News Wrap: Carbon dioxide reaches record level in the atmosphere

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In our news wrap Monday, climate change-driving CO2 reached a new record level in the Earth's atmosphere this spring according to new data. Survivors demanded answers in the train crash that killed 275 people in India and ground assaults in Ukraine may signal the beginning of a long-rumored counter offensive against Russian forces.

AMNA NAWAZ:

In the day's other headlines: Survivors and families in eastern India are demanding answers after a rail disaster that killed 275 people. Investigators focused on the cause today as relatives waited for the remains of loved ones.

Stephanie Sy has our report.

STEPHANIE SY:

The search for survivors is waning, but the search for answers continues.

Today, as repair workers dug through the mangled wreckage, investigators launched a two-day probe into what caused one of the deadliest train disasters India has seen in decades.

ANANT CHOWDHARY, Commissioner of Railway Safety: The inquiry is under way. We have called all the witnesses for the inquiry, and after the inquiry is over, only then we will know what is the reason for the accident.

STEPHANIE SY:

Early findings point to a signaling error that led a train to mistakenly switch tracks. Officials say a southbound passenger train collided with a stationary freight train in the Eastern District of Balasore,.

That caused several cars to derail, striking a third train speeding by. In the days since, only a fraction of the dead have been identified. A shortage of morgues forced about 100 unclaimed bodies to a hospital in Bhubaneswar, over 100 miles from the crash site.

Distraught relatives lined up outside to identify loved ones as their images, barely recognizable, popped up on a TV screen.

UPENDRA RAM, Father of Crash Victim (through translator): I will die remembering him. I will die here if I don't get his body. I just want to take his dead body and go back home.

STEPHANIE SY:

For others, the grief has already begun to set in; 20-year-old Bijay Lakshmi lost her husband in the crash. Unable to speak, her mother-in-law described her state of shock.

SAVRITI SAHU, Mother of Crash Victim (through translator): She is just not in a position to talk. She has not eaten anything. She has not drunk anything. She has not even taken water. It is such a huge calamity. Such grief and pain. She got married barely a year ago.

STEPHANIE SY:

As families across India mourn, rail upper operations resume.

Trains crawled past the crash site, with passengers gazing out at the remains of a tragedy yet to be explained.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy.

AMNA NAWAZ:

India's huge rail network dates back to the British colonial era and has several hundred accidents every year.

In Ukraine, a surge in ground assaults by government forces fueled speculation today that a long-expected counteroffensive is finally beginning. Russia's military claimed it repulsed attacks at five points in the Donetsk region on Sunday. Russian video purportedly showed its forces throwing back the attackers. Ukraine said its troops were gaining ground, and U.S. officials backed that claim.

The U.S. and India have set out a road map for upgraded military cooperation to counter China and other challenges. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in New Delhi today and held talks on improving defense and security ties over five years. The agreement comes weeks before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes a state visit to Washington.

In the meantime, the U.S. denounced what it called an unsafe maneuver by a Chinese navy ship in the Taiwan Strait. It happened Saturday as an American destroyer and a Canadian frigate were transiting the disputed waterway. Video taken on board those ships showed the Chinese vessel cutting within 150 yards of the U.S. warship.

Today, the White House condemned the maneuver.

JOHN KIRBY, NSC Coordinator For Strategic Communications:

When you have pieces of metal that size, whether its in the air or on the sea, and they are operating that close together, it wouldn't take much for an error in judgment or a mistake to get made, and somebody could get hurt. And that's just got to be unacceptable. And it should be unacceptable to them as well.

AMNA NAWAZ:

This was the latest in a series of incidents between the U.S. and Chinese militaries in recent weeks.

Search teams in Davenport, Iowa, have now recovered the bodies of three men missing in last week's apartment building collapse. The police chief said today there's no indication that anyone else is missing. A large section of the century-old building came down on May 28. Today, one of the tenants sued the city and the building's owners, charging they failed to warn anyone of the danger.

A separate investigation is focusing on why a small business jet buzzed Washington, D.C., on Sunday before crashing in Southwestern Virginia. Fighter jets were scrambled, but they reported that the plane's pilot appeared to be unconscious. Aerial footage showed the crash site on a heavily wooded mountainside. Remnants of the shattered plane littered the ground. All four people on board were killed.

The Biden administration announced $570 million in grants today to eliminate railroad crossings in 32 states. The funds will help build bridges and overpasses. In some places, trains stretching more than two miles can block crossings for hours.

And, on Wall Street, stocks edged lower as economic growth and may fell short of expectations. The Dow Jones industrial average lost nearly 200 points to close below 33563. The Nasdaq fell 11 points. The S&P 500 was down eight points.

And a former FBI agent who spied for the Soviet Union and then Russia for 16 years has died. Robert Hanssen was found unresponsive today in his federal prison cell in Colorado. He'd been sentenced in 2002 to life behind bars. Robert Hanssen was 79 years old.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": Tamara Keith and Amy Walter break down the latest GOP campaign events in Iowa; more Republican-led states abandon an election database designed to combat voter fraud; a Florida professor breaks the record for days lived underwater; plus much more.

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