In Colombia, the death toll from Monday’s massive earthquake has topped 250 and is expected to rise, as search and rescue crews race to find survivors trapped under rubble. More than 2,700 people have been reported as “missing,” and hundreds more are injured. This is a volunteer helping to search for victims in the city of Pereira, which was left devastated by the earthquake.
Victor Daniel Cardona: “Three people have been rescued here, and two more over there. Thank God, they’re unharmed, not too badly injured. Everything’s going well, thanks to all of us.”
Geologists report Monday’s earthquake was the strongest to hit Colombia since 1970.
The United States Navy said Tuesday it had fired on a Panama-flagged cargo ship attempting to break the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports in the Gulf of Oman. The missile strikes reportedly targeted the ship’s engine room, leaving it disabled. The Pentagon did not say whether it killed or injured any sailors. The attack came as President Trump told reporters that U.S. forces are in “total control” of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s claim came as mediators in Qatar announced that negotiations between Iran and Oman over the Strait of Hormuz have reached an advanced stage. This is a spokesperson for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry.
Majed al-Ansari: “We have heard positive statements from both capitals in the recent couple of days, and we are eagerly awaiting. Our main priority here is the reopening of the strait, maintaining the ceasefire and making sure that we are able to push forward towards the negotiation.”
The emerging deal would see vessels enter the strait along a northern route, via Iranian waters; ships exiting the strait would follow a southern route through Omani waters.
Meanwhile, six people were killed and 10 others wounded when Iran-allied Houthi fighters attacked a ship in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The Houthis say the ship was carrying Saudi military equipment. Last month, the Houthis declared a naval blockade of Saudi ports.
An alleged Iranian threat to assassinate President Trump led to a secret operation last month that possibly endangered the lives of journalists and White House staffers. That’s according to The Washington Post, which reported Tuesday that Trump secretly swapped planes just before departing a NATO summit in Turkey, hiding in an airport catering truck normally used to load food and supplies onto planes. Trump then departed Turkey on a smaller military aircraft, even as the White House told the public he was aboard Air Force One alongside the reporters, White House staff and other crew members. The White House was responding to what it considered a credible Iranian threat to shoot down Air Force One. That followed the U.S. assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, members of his family and other top officials. Steven Cash, executive director of The Steady State and a former CIA intelligence officer, said, “It appears that the idea was we can reduce the danger to President Trump by offering up 100 or so people to be killed by the Iranians in his place.”
At least four civilians are dead in Russia and Ukraine after a series of deadly drone attacks overnight. Among the dead are two people killed by a Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s Kherson region and a man and child killed after Ukrainian drones struck the Russian city of Novorossiysk. This follows Russian attacks on Ukraine that killed at least 12 people the previous night, leaving dozens more wounded. Ukraine accused Russia of using North Korean missiles in those attacks, and said a children’s hospital was among buildings struck.
According to the United Nations, Russia is holding over 16,000 Ukrainian civilians in detention. Many are kept in isolation and are not being treated according to standards of international law. This is a Ukrainian former prisoner of war who testified to the United Nations on Tuesday about torture and sexual abuse by Russian forces.
Khuan Levya Garsiya: “I was lucky enough to survive. Not many of my friends were lucky enough. Two of my friends were beaten up to death in detention centers in the Donetsk region. Two of my friends died because of the conditions they were put in in Russian prisons and were returned in plastic bags to their homelands.”
Meanwhile, a Moscow court has decided that Russia’s main antiwar and liberal political party cannot run in next month’s parliamentary elections. On Monday, hundreds of young supporters gathered outside the Moscow courthouse during the hearing, showing their support for the antiwar party by singing songs and waving flags.
In Minnesota, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan has won the Democratic Party’s Senate primary, securing about 60% of the vote in a match-up against her better-funded opponent, Congresswoman Angie Craig. Flanagan had the backing of progressives including Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who supported her calls for Medicare for All, a higher federal minimum wage, universal childcare and more. She spoke to supporters after polls closed Tuesday evening.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan: “And we are going to stop Donald Trump’s billion-dollar-a-day illegal war in Iran and the crushing gas and fertilizer prices. We are going to fight the corruption, whether it’s in the White House or in the halls of Congress, because the grift has to stop.”
Flanagan is a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. She could become the first Native American woman to serve in the Senate. Her primary opponent, Angie Craig, was endorsed by Democratic Party leaders, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Craig’s campaign outspent Flanagan by a more than four-to-one margin and benefited from nearly $10 million in dark money spent on her behalf. Craig’s loss marks another defeat for AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which encouraged its members to support her campaign.
Meanwhile, progressive Democrat Matt Little has won the race to fill the congressional seat Craig left to pursue her failed Senate candidacy. Little campaigned on a pledge to support Medicare for All, while seeking to ban corporate money from politics. He defeated two challengers whom he accused of receiving support from AIPAC.
In Wisconsin, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley appears to have narrowly defeated Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong for the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nomination. With 98% of the expected vote tallied, Hong is trailing by about 3,000 votes. It’s an unexpectedly poor showing for Hong, after most polls showed her leading the race by double digits.
In South Carolina, Darline Graham will advance to a runoff in the race to win the Republican Party’s nomination to replace her brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, who died in July. Graham spoke to supporters after polls closed.
Sen. Darline Graham: “I want to thank President Trump. His steadfast support and his complete and total endorsement means so much to me.”
A federal judge in Boston blocked the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing part of Trump’s executive order to tighten mail-in voting rules before November’s congressional elections. The order required states to submit lists of eligible voters who may receive mail ballots. If the states refused to do so, USPS would not deliver the ballots. Sophia Lin Lakin, a voting rights lawyer with the ACLU, said in a statement, “Today’s ruling sends another necessary message to an administration that continues to weaponize portions of the government to sow chaos into our elections.”
ICE is planning to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of gloves that can release painful electric shocks. This week, the Department of Homeland Security announced ICE agents and officers could begin carrying the gloves by March. The devices are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC based in Lexington, Kentucky, and have been used in recent years by police departments and jails.
This comes after the ACLU revealed federal immigration agents deployed to Los Angeles last summer used racist slurs against Latino people they targeted and racially profiled in operations. The discoveries came as part of a federal case that compiled months of body-camera footage, depositions and text messages.
The Trump administration has awarded a $158 million contract to a group founded by a former ICE agent to legally represent unaccompanied immigrant children in the U.S. The Minneapolis-based Our Rescue was founded in 2013 by Tim Ballard, who quit his job in federal immigration enforcement to combat the sex trafficking of children — inspiring the 2023 movie “Sound of Freedom.” The film drew widespread acclaim from conservatives, but others criticized it for featuring conspiracy theories perpetuated by the far-right group QAnon. Ballard abruptly left Our Rescue in July 2023. In the months after his departure, he was accused of sex trafficking, forced labor and abusing women himself. The contract between Our Rescue and the Office of Refugee Resettlement could reportedly increase up to $244 million.
This comes after the federal government also awarded a $150 million contract to a small Texas law firm with ties to the Trump administration to represent unaccompanied immigrant children in court. Burke Law Group is based in Houston and primarily focuses on administrative law.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the number of confirmed Ebola cases has surpassed 4,000. It’s now the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded. The World Health Organization has recommended testing an existing Ebola vaccine to see if it could protect against the strain now spreading in the DRC. This is the WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “It’s moving really, really fast. And I can’t hide from you my feelings. Maybe expressing my feelings properly would be better. I’m deeply, deeply concerned by how the situation is on the ground.”
Three executions are scheduled in Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee Thursday, in what would be the first time since 2010 that three people are put to death on the same day in the United States. In Tennessee, Republican Governor Bill Lee has refused to grant clemency to Darrell Hines, who is scheduled to be executed Thursday despite his attorneys warning that he could suffer cruel and unusual punishment. His attorneys said the physician likely to oversee Hines’s execution is unqualified to insert the IV to administer lethal drugs, citing the May botched execution attempt of Tony Carruthers. Governor Lee called off Carruthers’s execution and granted him a one-year reprieve after the physician struggled for about an hour to insert the IV to administer lethal drugs. Witnesses described the scene as a “bloody mess,” according to the Tennessee Lookout. Hines has suffered two strokes that left him partially paralyzed on his left side, blind in his left eye and in severe pain.
Millions of people in Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain will witness a total solar eclipse today, the first of its kind since 1999. A partial eclipse will be visible across a vast swath of western Europe, northwestern Africa and some eastern states and provinces in North America. Here in London and the U.K., people are scrambling to get special glasses to witness the eclipse.
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