International News
Six Presumed Dead After Baltimore Bridge Collapse
Authorities on Tuesday suspended their search for six people missing after a packed cargo ship slammed into a Baltimore bridge, causing it to collapse and blocking one of the busiest US commercial harbors.
“Based on the length of time that we’ve gone in this search, the extensive search efforts that we put into it, the water temperature… at this point we do not believe that we’re going to find any of these individuals still alive,” US Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath told a press conference as night fell.
All six people were members of a nighttime construction crew who were repairing potholes on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when disaster struck not long after midnight.
“We’re going away from the search and rescue portion to a recovery operation,” said Roland Butler, Maryland’s secretary of state police.
He said the temperatures and currents were making it difficult for divers to continue working underwater, but that boats would continue patrolling overnight.
Video footage showed the packed container ship slamming into one of the bridge’s supports, causing the 1977-built steel structure to collapse like a deck of cards.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore said earlier that quick thinking by authorities once the ship issued a mayday call allowed them to stop vehicles from driving onto the bridge.
“These people are heroes. They saved lives last night,” he told a press conference.
The FBI and other agencies stressed that there was no known connection to terrorism.
“The preliminary investigation points to an accident,” Moore said.
Paul Wiedefeld, the Maryland transportation chief, said the crew working on the bridge was “basically repairing potholes, just so you understand that had nothing to do with a structural issue at all.”
President Joe Biden called the collapse a “terrible accident,” and pledged to get the port reopened and the bridge rebuilt.
Governor Moore, a rising star in the Democratic party, told CNN that the focus was now to make sure victims’ families “can find closure.”
Two of the missing workers were from Guatemala, the country’s foreign ministry said, while local news outlet The Baltimore Banner reported that Mexican, Salvadoran and Honduran nationals were also among the victims.
Attempt to drop anchors
From the banks of the Patapsco River, steel girders could be seen protruding from the water, with mangled metal draped over the deck of the massive ship.
“This is something we’ve been looking at our whole lives,” said teacher Tiffany Wengert, 30.
“And all of the sudden… it’s just gone.”
Details emerged on how the crew tried to avert disaster after their ship lost power and began careening toward the bridge.
“Just prior to the incident, the vessel, Dali, had experienced momentary loss of propulsion. As a result, it was unable to maintain the desired heading and collided,” said the maritime authority for Singapore, where the Dali is flagged.
The authority said the ship’s management company, Synergy Marine Pte Ltd, reported the crew “dropped anchors” in a last-ditch attempt to hold the ship back.
Federal investigators expect recordings from the vessel to be critical to help determine what happened, said Jennifer Homendy, head of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is overseeing the investigation.
Butler, with Maryland state police, said divers on Wednesday morning will “begin a more detailed search to do our very best to recover those six missing people.”
The Francis Scott Key Bridge, named after the poet who penned the lyrics to the US national anthem, is an important link in the East Coast highway system, used by about 34,000 vehicles every day.
There are other bridges and tunnels for drivers to cross the harbor. However, the tangled steel barrier now lying half-submerged across the harbor entrance blocks almost all maritime traffic.
The Port of Baltimore is the ninth-busiest major US port in terms of both foreign cargo handled and foreign cargo value, and is directly responsible for more than 15,000 jobs, supporting almost 140,000 more.
“There is no question that this will be a major and protracted impact to supply chains,” US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg warned, adding it was “too soon” to know when the port might reopen.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott described the bridge as an “unthinkable tragedy… like something out of an action movie.”
“We have to be thinking about the families and people impacted,” he said.
Defence Minister Israel Katz announced on Thursday that an Israeli airstrike had killed Alireza Tangsiri, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ navy.
“Last night, in a precise and lethal operation, the IDF eliminated the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ navy, Tangsiri, along with senior officers of the naval command,” Katz said in a video statement.
“The man who was directly responsible for the terrorist operation of mining and blocking the Strait of Hormuz to shipping was blown up and eliminated.”
Since the start of the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on February 28, Israel has announced the killing of several top Iranian officials, including supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic republic’s powerful security chief, Ali Larijani.
In recent days, Israeli forces have carried out several strikes targeting the naval assets of Iran.
Last week, Israeli airstrikes hit several Iranian naval ships in the Caspian Sea, including ones equipped with missile systems, support vessels and patrol craft.
AFP
US President Donald Trump insisted Wednesday that Iran was taking part in peace talks, suggesting Tehran’s denials were because Iranian negotiators fear being killed by their own side.
“They are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly. But they’re afraid to say it, because they figure they’ll be killed by their own people,” Trump told a dinner for Republican members of Congress.
“They’re also afraid they’ll be killed by us.”
The US leader’s comments came after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that “we do not intend to negotiate”.
Trump repeated his assertion that Iran was being “decimated” in the conflict now in its fourth week, even though Tehran still maintains an effective stranglehold over the crucial Strait of Hormuz oil route.
Lashing out at his domestic opponents, Trump also claimed Democrats were trying to “deflect from all of the tremendous success that we’re having in this military operation.”
In a mocking reference to calls from Democrats for him to seek the approval of Congress for the conflict, Trump added: “They don’t like the word ‘war,’ because you’re supposed to get approval, so I’ll use the word military operation.”
The White House said earlier that Trump was ready to “unleash hell” if Iran did not admit defeat, while also insisting that Tehran is still taking part in talks.
Iranian state media had earlier cited an unidentified official as saying that the Islamic republic had responded “negatively” to a reported 15-point plan from Washington.
‘Talks continue’
“If Iran fails to accept the reality of the current moment, if they fail to understand that they have been defeated militarily and will continue to be, President Trump will ensure they are hit harder than they have ever been hit before,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
“President Trump does not bluff and he is prepared to unleash hell. Iran should not miscalculate again.”
Asked if negotiations with Iran had stalled, Leavitt replied: “Talks continue. They are productive.”
Leavitt declined to say whom the US was dealing with in Tehran following the assassination of supreme leader Ali Khamenei, whose son and successor Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public.
Reports have suggested the Trump administration’s interlocutor is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s speaker of parliament and one of its most prominent non-clerical figures.
The spokeswoman also declined to confirm reports that top US officials including Vice President JD Vance were set to hold talks with the Iranians in Pakistan, which has emerged as a key mediator.
Trump is moving thousands of airborne troops and extra marines to the Gulf amid speculation that he might order a ground invasion to either seize Iranian oil assets in the Gulf or secure the Strait of Hormuz.
The White House meanwhile appeared to stick to the four to six-week timeline it has previously given for the war.
Trump announced Wednesday that his visit to China to meet Xi Jinping had now been rescheduled for mid-May, having postponed it by six weeks to deal with the conflict.
“We’ve always estimated approximately four to six weeks (for the length of military operations against Iran), so you could do the math on that,” Leavitt added.
AFP
Ousted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro will appear in a New York court on Thursday for the second time since his capture by US forces in an extraordinary nighttime raid.
Maduro, 63, and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been held in a Brooklyn jail for almost three months after American commandos snatched the pair from their compound in Caracas in early January.
The stunning operation deposed the strongman who had led Venezuela since 2013 and has since forced the oil-rich country to largely bend to the will of US President Donald Trump.
Maduro has declared himself a “prisoner of war” and pleaded not guilty to the four counts of “narco-terrorism” conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
Thursday’s hearing at 11 a.m. (1500 GMT) will likely see Maduro push for the dismissal of his case as lawyers tussle over who will pay the former leader’s legal fees.
Venezuela’s government is seeking to cover the costs, but because of Washington’s sanctions, his lawyer, Barry Pollack, must obtain a US license that has not been issued.
Pollack argued in a court submission that the license requirement violated Maduro’s constitutional right to legal representation and demanded the case be thrown out on procedural grounds.
Deadly Raid
Detained in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Centre, a federal prison known for unsanitary conditions, Maduro is reportedly alone in a cell with no access to the internet or newspapers.
A source close to the Venezuelan government said the incarcerated Maduro reads the Bible and is referred to as “president” by some of his fellow detainees
He is only allowed to communicate by phone with his family and lawyers for a maximum of 15 minutes per call, the source added.
“The lawyers told us he is strong. He said we must not be sad,” said his son, Nicolas Maduro Guerra, adding his father told him: “We are fine, we are fighters.”
Maduro and his wife were forcibly taken by US commandos in the early hours of January 3 in airstrikes on the Venezuelan capital backed by warplanes and a heavy naval deployment.
At least 83 people died, and more than 112 people were injured in the assault, according to Venezuelan officials.
No US service members were killed.
US Pressure
At his first US court appearance in January, Maduro struck a defiant tone as he identified himself as the president of Venezuela despite being captured.
The South American country is now led by Delcy Rodriguez, who has been Maduro’s vice president since 2018.
Under US pressure, she is grappling with leading a country saddled with the world’s largest proven oil reserves but an economy in shambles.
Rodriguez has since enacted a historic amnesty law to free political prisoners jailed under Maduro and reformed oil and mining regulations in line with US demands for access to her country’s vast natural wealth.
This month, the State Department said it was restoring diplomatic ties with Venezuela in a sign of thawing relations.
Security is expected to be heightened around the New York courthouse for Thursday’s hearing.
Presiding over the case is Alvin Hellerstein, a 92-year-old judge credited with overseeing several high-profile trials during his decades on the bench.
AFP
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