Safeguarding rail passengers

May 14, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

Beyond the possibility of human error in the Amtrak derailment, riders assurance that tracks and trains are safe.

Subscribe Now to read this post!

To read this post and thousands more articles, subscribe today!

The engineer at the controls of an Amtrak train that hurtled off the tracks while rounding a sharp curve refused to talk to police Wednesday as the death toll climbed to seven with the discovery of another body in the wreckage, authorities said. More than 200 people were injured in the derailment that plunged screaming passengers into darkness and chaos Tuesday night. Investigators recovered the locomotive's data recorder and said they expected it to yield crucial information, including how fast the train was going when it jumped the tracks in an old industrial neighborhood not far from the Delaware River shortly after 9 p.m.

Officials with bullhorns walked through the quake-damaged streets of Chautara, Nepal Wednesday, calling for people to leave buildings in danger of falling after the second major earthquake in less than three weeks. The evacuation orders came a day after a magnitude-7.3 quake shook the impoverished Himalayan nation just beginning to rebuild from the devastating April 25 temblor. Tuesday's earthquake killed at least 76 people, injured another 2,700 and caused landslides that blocked roads and slowed the delivery of relief supplies.

Gunmen stormed a bus in southern Pakistan and shot at least 45 Shiite Muslims to death in the latest attack targeting a religious minority, officials said. Who carried out the attack in the port city of Karachi wasn't immediately clear, as a Pakistani Taliban splinter group and an Islamic State affiliate both claimed the attack. However, some Taliban fighters have pledged their allegiance in recent months to the extremist group that now holds a third of Iraq and Syria in its self-declared caliphate.

Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Syrian army made big advances against insurgents in the region north of Damascus on Wednesday, Hezbollah and Syrian state media said, shoring up President Bashar al-Assad's grip on a crucial border zone. The gains in the mountainous Qalamoun region against groups including the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front come at a time when Assad has suffered significant defeats elsewhere, notably in Syria's northwest. Hezbollah fighters and the army seized Talat Moussa, the highest peak in the border area, the group's al-Manar TV and sources briefed on the situation said, securing control of the area.

A fire gutted a rubber slipper factory in a suburb of the Philippine capital Wednesday, possibly killing dozens of workers who ran to the second floor in hopes of escaping only to become trapped by the smoky inferno, officials said. The mayor of the Manila suburb said the fire apparently was ignited by sparks from welding works at the factory's main entrance door, triggering an explosion of the chemicals used to make the slippers.

Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. are expanding their recalls over problem air bags made by Japanese supplier Takata Corp. by another 6.5 million vehicles. Toyota said Wednesday it was recalling nearly 5 million more vehicles globally for the air bag inflator problem. Some 637,000 of the vehicles are in the United States. In Japan, it is recalling nearly 1.4 million vehicles. Nissan recalled an additional 1.56 million vehicles globally for the new Takata problem, with 326,000 of them in North America, 563,000 in Europe and 288,000 in Japan.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

Subscribe Now to read this post!

Are you sure?

Forgot to add folder?

Tags Error