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Tragic Collision: Baltimore Bridge Collapse Leaves Multiple Dead and Missing
The Baltimore bridge disaster reveals the significance of taking maritime safety measures and ensuring the infrastructure is in good maintenance as the recovery process proceeds against the backdrop of the economic and environmental concerns.
United States – The pilot of the freighter that bottomed a bridge to the Baltimore harbor had communicated for towing assistance and reported power loss, the federal safety officers said already on Wednesday, citing audio recorded in the vessel data recorder’s black box.
Catastrophic Bridge Collapse
The Chairperson of the National Transportation Safety Board also said that Francis Scott Key Bridge, one of the main traffic arteries crossing the water channel built in 1976, lacked structural engineering redundancies, which is a common feature in newer crossings. Therefore, the older structures are weaker and more prone to catastrophic failure, as reported by Reuters.
After one day of Dali, the Singapore-flagged container ship sailing out of Baltimore Harbor towards Sri Lanka with power failures and the inability to maneuver, sad news emerges about its collision with the bridge’s support pylon.
The destruction occurred nearly as soon as the bridge collapsed and fell into the mouth of the Patapsco River, virtually blocking shipping lanes and calling for the Port of Baltimore to shut down indefinitely, one of the busiest on the United States eastern shoreline.
Wednesday morning, divers brought up two bodies out of the six missing since the bridge slipped off and threw them into the water, according to officials who made the statement on Wednesday.
Colonel Roland Butler of Maryland State Police reported that the red pickup truck, which had the bodies of the two men inside, was found about 25 feet (7.62m) deep in the water down below the collapsed bridge in the middle.
He added that they had halted their attempts to pull out more bodies from the harbor because of the significantly hazardous catastrophe scenes. Butler kept saying that sonar images suggested vehicles being “locked on things in the sunken bridge,” resulting in them being unavailable for recovery.
Those bodies who were found on Wednesday and verified by authorities were Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, a native of Mexico who resided in Baltimore, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, an original resident of Guatemala who lived in nearby Dundalk.
As for the crew of four who were involved in patching up the holes on the surface of the bridge road, they were also declared as missing and presumed dead. On top of that, the Hurricane Maria also included Hondurans and Salvadorans, officials said.
Rescuers plucked two workers from the water on Tuesday, and one was sent to the hospital.
The cost to the people and society at large could be disastrous. The port services even more automobile and farm equipment freight than any other port, as well as container freight and bulk goods, including sugar and coal.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg notices that the 8,000 jobs are the ones “which are directly connected to the port activities and generate more than $2 million in wages every day.”
On the other hand, economists and shipping experts argued that the port’s closure would not lead to a significant U.S. supply chain crisis or a massive rise in the cost of goods, as there was sufficient capacity at other shipping spots along the East Coast.
The collapse, which occurred at 1:30 a.m., brought the citizens of Baltimore and the region a heavy traffic jam.
INTERVIEWING SURVIVORS
The investigating team from the National Transportation Safety Board boarded the moored freighter, still anchored in the channel, and the broken pieces of the bridge leaned over its bow to start asking the pilots of the ship (two) and the entire freighter crew (21) that remained on the freighter safety board chief Jennifer Homendy said.
Besides, investigators also began to look at the information obtained from the trip data recorder, which included radio communication between the pilot at a shore-based authority ahead of the tragedy.
The derelict tugboat and pilot were heard calling for assistance radio transmissions several minutes before the crash; the first distress signals that harbor officials had of a captain who had lost all engines and was heading for a bridge, which NTSB officials said at a press conference held Wednesday evening.
The video recording that caught the event shows the lights of the ship flashing on, then back on after a while before the ship’s lights go off for a far longer period.
Homendy reported to the recorder that the data was congruent with a power interruption, but until now, the blackout had not been authenticated, as reported by Reuters.
The recorder also indicated directions for the crew to drop anchor with the aim of slowing the ship.
An expert from a safety board, Marcel Muise, reported the incident. He presented the data showing that the Dali, which is about three football fields long and full of sea containers, was moving at about 8 miles per hour (12.8 km) when it struck the bridge abutment.
Homendy stated that although the bridge’s most recent examination in 2023 found it to be in “satisfactory” condition, the manner in which it was built meant that the failure of one structural member “would likely cause a portion of, or the entire bridge to collapse.”
On Wednesday, additional information about the desperate attempts to save lives surfaced from publicly available recordings of emergency radio conversations made as soon as officials learned that the cargo ship Dali was heading near Key Bridge and was losing control.
“Hold all traffic on the Key Bridge. There’s a ship approaching that just lost their steering,” someone is heard saying over a police radio.
While voices were heard discussing the next steps, including alerting any work crews to leave the bridge, one broke through to say: “The whole bridge suddenly collapsed!” This audio was live streamed on Broadcastify, a public broadcasting service.
The first mission of the US Coast Guard is to reopen the waterway for shipping, stabilize the crippled vessel and drag it out as soon as possible, according to Vice Admiral Peter Gautier in the briefing, as reported by Reuters.
Four thousand seven hundred out of its cargo containers, 56 containers carry hazardous materials, but there is still no public threat, Gautier said. Two containers fell overboard during the storm that was only carrying non-hazardous materials. The vessel was holding over 1.5 million gallons of fuel oil, said Gautier.
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Hunter Biden’s Ex-Wife to Testify in Firearm Possession Case
The trial will involve whether Hunter Biden falsely stated about his drug use in a bid to buy a pistol: witness accounts from his former wife and former girlfriends.
United States – Hunter Biden’s ex-wife is set to testify about what the young Biden’s drug habits were as a defense claim in a case that suggests he lied about them to possess a firearm.
On charges of possession of a firearm by a user of a controlled substance, prosecutors said they would prove that Hunter Biden allowed his anti-drug screening test to come back clean when he purchased a revolver in October 2018, knowing that he was a drug user, as reported by Reuters.
The jurors viewed the text messages, banking records, and some clips of the audiobook of the Then Hunter Biden memoir that the prosecutors say show the client was habitually using crack at the time he bought the gun, one day after the purchase.
“Addiction is not a crime. Lying is,” prosecutor Derek Hines said.
Hunter Biden, 54 years old, has not quit guilty to three felonies, charging him with filing false information while purchasing the gun and possession of the prohibited firearm for 11 days.
The trial comes in the wake of another precedent setting case; the criminal indictment of former President of the United States, Donald Trump, who became the first US president to be convicted of a felony last week. Trump is the Republican candidate for president against Joe Biden of the Democratic party in the Nov. 5 poll.
Something was not mentioned at Hunter Biden’s trial regarding that aspect, but the prosecution used the phrase “no one is above the law.
Testimonies and Defense
Hines said that jurors would hear Kathleen Buhle, Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, and his former girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, and Hallie Biden, who was his brother, Beau Biden’s wife. They all can testify about Hunter Biden’s problems with drugs and alcohol throughout the years, Hines noted.
Prosecution’s Evidence and Statements
Lowell, who has represented Hunter Biden in an ongoing grand jury investigation, noted that his client contradicted these claims in his memoir titled “Beautiful Things,” published in 2021. Hunter Biden’s lawyer insisted that the evidence would demonstrate the subject was sober when purchasing the firearm and viewed himself as ‘not a user’ at the time.
Context and Political Backdrop
Trump is expected to be sentenced on July 11th after he was convicted by a jury in the state court in New York last Thursday of 34 felonies of presenting fake documents to conceal payments made to a pornographic actor ahead of a sex scandal that might have had an impact on the build-up to the 2016 U. S. election, as reported by Reuters.
He has denied the allegations in three other ongoing criminal charges, two against him for his attempts to overturn his 2020 defeat by Biden and one for keeping top-secret materials at his Florida estate after his presidency in 2021.
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FDA Debate Looms Over MDMA Therapy’s Role in PTSD Treatment
The FDA on MDMA therapy for PTSD is going to usher a new era in the therapeutic management of mental health with implications in treatment for millions of patients with the disorder.
United States – An important meeting on the approval of a new treatment using one of the substances considered hallucinogens is to be held on Tuesday as the advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration are set to deliberate on the therapy based on MDMA for PTSD.
The session, conducted by the independent experts of the agency, is the closest that a drug based on MDMA, commonly referred to as ecstasy or molly, has ever gotten within the FDA procedure for approval, as reported by Reuters.
Addressing Mental Health Needs
This comes after several similar efforts have been pursued by supporters claiming that substances such as MDMA are effective in the treatment of mental health and millions also have other uses that are not related to drug use in society.
The treatment is a capsule containing or containing pure MDMA manufactured by the public-benefit corporation Lykos Therapeutics and to be taken in combination with hourly, full-spectrum sessions of talk therapy by a licensed, entheogenic mental health provider.
Promising Results and Concerns
MDMA, in combination with consultation, has indicated lower PTSD scores in trials with over 190 patients in contrast to placebo.
However, the FDA’s staff reviewers voiced concerns on Friday about how patients suffering from PTSD in the clinical trials knew whether they were given MDMA or a placebo due to the mind-altering effects of the drug.
A Step Towards Innovation
“I don’t think that is as much of a concern because even if it is an enhanced placebo effect, people are still getting better,” said David Olson, director of the UC Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics.
“But the bigger question is, what is the risk to those individuals?”
PTSD is among the largely prevalent mental health disorders, which impacts 13 million people within the United States of America and is prevalent among war veterans. This indicates that there is still a big gap in the development of new treatments for PTSD in this regard since the other drugs do not affect every person.
Lykos treatment is one treatment out of many psychedelic drugs given to patients with untreatable mental disorders, including Compass Pathways’ (CMPS. O) drug, which is derived from magic mushrooms.
The agency’s staff discussed restrictions on its use and oversight in briefing documents delivered on Friday. The FDA also pointed out the increase in both blood pressure and pulse in the trials and instances of hepatic toxicity.
According to Olson, the approval could provide “a new way to attack the problem, but as a single agent, it is not going to be a large driver” because of the cost and logistical challenges associated with it, as reported by Reuters.
“It’s important because it would be the first in this class of molecules, but I don’t think it will be the last; it will be replaced by compounds that have superior properties to MDMA.”
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British Tech Pioneer Faces Fraud Charges in HP Acquisition Trial
The fraud trial of Lynch is a follow-up on the disastrous HP-Autonomy interface, which has been a significant turning point on the technology as well as corporate governance.
United States – Jurors at the trial of British tech pioneer Mike Lynch may hear closing arguments in San Francisco on Monday in the fraud case regarding Hewlett-Packard’s (HPE. N) acquisition of Lynch’s software company Autonomy for USD 11.2 billion in 2011.
The Cambridge University-educated businessman testified for the defense at the trial, explaining that he had no criminal intentions and that HP performed the merger poorly, as reported by Reuters.
HP then proceeded to write down the value of Autonomy by USD 8.8 billion in one year since the acquisition.
Lynch and the former Autonomy finance executive Stephen Chamberlain have been charged with fraud and conspiracy for planning to artificially increase the company’s revenue starting in 2009, in part to attract a buyer.
Allegations of Fraud
Prosecutors claimed the two inflated Autonomy revenue through back-dated transactions and ‘round-trip’ transactions, where money was paid upfront by the customer through a fictitious contract.
During the trial, which started mid-March, the jurors were presented with over thirty government witnesses, including Leo Apotheker, the former HP chief who was dismissed just a few weeks after the purchase of Autonomy was declared.
Lynch’s legal advisors prepared the trial, stating that HP wanted to acquire Autonomy ahead of potential competitors, so the due diligence was performed quickly before the sale was closed.
Lynch Denies Involvement in Accounting Decisions
Taking the stand, Lynch denied that he was involved directly with the accounting decisions at issue and asserted that he was more concerned with technology issues at the time, leaving the finance-related matters in the hands of Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy’s former chief financial officer.
Hussain was convicted in 2018 in the same court in another trial. He was released from U. S. prison in January following his five-year imprisonment term.
Lynch was identified as one of the UK’s leading tech enablers in a bracket that included Steve Jobs of Apple and Bill Gates of Microsoft.
Fallout from Controversial Acquisition Continues
The Autonomy deal was one of the largest British technology deals that was supposed to boost HP’s software segment. Rather, it gave rise to a chain of cruel and costly court proceedings, as reported by Reuters.
Lynch and Hussain were found liable for the defamation in a civil trial in London in 2022, though the amount of the damages remains unconcluded. The company is requesting 4 billion US Dollars in total funding.
- Hunter Biden’s Ex-Wife to Testify in Firearm Possession Case
- FDA Debate Looms Over MDMA Therapy’s Role in PTSD Treatment
- British Tech Pioneer Faces Fraud Charges in HP Acquisition Trial
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