Kayaker says he photographed crack in I-40 bridge in 2016
CBSN
A Mississippi River kayaker said photos he took about five years before a crack was found in the Interstate 40 bridge linking Tennessee and Arkansas appear to show the fracture that led transportation officials to close the span indefinitely last week.
Arkansas transportation officials said they cannot confirm or refute what's shown in the kayaker's photos, which raise questions about how early the crack appeared. An Associated Press photo editor inspected metadata from one of the photos and determined it was shot on August 6, 2016. The I-40 bridge connecting Memphis and the Arkansas city of West Memphis was shut down on May 11 after inspectors found a crack in one of two 900-foot horizontal steel beams that are critical for the bridge's structural integrity. River barge traffic under the span was closed that day but reopened three days later. Road traffic has been rerouted to the nearby Interstate 55 bridge.Rodeo star Spencer Wright and his wife are making end-of-life preparations for their 3-year-old son after he was found unconscious in a creek, a close family friend said in updates posted on social media and confirmed to CBS affiliate KUTV. The boy had been playing on his tractor before he ended up in the water and a mile downstream.
The launch of Boeing's star-crossed Starliner spacecraft on its first piloted test flight is slipping to at least June 1 to give engineers more time to assess a small-but-persistent helium leak in the capsule's propulsion system, and its potential impact across all phases of flight, NASA announced Wednesday.
Washington — As former President Donald Trump's "hush money" criminal trial in New York proceeds to closing arguments next week, the legal focus is moving south. His attorneys and longtime aide Walt Nauta appeared before Florida federal Judge Aileen Cannon, where they sparred with prosecutors during two contentious, day-long hearings on Wednesday.