Search suspended for woman who fell overboard on Taylor Swift-themed cruise
Courtesy Omar Rodriguez
(NASSAU, Bahamas) — Search efforts have been suspended for a 66-year-old woman who fell overboard on a Taylor Swift-themed cruise Tuesday night, the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday.
The Coast Guard previously said they were assisting with the search, which was being led by the Royal Bahamas Defense Force.
“We were informed by @TheRBDF this afternoon that they are suspending the active search efforts pending further developments & were no longer requesting further @USCG assistance,” the U.S. Coast Guard wrote on X.
The missing passenger fell off the Royal Caribbean ship Allure of the Seas about 17 miles north of Nassau, Bahamas, the Coast Guard said.
The woman has not been publicly identified.
The four-night Swift-themed voyage, known as “In My Cruise Era,” set sail from Miami for the Bahamas on Monday. It was not officially affiliated with Swift.
About 400 people registered for the cruise, which was scheduled to include karaoke, a dance party and friendship bracelet trading.
In a statement from the cruise company, Royal Caribbean said it initiated search efforts as soon as the woman fell overboard.
“Our crew immediately launched a search and rescue effort and is working with local authorities We are also providing support and assistance to the guest’s family during this difficult time. To respect the privacy of our guest’s family, we have no additional details to share,” a Royal Caribbean spokesperson said.
(SEATTLE) — Boeing machinists on Wednesday rejected a new contract proposal that would’ve ended a weekslong work stoppage against the embattled aerospace company — and the union said the strike will go on.
Sixty-four percent of workers voted to reject the new contract, according to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), the union representing 33,000 Boeing workers in Washington, Oregon and California.
Representatives for Boeing said Wednesday night the company did not have a comment on the vote.
The proposed contract would have delivered a 35% raise over the four-year duration of the contract, upping the 25% cumulative raise provided in a previous offer overwhelmingly rejected by workers in a vote last month. Workers had initially sought a 40% cumulative pay increase.
The proposal also called for hiking Boeing’s contribution to a 401(k) plan, but it declined to fulfill workers’ call for a reinstatement of the company’s defined pension. The contract would have included a $7,000 ratification bonus for each worker, as well as a performance bonus that Boeing had sought to jettison.
But union leaders said the concessions offered in the proposal were not enough to meet the demands of rank-and-file union members.
“This contract struggle began over ten years ago when the company overreached and created a wound that may never heal for many members,” said Jon Holden, president of IAM District 751 in Seattle, in a statement after the vote. “I don’t have to tell you all how challenging it has been for our membership through the pandemic, the crashes, massive inflation, and the need to address the losses stemming from the 2014 contract.”
The union said the strike will continue as they return to the bargaining table with the company.
Hours before workers cast ballots on Wednesday, Boeing released an earnings report showing the company had lost a staggering $6.1 billion over the most recent quarter due primarily to costs associated with the strike.
“We have some really big rocks that we need to get behind us to move the company forward,” Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a letter to investors on Wednesday.
Ortberg singled out the strike as an issue that must be addressed “first and foremost.”
“We have been feverishly working to find a solution that works for the company and meets our employees’ needs,” Ortberg said.
The company and its workers have faced significant financial losses during the nearly six-week strike.
Union members have received $250 per week from a strike fund, beginning in the third week of the work stoppage. That compensation marks a major pay cut for many of the employees.
Mid-ranking workers involved in the strike typically make $20 per hour, which totals $800 per 40-hour work week, while higher-paid members earn salaries upward of $100,000 per year, or nearly $2,000 per week.
“The question is whether the employees and their union determine that they have the power to get more from Boeing,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, told ABC News. “It’s whether they think they can extract more from Boeing, or Boeing says, ‘You know what, this is it.'”
The strike was set to cost Boeing $108 million per day in lost revenue, amounting to as much as $5.5 billion in losses should the work stoppage last 50 days, investment bank TD Cowen said in a report reviewed by ABC News at the outset of the dispute. So far, the strike has lasted 40 days.
In September, Boeing announced furloughs and pay cuts for some white-collar employees in response to the strike. Last week, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg announced plans to cut 17,000 jobs, which amounts to about 10% of its global workforce.
“This is really painful for Boeing,” Richard Aboulafia, managing director of aerospace consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory, told ABC News.
The most recent IAM strike against Boeing in the Pacific Northwest, in 2008, lasted 57 days. Work stoppages undertaken by unionized Boeing employees in the same region have historically lasted an average of 60 days, a Bank of America Global Research analysis found after examining seven previous strikes, the earliest in 1948.
In the days leading up to Wednesday’s vote, the outcome remained unclear, Jake Rosenfeld, a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies labor, told ABC News.
“What are the workers going to do?” Rosenfeld said. “That’s a really tough question.”
(BUTLER COUNTY, Pa.) — More than a dozen 911 calls from the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on July 13 in Butler County, Pennsylvania, were released on Wednesday, reflecting moments of fear and confusion after a gunman opened fire at the outdoor rally.
“They just tried to kill President Trump,” a 911 caller reported.
“We have an emergency. We’re at the Trump rally,” another caller said.
The 15 recordings, some of which capture the sounds of chaos in the background, were released by Butler County.
The first call came in at 6:12 p.m., about a minute after shots rang out. Trump was eight minutes into his speech when the shooting began, according to officials.
“We’re at the Trump rally — gunshots,” a woman shouts above loud crowds.
“Yep, the police are on their way,” the dispatcher responds.
“You better get over here quick!” the woman says.
The gunfire killed Corey Comperatore, 50, and critically injured two other attendees, Jim Copenhaver and David Dutch.
“I have a woman on the line, her husband was shot at the Trump rally,” a dispatcher from neighboring Allegheny County reported.
Another call came from a woman who was trying to locate her husband, who, she told the call taker, had been shot and taken by paramedics.
Trump was left with a bloodied ear before a Secret Service sharpshooter killed the suspected gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks.
The bipartisan House task force investigating the assassination attempt outlined the security failures of the U.S. Secret Service and lack of coordination with local law enforcement in an interim report released earlier this week.
The report revealed that there was “inadequate planning and coordination by the Secret Service with state and local law enforcement before and during the July 13 rally.”
The preliminary findings are based on 23 transcribed interviews with local law enforcement officials, thousands of pages of documents from local, state and federal authorities as well as testimony from a public hearing on Sept. 26, according to the task force.
The task force concluded that the attempt on Trump’s life was “preventable.”
Trump returned to the Butler site earlier this month for a rally marked by enhanced security measures around the fairground, during which he thanked the first responders and the community that rallied behind him in the wake of the assassination attempt.
ABC News’ Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office are expected to rest their case Monday against Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who is charged with manslaughter and negligent homicide in the chokehold death of a homeless man aboard a New York City subway car.
Defense attorneys will finish their cross-examination of the medical examiner, Dr. Cynthia Harris, who concluded “there are no alternative reasonable explanations” for Jordan Neely’s death other than Penny’s chokehold.
She is expected to be the last witness for the prosecution, which argued Penny’s chokehold became reckless when he held on too long, beyond the point when Neely represented any kind of threat to subway riders.
Jurors saw a video of Penny demonstrating the chokehold during an interview inside a police precinct.
“He had his back turned to me and I got him in a hold, got him to the ground, and he’s still squirming around and going crazy,” Penny is heard saying.
The defense is expected to shift the focus of the case from Penny to Neely, who had prior arrests, a history of mental illness and drugs in his system.
