Month: June 2023

CNN  —  Two American citizens were found dead Tuesday in a hotel room in Mexico, a US State Department spokesperson said. They have been identified as 28-year-old Abby Lutz and her boyfriend, 41-year-old John Heathco, by Lutz’s stepsister, Gabrielle Slate. The couple was discovered in the Mexican resort village of El Pescadero in Baja California Sur state, a statement from the state attorney general’s office said. Slate told CNN she talked to her stepsister earlier this week during the couple’s vacation and said Lutz and Heathco thought they had gotten food poisoning. “They had been sick for a few days. She had gone to the hospital to get an IV and came back to the hotel f...

CNN  —  The mayor of the Mexican border town of Tijuana has been forced to take up residence at an army base, following escalating threats from organized criminal groups. Mayor Montserrat Caballero announced on Monday she would start living at the base due to threats, which she said were a result of her administration’s crackdown on gang members. “Your representative saw herself in the need to live in an army base because we are the police force that has seized more weapons on a national level from criminals…without mentioning the thousands of arrests we did, and because of these actions I suffered an attempted attack,” Caballero said, referencing a shooting incident on May 17. The m...

CNN  —  A day before the disappearance of the doomed Titan submersible, a British businessman and explorer wrote of his pride to be “going down to the Titanic” as a mission specialist. Hamish Harding said via social media Saturday that “a weather window has just opened up” after “the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years.” A veteran of extreme expeditions, Harding said he would be accompanied by “a couple of legendary explorers” on the dive starting early Sunday morning. His last social media post included a photo of the OceanGate submersible and another of Harding signing a Titanic Expedition banner. The dive “is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titani...

CNN  —  When four young indigenous children were found last week after 40 days in the Colombian Amazon jungle, their rescuers noticed that the oldest, 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, had something hidden between her teeth. “We found she had a couple of seeds slowly chewed between her cheeks and her jawbone,” said Eliecer Muñoz, one of the four indigenous guards who made the very first contact with the children. Muñoz told CNN the seeds were from a native Amazon palm tree called Oenocarpus Bataua, colloquially known as “milpesos” in Colombia. Its fruits are rich in fat and Amazon tribes use them to make a vegetable oil, but Leslie’s seeds were still unripe when she was found, M...

From left, Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood, Suleman Dawood, Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Stockton Rush. Obtained by CNN The Titan submersible bound for the Titanic that went missing on Sunday with five people on board suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said Thursday. Now those who knew the passengers are grappling with their tragic loss and some have sent messages of condolences as their legacies are remembered. Engro Corporation Limited, where Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood was vice chairman, issued a statement on the deaths of Dawood and his son Suleman — who were among the five people on board the Titan submers...

CNN  —  Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s trial on charges of abuse of political power and misuse of public media began in the country’s highest electoral court on Thursday in Brasilia. The charges stem from a meeting Bolsonaro held with foreign diplomats in July 2022, in which he is accused of spreading false information about Brazil’s electoral system and bringing its credibility into question – a strategy the former president used in his reelection campaign. If found guilty, Bolsonaro could be ruled ineligible to run for public office for up to eight years. In Thursday’s court session, a report from Judge Benedito Gonçalves on the case was read aloud and both sides presen...

An undated file photo shows the RMS Titanic shipwreck from a viewport of an OceanGate Expeditions submersible. From OceanGate Expeditions/FILE OceanGate Expeditions, the company that operates the missing submersible, faced a series of mechanical problems and inclement weather conditions that forced the cancellation or delays of trips in recent years, according to court records.  The scuttled excursions led to a pair of lawsuits in which some high-paying customers sought to recoup the cost of trips they said they didn’t take. The complaints alleged that the company overstated its ability to reach the Titanic wreckage.   A London-based travel company, Henry Co...

Marc and Sharon Hagle were on Blue Origin’s 2022 space mission. Blue Origin MediaOceanGate Expeditions CEO Richard Stockton Rush was sued in February by a Florida couple seeking a refund for a trip to see the Titanic wreckage they claim was booked with OceanGate but never happened.  According to the lawsuit, Marc and Sharon Hagle of Winter Park, Florida, signed a contract with Rush to go on a manned submersible dive expedition to the RMS Titanic on Cyclops 2. In November of 2016, the Hagles paid a deposit of $10,000 each, which they say they were told was fully refundable. But after paying a total of $210,258 and seeing their expedition postponed many times, the lawsuit says they were unable to get a refund. The lawsuit alleges fraudulent inducement and violation of Florida’s Deceptive ...

CNN  —  A deadly riot at a women’s prison in Honduras led to at least 41 people being killed, Public Ministry spokesperson Yuri Mora told CNN en Español. The apparent prison riot broke out Tuesay at the Centro Femenino de Adaptacion Social, a women’s penitentiary outside the capital city Tegucigalpa, and there are fears the death toll will rise. Mora said the death toll could increase as rescue teams continue to work, adding that some of the deaths were the result of burns while others had gunshot wounds. The main assistance center in Tegucigalpa has received several injured people, he said A brawl is believed to have broken out in the prison in the early hours of Tuesday...

The port bow railing of the Titanic lies in 12,600 feet of water about 400 miles east of Nova Scotia as photographed as part of a joint scientific and recovery expedition sponsored by the Discovery Channel and RMS Titantic. Reuters/FILEThe submersible that has gone missing in the North Atlantic was part of an expedition to view the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, perhaps the most famous shipwreck in the world.More than 100 years after its disastrous maiden voyage, the fate of the luxury liner has long served as a source of fascination, and been the backdrop for countless books, fiction and non-fiction and, of course, the blockbuster movie.The ship set sail from Southampton, England, to New York on April 10, 1912. Then, between April 14-15, it hit an iceberg around midnight and sank in les...