BRIDGE COLLAPSE: A massive cargo ship stacked high with containers overnight hit and collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge, a primary traffic artery over the outer Baltimore harbor.

  Surveillance video caught the bridge spans dropping simultaneously into the water. A local emergency announcement to responders said, “Be advised the entire bridge, the entire Key Bridge is in the harbor.” 

  One local resident said he was awakened by a “long rolling sound of thunder.” This morning, wreckage of the bridge is hanging off the bow of the ship and rescue boats were looking for people in the water. Two were pulled out alive, but vehicles have been detected in the water.

  Baltimore Harbor is one of the busiest shipping ports in the country and this morning the harbor and the vital highway over the bridge are blocked.

DIDDY RAP: Heavily armed Homeland Security agents yesterday raided the Los Angeles and Miami homes of rapper Sean Combs, also known as “Puff Daddy” and “Diddy.”

  Combs has been a power in the music industry for 30 years.

  Homeland Security said the searches were part of “an ongoing investigation.” The 54-year-old hip-hop mogul has been accused in recent months of sexual assault and sex trafficking in multiple civil lawsuits.  

WINNING AND LOSING: Donald Trump put one in the winning column yesterday and one in the losing.

    On the losing side, the judge in the case of the hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels set an April 15^th trial date. The former president is accused of business fraud in hiding the payment to Daniels made before the 2016 election to keep quiet about an affair.

  This would be the first of Trump’s criminal cases to be tried before November. Trump astoundingly said, “I don’t know if Biden knows what’s happening, if you want to know the truth,” then said, “but this is all done by Biden and the thugs.” 

  Trump’s win for the day came when his lawyers convinced another New York court to vastly reduce the cash bond he must put up to be able to appeal his business fraud judgement. Instead of $464 million, he now has 10 days to produce cash or a bond for $175 million. 

MOSCOW TERROR:  Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted for the first time yesterday that the terror attack on a Moscow theatre last week was carried out by radical Islamists but still claimed that the operation may have been ordered by Ukraine.

  Putin said, “This atrocity can be just an element in a series of attempts of those who have been at war with our country since 2014.”  The Russians have produced no evidence that the four gunmen from Tajikistan who killed 137 people have any connection to Ukraine. The four appeared for arraignment with marks of having been severely beaten. One of them had his right ear partially or entirely cut off during interrogation.

PEACOCK REVOLT: MSNBC host Rachel Maddow last night joined the internal revolt against the network’s hiring of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as a political analyst. Maddow spent the first half hour of her show deriding her NBC employers.

  “She was part of a project, and what was the project?” Maddow said. “It was to use the power of the Republican Party, Republican officials, and Republican officeholders in Washington, the National Republican Party that she runs … to reject election results to take over the government and hold power by other means.

    McDaniel has repeated the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and echoed Trump’s claims about the “fake news.” NBC hired a woman who undermined both democracy and the free press.

  Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski also spoke up on “Morning Joe,” MSNBC’s flagship morning broadcast. Scarborough said, “It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on ‘Morning Joe’ in her capacity as a paid contributor.”

   Host Nicole Wallace said that by hiring McDaniel, “What we’ve also said to election deniers is not just that they can do that on our airwaves, but they can do that as one of us, a badge carrying employee of NBC News, as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves.”

THE OBIT PAGE: Lisa Lane, the first chess player to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated and a two-time US women’s champion, died last month at her home in Carmel, NY. She was 90.

  Lane had both brains and beauty and was sometimes known more for her looks. Sports Illustrated described her as “a very serious young woman, but beautifully serious, or seriously beautiful.”

  She was serious. Lane didn’t take up chess until she was in college at Temple University and won her first US championship within two years.

  In the late 1960s Lane tried to organize a movement to get women professionals paid as much as the men but failed to crack the ceiling. She quit professional chess soon after.

THE SPIN RACK: Israel cancelled a diplomatic delegation to the US after the UN Security Council voted 14-0 for a cease for in Gaza with the US abstaining. — Baseball’s $700 million star Shohei Ohtani said he was shocked and surprised that his translator stole from him for gambling money.

BELOW THE FOLD: LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey threatened a defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post for a story about her that is yet to be published. Mulkey said in a news conference Saturday that she is expecting a “hit piece.” Her team has made the “Sweet 16.”

  “I’m fed up, and I’m not going to let The Washington Post attack this university, this awesome team of young women I have or me without a fight,” Mulkey said. “I’ve hired the best defamation law firm in the country, and I will sue The Washington Post if they publish a false story about me.”

  We don’t know what the story is about, but in many published photos of Mulkey, she’s angrily shouting.

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