Six people died after a sightseeing floatplane carrying cruise ship passengers crashed in southeast Alaska on Thursday, authorities said. Everyone on board the de Havilland Beaver was killed in the crash in the Misty Fjords area, the U.S. Coast Guard said. An emergency beacon was activated around 11:20 a.m., and a search helicopter found the wreckage on a ridgeline at 2:37 p.m. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the victims and with our guests and team members who are affected by this tragedy," cruise line Holland America said in a statement. The plane was owned by Southeast Aviation, a private company, and the excursion was not sold by Holland America cruise line, the cruise company said.  

National Guard Civil Support Team units from twelve different states recently participated in a statewide training effort at various training locations in Anchorage, Seward, and the Mat-Su Valley. National Guard teams executed Exercise ORCA 2021 along with partnering local, state, and federal agencies and organizations with approximately 250 people involved from May 17 through May 20, according to a recent press release. The ORCA training program was created to give participants the opportunity to respond to hazardous materials incidents, test interoperability between the agencies, increase working relationships, and practice requests for assistance methods. "We're conducting an all-hazards, multi-CST, multi-agency exercise," Col. Anthony Mortrud, commander of the 103rd Civil Support Team, Alaska National Guard stated in the press release. "This particular exercise is the largest chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear exercise held in Alaska."  

VIDEO: Jon Stewart is featured in the trailer for No Responders Left Behind, a new documentary on the fight for first responders of the September 11th attacks to receive healthcare benefits. The documentary is largely focused on the work of activist John Feal and his FealGood Foundation, which has worked to reclaim healthcare rights for the thousands of first responders who are suffering from life-threatening and debilitating illnesses due to the toxins released at Ground Zero on 9/11. "I see these guys, married with kids, who are losing their houses, their health," Feal says in a scene in front of the 9/11 Memorial in New York. In solidarity with Feal, Stewart fiercely spoke out against the failures of Congress to help 9/11 survivors in a highly publicized 2019 hearing. "When something like this takes this long, and is this hard, something is wrong with that system," Stewart notes later in an on-camera interview.  

VIDEO/PHOTOS: Officials are calling a fire that destroyed several vehicles and damaged a Decatur apartment building suspicious. Crews arrived at about 2:15 a.m. Thursday in the 500 block of West Macon Street. A dashcam video released Thursday afternoon by the Decatur Fire Department shows firefighters arriving to find a carport ablaze and thick, black smoke rising into the night sky. Overhead power and cable lines were on fire, as were the vehicles parked under the enclosure. "Crews deployed attack lines to extinguish the fire and protect the apartment building from fire spread," Deputy Fire Chief Jim Ohl said in a statement. "The parking garage was heavily damaged and the apartment building only had minor heat damage and was not involved in the fire."  

PHOTOS: Due to their construction that features a large primary battery and high-voltage wiring, electric cars need to be approached differently by emergency services in the event of an accident. For instance, first responders have to know where they should attempt to cut in order to free trapped occupants, and the XC40 Recharge will help them practice quick and safe extrication procedures. Present at the handover event, alongside Volvo USA's President and CEO, Anders Gustafsson, and VP of the Northeast Region, Eric Miller, Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro thanked the Swedish automaker for the donation.  

VIDEO: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Mana Mobile food truck is making a few stops in St. Louis as part of a nationwide tour to celebrate first responders. Thursday afternoon it was parked at the fire station downtown. The Rock's food truck pulled up a little before 4 p.m. Firefighters at St. Louis Fire Department House No. 2 have been enjoying the complimentary tacos. This is all part of The Great American Mana Mobile Road Trip where they are making stops in towns, communities, and cities across the country. Stops include military bases, firehouses, and hospitals to show gratitude to our first responders. Also along the way, the Mana Mobile will be stopping at main streets across America to help encourage people to support local businesses, many of which have been hit hard by the pandemic.  

VIDEO: Doctors and the CDC report that the Delta variant of COVID-19 spreads as easily as chickenpox, but what exactly does that look like when it's transmitted from person to person? Dr. James Lawler sees patients at Nebraska Medicine on a daily basis. He explained in simple terms, if someone is infected with the COVID-19 Delta variant, it attaches to cells in our respiratory system, lining our airways and our lungs. Dr. Lawler said the variant then "hijacks" the cell, causing it to spread to others quickly. "What happens is it releases its RNA," Dr. Lawler said while in front of a big screen of 3-D animations. "The cell then uses its ribosome to turn that RNA into virus protein." He went on to explain how these steps lead to infection, "The virus is essentially hijacking the cell to turn it into a virus factory. This is making thousands and thousands of copies of viruses in the golgi apparatus and turns into new virus particles and variants, and then, they come out of this cell and go on to infect other cells."