Category: National News

Colleen Loud, 68, had been sitting at home waiting for a baseball game to start when two officers appeared at her door investigating a crash
After one of them said they could smell alcohol on her breathe, the two arrested Loud and claimed the filthy state of her mobile home was hazardous
Now, Loud has said she has hired an attorney and plans to sue the town over what she calls a ‘wrongful arrest’
By JOE HUTCHISON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

A woman plans to sue a small New Hampshire town after she was arrested in her own home last year by cops, who were investigating a crash that occurred nearby, because they said that they could could smell alcohol on her breath.

Colleen Loud, 68, had been sitting at her home in New Hampton eating a bowl of ice cream waiting for a Yankees game to start last October when officers knocked on her door and eventually took her into custody.

Police say that they arrested for being intoxicated with a breath alcohol test reading of just over .08, which is below the legal limit for driving, as well over concern for the condition of her home, in documents one officer accused her of being a ‘hoarder.

Loud later shot back in an interview saying: ‘My house is a mess, which is none of their business to be honest with you.’

Now, Loud has said she has hired an attorney and plans to sue the town over what she calls a wrongful arrest.

Officer Matt McCue had appeared at Loud’s door in October of last year and wanted to know if she had heard a car crash into the bushes outside her mobile home.

After telling McCue she had not, she closed the door on the officer and returned to watching her baseball game.

Following this, Sergeant Asa Johnson is said to have knocked on her door and claimed he could smell alcohol.

Loud told the Boston Globe that she had stopped by a local bar for a few beers after work prior to the officers appearing at her home.

Johnson made her take an alcohol test and found that her breath alcohol content was just over .08 percent, the legal limit for driving.

Loud told the newspaper she remembers Johnson saying: ‘We are taking you into police custody.

‘I’m sitting on my recliner waiting for a baseball game. The next minute you’re taking me into custody. What the hell.’

Colleen Loud, 68, pictured here on her daughter’s Facebook page

 

Loud claims they gave her two choices, call someone to take care of her, or go to the ‘drunk tank’ overnight.

They took her out of her home in handcuffs, and she spent the night in the Rockingham County Jail.

Loud said: ‘I feel like I was violated. My rights were violated. I was in my own home. I wasn’t staggering around.

‘I wasn’t falling down drunk. I was doing nothing but literally waiting for a baseball game to start on TV.’

Sgt Asa Johnson, pictured here, is said to have told Loud he could smell alcohol on her after knocking on her door

 

Officer McCue had originally gone to the door of her mobile home and questioned Loud on the crash

 

Former North Hampton Police Chief Kathryn Mone stood down from her post following an investigation into the arrest of Loud

 

After the town launched an investigation into the incident a report was filed on the arrest.

In the reports, which have been obtained by the Boston Globe, McCue and Johnson said Loud’s home was filled with ‘mountains of trash’ and they took her in to protect her from it.

Loud told the newspaper: ‘My house is a mess, which is none of their business to be honest with you.’

Since the incident, Police Chief Kathryn Mone has retired and Sgt. Johnson has left the police force.

The town investigation is also said to found that after the arrest there was no training, change to policy or disciplinary action.

According to the report, Mone is alleged to have said she would rather ‘get sued for taking action than not taking action’.

Hunter Biden privately settled child support dispute with mother of four-year-old
It came after Lunden Roberts turned up at first son’s deposition this month
The deal reportedly slashes payments from $20K a month to less than $5K
By BEN ASHFORD FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and ROB CRILLY, SENIOR U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Hunter Biden and his Arkansas baby mama have settled their bitter, years-long paternity battle over the daughter the First Son refuses to meet.

Hunter and former flame Lunden Roberts submitted an agreed order to Independence County Circuit Court on Monday afternoon for Circuit Judge Holly Meyer to approve, DailyMail.com has learned.

The document will become public within the next 24 hours but with heavy redactions to keep the full financial arrangements of four-year-old Navy Joan Roberts’ upbringing a secret.

A New York Post report published last week suggested that Roberts, 32, had signed a deal agreeing to slash the $20,000 Hunter pays each month to just $5,000 after he pleaded financial hardship.

The face-to-face showdown comes after Roberts petitioned a judge to toss Hunter in jail for six months for failing to come clean about his wealth

However Roberts’ attorney Clinton Lancaster pushed back against the article, stating that no deal had been reached and refusing to confirm the figures involved.

The confidential settlement means Hunter, 53, will avoid the scrutiny of a public paternity trial where details of his murky finances were likely to feature heavily.

Details emerged soon after it was reported that President Joe Biden’s son will plead guilty to federal tax offenses as part of a deal to avoid a full prosecution on a separate gun charge.

Roberts sprang a surprise on her former lover earlier this month. She turned up in person to hear him being deposed for the first time in their paternity battle.

Things were resolved soon after, however.

Roberts is understood to have dropped her demand that daughter Navy change her surname to Biden, a request that had been rejected by Hunter’s legal team.

The former flames had settled the case in 2019 but Hunter abruptly asked a court last year to lower the $20,000 per month in child support he pays for their adorable four-year-old daughter, Navy Joan Roberts.

Roberts refused to budge until the first son handed over a trove of financial docs and sat for a videotaped deposition which was supposed to take place at the Arkansas office of her Donald Trump-supporting attorney, Clinton Lancaster.

The recovering drug addict switched the venue to the Stephens Building, which was teeming with Secret Service agents as his five-vehicle motorcade pulled in just before 9am via a private parking garage.

Roberts, a former DC bottle girl who once worked as Hunter’s PA, drove in unnoticed about five minutes later. She was deposed at the same high-rise office for seven hours on Wednesday, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.

The face-to-face showdown comes after Roberts petitioned circuit court judge Holly Meyer to toss Hunter in jail for six months for failing to come clean about his wealth. Meyer is yet to rule on the contempt accusation.

In round one of their four-year suit Hunter claimed he was ‘unemployed and had no monthly income’ despite living in a $12,000-per-month Hollywood rental and driving a Porsche.

Details emerged soon after it was reported that President Joe Biden’s son will plead guilty to federal tax offenses as part of a deal to avoid a full prosecution on a separate gun charge

Roberts is a former DC bottle girl who once worked as Hunter’s PA

But when ordered to produce his financial records he repeatedly failed to do so before agreeing a 2019 settlement that has seen him pay Roberts more than $750,000 to date.

Despite already facing congressional and federal probes into his financial affairs, Hunter unexpectedly reopened the case last September, claiming he had suffered ‘a substantial material change’ in his income.

Roberts refused to buckle and raised the stakes by petitioning the court to officially rename her daughter Navy Joan Biden to ‘benefit from carrying the Biden Family name.’

Her discovery request covers everything from Hunter’s business deals in Ukraine and China to the names of the mystery art lovers who have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for his beginner paintings.

In his own filings, Hunter has opposed Navy Joan becoming a Biden, insisting he wants a ‘peaceful existence’ for her, free of the political scrutiny associated with his family dynasty.

 

The remaining staffers who worked on Carlson’s show before his shocking April ouster were informed that their positions are being eliminated
The development arrives as Fox News, on Monday, announced its new primetime lineup that will place Jesse Watters in Carlson’s old spot
While Carlson remains locked in a legal battle with Fox News, the staffers were told they will have the opportunity to apply for other roles at the network
By SOPHIE MANN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

The eight remaining staffers who formerly worked on Fox’s Tucker Carlson Tonight have been told that their positions are being eliminated after the network officially announced its new primetime lineup on Monday.

At least one Carlson employee did not take that news lying down. Gregg Re – the show’s former head writer – unleashed a series of ‘scorched earth’ tweets Monday evening that targeted Fox’s Executive Vice President of Primetime Programming Meade Cooper.

According to a source familiar with the situation, the staffers, who have been working on Fox News Tonight – the placeholder show that’s been airing as the network decided what would replace Carlson’s show – were individually told that their jobs will no longer exist come mid-July.

The eight were offered ‘enhanced severance’ if they decide to stay on through July 14, which is the last day of Fox’s current primetime lineup before the new schedule takes effect.

The staffers were also offered the opportunity to apply for other roles at the network.

The remainder of Tucker Carlson’s staffers were told their positions were being eliminated Monday after the network announced its new primetime lineup

44-year-old Jesse Watters was announced as the new face of Fox News’ coveted 8pm slot, a spot he had been the frontrunner to assume for weeks

Earlier in June, two former Carlson staffers, Alexander McCaskill and Thomas Fox – both senior leadership for the show – departed the network. Both men were mentioned by name in the discrimination suit filed against the network by former producer Abby Grossberg.

Former head writer Re specifically aimed his harsh commentary at Fox’s Executive Vice President of Primetime Programming Meade Cooper.

‘Meade Cooper did not simply fire all of Tucker’s old team. It’s important to capture the callousness. First, she let the employees hear about the news of their show’s cancellation from a Fox press release. Then, Meade told the employees to hunt around the Fox website to see if they could maybe find another gig,’ he wrote.

He continued: ‘Tune into “Fox News tonight” for its last two weeks on air. Enjoy watching the work product of nine producers, whom Meade Cooper is forcing to work before she fires them. (Under threat of losing their severance). I’m sure it’ll be great content.’

Supporting Re’s comments, Chadwick Moore, an author who wrote a book about Carlson due out later this summer, wrote: ‘Meade Cooper, the exec who fired all of Tucker’s former team yesterday, is a “terrible leader” with no regard for the people who perform day in and day out, Fox staffers tell me.

‘She “lacks creativity” and “pretended to have oversight of Fox Primetime programming for years,” they said. Cooper “benefited from the ascension of women at the network after Roger Ailes departed,’ he wrote.

‘She has now executed the highest performing producers in cable news history. While riding a women’s advocacy wave, many of those she fired yesterday were women, sources tell me.’

Re excoriated Fox News executive Meade Cooper after she fired the remaining eight staffers who used to work on Carlson’s show on Monday. McCaskill, who used to work on Carlson’s show, departed the network earlier this month after he ran a chyron that called Joe Biden a ‘dictator’

Meade Cooper, the Fox executive who allegedly made the decision to fire the rest of Carlson’s staff

Carlson’s shocking ouster came in late April after the company settled a massive $787.5million lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems. Even then, the move puzzled many who thought Fox would never have backed down from a fight when it came to their lucrative golden boy – who technically is still under contract.

Earlier this month, the network touted this arrangement after top brass threatened to sue Carlson for violating his contract by way of the launch of a low-budget Twitter show that was watched by more than 80million people.

In a report from Axios, lawyers for the media giant are said to have sent official correspondence to Carlson’s legal team claiming the newscaster was ‘in breach’ of his contract when he aired his new Twitter show.

Carlson’s lawyers reportedly argued any legal action by Fox would be a direct violation of their client’s First Amendment rights, as the pundit is said to be looking for a way out of a $20million-a-year contract with the company.

Carlson left his Fox News show on April 23, with no official reason given for why the company let their most-watched anchor go. The aforementioned contract has prevented him from taking work at competing networks.

In the statement to Axios, Carlson’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, accused Fox executives of engaging in hypocrisy by silencing Carlson, pointing to how the company claims to ‘defend its very existence on freedom of speech grounds.’

On Monday, Fox announced that Jesse Watters will take over the 8pm prime time slot after Carlson was yanked from the air by the network this spring.

Announced as part of a shuffle that will also see Laura Ingraham shift earlier in the evening and late-night host Greg Gutfeld move up to 10pm, Watters will now man the hallowed 8pm slot – left vacant by Carlson back in April.

The brand-new lineup will also see Ingraham, previously the host of the 10pm hour, kick off the primetime programming block at 7pm. Seasoned commentator Sean Hannity, meanwhile, will keep his old 9pm time, top brass confirmed in a statement.

It comes almost two months to the day that Carlson was abruptly axed from his longtime post at Fox, days after it paid $787.5million to settle a defamation suit linked to remarks made on air by the commentator.

In the time since, rumors swirled as to a possible replacement – with a frontrunner eventually surfacing in 44-year-old Watters, whose rise can be traced back to his days as a production assistant on the O’Reilly Factor when he was just 24, when he gained notoriety as a dogged man-on-the street correspondent.

Suzanne Scott, the network’s CEO, announced Watters would be replacing Carlson in a statement early Monday morning.

‘Fox News Channel has been America’s destination for news and analysis for more than 21 years and we are thrilled to debut a new lineup,’ Scott, the network’s top exec since 2018, wrote in the bombshell notice.

She added: ‘The unique perspectives of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld will ensure our viewers have access to unrivaled coverage from our best-in-class team for years to come.’

Fox’s announcement came as many had pegged Watters to be the clear-cut choice to replace Carlson, given the ratings he commands and the screen presence he exhibits on-set.

His current show, Jesse Watters Primetime, which only began airing last year, currently boasts an average of about 2.6 million viewers a night, while his long-running Saturday show, Watters’ World, drew in 1.9 million viewers before being pulled in 2022.

In addition to his prime time duties, Waters also hosts Fox’s panel-style program The Five – where he appears alongside fellow network personalities Gutfeld, Dana Perino and Judge Jeanine Pirro. It is assumed he will continue in that role while serving as the new 8pm hour host.

Three elderly people were found murdered in their home in Massachusetts
They included an elderly couple and the woman’s mother, in her late 90s
Police said there was evidence of a break in and told locals to lock their doors
By NEIRIN GRAY DESAI FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

An elderly couple that failed to appear at church on Sunday to renew their wedding vows in a celebration of their 50th anniversary were later found murdered in their home along with the wife’s mother, who was 97.

Jill and Bruno D’Amore, 73 and 74, described as ‘fantastic Italian people who wouldn’t hurt a soul’, celebrated their wedding anniversary on Saturday night and were due to renew their vows at Our Lady Help of Christians Church on Sunday.

But they never showed up and at around 10.15am, shortly after mass had begun, were found dead in their home alongside Jill’s mother, Lucia Arpino, who had attended that Sunday mass for more than 60 years.

The three were said to have died of stab wounds and blunt-force trauma and there were signs that the house – located Newton, Massachusetts – had been broken into, police said on Sunday night.

The Newton Police Chief advised residents to keep their doors locked and check their surveillance cameras in case anything had been captured on video. No suspects had been identified as of Sunday night.

Jill and Bruno D’Amore, 73 and 74, and Jill’s mother, Lucia Arpino, 97, were found dead in their Massachusetts home by a neighbor after they failed to attend Sunday mass

The D’Amores and their mother were expected at church on Sunday morning but did not show up, causing a neighbor to check in on them at their house (pictured)

Police said there was evidence of forced entry into the elderly couple’s home and a separate incidence of burglary was reported that morning around half a mile away

A neighbor who went to check in on the family at their home in the Italian-American neighborhood of Nonantum called 911 at 10.14am after discovering their bodies, Newton police said in a press release.

Jim Sbordone, a retired Newton Fire Department lieutenant who was also close friends with the D’Amores, told The Boston Globe that the family had long been patrons of the nearby Our Lady Help of Christians Church.

‘They were fantastic Italian people who wouldn’t hurt a soul, and they would just do anything for anybody,’ Sbordone told the newspaper.

‘These were great people.

‘This isn’t the type of thing that happens in the neighborhood,’ he said. ‘I hope it never happens again to anybody.’

Cousins of the D’Amores, Paul and Ginny Arpino, noted in a tribute that prior to Covid, Jill’s mother Lucia had not missed a mass in over 60 years.

‘She and her husband Alberto sat in the “North End” section of our church,’ they wrote. According to an obituary published in the Boston Globe, Alberto left her widow after passing away in 2014 aged 87.

Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said during a news conference on Sunday night that half a mile away in Newtonville there had been a separate attempted burglary that morning, at around 5.40am.

She said authorities were still working to establish if the two events were related and if so, in what order they had occurred. She also appealed to members of the community report anything suspicious.

Relatives of those killed, Paul and Ginny Arpino, said Lucia Arpino, 97, would sit with her late husband Alberto at the north end of church and before Covid had attended every Sunday mass for more than 60 years

 

‘This is the night to lock your doors and windows even if you do not normally do that.

‘It’s a warm night, people may have air conditioners going, be vigilant,’ she said during the conference.

Newton Police Chief Chief John F. Carmichael Jr. said that there would be additional police presence on the streets on Sunday night.

‘I am very concerned with such a violent crime taking place and whereas this individual or individuals is still at large, we do really emphasize again be vigilant,’ he said.

A neighbor that lives two doors down from the couple but wanted to remain anonymous also expressed confusion and shock at such a seemingly arbitrary act of violence.

‘Why them?’ they told The Boston Herald. ‘Why a nice couple like them? Why this neighborhood? Nothing like this happens in this neighborhood.’

He said the victims were a ‘very, very nice couple’.

The pair were regular attendees of the church and Jill is listed on its website as being involved in decorating it ‘in keeping with the liturgical seasons’.

‘Jill had taken on the ministry of beautifying our church’s environment. Without a single day of liturgical training she simply followed her heart, caring for the flowers and decorating for the liturgical seasons. She spent endless hours in the care of our church,’ wrote the couple’s cousins, Paul and Ginny, in a tribute.

The the church’s pastor Rev Dan Riley, told The Globe he had known the family since he moved to the Roman Catholic parish more than six years ago.

Riley described them as ‘just the best vision you could have of a Catholic Italian-American family’

‘They had family warmth, a tomato garden outside, hospitality. They were just great people,’ he added.

 

Amul Thapar made his remarks to broadcaster CNN
He slammed liberal critics of Clarence Thomas for misinterpreting his rulings
The 75-year-old Thomas has been under fire over failing to disclose gifts from a billionaire friend
By JAMES FRANEY, SENIOR U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

A Donald Trump-appointed judge has hit out at recent media attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas and slammed the ‘pot shots’ taken at the Supreme Court.

Judge Amul Thapar, a federal appeals court judge based in Cincinnati, rejected allegations that one of the most senior legal minds in America had acted improperly after his alleged failure to disclose lavish gifts provided by a billionaire friend.

‘Judges are just like every other human being. We have a diverse group of friends, and those friends don’t influence the way we do our job,’ Thapar told CNN in an interview.

Thapar was promoting a new book that analyzes Clarence Thomas’s rulings during his time as a Supreme Court justice

 

The 54-year-old attorney made his remarks during a PR blitz for his new book on Thomas ‘The People’s Justice.’

Liberal critics accuse the 75-year-old of an overly rigid approach to interpreting the constitution that produces his conservative rulings on abortion and gun rights.

But Thapar said there is no evidence that Thomas’s links to Dallas real estate magnate Harlan Crow had influenced his decisions.

‘You can judge their works, and what they do, against what they’ve done in the past,’ he said. ‘And if it’s consistent, then it’s hard to say anything influenced them.’

He added that it was ‘disheartening that people who know better are taking pot shots at the court.’

Thapar writes in his new book that ‘by cherry-picking his opinions or misrepresenting them, Justice Thomas’s critics claim that his originalism favors the rich over the poor, the strong over the weak, and corporations over consumers.

‘They have called Justice Thomas ‘the cruelest justice,’ ‘stupid,’ and even an ‘Uncle Tom’ a traitor to his race.’

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has gone on weekly vacations with real estate magnate Harlan Crow, including on an adventure to Indonesia aboard a megayacht and private jet. He issued a response citing a ‘personal hospitality’ exception to gift rules

Crow called Thomas a dear friend, and got to know him after he joined the Supreme Court. Crow is a Dallas-based real estate magnate

 

Clarence Thomas has faced increased scrutiny in recent weeks after it emerged that he had failed to declare hospitality provided by his wealthy friend Harlan Crow.

He had been aboard the billionaire’s superyacht to Indonesia, New Zealand and Greece and made free use of his private jet.

The 74-year-old also took vacations at Harlan Crow’s countryside lodge in Adirondack Park, New York.

The retreat offers opportunities for boat rides and fishing, and features exotic furnishings

Crow also paid the pricey private school tuition of a great-nephew of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, which the judge failed to declare.

A July 2009 bank statement showed that Crow’s business had paid a $6,000 monthly bill for a boarding school attended by Mark Martin.

Thomas had legal custody of the teenager at the time.

In April, he released a rare statement noting that he and his wife had been friends with Crow ‘for over twenty-five years.’

‘As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them,’ Thomas wrote.

He said he had followed the advice of others in deciding what required disclosure as per official guidelines and that Crow himself did not have business before the court.

The real estate mogul has made more than $10 million in donations to Republican political groups.

He also stumped up half a million dollars to a conservative lobbying group founded by Ginni Thomas.

The justice’s wife has drawn her own criticism for supporting Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.

Billionaire Harlan Crow helped foot the tuition bill for a relative of Clarence Thomas. This included help for the $6,000 per month Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia

The retreat offers opportunities for boat rides and fishing, and features exotic furnishings

Supreme Court guidelines have since been tightened and now justices are required to declare gifts and free property stays.

But there is nothing in the past that would have prevented a member of the nation’s highest court refusing to reveal lavish travel gifts.

The Ethics and Government Act of 1978 requires justices to file an annual disclosure form where they are required to disclose gifts, but makes exceptions for ‘personal hospitality.’

A Judiciary Policy Guide references the exception, but its language states that it does not apply to travel that substitutes for commercial transportation – which would appear to include luxury jet or yacht travel.

‘The personal hospitality gift reporting exemption applies only to food, lodging, or entertainment and is intended to cover such gifts of a personal, nonbusiness nature,’ according to the guide.

‘Therefore, the reporting exemption does not include: gifts other than food, lodging or entertainment, such as transportation that substitutes for commercial transportation,’ it states.

Rachel Lance, a Duke University biomedical engineer and underwater survival expert, on Thursday said OceanGate was using technology proven not to work
Lance told CNN that the carbon fiber hull was already widely discredited, despite OceanGate’s CEO hyping it as innovative and safe
She said some of the vessel’s design materials ‘were already large red flags to people who have worked in this field’

By HARRIET ALEXANDER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

OceanGate’s submersible design which the CEO touted as innovative and safe had already been widely discredited by the deep sea diving community, a survival expert has claimed.
Rachel Lance, a Duke University biomedical engineer, said that the carbon fibre hull which OceanGate’s sub used was known to be unsuitable.
The tourist sub is now believed to have imploded on Sunday morning at 9:45am while diving down to see the wreck of the Titanic. All five people on board – including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush – were killed in the disaster, the first of its kind.
Lance told CNN on Thursday that Rush’s boasts about being experimental were not true – as experiments had been attempted, and deemed unsafe.
‘This was a company that was already defying much of what we already know about submersible design,’ said Lance.

Rachel Lance of Duke University said that the Titan’s carbon fiber hull was a serious cause for concern

 

The submersible, Titan, is pictured descending. It was the only five person sub capable of reaching Titanic, and the only tourist sub which had not been independently certified as safe. On Thursday debris from the sub was found on the ocean floor

 

Titan’s carbon fiber hull and its acrylic viewport were subject to several warnings and James Cameron singled them out as ‘potential failure points’ on the vessel

 

She noted some of the vessel’s design materials ‘were already large red flags to people who have worked in this field.’
She said the unconventional combinations of materials used in the sub, named Titan, posed safety risks because ‘over the course of repeated pressurizations, they tend to weaken.’
Lance added: ‘This is not exactly what, in my opinion, would be innovation because this is already a thing that has been tried and it simply didn’t work.’
OceanGate was founded in 2009, and began its first tourist trips to the Titanic wreckage in 2021.
OceanGate, and in particular Rush, have come in for fierce criticism about alleged corner-cutting with the design and testing, and ignoring the scientific and engineering consensus.
Rush died in the disaster, along with British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58; French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77; and British-Pakistani father and son Shahzada Dawood, 48, and Suleman Dawood, 19.

Five people were onboard, including British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding and Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, who was just 19

 

French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet (left) was in the sub along with Stockton Rush (right), CEO of the OceanGate Expedition

 

In 2018, the director of maritime safety was fired for questioning the structural composition.
That same year, an industry group told Rush that there were widespread concerns about Titan’s design.
Rush boasted that Boeing, NASA and the University of Washington had all collaborated on the design, but all three have since said they were not involved in designing and testing Titan.
James Cameron, the director of the 1997 film Titanic and an experienced deep sea explorer, has been among the most vocal critics of the Titan’s design.
He said there were several ‘potential failure points’ in the doomed Titan submersible – and a warning system probably alerted the five crew who perished shortly before the vessel imploded.
A series of concerns were raised in recent years about the vessel’s carbon fiber hull – the cylinder which carried the five crew who perished – and its porthole, which was allegedly not certified to the immense depths Titan ventured to.
Rush even said the carbon fiber design broke a ‘rule’ and was accused of ignoring concerns from his own staff.
Cameron, a renowned explorer who has traveled to the deepest known point in the ocean, said Titan had ‘three potential failure points’ and indicated that its ‘Achilles heel’ was the carbon fiber cylinder.
He added the hull was broken into ‘very small pieces’ after Titan imploded when the hull fractured because of the pressure. A warning system probably sounded an alert and the crew tried to ascend in the moment before the implosion, he added.

Cameron gave a series of interviews following news of Titan’s demise which criticized the ‘fundamentally flawed’ carbon fiber hull

 

Concerns about the hull and porthole were also raised by OceanGate’s former head of marine operations, David Lochridge, in court documents in 2018. The filings state the viewport was ‘only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers down to depths of 4,000 meters’.
Cameron delivered a damning assessment of the Titan craft during a series of interviews following the grim news it had been destroyed during its mission.
He criticized the design for straying away from proven techniques in favor of experimental methods.
‘There are three potential failure points and the investigation hopefully can localize it down to exactly what happened,’ he told Good Morning America.
‘The viewport in the front was an acrylic viewport. I’m told it was rated to less depth than they were diving to, which is one point. They also had two glass spheres on the sub, small glass spheres for floatation, which is a bad idea.’
Cameron didn’t clarify his statement about the ‘glass spheres’ but he said it was the carbon fiber hull that was the ‘weakest link’.
‘If I had to put money down on what the finding will be, the Achilles heel of the sub was the composite cylinder that was the main hull that the people were inside.
‘There were two titanium end caps on each end. They are relatively intact on the sea floor.
‘But that carbon fiber composite cylinder is now just in very small pieces. It’s all rammed into one of the hemispheres. It’s pretty clear that’s what failed.’

Cameron said: ‘And they probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate, and it started to crack… It’s our belief we understand from inside the community that they had dropped their ascent weights and they were coming up, trying to manage an emergency’

 

Rush, who died in the Titan incident, said in a video posted online in 2021 that he had ‘broken some rules’ to create the vessel and added: ‘The carbon fiber and titanium, there’s a rule you don’t do that – well I did.’He also said in 2020 that the hull had ‘showed signs of cyclical fatigue’.
Carbon fiber is prone to delamination, the process whereby a material fractures into layers while put under pressure
Cameron said: ‘The way it fails is it delaminates. You have to have a hull, a pressure hull, made out of a contiguous material like steel, or like titanium, which is the proven standard.’
‘This OceanGate sub had sensors on the inside of the hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crack. And I think if that’s your idea of safety, then you’re doing it wrong. And they probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate, and it started to crack…
‘It’s our belief we understand from inside the community that they had dropped their ascent weights and they were coming up, trying to manage an emergency.’

In 2012, James Cameron carried out a successful solo mission to the deepest known point on Earth, the Mariana Trench. He piloted the Deepsea Challenger (pictured) which was designed to withstand depths in excess of 36,000ft

 

Cameron in 2012 after his successful solo dive in Deepsea Challenger to the deepest-known point on Earth, the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench

 

A graphic breaks down Cameron’s 2012 mission to the deepest known point in the ocean

 

OceanGate has not shared a comment about reports into safety concerns about Titan since the incident.
The company had boasted in promotional material about Titan’s ‘Real Time Hull Health Monitoring’, which constantly checked the integrity of the vessel throughout the dive.
The system used acoustic sensors and strain gauges to ‘analyze the effects of changing pressure on the vessel as the submersible dives deeper, and accurately assess the integrity of the structure’.
But legal filings reveal Lochridge, the former director of marine operations, ‘expressed concern that this was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail—often milliseconds before an implosion—and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull.’
Cameron successfully reached the deepest known point on Earth, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, in 2012 using the Deepsea Challenger submersible.
It was only the fourth time the seven-mile descent to the Pacific sea bed has been made successfully – and the first time a man has made it the bottom and back since 1960.
The dive followed seven years of planning and design for the construction of the specialized sub which could withstand the immense pressure at the ocean floor.

• • Demand for the Anheuser-Busch owned beer continues to drop at both personal and corporate events 

• • The owner of a mobile bartending service says she is seeing consumers pivot away from wanting Bud Light at their events 

• • Since the brand’s controversial partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, the brand has lost billions in market value and has suffered a 25 percent sales decrease 

Demand for Bud Light continues to plummet as both corporate and personal events have pivoted away from featuring the Anheuser-Busch brand at their gatherings, according to the owner of a pop-up bar business.

Catarina Tucker, the founder of Barnastics – a mobile bartending company based in New Jersey- told Fox News there has been a ‘significant shift’ away from Bud Light among her clients recently.

In April, the Anheuser-Busch-owned brand became embroiled in controversy over a promotion it did with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

The company has since lost billions of dollars in market capitalization, and continues to be boycotted by tens of millions of former consumers.

Shelves have remained stocked with Bud Light as the brand continues to suffer from the fallout of the Dylan Mulvaney partnership 

The brand has been forced to buy back expired beer from wholesalers, and is contemplating how to deal with the people at every juncture of the sales lifecycle who are experiencing a loss of profits.

Though Tucker said the liquor stores she works with have yet to begin selling Bud Light at a discount, the consumer backlash has been tangible.

‘[Demand for Bud Light] has plummeted completely. No one wants it at their event anymore,’ she said.

‘There are a couple clients that have expressed to me their feelings behind it, and it’s no longer popular.’

She said her customers, and consumers generally, are becoming more aware of whether the brands they support align with their personal and political values.

As a result, people are ‘actively seeking alternatives to Bud Light, gravitating towards craft beers, specialty cocktails, and premium spirits.’

Tucker said she does not believe the brand will rebound in popularity any time soon.

‘With the feedback that I’ve gotten and how strongly a lot of clients feel about it, it [the company] doesn’t switch gears, I don’t see the popularity picking back up,’ she said.

Tucker’s company website allows customers to create a custom proposal that allows the company to see and understand any shifts in demand for certain products.

‘Sometimes things blow over,’ she noted, but added that Bud Light’s actions as a corporation ‘hold a lot of weight’ with their consumers.

Tucker said she has not noticed the same plummeting demand for other Anheuser-Busch products, like Budweiser, but ‘anything Bud Light, they just won’t support.’

Sales of Bud Light have been in free fall for weeks, falling about 25 percent in the the last month.

Catarina Tucker said she does not foresee Bud Light’s popularity recovering anytime soon

Bud Light, which has been down 25 percent in sales over the last month, released a Pride month line of beer

Mulvaney worked with Bud Light in April as part of their March Madness campaign and was gifted a can of the light beer with her face on it

In a note last week, JPMorgan analysts said they expect AB InBev’s earnings before interest and tax in the US to drop 26 percent this year, on a 12 percent drop in volume and a 10 percent decline in sales.

‘We believe there is a subset of American consumers who will not drink a Bud Light for the foreseeable future,’ the note said.

Bud Light’s parent company said earlier this month it will triple its marketing spending in the US this summer as it tries to boost ailing sales.

Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Michel Doukeris has downplayed the impact of the backlash, saying Bud Light’s US sales declines in the first three weeks of April represented only one percent of InBev’s global volumes.

‘We believe we have the experience, the resources and the partners to manage this,’ Doukeris said during a conference call with investors earlier this month.

Conservatives have continued with the boycott, leading to the Belgian based brewer to place two executives responsible for partnership— Alissa Heinerscheid, the vice president of marketing, and her boss, Daniel Blake — on leave in April.

Heinerscheid was hired to overhaul Bud Light’s marketing in June 2022 with the vision of freshening up its image, while Blake had worked at Anheuser-Busch for nearly nine years.

Heinerscheid’s short-lived tenure reportedly included a widely-lauded Super Bowl ad featuring Miles Teller and wife Keleigh Sperry, as well as ‘the Bud Light Carry’ campaign that showed a woman carrying a round of beers to a table of friends without spilling a drop.

Those ads, statements from the beer brand revealed, were part of Heinerscheid’s vision to make the brand more female friendly – something she described only a few months ago as a ‘passion point’.

But that vision was swiftly cut down on April 3 with the brand’s partnership with Mulvaney, a controversial trans activist with a mass following on social media, which proved to be a step too far for Bud Light’s loyal customers.

After Anheuser-Busch tried to distance itself from the Mulvaney promotion, Bud Light also faced backlash from the opposite direction, with pro-LGBTQ groups accusing the company of abandoning the transgender influencer.