(image: Associated Press)

At least five people were killed and many injured, some seriously, when a New York-bound Amtrak train from Washington DC derailed just north of Philadelphia at around 9.30pm on Tuesday night.

Several cars derailed and some had flipped over. There was a massive response by emergency teams, working initially in almost complete darkness, with rescuers using flashlights to search for people in the mangled wreckage.

More than 200 people were thought to be on board, including five Amtrak crew. There was no official word so far as to the cause of the accident, but officials said there was no indication there had been a collision with another train or vehicle. Some passengers reported feeling a “vibration” before the incident occurred. The NTSB has dispatched a team to begin an investigation.

NBC10 Philadelphia reported that Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter called the scene an “absolute disastrous mess.” The Mayor later said it would be unlikely there would be any service on the line for the rest of the week.

(CBS News)

(Fox News)

* Live coverage from Philly.com is here

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* WORLD * After Nepal experienced a second large earthquake, in which dozens of people are reported to have died, a US Marine helicopter helping with emergency relief and evacuations was reported missing. The aircraft had six US Marines and two Nepalese military officials on board.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberations on Wednesday in the sentencing phase of the trial of Boston marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev.

* Full coverage from the Boston Globe is here.

A five-day humanitarian cease-fire began Tuesday night in Yemen, with ships ready to deliver aid cargoes. But some fighting was reportedly continuing.

North Korea may have executed its defense chief according to reports in South Korea, while a high-level defector has been telling CNN about Kim Jong Un’s “reign of terror.”

Prince Charles’s “secret” memos to government ministers are set to be published on Wednesday. The release comes after the 27 letters were the subject of a lengthy Freedom of Information request by The Guardian. The paper writes that

[Former Attorney General Dominic] Grieve vetoed the information tribunal’s original decision to order publication in 2012, warning that the letters “contain remarks about public affairs which would in my view, if revealed, have had a material effect upon the willingness of the government to engage in correspondence with the Prince of Wales, and would potentially have undermined his position of political neutrality”.

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* POLITICS * Senate Democrats defied President Obama by preventing a vote on fast-track trade authority from coming to the floor. The Hill reports that the legislation “faces even stronger opposition from Democrats in the House, and the surprise Senate failure could signal the beginning of the end for one of Obama’s top priorities.”

GOP Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush is set to skip the Iowa straw poll – and apparently “misheard” a question about Iraq from Fox News’s Megyn Kelly.

(CBS News)

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* BUSINESS * Verizon is buying AOL for $4.4bn – Vox notes that the price paid is more than the combined value of BuzzFeed and the New York Times, “which sounds like a much more formidable content portfolio.” As you’d imagine, there were plenty of “dial-up” jokes. Verizon’s aim is to tap AOL’s mobile video advertising know-how. Robert Hof writes at Forbes on why “advertisers really want the deal to succeed, but fear it won’t.”

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* MEDIA * A new partnership beginning on Wednesday between Facebook and a number of leading publishers including NBC News and the New York Times will see select content delivered directly into Facebook consumers’ news feed. Gabriel Sherman at New York magazine calls it “a tectonic shift in the publishing industry.” He writes:

Not surprisingly, the prospect of a Facebook partnership is generating palpable anxiety inside the Times newsroom, with some Times journalists casting it as an end-of-the-Times-as-we-know-it inflection point. When rumors of a deal surfaced last October, the Times‘ late media columnist David Carr articulated this view, writing “the wholesale transfer of content sends a cold, dark chill down the collective spine of publishers, both traditional and digital insurgents alike.”

 

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* CULTURE * Prof Stephen Hawking will apparently appear at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. No information was available about his possible set.

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* SPORTS * Barcelona will play either Juventus or Real Madrid in the Champions League final, after Luis Enrique’s team had enough from the first leg against Bayern Munich to hold off a spirited but ultimately futile fightback in Bavaria.