Investigators examine fractured rail in Connecticut train crash

By Richard Weizel

BRIDGEPORT, Connecticut (Reuters) - A fractured segment of track has been found on the rail line of a Metro-North passenger train from New York that derailed in Connecticut and struck another commuter train, injuring more than 70 people, investigators said on Saturday.

Authorities have ruled out foul play in Friday's collision, which occurred during the evening rush hour between the towns of Bridgeport and Fairfield, about 50 miles northeast of New York City.

Further examination is necessary to determine if track damage found at the site of the accident was a cause or effect of the train wreck, but that stretch of rail line had undergone repair work during the past month, officials said.

"We don't yet know whether the fractured train track caused the accident, or was caused by it," Earl Weener, a board member for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters at a news conference in Bridgeport.

"We do know that the back end of the eastbound train that derailed went over that part of the track where there is a fracture, and that there was repair work done on that stretch of track within the past 30 days," Weener said.

The segment of fractured rail was being sent for analysis.

The accident involved two trains from the Metro-North commuter line that runs between New York City and parts of Connecticut. The wreck occurred when several cars of an eastbound train headed from New York to New Haven, Connecticut, left the track and collided with a train coming in the opposite direction bound for New York's Grand Central Station.

More than 70 passengers and crew members were injured, officials said. Eight remained hospitalized on Saturday, three in critical condition, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy said.

The collision of the Metro-North trains forced Amtrak to shut down service indefinitely between New York and Boston.

The governor urged commuters who normally use the line to find alternative ways to get to work on Monday.

'FORTUNATE THERE WERE NO DEATHS'

NTSB officials arrived at the scene on Saturday to begin their investigation, which has focused in part on recent construction and repair work in the vicinity.

"The FBI was involved at the beginning, but has determined, as have we, that there was no foul play involved," Weener said.

"Frankly, we still don't know what caused the derailment and collision and will not have any answer to that question any time soon, certainly not while on site investigating," he said.

Malloy said the train cars that derailed were new and "designed to the latest standards" for safety and protection of passengers.

"To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that a car like this has been involved in this kind of incident, and by all appearances, they responded well," Malloy said.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told the news conference he had come directly from St. Vincent's Medical Center, where some of the passengers and crew were being treated.

He said he was particularly struck by the courage of one conductor hurt in the collision, a woman he identified only as Helen, who despite serious back injuries helped "many of the people off the train."

"Considering the impact, we are very, very fortunate there were no deaths," Blumenthal said.

Metro-North is operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a New York state agency.

The New York-New Haven line is the busiest rail line in America and serves 125,000 commuters a day, said Judd Everhart of the Connecticut Department of Transportation.

(Additional reporting by Karen Brooks in Austin, Texas, and David Bailey in Minneapolis; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/investigators-examine-fractured-rail-connecticut-train-crash-012857289.html

apple ipad kony kony 2012 jim irsay the new ipad apple announcement indianapolis colts

When should drivers retire from driving? - KevinMD.com

When should drivers retire from driving? This question is always difficult to answer.??In our suburban car culture driving allows?seniors to maintain their independence and prevents social isolation. However, at what point does it become unsafe for the elderly to drive and what are the risks?

One month ago my fit and about 80-year-old in-laws were involved in a serious car accident. A young man crashed into the passenger side back corner of their car on the highway as he shifted from right to left lane behind them causing them to lose control, and sending them head on into the concrete median of the highway.??He drove away, his car and him unscathed, but my in-laws were not so lucky.??Their car was totaled and they were taken to Grady Hospital in Atlanta.

My father-in-law, who suffered a lumbar fracture and contusions, was released after three days. My mother-in-law had more serious injuries?she fractured all of her ribs on the left, her sternum, and subluxed her cervical spine to a dangerous degree requiring emergent decompression and fusion or the cervical spine to prevent spinal cord injury. She stayed in the hospital for one week, and then came to our home to convalesce for another three weeks, requiring physical therapy, home oxygen, a home health aide and multiple assistive devices to help with her activities of daily living. Fortunately, she has done very well, and recently has flown home to Michigan where she will continue to do physical therapy to try to regain her former functional ability, which was fantastic (just before the accident she was giving dinner parties and had planted pansies in my back yard).??My father in law was also in great shape?an avid gardener and retired physician. He maintains his medical license and stays current by reading the New England Journal of Medicine.

It would?never?have occurred to me to caution my in-laws not to drive, either as a physician or as a concerned family member, given their excellent physical and cognitive functioning.? However, the accident?did cause me to reflect upon the issue of driving and safety for seniors.? There are two components?of driving risk?for the elderly:???the risk that a senior driver could present to another person on the road, and that which an elderly driver poses to his or herself.

It turns out that with the aging process, changes in the architecture and mechanics of bones makes them more prone to fracture. Not only are bones more osteoporotic, but also the rib cage changes shape making it more susceptible to injury by frontal force.??Loss of muscle mass and subcutaneous fat increase the likelihood of serious injury.??My mother-in-law, the front passenger, restrained by a seat belt and cushioned by the airbag of her Hyundai Sonata, certainly was a victim of these physiological changes.

According to the?National Highway Traffic Safety Administration?the elderly (persons 65 and older) make up 16% of traffic fatalities.??As we all know the elderly are a growing percent of our population. What will happen to travel patterns as our population ages?

A study by the AARP?in 2012 looked at the impact of the baby boom on travel and recommended research into strategies aimed to address the specific transportation needs of the senior population.

Debra Whitman, AARP Executive Vice President for Policy, quoted in the?Huffington Post?report on this study, said: ?people who live past age 70 will outlive their driving years by seven to 10 years on average. The challenge will come when the generation that is turning the suburbs gray hangs up the keys.?

Often family members come to physicians asking for help with telling their loved one not to drive. I remember one patient who was 90 and had dementia and severe cardiovascular disease. I recommended to his family that he quit driving after he had several fender benders in town. However, I would have liked for him to stop before the fender benders. There are a variety of resources on line to help guide seniors and their family members on decision making about driving in the elderly.???In the case of my in-laws my feeling is that they, and?many other octogenarians in similar shape should safely be able to drive. However, given their?increased risk of serious injury, perhaps car design needs to evolve to better meet the safety needs of the elderly driver and passenger.

What is your plan for driving and transportation as you grow older? Have you given it thought? Are you confident that you will know when it?s time to turn over the keys? Just as middle-aged adults think about retirement, long-term care insurance, estate planning and advanced directives, they should also think about their plan for transportation as they grow older.? In turn there is a social need to address how to maintain safe and efficient transportation for our seniors, which enables our healthy octogenarians to maintain independent living for as long as possible.

Here are some helpful resources:

Older Drivers?(National Institute on Aging)

Senior Driving?(AAA)

Patient and Caregiver Educational Materials?(AMA)

Physician?s Guide to Assessing and Counseling Older Drivers?(AMA)

Juliet K. Mavromatis is an internal medicine physician who blogs at?Dr Dialogue.

Image credit:?Shutterstock.com

Source: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/05/drivers-retire-driving.html

jobs report tiger woods masters 2012 nikki haley stan van gundy navy jet crash virginia beach crash stephen hawking

Iraq and Libya Haunt Obama's Syria Policy

The Obama administration?s policy on Syria is moving in such excruciatingly slow increments that it?s often difficult for the naked eye to detect any policy at all. That process is unlikely to accelerate much in coming weeks, despite a flurry of activity lately, including Secretary of State John Kerry?s planned trip to Russia next week.

Recent indications that the administration has shifted its position on arming the Syrian rebels and is readying a response to alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime are premature, said an administration official who is knowledgeable about the internal discussions on Syria.

In both cases, the president, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and other senior officials continue to be haunted by the lessons of both Iraq and Libya, said this official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The administration recently acknowledged that besieged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may have used small amounts of the nerve agent sarin, but delivered the news with extreme caution because of the botched intelligence about Saddam Hussein?s alleged possession of chemical weapons before the Iraq war. ?People are openly citing the Iraq assessment as a warning,? the official said.

The administration is also under increasing pressure to arm the rebels, with Kerry having acknowledged a Saudi estimate that the death toll could be as high as 90,000. But here, too, the president is being very cautious because of the intervention he backed in Libya?which, even though it was far more straightforward, still went badly. ?And in Libya we knew who the opposition was. They weren?t perfect, but we knew them. In Syria, we just don?t know who these groups are, and who will join them later,? the official said. ?Clearly the radicalized element is of much more of concern in Syria than in Libya. It?s right next to Iraq. You have a lot of historical and geopolitical reasons why the al-Qaida-inspired threat is much, much higher.?

Another administration official confirmed that supplying military aid to the Syrian rebels was still an option being considered, but that was all. White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden added that ?our assistance to the Syrian opposition has been on an upward trajectory,? and that President Obama ?has directed his national security team to identify additional measures so that we can continue to increase our assistance.... We continue to consider all other possible options that would accomplish our objective of hastening a political transition, but have no new announcements at this time.?

Nor is there likely to be much of a shift when Kerry meets his counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow. Given all the U.S. caveats about chemical-weapon use, Russian President Vladimir Putin will probably not be persuaded to abandon his qualified support for Assad. Even the French government, which has been the most aggressive among the NATO allies in supporting aid to the rebels, has expressed doubt about the solidity of the sarin evidence. ?France has?at this stage?suspicions but lacks absolute certainty,? a French diplomat told National Journal, speaking on condition of anonymity. ?That?s why we?ve asked the [U.N. secretary-general] to launch an independent investigation,?in order to gather evidence and not just indications?on the possible use of chemical weapons.?

The president, at his news conference on Wednesday, appeared to walk back even the heavily qualified statement that his own congressional liaison, Miguel Rodriguez, delivered last week in a letter to senators. Whereas Rodriguez had written definitively that ?our intelligence community does assess, with varying degrees of confidence, that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons," Obama did not ascribe the alleged offense to Assad. ?What we have now is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria, but we don?t know how they were used, when they were used, who used them,? the president said.

So don?t expect a news flash on Syria any time soon. The administration?s policy, to the extent it has one, is to test the waters of the Syrian revolution very gingerly, no matter how many are dying, while Assad?s power slowly evaporates. ?First we supplied communications and medical aid, then we helped the rebels to organize, and then we recognized them,? the official said, referring to the Supreme Military Council headed by Gen. Salim Idriss, who defected from Assad?s army last year. ?Now the million-dollar question is: What will Assad do? Do we trust that he can negotiate a path to end his regime? Does he think he?s going to die peacefully, or is the only way he leaves power is with a bullet in head?

?I don?t know what the name is for the policy, but it?s not stagnant. It is moving, very slowly.?

Almost too slowly to see.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-libya-haunt-obamas-syria-policy-143910252.html

china gdp dont trust the b in apartment 23 johnny damon kirk cameron news 10 hillary rosen j.k. rowling

Warren Buffett joins Twitter, gains 1,000 followers a minute

(Reuters) - Warren Buffett accumulates Twitter followers even faster than he makes money.

The 82-year-old "Oracle of Omaha" joined the service and sent his first tweet on Thursday, picking up more than 45,000 followers in just under 45 minutes.

"Warren is in the house," Buffett said under the handle "@WarrenBuffett."

The handle was not officially verified by Twitter, but was confirmed by Fortune magazine, which hosted Buffett for a live webcast Thursday. It was billed as the first social media event for the notoriously technology-averse billionaire.

If followers were dollars, Buffett is having even more success on Twitter than he had with one of his best investments ever, his 2008 stake in Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

That deal gave him preferred stock that paid dividends at $900 a minute. On Twitter, he has gathered 1,000 followers a minute.

By joining Twitter, the Berkshire Hathaway Inc chief executive officer now stands in good mogul company. Other relatively recent converts to the service include News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch (@RupertMurdoch) and former U.S. President Bill Clinton (@BillClinton).

(Reporting by Ben Berkowitz; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Lisa Von Ahn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/warren-buffett-joins-twitter-gains-10-000-followers-164619709.html

Martha Raddatz Chris Lighty JJ Watt jerry sandusky johnny depp hayden panettiere raul ibanez

SOINN gets intelligence boost, uses web-based image search to ID objects

Tokyo Institute of Technology's SOINN (Self-Organizing Incremental Neural Network) bot was impressive enough during our first introduction back in 2011, but the intelligent device can now tap the web for its latest trick: accurate object identification. The updated system, which appears to utilize a database akin to Google's image search, can scour the web for similar shots, making it possible to ID objects based on comparable structures published on the web. It can distinguish a box cutter from a knife, for example, or a rickshaw from a car. For now, SOINN is limited to identifying objects in images, including those captured in realtime with a camera, but its designers imagine that future revisions could enable content recognition in video streams, and audio clips, too. Our friends at DigInfo saw the update in action -- check it out for yourself in the video after the break.

Filed under: Robots, Internet, Alt

Comments

Source: DigInfo.TV

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/Hgq-bLl0_8M/

miramonte elementary school mark jenkins super bowl commercials 2012 mia amar e stoudemire m.i.a. adrianne curry

Protecting our Families: How the U.S. Falls Short in Protecting New ...

Last weekend, I had the privilege of speaking at the National Convention for American Mothers, Inc. about motherhood in the 21st Century. ?Because this is such a vital issue for mothers that live in the U.S. (since a large majority of families have two full-time wage earners), I thought it would be appropriate to share my speech here. ?With the understanding that this a forum for feminism, I believe that this topic fits this forum because it continues to show how unequal the treatment is between the sexes ? whether it is pay, position in employment, healthcare, education, or simply balancing the responsibilities of family/career. ?For those that live in the United States, there is often a sense of exceptionalism, and as I clearly demonstrate in this speech, we are certainly a far cry from being role models that when it comes to protecting mothers (whether by birth or adoption) and families.

As a side note: ?One topic that was not explored, due to lack of data, is how maternity/paternity leave impacts same sex couples who become new parents ? I have to believe that this is a topic to also examine (and I am would encourage any feedback here). ?

Recently the United States ranked 25 out of 165 countries for being the best place to live if you are a mother.? This number is up from 31 a year ago and places us between Belarus and the Czech Republic.

You may be asking yourself, Why isn?t the United States in the top five or even in the top ten? The answer to that question becomes evident once we examine how that determination is made. The categories examined are:

• The Election of women to government office;

• Breast feeding programs.? In the United States 75% of mothers breastfeed their babies, 35% continue to breastfeed after six weeks. The number shrinks because mothers usually return to work and find it difficult to to pump at the office;

• Maternal death rate is another factor, which stunned me when I found out that the US has the highest maternal death rate of any industrialized nation. Approximately 1 in 2,100 women are at risk of dying during child birth;

• Infant death rates is another category.? Infant deaths are estimated to be 8 per 1000 births ? a number that throws us behind 40 other countries;

• The final item is maternity leave benefits for mothers working outside the home. This seems to be one of the biggest problems.?? That is why I think it is important to take a closer look at this issue with the hope of educating ourselves so we can perpetuate change.

Sharp to post worse than forecast full-year loss: sources

BERLIN, April 29 (Reuters) - Barcelona will try every trick in the book to overturn a 4-0 first-leg deficit against Bayern Munich in their Champions League semi-final return leg on Wednesday, honorary Bayern president Franz Beckenbauer warned on Monday. Bayern crushed the Spaniards last week in a surprisingly one-sided encounter but Beckenbauer, former player, coach and president of Germany's most successful club, warned that Barcelona were not ready to surrender. "Barca will try everything to throw Bayern off balance," he told Bild newspaper. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sharp-post-worse-forecast-full-loss-sources-002936103.html

Salwa Amin Grammys 2013 2013 Grammy Winners abraham lincoln Chris Dorner 1800 Flowers walking dead

Uncle: Family to claim Boston bomb suspect's body

FILE - In this April 29, 2013 file photo, Katherine Russell, wife of Boston Marathon bomber suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, right, leaves the law office of DeLuca and Weizenbaum with Amato DeLuca, in Providence, R.I. Relatives of Tsarnaev, the older of the brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing, will claim his body now that his wife has agreed to release it, an uncle said as officials in the U.S. and Russia deepened their investigations into him. (AP Photo/Stew Milne, File)

FILE - In this April 29, 2013 file photo, Katherine Russell, wife of Boston Marathon bomber suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, right, leaves the law office of DeLuca and Weizenbaum with Amato DeLuca, in Providence, R.I. Relatives of Tsarnaev, the older of the brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing, will claim his body now that his wife has agreed to release it, an uncle said as officials in the U.S. and Russia deepened their investigations into him. (AP Photo/Stew Milne, File)

In this Feb. 17, 2010, photo, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, left, accepts the trophy for winning the 2010 New England Golden Gloves Championship from Dr. Joseph Downes, right, in Lowell, Mass. Tsarnaev, 26, who had been known to the FBI as Suspect No. 1 in the Boston Marathon Explosions and was seen in surveillance footage in a black baseball cap, was killed overnight on Friday, April 19, 2013, officials said. (AP Photo/The Lowell Sun, Julia Malakie) MANDATORY CREDIT;

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) ? Relatives of the dead suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing will claim his body now that his wife has agreed to release it, an uncle said as officials in both Washington and Russia deepened their investigations into him and his ties.

The body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, has been at the medical examiner's office in Massachusetts since he died after a gunfight with authorities more than a week ago.

Amato DeLuca, the Rhode Island attorney for his widow, Katherine Russell, said Tuesday that his client had just learned that the medical examiner was ready to release Tsarnaev's body and that she wants it released to his side of the family.

Police said Tsarnaev ran out of ammunition before his brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, dragged his body under a vehicle while fleeing the scene. His cause of death has been determined but will not be made public until his remains are claimed.

"Of course, family members will take possession of the body," uncle Ruslan Tsarni of Maryland told The Associated Press on Tuesday night. "We'll do it. We will do it. A family is a family."

He would not elaborate. Tsarnaev's parents are still in Russia, but he has other relatives on his side of the family in the U.S., including Tsarni.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lies in a prison hospital after being wounded in the shootout with police as he and his brother made their getaway attempt. He is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction to kill, a crime that carries a potential death sentence.

Russian agents placed the older suspect under surveillance during a six-month visit to southern Russia last year, then scrambled to find him when he suddenly disappeared after police killed a Canadian jihadist, a security official told the AP.

U.S. law enforcement officials have been trying to determine whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev was indoctrinated or trained by militants during his visit to Dagestan, a Caspian Sea province that has become the center of a simmering Islamic insurgency.

The security official with the Anti-Extremism Center, a federal agency under Russia's Interior Ministry, confirmed the Russians shared their concerns. He said that Russian agents were watching Tsarnaev, and that they searched for him when he disappeared two days after the July 2012 death of the Canadian man, who had joined the Islamic insurgency in the region. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

Security officials suspected ties between Tsarnaev and the Canadian ? an ethnic Russian named William Plotnikov ? according to the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, which is known for its independence and investigative reporting and cited an unnamed official with the Anti-Extremism Center, which tracks militants. The newspaper said the men had social networking ties that brought Tsarnaev to the attention of Russian security services for the first time in late 2010.

President Barack Obama said Tuesday at a news conference that the U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy "did what it was supposed to be doing" before the Boston Marathon bombing as his top intelligence official began a review into whether sensitive information was adequately shared and whether the U.S. government could have disrupted the attack.

"We want to go back and we want to review every step that was taken," Obama said. "We want to leave no stone unturned. We want to see, is there in fact additional protocols and procedures that could be put in place that would further improve and enhance our ability to detect a potential attack."

In Rhode Island, DeLuca said Tamerlan Tsarnaev's widow met with law enforcement "for many hours over the past week" and will continue cooperating. FBI agents on Monday visited her parents' North Kingstown, R.I., home, where she has been staying, and carried away several bags.

"Katherine and her family continue to be deeply saddened by the harm that has been caused," DeLuca said Tuesday.

Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said Tuesday evening that the state had not yet received Russell's request to release her husband's body.

He said arrangements must be made to release the body and once that happens a death certificate will be filed and the cause of death made public. He said it is too soon to speculate on when that might happen.

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Lynn Berry in Moscow; Arsen Mollyaev in Makhachkala, Russia; and Alicia A. Caldwell, Eileen Sullivan and AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier in Washington.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-05-01-Boston%20Marathon-Explosions/id-128aaf5a31584ebcac9fda5e3ec846ae

Family Guy Boston Marathon revolution huffington post What is ricin Boston Marathon Explosion Boston Marathon bombing irs