Washington (AFP) - The body of the sixth and final victim who died after a container ship struck a bridge in the US city of Baltimore has been recovered, Maryland state authorities said Tuesday. The Francis Scott Key Bridge, a major transit route into the busy port of Baltimore, collapsed on March 26 when the Dali container ship lost power and collided into a support column, killing six roadway construction workers. The victim was identified by authorities as 37-year-old Jose Mynor Lopez, a construction worker from Baltimore, Maryland, who had been working on the bridge when it collapsed. "Tod...
AFP
New York (AFP) - It was the courtroom face-off everyone was waiting for -- testimony of high legal importance, and salacious sexual content. Donald Trump, the former US president who has always prided himself on being in charge and in control, was forced to sit and listen to a porn star describe in open court a bedroom encounter that he denies ever took place. "When I opened the bathroom door to come out, Mr. Trump had come into the bedroom," Stormy Daniels told the New York court. "The intention was pretty clear, someone stripped down to their underwear posing on the bed waiting for you." Tru...
AFP
New York (AFP) - Stormy Daniels, the porn star at the heart of Donald Trump's historic criminal trial, testified Tuesday -– in sometimes explicit detail –- about an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with the former president in a hotel penthouse suite. Trump, 77, is accused of falsifying business records to reimburse his lawyer, Michael Cohen, for a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels on the eve of his 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, when the lurid story of marital infidelity could have sunk his campaign. "The people call Stormy Daniels," prosecutor Susan Hoffinger said as Trump, who is ...
AFP
Boca Raton (United States) (AFP) - Americans Harold Terens and Jeanne Swerlin promise their courtship is "better than Romeo and Juliet": He is 100, she's 96, and they marry next month in France, where the groom-to-be served during World War II. US Air Force veteran Terens will be honored on June 6 at a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, the historic Allied operation that changed the course of the war. Two days later Harold and Jeanne will exchange vows in Carentan-les-Marais, close to the beaches where thousands of soldiers waded ashore -- and many died --...
AFP
Kingwood (United States) (AFP) - Before a T. rex can tower over museum visitors or a Triceratops can show off its huge horns, dinosaur fossils must first be painstakingly reconstructed -- cleaned, fit together and even painted. For US restorationist Lauren McClain, the process is like putting together a giant 3D puzzle. McClain's job begins at her home workshop near Houston, Texas, where she carefully clears away dirt stuck to the more than 60-million-year-old remains using a tiny drill with an air compressor, similar to a dentist's tool. Then, she must assemble this ancient puzzle -- even t...
AFP
Guatemala City (AFP) - Washington is redoubling efforts to disrupt irregular migration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday at regional talks in Guatemala, as the hot-button issue looms large once again over US elections in November. Blinken led the US delegation at a meeting in the Guatemalan capital of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, a cooperation framework agreed to at a summit in California in 2022. The United States has "stepped up efforts against those preying on vulnerable migrants," notably those flying people from Asia, Africa and elsewhere to Centr...
AFP
Miami (AFP) - A Florida judge on Tuesday indefinitely postponed Donald Trump's criminal trial over his alleged mishandling of classified documents, making it unlikely the case will be heard before the November presidential election. The former president had been scheduled to go on trial on May 20 but District Judge Aileen Cannon said that was not possible because of the number of pre-trial motions before the court. Cannon, a Trump appointee, did not set a new date for the start of the federal trial. The postponement is a major setback for special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges aga...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - The US military has completed construction of its Gaza aid pier, but weather conditions mean it is currently unsafe to move the two-part facility into place, the Pentagon said Tuesday. The pier -- which the US military started building last month and which will cost at least $320 million -- is aimed at boosting deliveries of desperately needed humanitarian assistance to Gaza, which has been ravaged by seven months of Israeli operations against Hamas. "As of today, the construction of the two portions of the JLOTS -- the floating pier and the Trident pier -- are complete and ...
AFP
Los Angeles (AFP) - A long-simmering feud between rap titans Drake and Kendrick Lamar exploded into allegations of pedophilia, abuse and infidelity over the weekend, sending shockwaves through the world of hip hop and beyond. Drake, the highest-grossing rapper in the world last year, and Lamar, a Pulitzer Prize winner, have been locked in an escalating war of words in a music genre long known for celebrating and obsessing over beefs between its biggest stars. But while the pair's previous exchanges have focused on disputes like which man is the bigger star, lyrics in tracks released by both ar...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - The United States announced Tuesday it had brought back two dozen Western citizens, half of them Americans, from Islamic State prison camps in northeastern Syria where tens of thousands have languished. The repatriation is the largest ever of US citizens and comes as rights groups warn of dire conditions in the camps still in use some five years after the ultra-violent extremist movement lost its last territory in Syria. In a complex operation involving US agencies, Kuwait and pro-US Kurdish fighters, the United States repatriated 11 US citizens, including five minors, as we...
AFP
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