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PHILADELPHIA (AP) —
The Amtrak train that crashed in Philadelphia, killing at least seven people, was hurtling at more than 100 mph before it ran off the rails along a sharp curve where the speed limit is just 50 mph, federal investigators said Wednesday.
The engineer at the controls refused to give a statement to authorities and left a police precinct with a lawyer, police said.
More than 200 people were injured in the derailment that plunged screaming passengers into darkness and chaos Tuesday night. It was the nation's deadliest train accident in nearly seven years.
"We are heartbroken by what has happened here," Mayor Michael Nutter said.
Hours after recovering the locomotive's data recorder, the National Transportation Safety Board tweeted that the train "exceeded 100 mph" before jumping the tracks in an old industrial neighborhood not far from the Delaware River shortly after 9 p.m.
The finding appeared to corroborate an Associated Press analysis of surveillance video from a spot along the tracks. The AP concluded from the footage that the train was speeding at approximately 107 mph just before it entered the curve.
The speed limit is 70 mph just before the bend, the Federal Railroad Administration said.
BOSTON (AP) —
It's the last chance for prosecutors and lawyers to make a case for life in prison or the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev when they present their closing arguments to the jury.
The jury is expected to begin its deliberations late Wednesday after it hears closing arguments and instructions from the judge.
Judge George O'Toole Jr. told jurors before closing arguments that they only have two choices for punishing Tsarnaev: life in prison without the possibility of release or the death penalty.
"The choice between these very serious alternatives is yours and yours alone to make," the judge said.
During the four-month trial, prosecutors have portrayed Tsarnaev as a callous, unrepentant terrorist who carried out the deadly attack with his radicalized older brother, Tamerlan. They say he deserves the death penalty.
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Thousands of commuters and travelers had to scramble Wednesday after a deadly Amtrak train derailment shut down a critical section of the busiest railroad in North America.
More than 2,200 trains a day — including Amtrak, commuter railways and freight — run through the Northeast Corridor, and the crash has choked the rail system.
Amtrak warned early Wednesday that there would be no service between Philadelphia and New York, and that service elsewhere in the region would have to be modified.
"There is no circumstance under which there would be any Amtrak service this week through Philadelphia," the city's mayor, Michael Nutter, said after viewing mangled tracks and downed wires at the crash scene.
Amtrak alone carries 11.4 million passengers a year through the Northeast Corridor, and many found themselves offloaded far from their destinations Wednesday morning.
Airlines added flights and bus lines said they would honor Amtrak tickets, but many travelers struggled to find seats.
"I've been standing here in a daze, trying to figure out what to do," Bill Atkins, 48, said at Penn Station in Manhattan. The attorney was trying to get home to Tysons Corner, Virginia, after a New York business trip, and didn't learn about the crash until he woke up Wednesday. "I'm going to try to fly," he decided.
But there were no flights available from LaGuardia or Kennedy, so he was thinking about taking NJ Transit as his next step. "I think I'm going to get to the Newark Airport and just stand in line."
Wednesday afternoon flights between New York and Washington quickly sold out on Delta Air Lines, which was considering adding flights and switching to larger jets in both directions, spokesman Anthony Black said.