Over 1000 competitors have taken the plunge, with 90 securing their place in the final.

Tony Looker was eventually stopped by police who found $113,000 in cash and 44g of meth.

A second event hours later was cancelled over fears over more violence.

The crew of the Army helicopter that collided in midair with an American Airlines jet near Washington, DC’s Ronald Reagan National Airport may have had inaccurate altitude readings in the moments before the crash, and also may not have heard key instructions from air traffic controllers to move behind the plane, investigators said yesterday.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy told reporters that the recording from the Black Hawk helicopter cockpit suggested an incomplete radio transmission may have left the crew without understanding how it should shift position just before the January 29 crash, in which all 67 aboard the two aircraft were killed.

“That transmission was interrupted -– it was stepped on,” she said, leaving them unable to hear the words “pass behind the” because the helicopter's microphone key was pressed at the same moment.

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The helicopter pilots may have also missed part of another communication, when the tower said the jet was turning toward a different runway, she said.

Homendy said the helicopter was on a “check" flight that night where the pilot was undergoing an annual test and a test on using night vision goggles.

Investigators believe the crew was wearing night vision goggles throughout the flight.

It will take more than a year to get the final NTSB report on the collision, and Homendy warned reporters that many issues were still being probed.

“We're only a couple weeks out,” from the crash, she said.

“We have a lot of work to do.”

The collision was the deadliest plane crash in the US since 2001, when a jet slammed into a New York City neighbourhood just after takeoff, killing all 260 people on board and five more on the ground.

William Waldock, professor of safety science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said stepped-on transmissions — where a pressed microphone key blocks incoming communication — is a well-known problem in aviation.

“It’s an old story and it’s one of the problems oftentimes with radio communications," he said.

It's unclear, though, if that led to the crash.

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Retired airline pilot John Cox, chief executive of the aviation safety consulting firm Safety Operating Systems, said the helicopter’s pilots had accepted responsibility to avoid the plane two minutes earlier when they asked for and received permission to maintain "visual separation” with the jet — allowing it to fly closer than otherwise may have been allowed if the pilots didn’t see the plane.

“At that moment, the helicopter becomes responsible for separation, period. He accepts the responsibility of staying clear of the other aircraft,” Cox said.

If the helicopter pilots suspected they had missed any crucial information from the tower, they could have asked for it to be repeated.

Serious questions have yet to be answered about the helicopter's altimeters.

The collision likely occurred at an altitude just under 91 metres, as the plane descended toward the helicopter, which was well above its 61-metre limit for that location.

Cockpit conversations a few minutes before the crash indicated conflicting altitude data, Homendy said, with the helicopter’s pilot calling out that they were then at 91 metres, but the instructor pilot saying they were at 122 metres, Homendy said.

“We are looking at the possibility there may be bad data," she said.

That generation of Black Hawks typically has two types of altimeters — one relying on barometric pressure and the other on radio frequency signals bounced off the ground.

Helicopter pilots typically rely on barometric readings while flying, but the helicopter's black box captures its radio altitude.

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The radio altitude at the time of the impact put the Black Hawk at 85 meters, Homendy said.

“But I want to caution, that does not mean that’s what the Black Hawk crew was seeing on the barometric altimeters in the cockpit," she said.

Waldock said the helicopter pilots, with their night vision goggles interfering with their peripheral vision, may have wrongly focused on a plane that took off just before the collision.

“If they did indeed lock onto that departing airplane and assume that’s the traffic they were supposed to be avoiding, they didn’t see the other airplane coming," he said.

The jet also angled sharply upward in the last second before impact, Homendy said.

Waldock and Cox both saw that as a clear evasive maneuver by the American Airlines pilot.

“It’s a last-ditch attempt to escape,” said Waldock.

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The victims

The Army has said the Black Hawk crew was highly experienced and accustomed to the crowded skies around the nation's capital.

The Army identified the crew as Captain Rebecca Lobach of Durham, North Carolina; Staff Seargent Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia; and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland.

O’Hara was the crew chief and Eaves and Lobach were pilots.

Lobach's friends and fellow soldiers called her deeply meticulous, "brilliant and fearless".

The American Airlines jet, which was flying from Wichita, Kansas, and preparing to land at the time of the crash, was piloted by 34-year-old Jonathan Campos, whose relatives said he had dreamed of flying since he was three.

The jet’s passengers ranged from a group of hunters to students and parents from northern Virginia schools to members of the Skating Club of Boston.

They were returning from a development camp for elite junior skaters that followed the 2025 US Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.

Almost immediately after the crash, President Donald Trump publicly faulted the helicopter for flying too high.

He also blamed federal diversity and inclusion efforts, particularly regarding air traffic controllers.

When pressed by reporters, the president could not back up those claims.

A few days later, Trump placed the blame on what he called an “obsolete” air traffic control system.

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State Highway 7 is closed near Hope River Bridge because of the blaze.

Sahara Baker-Koro was killed in 2010 by her mother’s boyfriend Kerry Charles Ratana.

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An independent leading provider of not-at-fault accident replacement vehicles has analysed 20,562 combined internal reports.

The Gold Coast home of 9News presenter Dominique Loudon has been targeted by thieves.

Two people armed with a baseball bat and a tomahawk attempted to break into the Burleigh home of the journalist and soon-to-be mum and her husband, NRL legend Martin Lang yesterday morning.

Loudon said the attempted break-in made them sick to their stomachs.

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"[We were] so creeped out and shocked to see these two men with their faces covered just creeping around the front of our house looking for a way to get in," Loudon said.

"It was really confronting.

"I was also thinking, I'm pregnant, I'm having a baby in a month.

"If they came in, I don't know how I would protect myself."

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The pair broke into Loudon's car, ransacked it and took off with a remote control that opens the front gate.

Police are reminding residents to remove valuables from their cars, especially remotes that allow access to property.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a Russian drone struck the destroyed nuclear power plant at Chernobyl near Ukraine's border with Belarus on Thursday night.

Ukraine's State Emergency Service later said that the radiation background limits remain within normal limits.

"A Russian attack drone with a high-explosive warhead struck the shelter protecting the world from radiation at the destroyed 4th power unit" at the plant, Zelensky said on X.

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The concrete shelter that covers the unit was damaged, Zelensky added and a fire was extinguished.

"Radiation levels have not increased and are being constantly monitored.

According to initial assessments, the damage to the shelter is significant," Zelensky said.

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The International Atomic Energy Agency said on X that shortly before 2am local time its team at the Chernobyl site "heard an explosion coming from the New Safe Confinement, which protects the remains of reactor 4 of the former Chernobyl NPP, causing a fire."

"They were informed that a UAV [drone] had struck the NSC roof," the IAEA added.

Unit 4 at Chernobyl exploded in 1986, sending extensive clouds of radioactivity across parts of the Soviet Union and Europe.

It was later encased in a concrete and steel sarcophagus.

Altogether, on Thursday night, the Ukrainian military reported that Russia fired 133 drones at Ukraine, 73 of which were shot down and 58 did not reach their targets.

The numbers are broadly in line with the recent average of drone attacks.

It said drones were shot down in 11 regions, covering much of the country.

Zelensky said in his post that the nightly drone attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure meant that Russian President Vladimir Putin "is definitely not preparing for negotiations — he is preparing to continue deceiving the world."

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