In brief: Train crash toll raised to 50 dead

LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec – Canadian officials told distraught families Wednesday that 30 people still missing after the fiery crash of a runaway oil train are all presumed dead.

Along with 20 bodies found, that would put the death toll from Saturday’s derailment and explosions in this lakeside town at 50.

Hours before that somber meeting, the head of the U.S. railway company whose train crashed made his first visit to Lac-Megantic since the disaster.

The rail chief blamed the engineer for failing to set the brakes properly before the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train hurtled down a 7-mile incline, derailed and ignited.

Edward Burkhardt, president and CEO of parent company Rail World Inc., said the engineer had been suspended without pay and was under “police control.”

Brotherhood leader arrest ordered

Cairo – Egypt’s military-backed government tightened a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood on Wednesday, ordering the arrest of its revered leader in a bid to choke off the group’s campaign to reinstate President Mohammed Morsi one week after an army-led coup.

The Brotherhood denounced the warrants for the arrest of Mohammed Badie and nine other leading Islamists for inciting violence Monday that left dozens dead, saying “dictatorship is back.”

Leaders of the Brotherhood are believed to be taking refuge somewhere near a continuing sit-in by its supporters at the Rabaah al-Adawiya Mosque in eastern Cairo, but it is not clear if Badie also is there.

The Brotherhood is outraged by the overthrow of Morsi, one of its own, and demands nothing less than his release from detention and his reinstatement as president.

Security agencies have already jailed five leaders of the Brotherhood, including Badie’s powerful deputy, Khairat el-Shaiter, and shut down its media outlets.