Spanish Citizen Who Died in Hudson River Helicopter Crash Was Siemens Executive
The Consulate General of Spain in New York confirmed on Friday that five Spanish citizens — two parents and their three children — had died in the crash. Spanish officials identified the executive as Agustín Escobar.
Officials have not named his wife or their children.
President Pedro Sánchez of Spain described the accident — in which a sightseeing helicopter plunged into the Hudson River, killing everyone onboard — as 'an unimaginable tragedy.'
'I share the grief of the victims' loved ones at this heartbreaking time,' Mr. Sánchez said on social media in the early hours of Friday.
The helicopter was touring New York City when it tumbled out of the sky and crashed into the river.
Two of the passengers were alive when divers pulled them from the frigid water, but they later died, New York City's police commissioner, Jessica S. Tisch, said at a news conference.
The pilot was also killed.
The cause of the crash is under investigation, the police commissioner said.
Mr. Escobar was born in Puertollano, a small city in central Spain, Emiliano García-Page, the region's leader, said on social media. The region had celebrated his achievements in 2023, naming him a 'favorite son.'
On Friday morning, Mayor Miguel Ángel Ruiz of Puertollano said in a statement that the city 'mourns the loss of one of its most brilliant sons.'
Mr. Escobar led Siemens' rail infrastructure division from the company's Berlin office, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before that, he was the president and chief executive of Siemens Spain and previously worked for the technology giant in the United States and Brazil.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
17 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Trump's federal law-enforcement crackdown ripples through D.C. neighborhoods
WASHINGTON — The main drag in Washington's Columbia Heights neighborhood is typically crammed with people peddling pupusas, fresh fruit, souvenirs and clothing. On Tuesday, though, things felt different: The white tents that bulge with food and merchandise were scarcer than usual. 'Everything has stopped over the last week,' said Yassin Yahyaoui, who sells jewelry and glass figurines. Most of his customers and fellow vendors, he said, have 'just disappeared' — particularly if they speak Spanish. The abnormally quiet street was further proof of how President Trump's decision to flood the nation's capital with federal law enforcement and immigration agents has rippled through the city. Although troop deployments and foot patrols in downtown areas and around the National Mall have garnered the most attention, life in historically diverse neighborhoods such as Columbia Heights is being reshaped as well. The White House has credited Trump's crackdown with hundreds of arrests, while local officials have criticized the aggressive intervention in the city's affairs. The confrontation escalated Tuesday as the top federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia opened an investigation into whether police officials have falsified crime data, according to a person familiar with the situation who wasn't authorized to comment publicly. The inquiry could be used to bolster Trump's claims that the city is suffering from a 'crime emergency' despite statistics showing improvements. The mayor's office and the Police Department declined to comment. Blocks away from where Yahyaoui had set up shop, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local police stopped a moped driver delivering pizza. The agents drove unmarked cars and wore tactical vests; one covered his face with a green balaclava. They questioned the driver and required him to present documentation relating to his employment and legal residency status. No arrest was made. The White House said there have been 465 arrests since Aug. 7, when the federal operation began, including 206 people who were in the country illegally. The Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement and the president signed an executive order on Aug. 11 to put the Police Department under federal control for 30 days; extending that would require congressional approval. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Trump was 'unapologetically standing up for the safety of law-abiding American citizens.' Glorida Gomez, who has been working a fruit stand in Columbia Heights for more than a decade, said business is worse now than during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said many vendors stopped coming because they were afraid of encountering federal agents. Customers seem less willing to spend money too. Reina Sosa, another vendor, said that 'they're saving it in case something happens,' like getting detained by immigration enforcement. Ana Lemus, who also sells fruit, said that 'we need more humanity on that part of the government.' 'Remember that these are people being affected,' she said. 'The government is supposed to protect members of the community, not attack or discriminate against them.' Bystanders have recorded some arrests on video. On Saturday morning, Christian Enrique Carias Torres was detained in another part of the city during a scuffle with ICE agents, and the video ricocheted around social media. An FBI agent's affidavit said Carias Torres kicked one of the agents in the leg and another was injured when he fell during the struggle and struck his head on the pavement. A stun gun was used to subdue Carias Torres, who was charged Tuesday with resisting arrest. An alphabet soup of federal agencies have been circulating in the city. In the Petworth neighborhood, roughly 20 officers from the FBI, Homeland Security, Park Police and U.S. Marshals descended on an apartment building on Tuesday morning. A man extended his hands out a window while officers cuffed him. Yanna Stelle, 19, who witnessed the incident, said she heard the chatter from walkie-talkies as officers moved through the hallways. 'That was too many police first thing in the morning — especially for them to just be doing a warrant,' she said. From his actions and remarks, Trump seems interested in ratcheting up the pressure. His administration has asked Republican-led states to send more National Guard troops. Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio have agreed to deploy a total of 1,100 troops to the city, on top of the 800 from the D.C.-based National Guard. Resistance to that notion is starting to surface, both on the streets and in Congress. On Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-San José) introduced a bill that would require a report outlining the cost of any National Guard deployment unrelated to a natural disaster, as well as its legal basis. It would also require reporting on any Guard interactions with civilians and other aspects of the operation. Forty-four Democrats have signed on in support, including Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington's nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives. Although the measure stands little chance of passing while Republicans control the chamber, it's a sign of a wider Democratic response to Trump's unprecedented moves in Washington. 'Are L.A. and D.C. a test run for a broader authoritarian takeover of local communities?' Liccardo asked. He added that the country's founders were suspicious of 'executive control of standing armies.' Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said that 'Democrats continue to side with criminals over law-abiding Americans.' It's unclear what kind of help the National Guard will be able to provide when it comes to crime. 'The fact of the matter is that the National Guard are not law-enforcement trained, and they're not going into places where they would be engaged in law enforcement activity,' said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and consultant at AH Datalytics. 'So I don't know that it's fair to expect much of it.' Trump declared in a social media post that his initiative has transformed Washington from 'the most unsafe 'city' in the United States' to 'perhaps the safest, and getting better every single hour!' The number of crimes reported in D.C. did drop by about 8% this week as compared with the week before, according to Metropolitan Police data. There was some variation within that data, with crimes such as robberies and car thefts declining while burglaries increased a bit and homicides remained steady. Still, a week is a small sample size — far from enough time for data to show meaningful shifts, Asher said. Referring to the monthlong period that D.C.'s home rule law allows the president to exert control over the Police Department, he said: 'I think 30 days is too short of a period to really say anything.' Brown, Whitehurst and Megerian write for the Associated Press. AP writers Michael Kunzelman, Alanna Durkin Richer, Jacquelyn Martin and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Elon Musk's teen prodigy Kairan Quazi is ditching SpaceX for billionaire Ken Griffin's Citadel Securities
At just 16 years old, Kairan Quazi has already gained accolades most engineers spend decades accumulating. He graduated from college, helped design software for SpaceX Starlink satellites, and turned down offers from Silicon Valley's buzzy AI labs. Now, the prodigy is taking his next leap—not in Silicon Valley, but on Wall Street, where he's joining Citadel Securities, a liquidity provider, as a quant developer. A defiant attitude Quazi's path has been unconventional from the start. At 9, he left third grade for community college, went on to intern at Intel Labs at 10, and transferred to Santa Clara University at 11, eventually becoming the youngest graduate in its 172-year history. In 2023, he made headlines when Elon Musk's SpaceX hired him at just 14 years old. A 'rare company,' Quazi said at the time, that didn't use his age as an 'arbitrary and outdated proxy for maturity and ability.' The same year, he sparred with Microsoft-owned LinkedIn after it locked him out of the platform for being under 16, blasting the decision as 'illogical, primitive nonsense.' In fact, Quazi has never been shy about critiquing the traditional system that held him back. Once LinkedIn allowed him back on to their platform, Quazi posted a comment slamming the conventional school system. The 16-year-old argued that 'tests are not used to measure mastery, but the ability to regurgitate' and that the modern 'school factory' rewards fear and prestige-chasing over learning. 'Age, privilege, and unconscious (sometimes even conscious) biases are used to gatekeep opportunities,' he wrote, adding that philosophers like Seneca the Younger and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius might have seen today's education system as dangerous. Two years later, Quazi is channeling that same defiance into a different arena. He turned down offers from top AI startups and tech firms to join Citadel Securities this week in New York, citing the firm's culture of meritocracy and instant feedback. 'Quant finance offers a pretty rare combination: the complexity and intellectual challenge that AI research also provides, but with a much faster pace,' he told Business Insider. At Citadel Securities he said, he'll be able to see the results of his work in 'days, not months or years.' A win-win Citadel Securities—sister company to the well-known Citadel—for its part, has every reason to trumpet the win. The firm, which handles roughly 35% of U.S. retail stock trades and generated nearly $10 billion in revenue in 2024, is locked in a talent war with the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. Recruiting a prodigy who was once deemed too young for LinkedIn—but now works at the intersection of engineering and quantitative problem-solving—is a symbolic coup for Ken Griffin's trading powerhouse. For Quazi, the move also closes a personal loop. His mother worked in mergers and acquisitions as an investment banker, giving him early exposure to finance. And on campus, he saw how coveted quant jobs had become for math and computer-science students. 'It's one of the most prestigious industries you could go into as a computer scientist or mathematician,' he told Business Insider. Now, he's living that reality in New York City. Quazi has moved into an apartment just a 10-minute walk from Citadel Securities' Park Avenue office. 'New York has a very special place in my heart,' he said, noting that his mom grew up in Astoria, Queens. Unlike his time at SpaceX, where his mother had to drive him to work in Redmond, Wash., Quazi's commute is now his own: first on foot, and soon, by subway. 'I felt ready to take on new challenges and expand my skill set into a different high-performance environment,' he said. 'Citadel Securities offered a similarly ambitious culture, but also a completely new domain, which is very exciting for me.' Jackie Scharnick, Citadel's communications director, said Quazi would pass on an interview with Fortune so he could 'focus on his second day of work.' This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
MySize Credits Percentil Acquisition for Q2 Revenue Bump
Fashion technology company MySize said its acquisition of Spanish secondhand fashion marketplace Percentil helped the company achieve an increase in revenue for the second quarter of 2025. In the company's earnings report, MySize reported a 2 percent increase in revenue year-over-year for the three months ending June 30, bringing in $2 million. But its revenue for the six months ending June 30 was down year-over-year by 30 percent to $3.5 million, which MySize attributed to a decrease in sales for its fashion and equipment e-commerce division, Orgad, due to market changes. More from Sourcing Journal Impact and Profit Go Hand-in-Hand, ThredUp Impact Report Finds One in Five UK Consumers May Stop Shopping Online Over Cyberattacks This is What Trump's New AI Action Plan Says About American Jobs and Manufacturing Gross profit over the three-month period was up 14 percent to $1.1 million year-over-year, but down 30 percent for the six-month period to $1.5 million. MySize reported an operating loss of $586,000 for the second quarter, a 49 percent improvement from the same period in 2024. For the first two quarters combined, operating losses were $1.6 million, a 25 percent improvement over the same time last year. MySize's cash position sits at $4.28 million as of June 30, with $2.90 million in inventory. Percentil contributed $180,000 in revenue since its acquisition in May. And MySize said that it believes Percentil will continue to push the company forward, due to its operation in Spain and across Europe, directly in the path of the EU's Circular Economy Action Plan and Extended Producer Responsibility for textiles. With legislation forcing brands to manage the full lifecycle of their products, including take-back, recycling and repair, the Percentil acquisition provides a ready-made platform for compliance. 'We are focused on building long-term value while delivering operational progress each quarter,' said Ronen Luzon, founder and CEO of MySize. 'The EU is rewriting fashion's rulebook. Percentil is designed to help brands comply with these new standards and unlock new opportunities for growth.' Percentil's platform includes AI-powered product matching, garment grading and logistics integration that Luzon said will better position MySize to take advantage of the changing circularity landscape in fashion. 'Some companies see regulation as a hurdle. We see it as the competitive advantage,' Luzon said. 'In five years, we believe European fashion resale will not be a niche—it will be the infrastructure of the industry. We intend Percentil to be at the center of that infrastructure, enabling brands to comply, delight customers, and operate profitably in a circular economy.' MySize acquired Percentil in May for around 610,000 euros (approximately $679,000), and at the time, the company said it expected the Percentil business to generate $1.5 million in revenue during the second half of 2025. That would represent a a projected 25 percent increase to the company's total revenue. The company said it still expects Percentil's contributions to accelerate during the second half of this year, driven by brand partnerships and regulatory compliance demand. MySize recently transitioned fulfillment for its Orgad division to Fulfillment by Amazon, which lowered logistics costs and improved delivery efficiency. The company said that plays directly into its three-segment strategy of SaaS sizing solutions (MySizeID and NaizFit), fashion and equipment e-commerce (Orgad) and apparel resale (Percentil). Looking forward, MySize said its triple-revenue model will allow it to create operational synergies and recurring cash flow that it will need to be successful for the remainder of this year and beyond. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
