live in some crummy little trailer out back. If the government were to say, okay, we're going to control the quality of the living standards for the workers and then raise the price of milk 30%, then you could do that. But government doesn't want to do that. So, you have a system where there's a huge disconnect. I think, in the United States, about 40% of the labour is considered undocumented. You have photographed shog, the shit fog, in a part of the United States, and also the Third Pole in India. How was it to capture these with aerial photography? It's tricky. If I find an issue that's discussed and is important, I have to see if I can find a way to photograph it. With the shog, the shit fog, I talked to people who knew it, and they would say, okay, you want to come to this part of Texas, in this month, and you want to be there on a really hot, windy day. And then, there's the physical problem, like people who had the feedlots don't want us to photograph their property because they don't want their problem seen. So, I had to find one that was next to a road. To cut down that shog, you put sprinklers in the feed yard to keep the dust down. But it's only for one month a year, and they'd rather not spend the money on the sprinklers. And so, they're being cheap, and creating this problem for others. And with the Third Pole in India, it's challenging photographing water issues, and I don't think I did a very good job of that. There were some really big water development systems, places where they had like big storage and irrigation issues, and I just couldn't find a way to photograph that, but we tried. What does climate change mean for existing vulnerabilities and inequalities? I saw it most acutely in the Sundarbans in Bangladesh. With the monsoons getting more severe and the sea level slowly rising, people were farming rice inches above the tide line. It was kind of like you're stuck with your feet in the mud and the water's up to here (your nose). Then they get a big storm with a tidal surge and all their rice gets wiped out by the salt water. That was the most dramatic area I saw. Women are doing a lot of the work and also having to take care of their kids. The women were the ones who were being probably squeezed the hardest. What was it like to look at smallholder farming and large agri-corporations like you've done for the book? Well, I can tell you as a photographer, it's a lot trickier to get great pictures of the smallholder farmers. You go to the sugar mill in India. It looks kind of like the one in Brazil. But the farmers, it's just like three people out in their fields cutting cane with a long knife. And you go to Brazil, they have these monster machines. So, the big stuff is actually a lot easier to photograph. And it's more extraordinary. But that's not the norm. There's a huge percentage of the world's agriculture that's still being done by smallholder farmers. But even in India, you find those smallholder farmers are getting squeezed. In Europe, they have huge subsidies for smallholder farmers. And in other countries like the US, Brazil, that's not done as much. How was it to document agriculture in India? Well, it was a surprise to me. I was trying to cover the whole world but for India, I had to make three trips because it was so vast and seasonal and you have to choose. I really wanted to look at the red pepper harvest, because red -- it's kind of lame -- but it's going to photograph really well. And Kashmir; saffron is the most expensive crop in the world. I can't get into Iran where most of it is grown, but India I can do. I was looking at the global story of agriculture and to find things that are really particularly Indian. The scale of shrimp farming was really good. And I wanted to go the grain markets in Punjab. The stubble burning is a really important story. And I decided that I wanted to do the rice instead of the wheat. India was visually amazing; I would say it is like organized chaos. It's fascinating. In the West, people don't think of India as being a technical innovator, but I found quite the opposite. Like the biggest tractor factory in India. People think it's John Deere. But it's Mahindra. As a journalist, I love telling those surprises. And India was full of surprises for me. Where do you see farming and food production a decade from now? I think we'll see more consolidation. And I think you're going to see continued gains in productivity. There's been a lot of work with improved plant science and plant genetics. The experts were saying we have to double the global food supply by 2050. I think that's actually doable. I've seen big advances in fisheries. But at the same time, I see big problems like the Amazon disappearing. You really need to have strict, better enforcement of wild lands. Otherwise, we're going to lose all the wild spaces and wildlife that we have. What did you leave out? You know, we couldn't do everything. It would have been interesting to look at farming in Russia. As an American, with the current political situation, I didn't think it was realistic to be flying there. Everybody grows food and everybody does it differently. And I tried to pick out the best examples. And at some point, you have to say, well, enough. I worked on it for over 10 years. And I realised, at the end, that if I kept going, the pictures I took at the beginning, which are really good pictures, would become irrelevant because the farming techniques were changing. And now it's time for me to do something new. Aparna Karthikeyan is an independent journalist and author based in Chennai
Economic Times
a day ago
- Economic Times
Dravidian iron for the Aryan horse
AP (Image for representation) Horse breeding in India came very late, after 1400 AD, in parts of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Maharashtra. Colonial historians argued the 'Aryan invasion theory' that light-skinned chariot-riding people destroyed Harappan cities, conquered India, enslaved local dark-skinned people and created the caste system. To counter this, there was the 'out of India' theory popularised by many Brahmins, that Harappa was Vedic, that Aryans were originally India who migrated out of India, taking civilization to the world. Both were wrong. Neither explained what motivated these Aryans to move in, or out, of India. Now it seems increasingly clear that Aryans came for (newly smelted) iron, and they offered (newly domesticated) horses in exchange. Aryans were neither invaders nor migrants: they were traders. And like many merchants and sailors, they had local wives, which accounts for the spread of their genes (R1a-Z93), language (proto-Sanskrit) and patriarchal culture in India. In Hindu myth, the horse-headed Vishnu rescued the Vedas and gave it to Brahma for safe-keeping. For over 3,000 years, Brahmins of India have therefore meticulously transmitted the Vedic songs containing some of the oldest descriptions of horses, chariots and composite bows in the world (Rig Veda 1.163.10 and 6.75.2). The Brahmins saw these Vedic hymns as timeless (sanatan), not of human origin (a-paurusheya). Today, thanks to ancient DNA analysis, archaeology and linguistics, we know that is not true. Horses, originally bred for meat and milk, were fully domesticated only 4,000 years ago, around 2000 BC, in the region north of the Black and the Caucasian sea, west of the Ural mountains. The early horses were too small for adult humans to ride. This led to the invention of the earliest spoked-wheel chariots, light enough to be pulled by horses. They have been found in burial sites in Southern Russia, at Sintashta, east of the Ural mountains, also dated to 2000 BC. Composite bows (made of wood, bow and sinew) were invented around the same time, at the same place. This new military technology (horse, chariot, bow) spread to Egypt (indicated by wall art) in the east, Scandinavia (indicated by bronze statues) in the north and China (indicated in burial sites) and India (expressed in Vedic poetry) in the east by 1500 BC. With the horse-breeders, spread a new language Proto-Indo-European (PIE).The eastern migration saw the spread of a gene variant found only in Steppe pastoral men, present in Y-chromosome, identified as R1a-Z93. It is currently seen across Central Asia, Iran and amongst all Brahmins of India. Those with this gene have another mutation that enables adults to digest milk. North Indians can digest milk easily. South Indians prefer men who came bearing these genes referred to themselves as Arya or noble (this term was appropriated by racist Europeans causing much academic confusion). Rig Vedic verse (Mandala 4, Sukta 24) refers to bargaining a fair price. These traders would have had to repeatedly return to Central Asia to fetch more horses as horses do not breed in India. A simple fact that most people miss. The monsoon climate is not conducive to horse Aryans were neither invaders, nor migrants. They were traders, probably with wives on either side of the mountain trade route. The mothers gave their children voiced aspirated consonants (gh, jh, h, dh, bh) and retroflex consonants (t, d, n, s).The spoked-wheel chariot pulled by horses could carry two men: a driver and an archer. This image is immortalised in the Bhagavad Gita, with Krishna holding the reins of four white horses, and Arjuna holding his mighty bow, the Gandiva. Both riders blow conch-shells. The Rig Veda does not mention this conch-shell; the Atharva Veda does. They are only found off the Gujarat coast, in the Indian ocean. Recent excavations in Keeladi, Tamil Nadu, are drawing attention to iron smelting technology that was invented in India, in regions associated with Dravidian and Munda languages. This requires very high temperatures. Sites in Deccan have ash-mounds indicating a long-standing enquiry into fire-technology. Along with Anatolia (modern Turkey) and Africa (Bantu people), India seems to be another site where iron was first extracted. This could be a good reason why Aryans came to India from the Oxus river basin through treacherous mountain passes (not flat enough for wheeled wagons).Horse breeding in India came very late, after 1400 AD, in parts of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Maharashtra. So for nearly 3,000 years, every year, horse breeders would bring their horses from Central Asia for local Indian kings, who would use the horse in war, to conquer new lands, and even slaughter them as part of land acquisition ceremonies (Ashwamedha). Traders had no reason to 'invade' or 'migrate' to India. They had to go back to fetch more horses from Central Asia where horse breeding was easy. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. Tariffs, tantrums, and tech: How Trump's trade drama is keeping Indian IT on tenterhooks Good, bad, ugly: How will higher ethanol in petrol play out for you? As big fat Indian wedding slims to budget, Manyavar loses lustre As 50% US tariff looms, 6 key steps that can safeguard Indian economy Stock Radar: JSPL forms Ascending Triangle pattern on weekly charts, could hit fresh 52-week high soon Nifty and business are different species: 5 small-cap stocks from different sectors with upside potential of up to 30% F&O Radar | Deploy Bear Put Spread in Nifty to play index's negative stance amid volatility Wealth creation: Look beyond the obvious in some things; 10 fertilizer sector companies worth watching
