A passenger plane crashed at an airport in India’s western city of Ahmedabad, Indian media reported Thursday.

Images from the scene showed thick black smoke rising up into the sky.

It was not immediately clear how many people were on board or the number of casualties.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Thousands of activists from around the world are expected to descend on Egypt on Thursday for a “Global March to Gaza,” a movement aiming to break the Israeli blockade that has pushed the territory to the brink of famine.

The march puts Egypt in an awkward position as it tries to balance its ties with Israel and the United States against its public condemnation of the war’s brutal toll on Gaza’s civilians. A key mediator with direct channels to both Hamas and Israel, Cairo has been wary of the conflict spilling over into its territory. It has kept its side of the Rafah crossing closed to Palestinians, even as anger at Israel’s actions continues to rise at home.

In a statement Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he expects the Egyptian government “to prevent the arrival of jihadist demonstrators to the border of Egypt-Israel and not to allow them to carry out provocations and to try to enter into Gaza.”

This will “endanger the security of IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers and we will not allow it,” Katz added.

The international activists will be joined by another convoy of 2,000 protesters arriving from Tunisia. That group arrived in Libya, which neighbors Egypt, on Wednesday, organizers said.

Among those joining the march are Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela, a former South African lawmaker and grandson of Nelson Mandela, and Hala Rharrit, a former US State Department diplomat who resigned from her US government position during the Biden administration over Washington’s handling of the Gaza war.

As Israel’s war in Gaza enters its 21st month, high-profile international campaigners are becoming increasingly active in their attempt to break the siege.

On Monday, Israel intercepted a Gaza-bound aid ship, the “Madleen,” detaining its passengers and taking them to Israel.

Among the activists on board was Swedish climate and human rights activist Greta Thunberg and French member of the European Parliament Rima Hassan. Thunberg departed Israel on Tuesday and Hassan remains in Israeli detention.

Israel imposed a full humanitarian blockade of Gaza on March 2, cutting off food, medical supplies and other aid to the more than 2 million Palestinians in the territory for 11 weeks.

Faced with growing international pressure, it began allowing a trickle of aid in late May. But humanitarian organizations say it is only a fraction of the aid that entered the enclave before the war.

Organizers of the Global March to Gaza have said that they have reached out to Egyptian authorities, informing them of their plans and asking for cooperation and protection but have received no response.

The Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement that activists must obtain permits ahead of their arrival in Cairo.

“Egypt stresses the importance of adhering to these established regulatory measures to ensure the safety of visiting delegations due to the sensitive security conditions in this border area since the onset of the crisis in Gaza,” the ministry said, adding that “that no requests or invitations will be considered or responded to if submitted outside the framework specified by the regulatory provisions.”

Organizers said they followed “all the required protocols detailed in this statement.”

On Thursday, organizers said 170 people are currently facing delays and deportations at Cairo airport, but that thousands of participants are already in Egypt and are determined to continue their march.

Egyptian authorities “have no reason not to support this march,” Rharrit said, adding that delegations across the world had informed Egyptian embassies of their plan well ahead of time.

“There have been meetings with Egyptian ambassadors. Egyptian authorities have not said no,” she said, adding that the march is “in line with everything Egypt has been trying to do diplomatically.”

A huge collection of historic gold coins, recovered from the wall of a house in France after their owner passed away, has been sold for millions of euros at auction.

The coins were collected by Paul Narce, who lived in a small village in south-west France until his death in 2024, according to Beaussant Lefèvre and Associates.

“Narce, who lived a modest life and didn’t see a lot of the world, spent all of his money on his collection,” said coin expert Thierry Parsy in a statement previewing the sale.

Over the years, he built up a collection of gold coins “exceptional both in number, with more than 1,000 pieces, as well as the rarities it contains,” said Parsy.

Many of the coins date back centuries, according to Parsy.

Among them are ancient coins from the Kingdom of Macedonia, dating to 336-323 BC, as well as almost complete series of coins used during the reigns of French Kings Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Narce had no direct descendants and only a few people knew of his hobby.

However, no one knew where he kept his collection, which “could have remained undiscovered forever,” said Parsy, were it not for a notary who set out to find the coins in the house, which had been empty since Narce moved into a care home a year before he died.

The notary eventually found the coins in a small space in the wall, hidden behind a painting in a store room.

In addition to the carefully labelled collection, the notary also found 10 packages, each containing 172 gold 20 franc coins, equivalent to an ingot of gold.

The final sale far exceeded the pre-auction estimate of 2 million euros ($2.43 million).

Western countries have slashed foreign aid budgets this year and reductions will steepen in 2026, with the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada cutting the most, according to a new analysis from the Center for Global Development (CGD).

Smaller nations will also be hammered by the reduction in foreign aid, with Lesotho, Micronesia and Eswatini each losing around 50% of their aid.

The analysis looked at projections of bilateral aid – money provided directly to another country rather than routed through multilateral organizations such as United Nations agencies or the World Bank – for 2025 and 2026.

The US is projected to cut the most, with a projected 56% reduction compared to levels two years ago.

The Trump administration’s gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year has already left a hole in many international aid budgets, and several other Western nations are following suit rather than filling the void.

“A big, big chunk of overall cuts in the next couple of years are going to be from the US pulling out, rather than other countries. But these other countries are making things worse,” said Crawfurd, a senior research fellow at the CGD.

The UK aid cuts are estimated to represent a roughly 39% reduction compared to 2023 levels of spending. Meanwhile, Germany is cutting about 27%, Canada 25% and France 19% of their international aid budgets.

The true level of aid cuts remains unclear, as the Trump administration’s proposed budget and other government proposals are still making their way through legislatures. But some funding cuts are almost guaranteed.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in February that his government would increase the UK’s defense spending by cutting its aid budget to 0.3% of gross national income in 2027, its lowest level since 1999.

Many organizations and aid workers have raised alarm about European governments pitting aid budgets against defense spending.

“Cutting the already lean aid budget is a false economy and will only increase division and amounts to a betrayal of the world’s most vulnerable people,” said Halima Begum, head of Oxfam GB. “It is a false dichotomy to pit international cooperation to tackle poverty against national security interests in order to avoid tax increases.”

Crawfurd said that bilateral aid is a “really small part of government budgets” and the money for defense or security could be found elsewhere. “It’s a choice… it’s a political choice,” he added.

The think tank wrote in its analysis that “one striking takeaway is that some countries are projected to lose large amounts of ODA (official development assistance) simply because of who their main donors are – while others are projected to lose very little” – a game of chance, with losses not matching up to the recipient country’s needs.

Yemen, for example, is projected to experience a 19% fall in its bilateral funding compared to 2023, while its “comparable” neighbor country Somalia is projected to lose about 39%.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has also warned that multilateral aid cuts are threatening efforts to tackle 44 of the highest-priority, protracted humanitarian crises. As of April, only 11.9% of the funding for UN response plans had been covered.

Minimizing the damage

The CGD is urging Western donors to reallocate aid to the poorest countries to try to “ensure that resources are directed to populations in greatest need.”

Western countries also need to improve coordination to mitigate further damage, especially as they are withdrawing from countries receiving aid, the think tank said.

In some countries, the cuts will change who the largest donor is, which “can lead to major shifts in what gets funded and how,” according to the CGD. For example, Portugal will likely overtake the US in aid to Angola, and Japan is projected to overtake France in Egypt. “A new lead donor may not continue the same programs” or may take time to get up and running, according to the analysis.

Giving a larger share of aid to multilateral organizations can also help improve international cooperation and cut down on duplication of aid efforts.

An Air India plane bound for London carrying 242 people crashed shortly after take-off in western India on Thursday.

Videos showed a huge plume of black smoke billowing into the sky. Rescue workers have scrambled to put out the fire and search for potential survivors.

Here’s what we know.

What happened and when?

The flight, AI171, took off at 1:39 p.m. local time (4:09 a.m. ET) from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in India’s western state of Gujarat, according to a statement from India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation. It was headed to London Gatwick, and scheduled to land at 6:25 p.m. local time (1:25 p.m. ET).

But shortly after take-off, the plane gave a Mayday call to air traffic control (ATC), the Indian civil aviation authorities said.

“Thereafter no response was given by the aircraft to the calls made by ATC. Aircraft immediately after departure from Runway 23, fell on ground outside the airport perimeter,” the statement said.

The plane had reached an altitude of 625 feet when its signal was lost, according to data from flight tracker FlightRadar24.

Videos showed the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner descending, before disappearing behind buildings and bursting into a fireball.

Gujarat is also the home state of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi was chief minister of the state from 2001 to 2014.

The plane hit a hostel for doctors when it crashed, with images showing the tail of the plane protruding from the building. In the debris-strewn street below, rescue workers rushed to put out the flames and search among the charred wreckage for survivors.

What plane was involved?

The crash is the first major incident involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner since the aircraft first came into service in 2011, according to the aircraft maker.

Boeing said it is “working to gather more information” about the crash.

The manufacturer said there are more than 1,175 Dreamliner passenger aircrafts in service, accounting for 2,100 flights each day.

Shares in Boeing tanked by more than 7% in pre-market trade Thursday following the crash of one of its passenger aircraft in India.

Stocks in many other airlines also fell, including London-listed IAG – the parent company of British Airways. Shares in Germany’s Lufthansa, United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines also fell on Thursday.

Who was on board?

Air India said there were 169 Indian nationals on the flight, in addition to 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian.

The UK and India have strong cultural ties and a complicated history dating back to Britain’s colonial era. There is a large Indian diaspora in the UK of about 1.9 million people – or 3.1% of the population – according to the latest census data in 2021.

The Ahmedabad city police commissioner told the Associated Press that there appears to be no survivors from the crash.

Modi said the crash was “heartbreaking beyond words” and that he was in touch with the authorities involved in the disaster. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the scenes were “devastating.”

Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Air India, said the carrier was “doing everything in our power to assist the emergency response teams at the site and to provide all necessary support and care to those impacted.”

How rare are incidents like this?

If the death toll is confirmed the crash is the deadliest worldwide since 2014 when a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

Air India was bought by Indian multinational conglomerate Tata Group in 2022, and was widely regarded as a historic homecoming. Originally founded by J.R.D. Tata in 1932 before being nationalized in 1953, the deal marked the return of Air India to its original owners after nearly 70 years of government control.

Prior to the purchase, Air India was seen as a struggling, debt-ridden airline. The carrier has seen a few rare but high-profile plane crashes in recent years.

In 2020, at least 18 people died in 2020 after an Air India Express plane – a wholly owned subsidiary of Air India – crashed in the southern state of Kerala after skidding off the runway.

In 2018, an Air India Boeing 737 aircraft was damaged after hitting an airport wall during takeoff.

And in 2010, 158 people were killed after an Air India plane crashed after the jet overshot a runway in southern India.

These incidents spurred Indian authorities to improve safety and infrastructure, but challenges remain, including airspace congestion.

Since Air India’s 2022 acquisition, the airline has undergone a significant transformation and modernization effort as it looks to tap into the demand of India’s burgeoning middle class.