‘I punched him in the face and jabbed him in the eyes’: Fisherman tells how he fought off sharks as boat sank
Two fishermen fought off sharks after their boat sank off the Louisiana coast while a third swam to search for help.
The swimmer, Phong Le, managed to find a phone signal and sent a Google map of his location just before his battery died, he told ABC News.
The trio were stranded at sea for 28 hours in shark-infected waters before being rescued.
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Fishing boat crew rescued after shark attack
Luan Nguyen said he and his friends had been in the water since around 10am on Saturday and the predators showed up on Sunday morning. He said one bit the front of his life jacket.
“I punched him in the face. And I think that’s where I caught… these injuries on my hand. I took my two thumbs and jabbed him in the eyes, and he took off,” he said.
The third man was identified as Son Nguyen.
When the group’s 24ft-long (7.3-metre) boat sunk, they were left with no radio in an area without phone service.
“We made a distress call on the VHF radio to the Coast Guard and let them know that we’d taken on water,” Mr Le told ABC. “And not even seconds after that, the boat was nearly halfway in the water.”
They tied two cool boxes together as a makeshift float and one held water and fruit, Mr Nguyen said.
Mr Le said he swam off for help on Sunday and after swimming for what felt like miles, he found a signal on his phone and texted his Google map location to a friend.
“I see him trying to reply to me. And the phone cut off – I ran out of battery,” Mr Le said.
A fisherman’s wife reported them missing around 10pm on Saturday, said Lieutenant Commander Kevin Keefe, rescue coordinator for Sector New Orleans.
One of the men’s life jackets was torn in a shark attack. Pic: US Coast Guard Heartland/Facebook
The woman did not know the launch point and he said it took around 3.5 hours to find their vehicle in Venice, near Louisiana’s southeastern tip, so crews would know the best areas to search when dawn broke.
Coast Guard boats, planes and a helicopter had spent fruitless hours searching an area larger than Rhode Island before the Google Maps screenshot arrived.
Using coastal contours, the command centre was able to figure out where it was, said Mr Keefe.
The two men were hoisted onto a helicopter. Pic: US Coast Guard Heartland/Facebook
The Coast Guard said the two men were found around 25 miles off Empire, a small community located along the last narrow strip of the Mississippi Delta, southeast of New Orleans.
Mr Le was rescued first.
Even as the two other men were pulled from the water and lifted into a helicopter they were being circled and harassed by four blacktip sharks measuring around 4-6ft (1.2-1.8m) long, said Andrew Stone, who was in the Coast Guard boat crew that rescued the exhausted pair.
“They were too tired to even be panicking,” he said.
All three fishermen went home on Tuesday, the Coast Guard said.
DHL Express is suspending some shipments to the US as Donald Trump’s new tariff regime takes effect.
From 21 April, shipments worth more than $800 (£603) to US consumers from “any origin” will be temporarily suspended.
New rules that came into effect at the start of April made such shipments subject to increased customs checks.
“This change has caused a surge in formal customs clearances, which we are handling around the clock,” said the parcel delivery service.
Shipments going from business to business worth more than $800 aren’t affected by the suspension, but DHL warned they may also face delays.
Shipments under $800 to either businesses or consumers are not impacted, but one British cycle manufacturer suggested its US customers may need to split orders over $800 into “smaller shipments” to avoid the red tape.
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From May, shipments from China and Hong Kong that are worth less than $800 “will be subject to all applicable duties”, according to the White House.
“President Trump is targeting deceptive shipping practices by Chinese-based shippers, many of whom hide illicit substances, including synthetic opioids, in low-value packages,” it said in a statement.
Until now, deliveries worth less than $800 didn’t incur any duties, which allowed low-cost companies Chinese like Shein and Temu to make inroads in the US.
Both have warned their prices will now rise because of the rule changes, starting on 25 April.
Anti-Trump protests took place across America on Saturday, with demonstrators decrying the administration’s immigration crackdown and mass firings at government agencies.
Events ranged from small local marches to a rally in front of the White House and a demonstration at a Massachusetts commemoration of the start of the Revolutionary War 250 years ago.
Thomas Bassford, 80, was at the battle reenactment with his two grandsons, as well as his partner and daughter.
He said: “This is a very perilous time in America for liberty. I wanted the boys to learn about the origins of this country and that sometimes we have to fight for freedom.”
At events across the country, people carried banners with slogans including “Trump fascist regime must go now!”, “No fear, no hate, no ICE in our state,” and “Fight fiercely, Harvard, fight,” referencing the university’s recent refusal to hand over much of its control to the government.
Some signs name-checked Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorian citizen living in Maryland, who the Justice Department admits was mistakenly deported to his home country.
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Pic: AP
People waved US flags, some of them held upside down to signal distress. In San Francisco, hundreds of people spelt out “Impeach & Remove” on a beach, also with an inverted US flag.
People walked through downtown Anchorage in Alaska with handmade signs listing reasons why they were demonstrating, including one that read: “No sign is BIG enough to list ALL of the reasons I’m here!”
Pic: AP
Protests also took place outside Tesla car dealerships against the role Elon Musk ahas played in downsizing the federal government as de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The protests come just two weeks after similar nationwide demonstrations.
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Organisers are opposing what they call Mr Trump’s civil rights violations and constitutional violations, including efforts to deport scores of immigrants and to scale back the federal government by firing thousands of government workers and effectively shuttering entire agencies.
The Trump administration, among other things, has moved to shutter Social Security Administration field offices, cut funding for government health programs and scale back protections for transgender people.
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