Baltimore erupts in flames. The death toll in Nepal grows. And President Bush may (or may not) have criticized President Obama.
It’s Tuesday, and here are five things to know for your New Day.
BALTIMORE RIOTS
War zone: That’s what parts of Baltimore look like this morning after a half-day and night of riots and fires. Police (and their vehicles) were attacked. Businesses were looted. Buildings were burned. A state of emergency was declared. At least 15 officers were wounded, six of them seriously. More than two dozen people were arrested. All this came just hours after the funeral for Freddie Gray, who died of a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody. His family denounced the violence. So what will happen today? In an effort to head off more violence, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake imposed a curfew from 10 p.m to 5 a.m. daily starting tonight and lasting for at least a week.
BALTIMORE MAYOR
Tough day: Rawlings-Blake received the brunt of the criticism yesterday, as smoke and flame rose over parts of the city and looters took items from store shelves. She was slammed for the police’s passive posture at the start of the riot and for a delay in getting a state of emergency issued. But she was most savagely skewered for comments she made over the weekend where she said city officials “gave those who wished to destroy space to do that.” Critics howled that she was encouraging violence; the mayor said her detractors were mischaracterizing her words.
NEPAL EARTHQUAKE
‘Total destruction’: More than 4,400 people are confirmed dead, and that number is only expected to rise as the scope and scale of Saturday’s powerful earthquake becomes more clear. In the capital city of Kathmandu, people are sleeping outside, surgeries are being performed in makeshift operating theaters, power blackouts are widespread, needed supplies of all kinds are hard to come by and getting around is exceedingly difficult. Information about the condition of the villages outside of Kathmandu is spotty — because of blocked roads and unreliable communications — but reports that have filtered out speak of entire villages leveled by the quake or engulfed by landslides.
BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING TRIAL
‘No martydom’: That was the crux of the argument that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers made yesterday as they try to save him from a possible death sentence. Tsarnaev has been found guilty on all 30 counts related to the April 2013 bombing of the finish line at the Boston Marathon. Seventeen of those counts carry the death penalty for the murders of four people killed during the attacks. One of Tsarnaev’s attorneys, David Brock, showed the jury a photo of the federal supermax prison in Colorado, adding that “he goes here and he’s forgotten. No more spotlight, like the death penalty brings.” Just like during the trial, the defense team during the penalty phase is trying to convince the jury that Tsarnaev was under the influence of his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and that the jurors should consider that as a mitigating factor.
BUSH-OBAMA
Did he or didn’t he?: Did President Bush break his own longtime policy and publicly criticize President Obama? Depends on whom you ask. Bush appeared — to some observers — to criticize Obama’s foreign policy on Iran and ISIS while answering questions posed by Ari Fleischer, his former press secretary, during a closed-door meeting Saturday night with wealthy donors. The former president said the U.S. shouldn’t lift sanctions on Iran, months before Obama hopes to sign a final nuke deal with the Iranians. And Bush said it was a “strategic blunder” to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2011, a move which many have said created the vacuum in the country that helped create ISIS. Fleischer emphasized Bush never directly blasted Obama or his policies, which has been Bush’s custom since leaving office.
Those are your five biggies for the day. Here are a few others that are brewing and have the Internet buzzing.
Unreal: A hiker inadvertently captures the moment the Chile volcano erupted.
Watch this: Rubik’s Cube solved in less than 6 seconds!
Crazy good: Watch these school kids from Louisville rock Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train.”
Puppet power: Sesame Street takes on “The Avengers.”