TROUBLED WATERS: Federal officials recovered the data recorder from the massive. container ship that took down Baltimore’s Key bridge while recovery teams yesterday found the bodies of two construction workers in a pickup truck that had tumbled into the water. They are searching for four more men lost in the accident.

  Investigators say they heard “multiple alarms” and an order to drop anchor on the data recorder. 

  Officials from the National Transportation safety board were interviewing the ship’s crew and at least one survivor from the bridge who was plucked from the water. There is no explanation yet for why the ship’s engines failed, allowing it to cruise uncontrolled into one of the bridge piers, causing the massive failure.

  The ship sent out a warning and police had about 90 seconds to stop auto traffic from crossing the bridge.

  Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg warned of “a long and difficult path to full recovery.” It will take years and billions of dollars to rebuild the bridge. Buttigieg said rebuilding will not be quick easy or cheap, but we will get it done.”

  The accident is already shaping up as a record breaking loss for maritime insurers.

ORANGE ALERT: Less than a day after he was placed under a partial gag order by the judge in his new York hush money criminal case, Donald Trump lashed out on social media against Judge Juan Merchan and his daughter.

  The judge is not covered by the order and Trump called him “biased and conflicted.” The former president accused Merchan of having “Trump derangement syndrome.” Referring to an internet conspiracy theory, Trump also said, “Maybe the judge is such a hater because his daughter makes money working to ‘Get Trump.’”

FUNNY MONEY: The toppled former crypto-currency boss Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted last year of fraud and money laundering, is due in court for sentencing today. Once a billionaire … at least on paper …  Bankman-Fried 

faces a demand by prosecutors for him to be sent away for 40 to 50 years.

DENIAL AIN’T A RIVER:  Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that it is “extremely hard to believe” that the Islamic State would have had means to carry out the attack in a Moscow concert hall last Friday that killed at least 143 people.

  She repeated claims, despite the lack of evidence and the Islamic state taking credit for the massacre that somehow Ukraine was behind the attack on the Crocus City Hall theater. 

  US intelligence says the attack was carried out by the Afghan branch of ISIS, Islamic State Khorasan. Ukraine has repeatedly denied it had anything to do with the attack.

  Spokeswoman Zakharova said the West rushed to pin responsibility on ISIS as a way of diverting blame from Ukraine.  “In order to ward off suspicions from the collective West, they urgently needed to come up with something, so they resorted to ISIS, pulled an ace out of their sleeve, and literally a few hours after the terrorist attack, the Anglo-Saxon media began disseminating precisely these versions,” she said.

  The US had actually warned Russia in advance that some kind of attack was in the works.

THE OBIT PAGE: Former US Senator from Connecticut Joe Lieberman, a Democrat who served four terms and was on the 2000 ticket with Al Gore as the candidate for vice president, died in New York City yesterday as the result of a fall. He was 82.

  Lieberman, who was Orthodox, was the first Jewish candidate from any major party to be on a presidential ballot.

  Lieberman supported the right to abortion but he was also a moralist who was the first major Democrat to rebuke President Bill Clinton for his sexual daliance with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He urged Americans to merge religion and faith into public life.

  Democrats criticized Lieberman’s support for the war in Iraq. He lost his party’s 2006 nomination for re-election to the Senate but engineered a stunning upset as an independent. He angered the Democrats again in 2008 endorsing Republican Sen. John McCain over Barack Obama for president. 

THE SPIN RACK: New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to approve a $15 toll to drive into Manhattan below 60^th Street during prime daytime hours. The measure faces six lawsuits already. — A California judge ruled yesterday that Trump supporter John Eastman should be disbarred in that state. Eastman has been described as the “architect” of the fake elector scheme and appeared with Trump at the infamous January 6^th rally. — Thailand’s lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly approved same sex marriage yesterday, which would make it the first Southeast Asian country to do so. The bill still has to pass the Senate, which rarely disagrees with the house. Thailand has a history of social acceptance. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and The Walt Disney Company have reached a settlement of their two-year legal battle over Disney development following the governor’s takeover of Disneyworld’s special governing body. Disney had objected to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” education law. 

BELOW THE FOLD: The melting of polar ice is having an effect on Earth’s rotation and because the speed of rotation is what determines time in a 24-hour day, scientists say one second will likely need to be subtracted sometime by 2029.

  Seconds have been added to the clock before, but because Earth’s rotation is speeding up, this is the first time one tick of the clock would need to be removed. 

-30-