Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Early on Sunday morning, Amtrak’s passenger train number 91, the Silver Star, bound for Miami from New York, slammed into a stationary CSX freight train in Cayce, about ten miles (16 km) south of Columbia, capital of the US state of South Carolina. Two Amtrak employees were killed and at least 116 were injured, some seriously.

The two killed were 54-year-old engineer Michael Kempf of Savannah, Georgia, and 36-year-old conductor Michael Cella of Orange Park, Florida. Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a press conference the passenger train had been diverted into a siding by a switch left “literally locked, with a padlock” in that position.

The collision happened at about 2:35 am local time (0735 UTC) at a switching yard in the small city of Cayce. The Amtrak train, with reportedly 139 passengers and eight employees aboard, collided head on with the freight train, which was parked with no one on board. The Amtrak locomotive and the leading locomotive on the freight train were destroyed; the Amtrak locomotive and some of its passenger cars derailed, and one of those cars was folded in half. Several freight cars were crumpled, Reuters reported. In a press conference, the state governor, Henry McMaster, said the Amtrak locomotive was “barely recognizable” and described it as “a horrible thing to see, to understand the force involved”.

Harrison Cahill, a spokesman for Lexington County, gave a count of 116 injured, up from an initial report of 70; according to Derrec Becker, public information officer for the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, injuries ranged “from cuts and bruises to severe broken bones”. On Monday a Palmetto Health spokesperson said two patients were in serious and two in critical condition at their facilities. A spill of approximately 5,000 gallons of fuel from the freight train posed no safety hazard, according to officials.

Passenger Derek Pettaway told the CNN network that like most others, he had been sleeping when the collision happened. He said Amtrak staff cleared the passengers from the train rapidly, and there was no panic; “I think people were more in shock than anything else”, he said.

“Key to this investigation is learning why the switch was lined that way”, Sumwalt said. Amtrak’s CEO, Richard Anderson, speaking to reporters on Sunday, held CSX responsible; he stated the track in that area is operated by CSX and the signals, which CSX operates, were not working at the time of the collision and a CSX dispatcher was therefore directing the Amtrak train’s movements. Sumwalt noted an automatic monitoring and braking system called positive train control, which was not in use on the stretch of line, could have forestalled the collision.

Several fatal incidents involving Amtrak trains have occurred in the past three months. On December 18, the inaugural train on a new route in Washington state derailed at high speed while crossing above a highway, killing three; on January 31, the driver of a garbage truck was killed in Virginia when he collided with an Amtrak train chartered to take Republican lawmakers to a retreat.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Scientists at NASA have recently released the most detailed map of Antarctica ever. NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite took 10,000 photographs of the continent over a period of two years, from 1999 to 2001. 1,100 pictures were chosen to form the mosaic map. Officially titled the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA), the map reveals Antarctica’s geography in high definition and with accurate colors. Details as small as half the size of a basketball court are visible.

NASA created the map to coincide with the International Polar Year of 2007-2008. Robert Bindschadler, chief scientist of the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, remarked, “This innovation is like watching high-definition TV in living color versus watching the picture on a grainy black-and-white television.” The map represents a tenfold improvement over previous Antarctic imagery databases.

Landsat 7 managed to capture 80% of the continent in high definition. While the satellite was not able to take photographs of the South Pole due to its orbit path, lower-resolution images helped fill in the gap.

The map will help scientists plan and carry out expeditions on the notoriously difficult terrain. The new, intensely detailed information will also facilitate the tracking of environmental changes such as the calving of ice shelves. Researchers will be able to use such data to better understand phenomena like global warming in such amazing detail that even relatively small changes will be visible. Geologists, on the other hand, will be able to use the maps to study Antarctic rock formations.

The LIMA images are available to the public via the internet. The National Science Foundation contributed nearly US$1 million to create the website.

The Landsat 7 satellite will continue to document Antarctica from space through to 2011. Subsequently, NASA will launch the Landsat Data Continuity Mission. Information from both projects will update the map.

Thursday, December 2, 2004

WASHINGTON, DC — According to a report issued by U.S. House of Representatives Congressman Henry A. Waxman (D–CA), the majority of abstinence-only sexual education programs in schools contain incorrect or misleading information.

The report found that over 80% of the curricula used by the recipients of the grants contained incorrect information, including the claim that condoms did not prevent the spread of STDs and that abortions have a high chance of causing sterility.[1]

These programs are funded by the federal government under President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative. According to the report, these abstinence programs—promoted by the administration of President Bush—are receiving increasing amounts of funding: nearly $170 million will be spent in 2005, which is more than double the spending on these programs in 2001.[2]

Under the faith-based initiative programs, the United States government allocates funds to religious and other community organizations that agree to carry out abstinence education programs which do not include coverage of any other methods of birth control or sexually transmitted disease prevention, as well as other criteria.

The timing of the report is significant in that it comes on the heels of research from Columbia University that found that nearly 9 of 10 teenagers who had pledged abstinence from pre-marital sex had broken their vows in the first six years since the pledges[3].

The Waxman Report and the Columbia University study describe some abstinence programs as factually wrong and/or ineffective. In a rebuttal, Dr. Alma L. Golden, a deputy assistant secretary in the Health and Human Services Department, said in a statement that Mr. Waxman’s report “misses the boat” and that it took information out of context “for purely political reasons.”[4]

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

The Italian Cultural Institute in Barcelona was damaged today by an explosion. One Spanish policeman was injured and his bomb-sniffing dog killed. Staff at the Institute discovered a suspicious object and called police. Police then arrived with a bomb squad and bomb-sniffing dogs.

The explosion, described as small by Italian Embassy spokesman Filip La Rosa, occurred while police were investigating the object. Franco Giordano, Italian consul in Barcelona, described the home-made bomb as a coffee maker (a macchinetta di caffè) with cables.

The Italian Cultural Institute is located at the passatge Méndez Vigo, in the Eixample district of the Catalan capital. Italian language courses were suspended for the day.

Friday, May 22, 2015

Investigators looking into the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash in March announced on Wednesday that they had formally identified the 150 passengers who died on the Airbus 320 when it was flown into the French Alps. This will allow for the victims families to prepare for a proper burial ceremony in the coming weeks. It has reportedly taken more than six weeks to match the DNA found at the site of the crash in the French Alps with those of the family members of the victims involved. The city prosecutor of Marseilles, Brice Robin has now said that “The 150 death certificates can now be signed, as well as the 150 burial permits.”

This comes after extensive investigation into the life of the 27 year old co-pilot Andreas Lubitz who had reportedly suffered depression. After locking the cockpit door whilst the pilot was on a toilet break, Lubitz purposely flew the plane into the French Alps. Reports from France’s BEA civil aviation investigators revealed that Lubitz had practised altering the flight’s data settings during the outbound flight to Barcelona from an altitude of 11,600 metres to an alarmingly low 30 metres.

The incident has sparked calls for other international flights to implement the rule of always having two people in the cockpit at all times during flights to prevent any further tragedies such as this. The final report of the investigation is set to be finalised next year.

See the discussion page for instructions on adding schools to this list and for an alphabetically arranged listing of schools.

Due to the damage by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding, a number of colleges and universities in the New Orleans metropolitan area will not be able to hold classes for the fall 2005 semester. It is estimated that 75,000 to 100,000 students have been displaced. [1]. In response, institutions across the United States and Canada are offering late registration for displaced students so that their academic progress is not unduly delayed. Some are offering free or reduced admission to displaced students. At some universities, especially state universities, this offer is limited to residents of the area.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, a stock market index used to gauge the performance of American stock exchanges, fell 344.65 at the close of trading Thursday.

The exact reason for the drop is unknown, with different news agencies pointing to different causes. The New York Times cites a rise in unemployment numbers released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor and a fall in retail sales released by several large corporations.

According to the Associated Press, the number of people claiming weekly unemployment benefits rose 15,000 last week to 444,000, which, according to The New York Times is near a five-year high.

“This morning’s employment numbers continue to indicate that the labor sector remains soft at best and looks to continue to shed jobs throughout the remainder of the year,” Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at Merk Investments, said in a statement to The New York Times.

One major corporation that posted a gain in sales was Wal-Mart, with a 3 percent boost, which resulted in a one penny loss in their stock. Fellow retailer Target posted a sales loss. Shares of energy companies ExxonMobil and Chevron fell by 1.5 and 3 percent, respectively.

The other two major American stock indices fell too. The S&P 500 fell 2.99 percent while the Nasdaq composite index fell 3.20 percent. The Dow’s 344.65-point fall left the index at 11,188.23, a 2.99 percent decrease from the close of trading Wednesday.

According to The New York Times, the drop is the largest since June of this year, but an expected announcement Friday of August unemployment data could cause the index to rise.

The New York Times and the Associated Press both report that the number of jobs in the service sector rose in August according to research done by the Institute for Supply Management. This is the first rise in the number of jobs in several months.

CNNMoney.com points to the rise in the price of Treasury bonds as a reaction to data released Wednesday that the American economy would continue to be slow in 2009.