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    In Deadly Ship Crash, Questions About What Went Wrong

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    A day after a Mexican sailing vessel slammed its masts into the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge, new details about the deadly crash began to emerge.But as the hobbled, 300-foot long ship, the Cuauhtémoc, remained docked at Pier 36 in Manhattan on Sunday, a clear understanding of what went awry in the accident that killed two crew members remained elusive.“To put it mildly, after being fully briefed on last night’s Brooklyn Bridge accident, one thing is very clear: There are many more questions than answers as to how the accident occurred and whether it could have been prevented,” Senator Chuck Schumer said during a news conference on Sunday.As the National Transportation Safety Board and Mexican officials began a full investigation into the crash, those questions included what the “mechanical issues” were that authorities said caused the Cuauhtémoc to veer wildly off its course and into the bridge, and what role a tugboat seen in videos and photographs of the incident on Saturday night played in the accident.The two victims of the crash were identified on Sunday by Mexican officials. América Yamileth Sánchez Hernández, 20, from the state of Veracruz, was named in a social media post by the state’s governor, Rocío Nahle, who sent condolences to her family.“Veracruz is with you,” Ms. Nahle wrote.The second victim was Adal Jair Maldonado Marcos, 23, according to Raúl Rangel González, the mayor of San Mateo del Mar, a coastal town in Oaxaca state where Mr. Maldonado Marcos was from.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Pact Would Require Ships to Cut Emissions or Pay a Fee

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      A draft global agreement sets a fee for cargo ships, which carry the vast majority of world trade, to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.Amid the turmoil over global trade, countries around the world reached a remarkable, though modest, agreement Friday to reduce the climate pollution that comes from shipping those goods worldwide — with what is essentially a tax, no less.A draft accord reached in London under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, would require every ship that ferries goods across the oceans to lower their greenhouse gas emissions or pay a fee.The targets fall short of what many had hoped. Still, it’s the first time a global industry would face a price on its climate pollution no matter where in the world it operates. The proceeds would be used mainly to help the industry move to cleaner fuels. It would come into effect in 2028, pending approval by country representatives, which is widely expected.The agreement marks a rare bit of international cooperation that’s all the more remarkable because it was reached even after the United States pulled out of the talks earlier in the week. No other countries followed suit.“The U.S. is just one country and that one country cannot derail this entire process,” said Faig Abbasov, shipping director for Transport and Environment, a European advocacy group that has pushed for measures to clean up the maritime industry. “This will be first binding decision that will force shipping companies to decarbonize and switch to alternative fuels.”The agreement applies to all ships, no matter whose flag they fly, including ships registered in the United States, although the vast majority of ships are flagged in other countries. It remained unclear whether or how Washington might respond to the fee agreement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Oil Tanker and Container Ship Collide in the North Sea

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      Britain’s coast guard said it was “coordinating the emergency response to reports of a collision between a tanker and cargo vessel,” and that a fire had broken out.A container ship collided with a U.S.-flagged oil tanker off the northeastern coast of England, according to emergency responders, who scrambled to the scene on Monday morning. Initial images shared by the BBC showed fire and thick black smoke rising from the ships, and local authorities said that a number of people had been taken to area hospitals.The British coast guard said it was “coordinating the emergency response to reports of a collision between a tanker and cargo vessel off the coast of East Yorkshire,” and that an alarm was first raised at 9:48 a.m. local time. More

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      E.U. Vessels Surround Anchored Chinese Ship After Cables Are Severed in Baltic Sea

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      Multiple countries are investigating and the authorities in Europe say they have not ruled out sabotage. But U.S. intelligence officials have assessed that the cables were not cut deliberately.For more than a week, a Chinese commercial ship has apparently been forced to anchor in the Baltic Sea, surrounded and monitored by naval and coast guard vessels from European countries as the authorities attempt to unravel a maritime mystery.The development arose after two undersea fiber-optic cables were severed under the sea, and investigators from a task force that includes Finland, Sweden and Lithuania are trying to determine if the ship’s crew intentionally cut the cables by dragging the ship’s anchor along the sea floor.On Wednesday, the Swedish police announced that the inquiry into the episode had concluded but that an investigation was ongoing. Sweden did not release any initial findings.American intelligence officials had assessed that the cables were not cut deliberately, though the authorities in Europe say they have not been able to rule out sabotage.“The preliminary investigation was initiated because it cannot be ruled out that the cables were deliberately damaged,” Per Engström, the superintendent of the Swedish police, said in a statement on Wednesday. “The current classification of the crime is sabotage, though this may change.”Denmark has said it is in “ongoing dialogue” with various countries, including China.The mystery of the severed cable and who is to blame comes as Europe is increasingly on edge after a number of apparent sabotage operations, including arson attacks, vandalism and physical assaults. Many of these have been attributed to Russian intelligence operatives, including a plot that emerged last month, Western officials say, to put incendiary devices on cargo planes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ship in Need of Repairs Has Explosive Cargo, but No Dock

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      The MV Ruby has meandered around Europe’s northwestern coastline under a cloud of suspicion over its thousands of tons of Russian fertilizer.The MV Ruby has languished off the coast of Britain for more than a week, its hull cracked, its propeller damaged. Yet no port will let the ship dock, fearing that the thousands of tons of Russian fertilizer it carries could lead to a disastrous explosion.Over the weekend, the MV Ruby remained 14 miles off the coast of Kent, in southeastern England, where it has been since last month.For weeks now, the ship has sailed around northern Europe’s coastline, looking for a friendly port. But no country has allowed it to approach, fearing a repeat of the explosion in 2020 in Lebanon that destroyed the Port of Beirut and killed more than 190 people.The ship is reportedly ferrying 20,000 tons of ammonium nitrate, a substance used for fertilizer. An explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate devastated the Lebanese port and was felt as far away as Cyprus in the Mediterranean. The MV Ruby may be carrying more than seven times as much.The ship’s stalled journey underscores the distrust and suspicion that vessels linked to Russia have faced since the start of the war in Ukraine. While the MV Ruby is registered in Malta and owned by a Maltese company, Ruby Enterprise, and is managed by Serenity Shipping, which is based in the United Arab Emirates, the Russian fertilizer it is ferrying has caused some governments to worry that the ship may be a Trojan horse, sent to sabotage vital shipping and port infrastructure.The ship’s managers and some maritime authorities have tried with little success to assure the public that the cargo poses no threat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cruise Lines Change Their Itineraries to Avoid Helene’s Impact

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      Several cruise lines operating out of Florida’s west coast and the Gulf of Mexico altered their itineraries on Wednesday to avoid Hurricane Helene’s path.Carnival Cruise Line canceled port stops at Cozumel, Mexico, for several ships. including Carnival Paradise, Valor, Breeze and Horizon. Two ships, Carnival Elation and Carnival Paradise, could not return to Jacksonville and Tampa after the ports were closed on Wednesday, but the cruise line said it tentatively expected ports to reopen on Friday, depending on its post-storm assessment.“The safety of our guests and crew remains our priority, and our ships are sailing a safe distance from the storm,” Carnival said in a statement on Wednesday.Royal Caribbean has also adjusted the itineraries of seven west Caribbean sailings, including Independence of the Seas, Grandeur of the Seas and Serenade of the Seas, which will be making port stops in Nassau, in the Bahamas, instead of Cozumel.Guests onboard MSC Cruise line’s Seashore were informed that they would not be able to return to Port Canaveral in Florida on Thursday because of high winds and would instead have a bonus day at sea. More

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      Justice Department Files $100 Million Suit in Fatal Baltimore Bridge Collapse

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      The crash of the Dali into the Francis Scott Key Bridge killed six people. The federal government says the owner and the operator were “grossly negligent” and “reckless.”The U.S. Justice Department filed a legal claim on Wednesday against the owner and operator of the container ship that collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge last March, killing six workers and paralyzing the Port of Baltimore for weeks.The lawsuit asserts that the companies’ actions leading up to the catastrophe were “outrageous, grossly negligent, willful, wanton, and reckless.”The government is seeking more than $100 million in damages to cover the costs of the sprawling emergency response to the disaster and the federal aid to port employees who were put out of work. “Those costs should be borne by the shipowner and operator, not the American taxpayer,” said Benjamin Mizer, a deputy associate attorney general who is in charge of the Justice Department’s civil division. He added that the department would be seeking punitive damages as well, “to try to keep this type of conduct from ever happening again.” The action on Wednesday did not name an amount for the punitive damages the department was seeking.Filed in federal court in Maryland, the Justice Department’s action lays out in detail what investigators have learned about the ship’s short and catastrophic journey that night, describing a cascade of failures onboard and multiple points when the disaster could have been prevented.Because of poor maintenance or “jury-rigged” fixes to serious problems aboard the ship, known as the Dali, “none of the four means available to help control the Dali — her propeller, rudder, anchor, or bow thruster — worked when they were needed to avert or even mitigate this disaster,” the suit asserts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ukraine Says Russian Missile Hit Grain Ship in Black Sea

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      If confirmed, the attack would be the first on a commercial vessel since Ukraine secured a shipping route to grain markets abroad last year.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Thursday that a Russian missile struck a cargo ship in the Black Sea that was carrying wheat to Egypt, and a Ukrainian military spokesman said that the attack took place in Romanian waters.If confirmed, it would be the first such direct attack on a civilian vessel in open water since Ukraine established a new maritime export route last year.Mr. Zelensky said on social media that there were no casualties in the attack, which he said had happened overnight. He did not describe the extent of any damage.There was no immediate independent confirmation of the claim; and Russia’s defense ministry did not mention it on its Telegram channel.Captain Dmytro Pletenchuk, the spokesman for Ukraine’s southern command said in a telephone interview that the ship had been hit by a missile from a Russian military jet while it was in “the exclusive economic zone waters of Romania. It was not in the grain corridor of Ukraine.” He said the ship was sailing under the flag of a third country, but did not say which.An attack in the exclusive economic zone waters of Romania, a NATO member, would not be equivalent to an attack on sovereign territory under international law. Rather, the zone is an area where a government can control economic activity, such as oil drilling.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Two U.S. Marines Attacked in Turkey by Nationalist Youth Group

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      Turkish officials said they had detained 15 members of the group. The two servicemen had returned to the ship and were safe, U.S. officials said.The Turkish authorities said they had detained 15 members of a nationalist youth organization in connection with the assault of two U.S. Marines stationed in a port city in western Turkey on Monday.The marines, members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, were off their ship and wearing plain clothes at the time of the attack in Izmir, Turkey, Cmdr. Timothy Gorman, a spokesman for the U.S. Sixth Fleet, told CBS News. They were taken to a hospital for evaluation as a precaution, he said.The marines have since returned to the ship and are safe, officials said.“Local Izmir police and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service are cooperating in an investigation of the incident,” Commander Gorman told CBS. “No Marines have been detained by authorities and those involved are cooperating with investigators.”The Izmir governor’s office said in a statement on social media that members of the Turkish Youth Union were detained after the attack. The group is affiliated with the Patriotic Party, a nationalist group that does not hold any seats in Turkey’s Parliament, and has anti-American views, according to The Associated Press.The U.S. Embassy said in a statement on social media that the service members who had been assaulted were safe and aboard their amphibious assault ship, the U.S.S. Wasp. Video posted on social media and verified by the news agency Storyful appeared to show the attack on the Marines. The footage shows a group of young men crowding around a man, restraining him and attempting to put a sack over his head, while another man tries to intervene and push members of the group away.People could be heard chanting “Yankee go home” in English in the footage. In 2014, members of the nationalist youth group were arrested in connection with the assaults of three visiting American sailors in Istanbul. Members of the group used similar tactics at the time — a large group descending on a few servicemen on leave and pulling white sacks over their heads — and uttered similar chants, including “Yankee go home!” and “Down with U.S. imperialism!”The U.S.S. Wasp arrived in Izmir on Sunday for a regularly scheduled port visit after a joint training exercise with Turkey in the Mediterranean, according to the Department of Defense. The vessel was sent to the region as a part of broader plan by the U.S. Navy to deter further conflict in the Middle East. More