Monday, December 2, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips For The Day

Black box data recorder recovered, eyed after deadly Metro-North derailment in New York – NBC

By Richard Esposito, Jay Blackman, Jonathan Dienst and Alexander Smith

NEW YORK -- The black box data recorder was recovered from a commuter train that derailed as it hurtled around a sharp curve in the Bronx, killing four people and injuring dozens of others, investigators said late Sunday.

The device will be analyzed to determine what caused all seven cars of the Metro-North Commuter Railroad to jump the tracks near the historic Spuyten Duyvil station in the Bronx at around 7:22 a.m. ET on Sunday.

The train's engineer told first responders when they arrived at the scene that he had hit the brakes as the train approached the turn, sources told NBC News on Sunday afternoon. He was a "respected veteran" with 20 years of Metro-North experience who suffered minor injuries, the sources said.

Passenger Dennis O'Neil told NBC New York he believed the train was going too fast.
"It was coming towards Spuyten Duyvil and you could feel it starting to lean and it was like, 'hey, what's going on,'" he said. "And then it hit the curb real hard and flopped over and slid down the hill. A couple people were hurt very badly right in front of me."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the scene "looked like a child’s train set, just strewn about," speaking to TODAY on Monday.
He added that investigators had not told him how long it would take to analyze the black box, but he believes the cause of the crash would turn out to be speed-related.
"This was a tricky turn on the system, but it is a turn that’s been here for decades," he said.

MTA spokeswoman Marjorie Anders told NBC New York that the curve where the train derailed is in a slow-speed area, where the limit is 30 mph. The area just before the curve is a  70 mph limit, according to Anders. The black box should be able to tell how fast the train was traveling, she said.

The data recorder should also show whether its brakes did, in fact, fail.
Officials said at least 63 people were injured as passengers were tossed around like rag dolls.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority identified the four passengers who were killed as Jim Lovell, 58, of Cold Spring, N.Y.; James Ferrari, 59, of Montrose, N.Y.; Donna Smith, 54, of Newburgh, N.Y.; and Ahn Kisook, 35, of Queens.

Lovell, a father of four, was an audio technician who frequently worked on TODAY and other NBC programs. 

Fire officials said that as many as 11 of the injured were critical and that six were in serious condition.

Meanwhile, Cuomo warned that "people who use these lines should plan on a long commute" on Monday.

Many will be making their way back home from the long holiday weekend. Just what can travelers expect for their work commutes Monday morning? NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports.

A portion of a Metro-North Railroad line between the Bronx and part of Westchester County could be closed for a week or more. Service was suspended on the railroad's Hudson line, which serves 26,000 on an average weekday, between the village of Tarrytown and Grand Central Terminal, according to the MTA.

Metro-North said Sunday's 5:54 a.m. diesel train from Poughkeepsie derailed just feet from the water near the station. It was due at Grand Central Station at 7:43 a.m.
The train was half full, with about 150 passengers, rail officials said. The locomotive was on the north end of the train, pushing the cars southward.

"On a workday, fully occupied, it would have been a tremendous disaster," Fire Commissioner Salvatore Joseph Cassano told reporters at the scene.

The train derailed on a curved section of track in the Bronx on Sunday morning, coming to rest just inches from the water and causing multiple deaths and dozens of injuries.

One of the victims was found in the first car, one was found outside that car, another was found near the second and third cars, and the fourth was found outside the fourth car. 

Earl Weener, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the condition of the tracks and the cars will be the focus of the NTSB probe, along with the speed the train was traveling. The investigation is expected to take a week to 10 days.
Sherelle Coore, a 19-year-old college student from the Bronx who was aboard the train, told her cousin from her hospital bed that she felt a "jerking" movement and then everything started happening very quickly. 

"She hit the side of her head," Coore's cousin, Lisa Delgado, told NBC New York. "She saw the woman in front of her go out the other window. Her glass broke, and she hung on to the side rails like a monkey while the train was flipping and the rocks were coming in."

Sherry Nemmers, who lives near the scene, told NBC News that she heard a sound "that was a little too familiar for me." She'd heard it before this summer, when a CSX freight train hauling trash on the same line derailed near the same area of the Bronx.
"I heard this thud — this dull thud. It sort of sent chills up me because it was a sound that I heard in July," Nemmers said. "I was afraid that it was going to be a train, and it was."

No one was injured in July, but questions were raised about the safety of the track's design and its notoriously sharp turn right before the station. Cuomo noted that the two accidents happened at about the same location but said, "There has to be another factor. ... It can't just be the curve."

Weener said the agency would examine whether Sunday's incident could be related, but he said, "At this point in time, we have no indication it was a factor."
At St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, where at least 10 victims were taken, officials said critical patients had spinal cord injuries and broken bones.
Hospital officials said the injured there included a 14-year-old boy and his father, along with a New York police officer on her way to work who suffered broken bones. Sources said five off-duty New York officers were among the injured, all with relatively minor injuries and reported to be stable.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and federal safety officials say the investigation could take a week to 10 days.

Metro-North Hudson line service was suspended in both directions. Amtrak service between New York and Albany reopened in midafternoon with delays.

President Barack Obama was informed of the crash by the Department of Homeland Security, a White House official said. "His thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and families who lost a loved one and everyone affected by this incident," the official said.

MTA officials said JFK High School in the Bronx has been established as a meeting area for passengers and their loved ones, and 718-817-7444 is the contact number for those seeking the status of relatives who may have been aboard the train.



I am going to be boarding a train to North Carolina on December 19th for the Christmas holidays. I'm less afraid to travel by train than I am by air – even in this wreck only 4 people were killed, and most train wrecks aren't this severe. I hope it turns out that the breaks did truly fail, because otherwise it amounts to the engineer failing to be aware of the 30 mph speed zone up ahead. One wreck that was on the news within the last year was blamed on the engineer texting while driving. I'll look for any followup articles about this and clip them.

I, personally, was on a train going through Eastern North Carolina about 15 years ago when it suddenly came to a screeching halt, throwing me forward in my seat. We sat there stopped for 15 or 20 minutes before there was an announcement that a logging truck – a common sight in Eastern NC – had spilled its logs on the track. It took an hour to clear the track and then we went on. That's the only close call I've ever had while traveling. I trust I'll be safe this year.




Deadly factory fire highlights 'near-slavery' conditions in Italy--NBC

By James Mackenzie, Reuters

ROME, Italy -- At least seven people died and three were injured when a Chinese-owned clothing factory in the Italian town of Prato burned down on Sunday, killing workers trapped in an improvised dormitory built onsite.

Local media said 11 workers had been accommodated in a warren of small cardboard sleeping compartments above a warehouse in the Macrolotto industrial district of the town, known for its large number of garment factories. 

"This is a disgrace for all of us, because we have to recognize this reality for what it is: the biggest concentration of illegal employment in northern and central Italy," said Enrico Rossi, president of the region of Tuscany. 

Footage posted on the website of the local Il Tirreno newspaper showed fire crews battling the flames in a warehouse-like structure while smoke poured out of the building. Ambulances and police vehicles were also on the scene. 

The disaster prompted immediate questions about the conditions on the site and in a network of similar workshops operating in the area, which is noted for its large number of Chinese-owned textile manufacturing businesses, many operating on the fringes of legality. 

"No one can say they are surprised at this because everyone has known for years that, in the area between Florence and Prato, hundreds if not thousands of people are living and working in conditions of near-slavery," Roberto Pistonina, secretary general of the Florence and Prato section of the CISL trade union, said on his Facebook page. 

Prato, a town with one of the highest concentrations of Chinese immigrants in Italy, has at least 15,000 legally registered in a total population of under 200,000, with more than 4,000 Chinese-owned businesses, according to official data. 
Thousands more Chinese immigrants are believed to be living in the city illegally, working for a network of wholesalers and workshops turning out cheap clothing for the export market as well as well-known retail chains. 

The disaster underlined the unsafe conditions in which the workers are employed in many of the workshops although there was no immediate word on what may have started the blaze. 

"The worst thing was hearing the cries of the people trapped inside," Leonardo Tuci, an off-duty police official who saw the fire and sounded the alarm. "I did what I could, I dragged two people out, I'm only sorry I couldn't do more." 

A fire official quoted by the Corriere della Sera daily said there were clear violations of safety rules in the factory which burned down and evidence of unauthorized building work to put up the dormitories. 

The mayor of Prato, Roberto Cenni said there were "thousands of situations potentially as tragic as this one" in the industrial zone around the city and said he had been in contact with Interior Minister Angelino Alfano to combat the illegal "parallel district" which had grown up around the workshops. 




Hopefully the mayor of Prato and the Interior Minister, mentioned above, will investigate and close down the illegal businesses in the area. Businesses can go along under the radar all too easily, apparently, with “thousands of situations” similar to this one being known to exist. There have been a few cases in the US down through the years of “sweat shops” employing illegal immigrants. Most of them are clothing manufacturers, but when I was working in data entry I found two businesses that paid very low wages and required long hours. Luckily I wasn't hired.




China punishes officials for being too bureaucratic, partying, 'mediocre' performance – NBC

By Ben Blanchard, Reuters

BEIJING, China -- China has punished almost 20,000 officials in the last year for breaching rules to cut down on bureaucracy as well as pomp and ceremony, the government said on Monday. 

President Xi Jinping ordered the crackdown late last year when he became head of the ruling Communist Party, seeking to assuage public anger at waste and extravagance, particularly officials seen abusing their position to illegally amass wealth. 
Xi demanded meetings be shortened, over-the-top welcoming ceremonies ditched and wordy, meaningless speeches be abandoned, as he sought to cut red tape and make the country's bureaucracy more efficient and less prone to graft. 

The party's anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said the officials found breaching these rules had mostly been given administrative or internal party punishments. It did not give details. 

More than 5,000 officials were found to have breached rules connected to the use of official cars, while 903 were guilty of organizing overly elaborate celebratory events, the watchdog said in a statement on its website. 

Others were singled out for being "mediocre" or "indolent", the statement said. 
Xi has said that endemic corruption threatens the party's very survival and has vowed to go after high-flying "tigers" as well as lowly "flies." 



We could use some of these reforms in the US – endless and empty political speeches, useless time-wasting tactics in Congress and the Senate, sexual scandals and embezzlement-- all are part of the political game. That's one reason why I don't collect many political news articles. They are too discouraging and yet too ordinary to be really interesting. It's like crime stories. I get my fill of crime every morning on the local televison news.

This article shows China trying to make progress. It's encouraging, since we are – like it or not – China's economic partners, and they have several times helped to reign in the North Koreans as well. Also, the Chinese people are interesting. They are strong, intelligent and have had advanced culture since Europe was still fighting off barbarian hordes and beginning to form strong cities. Their art and poetry go back thousands of years. If they could remove the yoke of communist management, which they are beginning to do with allowing some private businesses to exist, and progress away from such things as using rhinosceros horn and tiger parts for medicine, it would be easier to relate to them. Their occasional military threats are also an ongoing problem, but I don't fear them like I do North Korea.





Beware: Online charity scams on the rise – NBC
Kelley Holland CNBC

'Tis the season to be jolly. Unfortunately, 'tis also the season for charity scams.
Consumers often become more generously minded in December, thanks partly to the many appeals they see and hear in malls and on the streets. A survey by Charity Navigator found that charities receive 41 percent of their donations in the last few weeks of the year. The approaching year-end tax deadline also makes December a great month to take charitable deductions.

But the very impulses that make us want to give can make us less cautious about whom or what we give to — and scam artists are all too aware of this.
Currently, certain online types of charity scams are on the rise, according to several experts.

Crowdfunding, for one, offers increasing opportunities for charitable giving — and for scams, according to Bennett Weiner, chief operating officer of BBB Wise Giving Alliance, the charity-monitoring organization affiliated with the Better Business Bureau.

"You can read stories about individuals in need, or organizations that may be soliciting for various projects," he said. "Don't assume that the organizations or individuals on those sites have necessarily been vetted to any great degree. They may have verified that the organization has tax-exempt status, and that may be it." In other words, you may be able to take a deduction for your donation, but that doesn't mean the entity you are funding is putting your money to use in any way close to what you intend.

There are other scams lurking online for careless givers, said Bill Kowalski, director of operations at Rehmann Corporate Investigative Services, part of Rehmann Financial Advisors. "If you are online looking for a place to give, if you mistype, there are similar sites with similar names," he said. Scam artists buy up URLs that are similar to the names of charities, and if your'e not careful, you can make a donation on the wrong site.

Not all those charities are fraudulent per se, Kowalski said. But even so, they may misuse your money. "We saw this after 9/11. Some charities cropped up and gave 5 percent to actual victims. In my mind, that's a fraud."

One challenge for charity monitors such as the Wise Giving Alliance is that they rarely receive complaints about charity schemes. "When people make a contribution, that's the end of the transaction. they're not expecting anything in return," Weiner said. "You don't know necessarily that there's a problem until much later on."
There are also added enforcement challenges if disasters occur around holiday time, since fraudulent charities often crop up in the wake of disasters. After Hurricane Sandy, the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs issued warnings about charity scams, and later settled a case with the operators of the so-called Hurricane Sandy Relief Foundation, which agreed to shut down its website and hand over more than $300,000 in donations to an administrator appointed by the court.

(Read more: After the hurricane, beware of scams named for Sandy)
Relatively few people fall for charity scams like telephone pitches for nonexistent or fraudulent organizations, Kowalski said, pointing to 2010 data showing that "probably under 6 percent" become victims of that kind of fraud.

To protect yourself from charity scams, Kowalski advises sticking to charities with a proven track record. "There is nothing inherently more dangerous about giving online as long as you've done your research," he said. "Anything that tugs on your heartstrings that's new and different, you should do your research before you contribute to things like that."

Organizations like the Wise Giving Alliance and Charity Navigator provide online information about charities, including whether they meet certain standards and how efficiently they spend their money.

It's also a good idea to avoid snap decisions about donations, even when the solicitor on the phone is telling a heartbreaking story.

Kowalski and Weiner say researching a charity is your best protection against fraud, but in a 2011 report on charitable giving, 90 percent of donors said a nonprofit's performance was important to them, but only 30 percent actually researched charities.

(Read more: Why the wealthy don't give more to charity)
"Most charities are honest and trustworthy," Weiner said. "But if you take no measures, you're going to be more susceptible to being taken when it happens."
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, trust but verify, even when it comes to charitable giving.


There are several charities I have given to at least once which may not be legitimate, because I haven't looked them up on the websites mentioned above to check them out. I just don't give very much so that if I lose it, it's okay. Most of the money I've given has gone to the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. When there is a major disaster that I can't bear to ignore, I call the Red Cross, and during cold snaps in the winter when homeless people are freezing I call the Salvation Army. I want to do something, and those two don't call me continually afterward to get me to give more like some charities do. I try to do my part, even though I can't give much at a time.



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­ Parents Of Sleep-Deprived Teens Push For Later School Start Times – NPR
by Allison Aubrey
­
Cristina Sevin knows the drill. Her 15-year-old son Isaac's first alarm goes off at 6:05 a.m.

When he sleeps right through it, Mom starts the nudging. But she also has to wake up 16-year-old Lily. She flips on the bedroom lights. "Lily, you gotta get up!"
They have to be out the door before 6:35 a.m. in their Annapolis, Md., neighborhood in order to catch the bus for a 7:17 school start. "I wish I didn't have to be awake right now," says Lily.

She barely has time to brush her teeth and grab a go-mug of hot tea before she and Isaac head out into the predawn darkness.

Cristina Sevin is convinced there's a better way to raise teenagers: Push back the start of school one hour. Instead of a 7:17 morning bell, how about 8:18?
Sevin's family is part of a growing grass-roots campaign advocating for later high school start times. A national petition to promote legislation that would prevent public schools from starting before 8 a.m., started by the group Start School Later, has thousands of signatures from all 50 states.

There have been years of debate on this issue. Sleep scientists argue that early high school start times conflict with teens' shifting circadian rhythms. Beginning in puberty, "adolescents are programmed to fall asleep later," says Dr. Judith Owens, who directs the Sleep Medicine Clinic at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. And she says many teenagers can't fall asleep before 11 p.m.
Because teenagers need eight to nine hours of sleep, waking up at 6 a.m. can lead to a pattern of sleep deprivation. And that puts them at higher risk of a whole range of potential problems, from depression to automobile accidents.

So Owens says it makes sense to move school start times later. As it is now, "we are asking [teens] to be awake and alert at the time in their 24-hour clock when their alertness level is at its very lowest."

A new poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health finds that 50 percent of parents of students in high school report a start time before 8 a.m. And almost 1 in 5 parents report school starting even earlier, before 7:30 a.m.

Proponents of later start times say that they're gaining traction.
"Momentum has picked up considerably in the past few years," says Terra Ziporyn Snider, executive director of Start School Later. Her group maintains a list of schools in 29 states that have made changes.

Tuck That Teen Into Bed
Sleep expert Amy Wolfson of College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., says these five strategies will help teenagers sleep longer and better.
Try to get 8 1/2 to 9 1/2 hours of sleep a night.

Keep a regular sleep-wake schedule throughout the week. Varying bedtimes by more than 60 to 90 minutes, even on weekends, can affect academics, mood and health.
Keep a regular study schedule. Studying late at night makes falling asleep harder.
Ban texting, videos and working or gaming on a computer in the hour before bedtime. Keep cellphones out of the bedroom, too.

Eliminate caffeine, especially three to five hours before bedtime.
And she points to two very large school districts in the Washington, D.C., area — Fairfax County, Va., and Montgomery County, Md. — that are both considering later starts. A petition in Montgomery County started by activist Mandy Mader to push high school start times to 8:15 or later has garnered more than 11,000 signatures.

But there are logistical obstacles. Transportation is one. How do schools rearrange bus schedules to pick up high school students later, without alarming the parents of elementary school kids who might be picked up earlier to accommodate the changes?
Parents opposed to later school start times point to issues such as day-care schedules and after-school jobs. Coaches say later dismissal times would interfere with team practices.

But given the fact that many schools have already overcome these obstacles and moved to later school start times, Ziporyn Snider says, "the real problem isn't sports or jobs or day care; the real problem is fear of change and failure of imagination."
And failure to act, advocates say, is putting high school students at greater risk.
There's a gathering body of evidence to suggest that pushing back school start times can cut the risk of car crashes. In Fayette County, Ky., the number of car accidents caused by teenage drivers dropped almost 17 percent in the two years after the county pushed start times back an hour to 8:30 a.m. That compares with an 8 percent increase in crashes among 17- and 18-year-old drivers statewide over the same time.
Despite the biological and societal nudging that keeps many teenagers awake well past midnight, it does help when parents set a bedtime, experts say — even if that bedtime is 11:30 p.m.

Teens whose parents set a bedtime are more likely to get enough sleep and function better at school, a recent study found. Owens says: "If a parent sets a bedtime, it at least gets the message across that [they] feel it's important."


Schools starting at 7:30 is really early, just because studying is not best done immediately after getting out of bed. The mind has to gradually open up and start to focus. We have to move away from our dream state to think well. Even though I get up about 7:30 after getting plenty o sleep, I have to have my two cups of coffee and yogurt and watch the news for half an hour or so before I start to do anything with my mind. After school jobs and sports team practices are given as reasons for the early start. I think those people would accept and adjust to the later dismissal times if the schools were to stick to their guns and not give in. They would have to. It wasn't mentioned in this article, but children waiting at school bus stops before dawn is dangerous, too, from cars hitting them to sexual predators kidnapping them. I hope this goes through. Getting themselves to school and settled down in class is enough of a scramble for the students, without having to do it at 6:30 AM.




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Getting To Know Black Innovators, One Tweet At A Time – NPR
by Elise Hu
­
There is no question that Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley, Silicon Beach and all of the other places we associate with tech entrepreneurism face diversity problems.
African-American innovators represent just 5 percent of America's scientists and engineers, according to a 2010 study by the National Science Foundation.

We've covered the dearth of women and people of color with a series of our own posts and those from outside contributors. But among the entrepreneurs of color, there are several who are making an impact in their communities.

Our friends at the NPR program Tell Me More are starting a three-week Twitter journey today, in which black game-changers will each tweet a day in their lives to provide a better look at how they're making a difference, the random obstacles they may encounter and what they observe as exceptions in an industry dominated by white men.

The details, from Tell Me More:
"Between Dec. 2-20, tech thinkers will live-tweet a day in their lives; they'll also provide feedback to the questions that Tell Me More has collected with #NPRBlacksinTech...

"Then, on Dec. 17, Tell Me More will bring together some of these participants with other African-American technology heavyweights for a Google Plus Hangout on Air to broaden the conversation and to reflect on some of its key moments."

The participants will include Mike Street, the head of Blacks in Tech NY; Walter Kimbrough, the president of Dillard University in New Orleans; digital consultant Mike Green; Christine Johnson, who founded DiversiTech in Washington, D.C.; Nnena Ukuku, co-founder of Black Founders; and many more. We hope you'll follow along and shoot us questions.

Tweet your questions to @TellMeMoreNPR or use the hashtag #NPRBlacksinTech, and the participants will answer them over the course of three weeks.


I expect to see a followup article to tell what the black entrepreneurs reported. I know one black man who is retraining in computers after leaving his security guard job last year. First they have to get the schooling, and then brave the network to compete for jobs. I hope more young black youths, both boys and girls, will study math and science in high school and college to qualify for the more technical fields. It should be easier to get work with a tech or scientific degree rather than history or philosophy.


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The Key Test For HealthCare.gov Is The Part You Can't See – NPR
by Elise Hu
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Calling the improvements "night and day" from October, the Obama administration says it has met its goal of getting the troubled HealthCare.gov site working for a "vast majority" of users. But that's only part of a complex technology system that is designed to end with insurance companies providing coverage for millions of consumers.
We've detailed the eight-page HealthCare.gov progress report in a post on our news blog, The Two-Way.

In short, it shows dramatic improvements in capacity, processing and speed. In October, only 30 percent of consumers could get all the way through the online application process for the federal insurance exchange. Now, after nine weeks of furious fixes, about 80 percent of users are able to make it through the process.
"It says my application was reviewed and processed, and I can view my results.

Before, it always got stuck right here," says Kendalyn Thuma, a Kalamazoo, Mich.-based consumer who had been trying unsuccessfully to enroll throughout October.
Thuma and other consumers we checked in with report a smoother overall experience — but not a perfect one.

"Everything is relative. This is a site that has been plagued with problems from the outset," says John Engates, the chief technology officer at the server and software company Rackspace. He's one of the few outside engineers who's seen the HealthCare.gov command center from the inside.

"I think what they focused on, to a large extent, was the consumer view from the outside looking into this website," Engates says. "I don't necessarily think they've gotten all of the behind-the-scenes connections to the health insurance providers and the work that's necessary behind the scenes to really take this to the finish line. I don't know if that's all done yet."

We don't know how complete the enrollment data getting to insurance providers is, either. The metrics on how well the back-end is delivering data wasn't part of this weekend's progress report.

"We are working with issuers on a regular basis, getting daily feedback from them, and will continue that conversation," says the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Julie Battaile, who says the system will need to see more user volume before engineers will know how well the back-end is working.

Those conversations will need to happen quickly, as a December deadline draws near for those who want coverage to start in January. December is also when HealthCare.gov's chief "fixer,"Jeffrey Zients, is expected to leave his presidentially-appointed role.

While outside tech experts like Engates say the site's front-end — the part that consumers can see — is dramatically improved, that's actually the easy part.
"The easy part is to put your data into the system," he says. "The hard part is to go and process that to make sure you have health care coverage. The government really has to deliver on that or else the whole thing is for naught. I mean, we really have to have a system that works from end to end or it really isn't a system."


I can only hope it works from end to end, as Engates says. I'll keep tracking articles as December goes on to see how its going. At least the “front” end is fixed – or at least 80 % fixed. That's fairly good progress, actually, from where we were.