A small passenger aircraft travelling from Kenya’s coastal city of Diani to the Maasai Mara National Park crashed early Tuesday, killing all 11 people on board, including foreign nationals, according to the airline.

The plane, operated by Mombasa Air Safari, was headed for Kichwa Tembo — an airstrip inside the popular Maasai Mara reserve — when it went down around 5:30 a.m. local time (0230 GMT).

Confirming the incident, the chairman of Mombasa Air Safari, John Cleave, said the aircraft had 10 passengers — eight Hungarians and two Germans — alongside a Kenyan pilot.

“Sadly, there are no survivors,” Cleave stated, citing preliminary information. “We have activated our emergency response team and are cooperating fully with the authorities.”

He added that the company’s thoughts and prayers were with the families and loved ones of those affected by the crash.

An earlier statement from the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) reported that the plane had been carrying 12 people at the time of the crash, though the discrepancy has yet to be clarified.

The KCAA said relevant government agencies were already at the scene to determine the cause of the accident.

In a similar incident in August, a light aircraft operated by medical charity Amref crashed near Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, killing six people and injuring two others.

Credit: AFP

Tech giants Meta and TikTok have confirmed they will comply with Australia’s new law banning users under the age of 16 from social media platforms — even as both companies warned that enforcing the measure would be challenging.

Under the new rule, set to take effect on December 10, social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok will be required to remove users below 16 years from their services.

The policy has drawn global attention as regulators around the world grapple with how to protect minors from online risks while balancing access and privacy concerns.

Both TikTok and Meta acknowledged the government’s authority but cautioned that enforcing the law would be technically difficult.

“Put simply, TikTok will comply with the law and meet our legislative obligations,” said Ella Woods-Joyce, TikTok’s Australia policy lead, during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

While the law is considered one of the strictest worldwide, Australian authorities are still ironing out key details about how it will be implemented and monitored.

TikTok described the ban as “blunt,” warning it could drive young users to unregulated corners of the internet.

“Experts believe a ban will push younger people into darker corners of the Internet where protections don’t exist,” Woods-Joyce added.

‘Vague’ and ‘Rushed’

Meta’s policy director Mia Garlick told lawmakers the company was working to remove hundreds of thousands of underage accounts before the December 10 deadline but described the task as complex.

She said Meta faced “significant new engineering and age assurance challenges” to identify and remove accounts belonging to users under 16.

“The goal from our perspective, being compliance with the law, would be to remove those under 16,” she noted.

Officials have clarified that social media companies will not be mandated to verify every user’s age but must take “reasonable steps” to detect and deactivate underage accounts.

Violating the regulation could attract penalties of up to Aus$49.5 million (US$32 million).

Several tech firms have criticized the legislation as “vague,” “problematic,” and “rushed.”

Video platform YouTube, also affected by the ban, said that while Australia’s intentions were good, the approach was flawed.

“The legislation will not only be extremely difficult to enforce, but it also does not fulfill its promise of making kids safer online,” said YouTube’s local spokesperson Rachel Lord.

Australia’s online safety watchdog has also hinted that other platforms — including WhatsApp, Twitch, and Roblox — could fall under the scope of the new law.

Credit: AFP

Amazon will lay off tens of thousands of office workers as the e-commerce and technology giant cuts costs amid growing investments in artificial intelligence, according to multiple US media reports.

About 30,000 positions are expected to be affected in the job reduction exercise, which is set to begin on Tuesday, reports from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and other outlets indicated, citing anonymous sources.

The move represents nearly 10 percent of Amazon’s 350,000 office jobs, though it will not affect the company’s much larger distribution and warehouse workforce, which accounts for most of its 1.5 million employees worldwide.

Seattle-based Amazon did not immediately respond to inquiries from AFP regarding the reported layoffs.

Shares of Amazon closed slightly higher on Monday as news of the potential cost-cutting spread across markets.

Amazon’s Chief Executive Officer, Andy Jassy, has repeatedly emphasized the company’s focus on AI as a major driver of efficiency and innovation.

“Our conviction that AI will change every customer experience is starting to play out,” Jassy said during the company’s last quarterly earnings call.

Amazon, which will report earnings on Thursday, is under pressure — alongside other major tech firms — to demonstrate tangible returns from its large-scale AI investments.

According to Sky Canaves, Principal Analyst at Emarketer, Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), will be closely watched for performance.

“AWS will be under pressure to both show revenue acceleration and operating margin improvement in light of its massive AI investments,” Canaves said.

The layoffs come shortly after Amazon experienced a significant AWS outage that disrupted internet access for millions of users worldwide.

Popular platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Airbnb, Snapchat, Fortnite, and Duolingo, were among the services affected, while messaging apps Signal and WhatsApp experienced disruptions in parts of Europe, according to Downdetector.

Some banks, including Lloyd’s, also reported interruptions linked to the cloud service failure.

Amazon later said the issue had been traced to a Domain Name System (DNS) error — the online infrastructure that directs internet traffic.

AWS remains the global leader in cloud computing, ahead of Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, and serves as a backbone for businesses, governments, and digital services around the world.