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A former Nascar driver is believed to be among seven people killed in a plane crash at a regional airport in North Carolina, an official says.

A spokesperson for the highway patrol said that people on the ground confirmed that racer Greg Biffle was among those who boarded the aircraft.

The Cessna C550 crashed while landing at Statesville Regional Airport around 10:20 local time (15:20GMT), officials investigating the incident told reporters.

“Heartbreaking news out of Statesville,” North Carolina Governor Josh Stein posted on X. “Beyond his success as a NASCAR driver, Greg Biffle lived a life of courage and compassion and stepped up for western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.”

The Cessna C550 aircraft is owned by a private company associated with Greg Biffle, a retired Nascar driver, CBS, the BBC’s US partner, reported.

Professional baseball player Mitchell Garret wrote on Facebook that Biffle and his family were on their way to spend the afternoon with him.

“Unfortunately, I can confirm Greg Biffle, his wife Cristina, daughter Emma, and son Ryder were on that plane… because they were on their way to spend the afternoon with us,” he wrote on Facebook. “We are devastated. I’m so sorry to share this.”

Statesville Airport director John Ferguson described the aircraft as a corporate jet and said that it was already engulfed in flames when he arrived on the scene.

The business jet took off around 10:06 local time and was in the air briefly before the crash.

It crashed on the east end of the runway and authorities do not yet have information on the cause of the crash.

Statesville Airport will remain closed until further notice as crews clear debris off the runway, Mr Ferguson told reporters.

Officials did not provide any information about deaths or people aboard the aircraft during the media conference.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation, said it was launching a go team to investigate the fatal crash. The team expects to arrive on scene on Thursday night.

The Statesville Regional Airport (KSVH) is owned by the City of Statesville, which is about 45 minutes north of Charlotte.

It also provides aviation facilities for Fortune 500 companies and several Nascar racing teams.

Biffle, whose racing career spanned two decades, was named one of Nascar’s 75 Greatest Drivers in 2023. The 55-year-old won 19 Cup Series races in the Xfinity Series and Craftsman Truck Series.

Known as The Biff, the Vancouver, Washington, native received national notice in 1995 when during that year’s Nascar Winter Heat Series, according to his Nascar profile.

He made a name for himself in the Craftsman Truck Series, winning the 1998 Rookie of Year award and the 2000 series championship.

He went on to be named 2001 Rookie of the Year in the Xfinity Series and to win the 2002 championship, becoming the first driver with championships in both the Xfinity Series and the Truck Series.

He also co-founded the organisation’s Sand Outlaws Series. Although he scaled back on racing after 2016, he seemingly came out of retirement in 2019 for a one-off race at Texas Motor Speedway, which he won.

“Racing is racing,” he told Nascar.com in 2021. “It’s that adrenaline, you want to be better than the competition, you want to build a better piece and have a faster car. I just enjoy the competition.”

An HR executive caught on the big screen at a Coldplay concert embracing her boss has described how “the harassment has never ended” following the viral moment.

Kristin Cabot has spoken publicly for the first time about the video in which she was seen hugging Andy Byron, then-CEO of tech company Astronomer, at the show in July, before they abruptly ducked and hid from the camera.

Ms Cabot, 53, who was the company’s chief people officer, stepped down following Mr Byron’s resignation after the firm announced he would be placed on leave and investigated.

Speaking to the Times, Ms Cabot said she has been looking for another job but been told she is “unemployable”.

The video, which showed the pair swaying to music at the concert in Boston, Massachusetts, before trying to hide, quickly went viral, after Coldplay’s lead singer Chris Martin said to the crowd: “Either they’re having an affair, or they’re just very shy.”

It was watched millions of times, shared widely across platforms, and the pair became the butt of many jokes. Within a few days, the internet had moved on, but for Ms Cabot, her ordeal had only just begun.

“I became a meme, I was the most maligned HR manager in HR history,” Ms Cabot told The Times.

Ms Cabot was separated from her husband, who was also at the concert.

In a separate interview with the New York Times, she explained she was not in a sexual relationship with Mr Byron and the pair had never kissed before that night – although she admits to having had a “crush” on her boss.

“I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss,” she said, adding she “took accountability and I gave up my career for that”.

As to why she chose to speak out now, Ms Cabot told the Times “…it’s not over for me, and it’s not over for my kids. The harassment never ended”.

Her two children are too embarrassed to be picked up from school by their mother, she said, or to go to sports games.

“They’re mad at me. And they can be mad at me for the rest of their lives – I have to take that.”

Ms Cabot wondered whether Mr Byron had received the same level of abuse throughout the ordeal, the Times reported.

“I think as a woman, as women always do, I took the bulk of the abuse. People would say things like I was a ‘gold-digger’ or I ‘slept my way to the top’, which just couldn’t be further from reality,” she said.

“I worked so hard to dispel that all my life and here I was being accused of it.”

At the peak of the scandal, her appearance, body, face and clothes were scrutinised and picked apart, with many high-profile celebrities including Whoopi Golderg piling on. Gwyneth Paltrow, who was once married to Chris Martin, even took part in a tongue-in-cheek promotional video for Astronomer.

Ms Cabot told the New York Times she received threatening messages after the incident, including from a person who said they knew where she shopped and wrote: “I’m coming for you”.

She said “my kids were afraid that I was going to die and they were going to die”, and that her family began to dread public spaces and social events.

Women were the cruellest critics, she told the New York Times, with all of the in-person bullying, plus most of the phone calls and messages from women.

Her private details were put online (known as doxxing) and for weeks she was bombarded with up to 600 calls a day, the New York Times reported. The paparazzi outside her house was like a “parade” and there were 50 or 60 death threats, she said.

Things are starting to improve, though. Ms Cabot has found therapists for her children and she has started leaving the house to play tennis, she said.

She said that while she and Mr Byron kept in touch for a short while, exchanging “crisis management advice”, they decided “speaking with each other was going to make it too hard for everyone to move on and heal,” and have not spoken since.

For his part, Mr Byron has not spoken publicly.

A fake statement purporting to be from him, complete with Coldplay lyrics, went viral after the concert and Astronomer had to release its own to say that he had not made any comment.

“Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding,” the statement read. “Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability.”

It later said: “Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted.”

The BBC has tried to contact Andy Byron, via his former employer Astronomer, for comment.