Wednesday, October 23, 2013

US, Afghans confident troop agreement will pass

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, center, arrives for a meeting of the North Atlantic Council of defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013. NATO defense ministers open a two-day meeting beginning on Tuesday to discuss Syria, Afghanistan, cyber security and ballistic missile defense. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)







U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, center, arrives for a meeting of the North Atlantic Council of defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013. NATO defense ministers open a two-day meeting beginning on Tuesday to discuss Syria, Afghanistan, cyber security and ballistic missile defense. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)







U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, left, speaks with Romanian Defense Minister Mircea Dusa during a meeting of the North Atlantic Council of defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013. NATO defense ministers open a two-day meeting beginning on Tuesday to discuss Syria, Afghanistan, cyber security and ballistic missile defense. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)







BRUSSELS (AP) — U.S and Afghanistan officials said Tuesday that they are confident tribal elders and the Afghan population will agree to keep U.S. and coalition troops in the country after 2014, even as a senior U.S. military official warned of high profile attacks and assassinations leading up to Afghanistan's presidential elections next year.

The comments come amid persistent uncertainty about the security agreement, including provisions allowing the U.S. military to continue to conduct counterterrorism operations and insuring that U.S. military courts, not the Afghans, would maintain legal jurisdiction over American forces that stay in the country.

A senior U.S. official said that Afghan Defense Minister Bismillah Mohammadi told U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that he has strong confidence that the agreement would be endorsed soon and that the vast majority of Afghans support it. The two spoke during a NATO meeting where leaders were getting updates on the war and progress of the Afghan forces.

In a separate discussion, a senior U.S. military official said he is pretty confident that the agreement will be signed, adding that he has spoken to Afghans at every level and none have said the bilateral security agreement was a bad idea.

The military official also said that Afghans recognize that keeping U.S. and coalition troops in the country after 2014 to train and assist the Afghan forces is key to getting the more than $4 billion in financial support that allied nations have pledged to provide.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issues publicly due to NATO rules.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and President Hamid Karzai reached an agreement about a week ago on the key elements of a deal that would allow American troops to stay after 2014, when combat troops are scheduled to leave. One key unresolved issue — which is a deal breaker for the U.S. — is whether U.S. military courts maintain legal jurisdiction over the troops.

The U.S. official said Hagel made it clear to Mohammadi that jurisdiction is a must for the security agreement.

Karzai said that issue must be discussed by the consultative assembly of tribal elders, or Loya Jirga, before he makes a decision.

The national meeting is expected to start between Nov. 19 and 21 and could last as long as a week, with as many as 3,000 people attending. The Loya Jirga is not binding but Karzai is likely to follow it. The agreement would then have to be ratified by the Afghan Parliament.

There have been repeated worries that the complex agreement could fall apart in much the same way that U.S. negotiations with Iraqi leaders collapsed over the issue of troop immunity. The U.S. then pulled all of its troops out of Iraq.

Officials Tuesday sought to present a more optimistic view of the Afghan situation, while still acknowledging that there are still challenges ahead.

In particular, the military official warned that based on intelligence reports and discussions with Afghans, the U.S. is expecting the Taliban to try to disrupt April's elections with high-profile attacks and targeted killings aimed at candidates and high-level officials.

The military official said that although the peak fighting season is ending, the winter is likely to focus more on kinetic attacks than in the past. He said he expects a concerted effort by the enemy to try and prevent successful elections and the Afghan security forces are preparing for that fighting campaign now.

The official added that in the coming months the U.S. and coalition forces will focus less on building the proficiency of individual Afghan units, and more on improving broader capabilities such as logistics, intelligence gathering, budgeting and command and control.

U.S. officials have said that the U.S. and NATO would like to keep between 8,000-12,000 troops in Afghanistan to train and assist the Afghan force and conduct counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida. Both Hagel and the U.S. military official said they are still comfortable with that range of numbers.

They noted, however, that the number of troops is just one of the key components for success. The state of the Taliban, cooperation from Pakistan in battling the insurgency and the Afghan political process are also important.

Hagel told reporters traveling with him that the sooner an agreement is reached, the better. But he said there is still sufficient time.

"I don't think there's any deadline that we have to have it by Thanksgiving," said Hagel, as he was traveling to the NATO meeting. "If we stay on track — that gives us plenty of time."

If the security agreement is not signed, all troops would leave at the end of next year. President Barack Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press he would be comfortable with a full pullout of U.S. troops.

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Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-22-EU-NATO-Afghanistan/id-655783beea4242b887b359a791366aa8
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Air Force Officers Keep Leaving the Doors to Our Nuclear Missiles Open

Air Force Officers Keep Leaving the Doors to Our Nuclear Missiles Open

Not to scare you or anything, but Air Force officers have left the blast doors to nuclear-tipped missiles open at least twice in the past year. These are the guys who help guard the launch codes who are also tasked with watching over the arsenal. Leaving the missiles available and unattended is a very, very big no-no.

Read more...


    






Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/ZTsgGIn0cNw/air-force-officers-keep-leaving-the-doors-to-our-nuclea-1450269228
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Obama taps former budget aide Zients to help health law rollout


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration has asked former budget official and management expert Jeffrey Zients to help the administration manage the rocky roll-out of the Affordable Care Act known as "Obamacare," the White House said on Tuesday.


The Department of Health and Human Services, which is managing the healthcare program's launch, has brought Zients in to provide "management advice and counsel" to the project, White House spokesman Jay Carney said at a briefing on Tuesday.


(Reporting By Mark Felsenthal and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-taps-former-budget-aide-zients-help-health-173900419.html
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Cardinals, Red Sox set to renew October rivalry


BOSTON (AP) — Lance Lynn squeezed through a door leading into the Green Monster, shimmied along a cramped space behind the famed left-field wall and peered out a tiny metal slot in the Fenway Park scoreboard.

"A little snug for me," the burly St. Louis pitcher said.

Plenty of Cardinals got their first look at the century-old ballpark during a workout Tuesday, a day before they opened the World Series against the Boston Red Sox.

The Red Sox saw a neat sight, too. As they took batting practice at dusk, a giant, vibrant rainbow formed high in the sky beyond center field. Slugger David Ortiz noticed.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "It's a Dominican thing."

Whatever, Big Papi. Something special always seems to happen when the Redbirds and Red Sox meet, from Stan the Man vs. the Splendid Splinter, to Gibby vs. Yaz, to Pedro vs. Pujols.

Now, they're set to meet for the fourth time in "that Octobery kind of air," as Cardinals Game 1 starter Adam Wainwright described it.

Jon Lester will oppose him Wednesday night, facing a lineup that got a late boost. Allen Craig, who hit a major league-leading .454 with runners in scoring position but hasn't played since Sept. 4 because of sprained left foot, is set to return.

"I feel like I'm in a good spot," said the cleanup man, who will be the Cardinals' designated hitter.

Weather could be a factor. Temperatures are supposed to dip into the low 40s and rain is in the forecast.

Boston was listed as a slim favorite in the matchup between teams that tied for the big league lead in wins. The clubs haven't met in the regular season since 2008, and Red Sox speedster Jacoby Ellsbury was looking forward to this pairing that some are billing as the Beards vs. the Birds.

"It will be exciting to see some unfamiliar faces," he said.

Dustin Pedroia, Mike Napoli and many of their scraggly Boston teammates figure to get a good look at the Cardinals' crop of young arms, led by postseason ace Michael Wacha and relievers Trevor Rosenthal, Carlos Martinez and Kevin Siegrist.

Ortiz is the link to the Red Sox team that swept St. Louis in the 2004 Series — Boston never trailed at any point — and ended an 86-year championship drought.

"Obviously I'm aware of the history of the two teams," Ellsbury said. "Once the first pitch happens, all that goes out the window."

The Red Sox are trying to win their third crown in 10 years. St. Louis is aiming to take its second title in three years and third in eight seasons.

"Some of us have some pretty bad memories of being here in 2004, and we're looking to kind of right that ship," St. Louis manager Mike Matheny said.

Matheny was the Cardinals' catcher that year, backed up by rookie Yadier Molina. Now Molina is considered the best defensive catcher in baseball, charged with trying to stop Ellsbury and a Red Sox team that's run a lot in the postseason.

"It's fun to be part of this history, to be here in Fenway Park, to be part of this Series against Boston," Molina said.

"It's different to play here overall. Playing defense, offense, pitching. It's different, but at the same time it's fun," he said.

David Freese grew up in St. Louis and became MVP of the 2011 Series. He heard about Stan Musial vs. Ted Williams in 1946, knew about Bob Gibson facing Carl Yastrzemski in '67 and recalled watching on TV when Red Sox reliever Keith Foulke fielded Edgar Renteria's tapper to finish off 2004.

"I remember the comebacker that ended it. The sweep. You don't expect a World Series to end in four games," the 30-year-old third baseman said.

Freese said he'd always hoped to get a chance to play at Fenway, and he got his first look Tuesday.

After Matheny stood near the mound and pointed out the particulars of the dirt triangle in center field, Freese stepped in for batting practice. He launched a long drive that hit high off the Green Monster in left-center, the loud thwack echoing all around the ballpark.

"That's my Wall ball," he hooted to teammate Matt Holliday.

Good for a hitter, maybe not so great for a pitcher.

"A ballgame can change with one swing of the bat in this ballpark," said Wacha, who also climbed into the wall. "It's pretty crazy. Crazy dimensions, that's for sure."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cardinals-red-sox-set-renew-october-rivalry-200225881--spt.html
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Chocolate Fashions Make For A Truly Sweet Little Black Dress





"Eternal Diamond," an A-line dress hand-painted with 40 pounds of Lindt chocolate. It's adorned simply along the hem with chili and orange segments, flavors used in speciality Lindt chocolate bars. The fan and hat are also crafted from chocolate, of course.



Photo: Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy Salon du Chocolat


"Eternal Diamond," an A-line dress hand-painted with 40 pounds of Lindt chocolate. It's adorned simply along the hem with chili and orange segments, flavors used in speciality Lindt chocolate bars. The fan and hat are also crafted from chocolate, of course.


Photo: Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy Salon du Chocolat


If you find yourself sauntering down the runway wearing 40 pounds of chocolate, don't sweat it. Seriously – you might find yourself dripping on the audience.


So warns Fiona Bitmead, one of ten models who showed off edible chocolate creations Friday night at the Salon du Chocolat in London. Five handlers helping her get dressed.


"[I] had to worry about a dress melting on me!" she says. "I can't say I've ever wanted to eat the dresses I've worn down the catwalk before."


But as Tim Gunn might say, make it work!


Salon du Chocolat, not surprisingly, is a French creation. It's the world's largest chocolate fair open to the public, and it has been running for 19 years. This year, it will travel to 23 cities around the world, providing patrons a chance to taste and buy artisan and specialty chocolate. The salon hits New York in November 2014.


Clad in little — and not so little — chocolate dresses, the models at the London event wore gowns, headpieces, bags and even a swimsuit all made of, or adorned with white, milk and the dark stuff.





Cute, but probably not the best choice for fun in the sun: This bikini was a collaboration between chocolatier Fruitful Blooms and swimwear purveyor Bikini Fling. It features Fruitful Blooms' signature chocolate leaves and flowers.



Photo: Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy Salon du Chocolat


Cute, but probably not the best choice for fun in the sun: This bikini was a collaboration between chocolatier Fruitful Blooms and swimwear purveyor Bikini Fling. It features Fruitful Blooms' signature chocolate leaves and flowers.


Photo: Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy Salon du Chocolat


Chocolatiers and designers worked together to create a chocoholic's dream dresses. Lauren Smith, a 23-year-old art school graduate, was hired by Swiss chocolatier Lindt to design its "Eternal Diamond" dress, the creation Bitmead modeled. The A-line dress gets its rich brown color from the 40 pounds of chocolate that cover it; it's adorned simply along the hem with chili and orange segments, flavors used in specialty Lindt chocolate bars. Smith says she had two major worries about the dress.


"One of the main challenges was trying to pick a fabric that could sustain the weight of the chocolate and the embellishments," Smith says. "Luckily, I picked a good, sturdy stiff canvas which worked well."


Fabric samples were tested at Lindt headquarters in advance to ensure the dress could withstand the heavy chocolate coating. Smith and the Lindt team constructed the piece de resistance by hand in just two weeks.





London patisserie On Cafe's entry featured a gown covered in macarons, of course.



Photo: Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy Salon du Chocolat


London patisserie On Cafe's entry featured a gown covered in macarons, of course.


Photo: Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy Salon du Chocolat


"The thing that I was really worried about was sewing through chocolate and fabric and that actually came out really well. It was a bit hard, but I was able to stitch it," Smith tells The Salt.


Food artist Paul Wayne Gregory was involved with the construction of the dress, which took 24 hours to hand-paint with chocolate. Gregory says the process wasn't without its meltdowns, as it were.


"Tempering helps," he says, "but there was a lot of melting, breaking and re-building."


And how on earth did they transport it? Gregory says, "We had two women holding it in the back of a van."


Mark Tilling, master chocolatier at Squires Kitchen, a British pastry shop and baking school, used 10 pounds of chocolate squares to create an Audrey Hepburn-inspired dress and matching round handbag. Tilling says the hardest part was finding something suitable to serve as the template.





Breakfast of chocolate at Tiffany's? Ten pounds of the dark, sweet stuff were used to craft this Audrey Hepburn-inspired dress and matching handbag, created by master chocolatier Mark Tilling of Squire Kitchen.



Photo: Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy Salon du Chocolat


Breakfast of chocolate at Tiffany's? Ten pounds of the dark, sweet stuff were used to craft this Audrey Hepburn-inspired dress and matching handbag, created by master chocolatier Mark Tilling of Squire Kitchen.


Photo: Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy Salon du Chocolat


"It took all day just to find the right dress," Tilling says. " It's got to be easy to get into, so we needed a long zip in the back."


Tilling started with the dress: Using it as a base, he warmed chocolate to act as glue for the squared panels that adorn the frock.


Thankfully, designers won't have to re-create their perishable dresses. Each fashion show will feature the work of local designers and chocolatiers.


Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/10/21/239291104/chocolate-fashions-make-for-a-truly-sweet-little-black-dress?ft=1&f=1004
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The ocean is broken


The following article was reprinted with permission from The Newcastle Herald.

IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.

Not the absence of sound, exactly.

The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.

Read what's happened since this article went global

And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.

What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.

The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.

"There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.

But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.

No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.

"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.

"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."

But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.

North of the equator, up above New Guinea, the ocean-racers saw a big fishing boat working a reef in the distance.

"All day it was there, trawling back and forth. It was a big ship, like a mother-ship," he said.

And all night it worked too, under bright floodlights. And in the morning Macfadyen was awoken by his crewman calling out, urgently, that the ship had launched a speedboat.

"Obviously I was worried. We were unarmed and pirates are a real worry in those waters. I thought, if these guys had weapons then we were in deep trouble."

But they weren't pirates, not in the conventional sense, at least. The speedboat came alongside and the Melanesian men aboard offered gifts of fruit and jars of jam and preserves.

"And they gave us five big sugar-bags full of fish," he said.

"They were good, big fish, of all kinds. Some were fresh, but others had obviously been in the sun for a while.

"We told them there was no way we could possibly use all those fish. There were just two of us, with no real place to store or keep them. They just shrugged and told us to tip them overboard. That's what they would have done with them anyway, they said.

"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."

Macfadyen felt sick to his heart. That was one fishing boat among countless more working unseen beyond the horizon, many of them doing exactly the same thing.

No wonder the sea was dead. No wonder his baited lines caught nothing. There was nothing to catch.

If that sounds depressing, it only got worse.

The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.

"After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.

"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."

In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.

"Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it's still out there, everywhere you look."

Ivan's brother, Glenn, who boarded at Hawaii for the run into the United States, marvelled at the "thousands on thousands" of yellow plastic buoys. The huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets. Pieces of polystyrene foam by the million. And slicks of oil and petrol, everywhere.

Countless hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by the killer wave and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea.

"In years gone by, when you were becalmed by lack of wind, you'd just start your engine and motor on," Ivan said.

Not this time.

"In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of situation, out in the ocean.

"If we did decide to motor we couldn't do it at night, only in the daytime with a lookout on the bow, watching for rubbish.

"On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of a big car or truck.

"We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.

"We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through a garbage tip.

"Below decks you were constantly hearing things hitting against the hull, and you were constantly afraid of hitting something really big. As it was, the hull was scratched and dented all over the place from bits and pieces we never saw."

Plastic was ubiquitous. Bottles, bags and every kind of throwaway domestic item you can imagine, from broken chairs to dustpans, toys and utensils.

And something else. The boat's vivid yellow paint job, never faded by sun or sea in years gone past, reacted with something in the water off Japan, losing its sheen in a strange and unprecedented way.

BACK in Newcastle, Ivan Macfadyen is still coming to terms with the shock and horror of the voyage.

"The ocean is broken," he said, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.

Recognising the problem is vast, and that no organisations or governments appear to have a particular interest in doing anything about it, Macfadyen is looking for ideas.

He plans to lobby government ministers, hoping they might help.

More immediately, he will approach the organisers of Australia's major ocean races, trying to enlist yachties into an international scheme that uses volunteer yachtsmen to monitor debris and marine life.

Macfadyen signed up to this scheme while he was in the US, responding to an approach by US academics who asked yachties to fill in daily survey forms and collect samples for radiation testing - a significant concern in the wake of the tsunami and consequent nuclear power station failure in Japan.

"I asked them why don't we push for a fleet to go and clean up the mess," he said.

"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."

This article ran in the Newcastle Herald, which published a follow up after it gained traction worldwide.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/the-ocean-is-broken-133327474.html
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Colorado theater gunman coerced into incriminating statements, defense says


By Keith Coffman


CENTENNIAL, Colo. (Reuters) - Police coerced movie theater gunman James Holmes into talking about explosives found in his apartment after he shot 12 people to death, and those statements should be barred from his murder trial, defense lawyers argued in a Colorado courtroom on Monday.


Prosecutors stood by the admissibility of the statements, countering that police were merely trying to obtain information on how to safely defuse the bombs to protect law enforcement officers and the public from a potential detonation of the booby traps.


The latest legal back-and-forth in the high-profile case came in a hearing over what evidence should be allowed in the capital murder trial of the onetime neuroscience graduate student, due to start in early February.


Holmes, 25, is charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder for opening fire in a suburban Denver cinema during a midnight screening of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" in July 2012.


The shooting rampage left 12 moviegoers dead and 70 others injured or wounded, some with permanent paralysis.


Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and his lawyers have said their client was undergoing a psychotic episode when he sprayed the movie auditorium with gunfire before surrendering to police.


Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the California native if he is convicted.


Public defender Kristen Nelson said police denied Holmes' repeated requests to speak to a lawyer before he was questioned by investigators, and deceived him into thinking that the information he provided would not be used against him.


Had police allowed him to seek legal counsel immediately after his arrest, as required under the U.S. Constitution, a lawyer would have helped "protect this mentally ill man from being the instrument to his own conviction and execution," Nelson said.


Holmes, who has tended to stare straight ahead during courtroom testimony, bowed his head throughout Nelson's impassioned argument.


Prosecutor Rich Orman countered that police were unsure at the time if there was a second gunman at large and were dealing with a fluid situation.


"They could not know if setting foot in the apartment would trigger a massive conflagration," he said.


Defense lawyers also said the seizure of Holmes' bank accounts, which traced his firearms purchases, should be suppressed because there was not initially a valid, signed court order allowing the records to be released to prosecutors.


But prosecutors said they noticed what they called an oversight and informed the public defenders and the court of the error that was later rectified with a proper court order.


Arapahoe County District Judge Carlos Samour Jr. has not ruled on the suppression motions.


(Reporting by Keith Coffman; Editing by Steve Gorman and Eric Beech)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/colorado-theater-gunman-coerced-incriminating-statements-defense-says-044658839.html
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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About #%!@% Car Seats

Everything you wanted to know about car seats
Car seats are confusing! But also important.

Photo by Sean/busbeytheelder/Flickr via Creative Commons








There are many things we do in private that we hope others never see. Installing a car seat is up there for me. Having just moved from New York City, where I rarely drove anywhere, to the country, where I rarely walk anywhere, car seats have suddenly become part of my daily life, and even though I know they may one day save my son’s life, I do not get along with them. When I’m fighting to install one into my car by myself, the process invariably involves instruction manuals (for my car seat and my car), YouTube installation videos (necessary since my manuals seem to be written in Pirahã), ample cursing, and me punching the car seat. Whoever said violence is never justified clearly never owned a Britax.














Most parents will agree car seats are a bitch to install; worse, the stats suggest that three out of four times, we’re doing it wrong. But the angst surrounding car seats does not end with installation—pretty much everything about them is ridiculously confusing. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently changed its recommendations on when to use which types of seats, but chances are, your state law disagrees. Rumor has it that next year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will tell parents to stop using the Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children system (LATCH) to secure car seats once the combined weight of your car seat and your child exceeds 65 pounds, which begs the question—do you know how much your car seat weighs? I don’t even know how much my kid weighs. Then there is the Freakonomics claim that car seats are in fact useless, the Consumer Reports debacle in which the organization apparently had to recall some reviews after screwing up its safety tests, and, oh yeah, the fact that some car seats simply do not fit in some cars. But hey, guess what? Your kid should be in a car seat until she’s 8 years old and don’t even think about letting her ride in the front seat until she’s 13. K?










Punch a car seat; it’ll make you feel better. Then read on, because I’m going to try to answer some of the many exasperated questions many of us have pondered about car seats in recent years.  












First, the very basics: Why these insufferable plastic contraptions are well worth the hassle. Car seats can be life-saving, and to understand why, we have to go back to high school physics. When your car flies down the highway at 70 mph, you go this fast, too. This means you and your car have a heck of a lot of momentum, a figure that reflects speed and mass. When you come to a rapid halt in a collision, your car’s momentum has to drop quickly, which requires force—a force that deforms your car, among other things. Your own momentum must drop, too; you have the choice of flying through the windshield and letting the force of hard pavement stop your momentum, or you can use a seat belt, which does the same thing but a little more amiably.










Seat belts do more than just keep you from becoming a projectile; they are also slightly elastic, so they lengthen the time over which your momentum slows (as opposed to if you’d slammed into the pavement), which ultimately reduces the total force on your body at any one time. That’s good. Seat belts also ensure that this force hits two of the strongest parts of your body—your pelvis and your shoulders—and that your more delicate tissues, such as your genitals, abdomen and neck, remain unscathed (unless your car gets crushed to the point of crushing you, too). So: Seat belts are awesome.










Car seats, however, are better—which is important because car crash injuries are more dangerous to children than adults. Motor vehicle accidents are the No. 1 cause of death in children; more than one-third of kids who died in accidents in 2011 were unrestrained. “For a kid, things can come apart much more easily. When we sustain whiplash, they can break their necks,” says Ben Hoffman, a pediatrician and car seat specialist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Forward-facing car seats, which the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends kids use from ages 2 to at least 4, have five-point harnesses. They distribute the force associated with impact across an even larger area—there are more straps coming into contact with your kid’s body—which means less force being applied to any single point. According to Partners for Child Passenger Safety, a long-standing research partnership between the State Farm Insurance Company, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania, forward-facing car seats really do save lives: When these car seats are not seriously misused—i.e. when parents actually strap their kids in and attach car seats to their cars (apparently some don’t even try?)—car seats of all types reduce a 2- to 6-year-old child’s risk of death in a serious crash by an average of 28 percent compared with seat belts.










But it’s the rear-facing seats that are the real life-savers for kids under 4. Most crashes are frontal, which means that the force applied to riders typically comes from the front. Rear-facing seats distribute the force of impact along the entirety of the backside of your child’s body. Again: same force, but it’s distributed across a much greater area still, which means, yes, less damage. Rear-facing seats also prevent kids’ heads from flying forward as happens to forward-facing passengers. Head-flying is bad for neck muscles and bones, as they have to snap the head back in place (would you want to use your neck as a bungee cord?). One recent study  reported that newborns to 2-year-olds were 76 percent more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash when they were in forward-facing car seats compared to rear-facing car seats. Seventy-six percent is a lot. In 2011, the American Academy of Pediatrics changed its recommendations to say that kids should remain in rear-facing car seats until at least the age of 2 (they used to say age 1); many state laws are not this strict—they are still, I guess, catching up with the science—but I’d do what the doctors say.













New Car Seat

Photo by Glenn Fleishman/Flickr via Creative Commons








What about booster seats, which the AAP says you’re supposed to use for 4 to 7-year-olds who have outgrown their forward-facing harness seats? They don’t protect quite as well as the harnessed seats and not nearly as well as rear-facing seats, because they use only the seat belt as a restraint. They are, however, important to ensure that seat belts actually sit where they are supposed to. When kids under 8 wear seat belts without booster seats, the belts can cut across their necks and abdomens, which is precisely where you do not want a massive amount of force to hit your kid. A 2009 study conducted as part of Partners for Child Passenger Safety found that kids between 4 and 8 were 45 percent less likely to sustain moderate to serious injuries in crashes when they were restrained in high-back or backless booster seats to lap-and-shoulder seat belts alone—and this reduction in injury risk went up to 67 percent for kids in post-1998 car models.










Do you know how much your car seat weighs? I don’t even know how much my kid weighs.










 What’s important to keep in mind, though, when considering all these studies is that parents who use car seats may differ from parents who don’t use car seats in many important ways. They may drive safer cars and drive more slowly, for instance, both of which could also influence injury risk. Researchers attempt to control for these confounding factors to isolate the effects of car seats themselves, but these controls are never perfect.










In fact, a small body of research downright contradicts many of the studies I have just mentioned. In 2005, University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner, co-authors of the bestselling Freakonomics published a controversial piece in the New York Times Magazine arguing that “there is no evidence that car seats do a better job than seat belts in saving the lives of children older than 2.” Their assertions were based on several studies Levitt conducted. One mined data from a federal database called FARS, which records the details of U.S. crashes that kill at least one passenger, and found that kids over 2 were no less likely to die in crashes while in car seats than were kids wearing lap-and-shoulder belts. Another Levitt study using crash data from a national database and those of several states found that for kids aged 2 to 6, car seats did not prevent serious injuries any better than lap-and-shoulder belts did. Car seats did, however, reduce the risk of minor injuries by 25 percent.














Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/the_kids/2013/10/car_seats_from_rear_facing_to_forward_facing_to_booster_everything_you_need.html
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Java forever! 12 keys to Java's enduring dominance



It's easy to forget the value of any given technology once its buzz has arced across our collective consciousness and died a fiery death beyond the hype horizon. Take Cobol, that "Mad Men"-era relic -- just like fish past its prime, as the hipster tech pundits say: worthless, smelly, out of date, bad for you. Java may be the next enterprise mainstay to find itself on the ropes of "relevance."


The book sales are a distant memory. And Java's middle-age utility is no longer sexy enough for the magazine cover spreads. Nearly 19 years since Java's launch, the application development cognoscenti are wandering around the luring bazaar of Node.js, Objective-C, Dart, Go, and the like, wondering, "Java? Is that Web 1.0 era artifact still here?"


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A quick search of Dice.com job listings says you bet -- in a big way. Whereas listings for iOS-related jobs top out around 2,500, Java pulls up more than 17,000 listings. The Dice numbers are far from a perfect measure, but anything suggesting the Java job market may be some seven times larger than that of the unstoppable force of hype in the developer world is not bad for a relic.


Maybe that's because Java offers a better business plan than giving 30 percent of your revenue to Apple off the top and crossing your fingers in hopes that your app makes the top-25 list. Truth is, Java has always tackled a grander problem than helping angry birds get back at some pigs. It's a foundation of a number of platforms, designed to deliver a smooth way for software to run efficiently on more than one chip architecture. That solved problems for the server programmers, client programmers, and embedded programmers all at once.


Before we forget Java's many vital contributions to computing and its role today, here are 12 definitive reasons why Java is not only surviving but actively thriving in its post-buzz existence.


In other words: Don't call it a comeback; Java's been here, dominating, all along.


Key to continued Java dominance No. 1: Resiliency in the face of (often dirty) politics
The tech world never gave Java a shot because its enemies were many and well-armed. Regardless, the language flourished. Many of those surprised to see Java still here have surely spent too much time listening to the haters and not enough time understanding its success.


Microsoft was Java's first big enemy because the company saw it as the most worthy successor to the unity MS-DOS offered. Redmond bad-mouthed Java from the beginning, fighting it tooth and nail. Java never found the traction it needed on the desktop, in part because the magic Java virtual machine took too much time to start up. Despite the tiny delay, Java applications run well enough on Windows to be functional.


For some inexplicable reason, Steve Jobs never embraced Java, even when the Mac was largely ignored by everyone except Adobe. Java compatibility could bring in plenty of code, but Apple always treated it as an afterthought. (Yes, iOS smartphones are smoother than my Android, so maybe Steve had a point.)


Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/java-forever-12-keys-javas-enduring-dominance-228504?source=rss_infoworld_top_stories_
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Monday, October 21, 2013

Tufts Medical Center to lead 20-center study on vitamin D's effect on Type 2 diabetes

Tufts Medical Center to lead 20-center study on vitamin D's effect on Type 2 diabetes


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Nationwide NIH-funded trial to examine whether vitamin D supplementation can reduce diabetes risk in patients with pre-diabetes



October 21, 2013 (BOSTON) A research team led by Anastassios G. Pittas, MD, MS, Endocrinologist and Co-Director of the Diabetes Center at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant of more than $40 million over five years to conduct the Vitamin D and Type 2 diabetes (D2d) study (http://www.d2dstudy.org). D2d is a nationwide clinical trial to determine if vitamin D supplementation can reduce the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes in people who are at high risk for this serious metabolic disorder.


Despite a lack of conclusive evidence to the effectiveness of vitamin D for conditions not related to bone health, sales of vitamin D supplements in the United States have skyrocketed to $425 million annually, making it one of the top selling supplements in the country and one of the most talked about topics in health and medicine. The D2d study, which is coordinated out of the Division of Endocrinology at Tufts Medical Center, is the first of its kind to specifically examine whether vitamin D has an effect on prevention of type 2 diabetes.


"Early studies, by our team and others, suggest a strong link between vitamin D and reduction of diabetes risk," said Pittas, who has investigated the connection since 2002. "While there is a lot of hype about vitamin D and its health benefits, including for diabetes, there is not yet enough evidence from clinical trials to support a recommendation of vitamin D supplementation for diabetes prevention. If the D2d study confirms our hypothesis, it could have a significant impact on the quality of life for millions of people and could potentially save the American health care system billions of dollars."


According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, diabetes is the 7th-leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for more than 69,000 fatalities in 2010. A chronic disease with no known cure, diabetes also can lead to other severe health complications, including stroke, blindness, and diseases of the heart, kidney and nervous system. Data from the 2011 National Diabetes Fact Sheet indicates that nearly 26 million Americans are currently living with the disease; 79 million more (about one-third of the adult U.S. population) are at a high risk for developing type 2 diabetes. The American Diabetes Association estimates that diabetes cost the U.S. health care system approximately $245 billion in 2012.


"Maintaining a healthy diet and staying physically active is the best way to lower the risk of type 2 diabetes," said Pittas. "However, achieving and maintaining the required lifestyle changes long-term is a challenge for many people. Therefore, it is critical to find new preventive measures that are safe, effective, affordable and easily applied to prevent future type 2 diabetes cases."


About 2,500 people at high risk for diabetes will be recruited for this landmark trial, which will take place at 20 medical centers in 17 different states across the country. Participants will receive either vitamin D supplementation or placebo, and will be followed for development of diabetes twice a year for approximately four years. Results of the D2d study are expected in 2018.


"At the completion of the study, our goal is to have conclusive evidence as to whether vitamin D supplementation lowers the risk of diabetes," said D2d Project Manager Patricia Sheehan, RN, MPH, MS. "The first step in reaching this objective is encouraging people at high risk for diabetes to take part in this important clinical trial."

###


D2d at Tufts Medical Center is now inviting people at risk for diabetes in the Boston metropolitan area to join the study. Those at risk for diabetes include people who are overweight, have a family member with type 2 diabetes, live a sedentary lifestyle, or have high blood pressure; members of certain ethnic groups, including African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans; and women who had diabetes during pregnancy. For more information or to enroll in the D2d study, please call 617-636-2843, e-mail d2dtufts@tuftsmedicalcenter.org or visit the study's website at http://www.D2dstudy.org.


D2d (ClinicalTrials.gov number NCT01942694) is supported under NIH grant U01DK098245. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of NIH, is the primary sponsor of the trial, with additional support from the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements and the American Diabetes Association. Support in the form of educational materials is provided by the National Diabetes Education Program.



About Tufts Medical Center and Floating Hospital for Children



Tufts Medical Center is an exceptional, not-for-profit, 415-bed academic medical center that is home to both a full-service hospital for adults and Floating Hospital for Children. Conveniently located in downtown Boston, the Medical Center is the principal teaching hospital for Tufts University School of Medicine. Floating Hospital for Children is the full-service children's hospital of Tufts Medical Center and the principal pediatric teaching hospital of Tufts University School of Medicine. For more information, please visit http://www.tuftsmedicalcenter.org.




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Tufts Medical Center to lead 20-center study on vitamin D's effect on Type 2 diabetes


[ Back to EurekAlert! ]

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

21-Oct-2013



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Contact: Jeremy Lechan
jlechan@tuftsmedicalcenter.org
716-636-0104
Tufts Medical Center



Nationwide NIH-funded trial to examine whether vitamin D supplementation can reduce diabetes risk in patients with pre-diabetes



October 21, 2013 (BOSTON) A research team led by Anastassios G. Pittas, MD, MS, Endocrinologist and Co-Director of the Diabetes Center at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant of more than $40 million over five years to conduct the Vitamin D and Type 2 diabetes (D2d) study (http://www.d2dstudy.org). D2d is a nationwide clinical trial to determine if vitamin D supplementation can reduce the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes in people who are at high risk for this serious metabolic disorder.


Despite a lack of conclusive evidence to the effectiveness of vitamin D for conditions not related to bone health, sales of vitamin D supplements in the United States have skyrocketed to $425 million annually, making it one of the top selling supplements in the country and one of the most talked about topics in health and medicine. The D2d study, which is coordinated out of the Division of Endocrinology at Tufts Medical Center, is the first of its kind to specifically examine whether vitamin D has an effect on prevention of type 2 diabetes.


"Early studies, by our team and others, suggest a strong link between vitamin D and reduction of diabetes risk," said Pittas, who has investigated the connection since 2002. "While there is a lot of hype about vitamin D and its health benefits, including for diabetes, there is not yet enough evidence from clinical trials to support a recommendation of vitamin D supplementation for diabetes prevention. If the D2d study confirms our hypothesis, it could have a significant impact on the quality of life for millions of people and could potentially save the American health care system billions of dollars."


According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, diabetes is the 7th-leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for more than 69,000 fatalities in 2010. A chronic disease with no known cure, diabetes also can lead to other severe health complications, including stroke, blindness, and diseases of the heart, kidney and nervous system. Data from the 2011 National Diabetes Fact Sheet indicates that nearly 26 million Americans are currently living with the disease; 79 million more (about one-third of the adult U.S. population) are at a high risk for developing type 2 diabetes. The American Diabetes Association estimates that diabetes cost the U.S. health care system approximately $245 billion in 2012.


"Maintaining a healthy diet and staying physically active is the best way to lower the risk of type 2 diabetes," said Pittas. "However, achieving and maintaining the required lifestyle changes long-term is a challenge for many people. Therefore, it is critical to find new preventive measures that are safe, effective, affordable and easily applied to prevent future type 2 diabetes cases."


About 2,500 people at high risk for diabetes will be recruited for this landmark trial, which will take place at 20 medical centers in 17 different states across the country. Participants will receive either vitamin D supplementation or placebo, and will be followed for development of diabetes twice a year for approximately four years. Results of the D2d study are expected in 2018.


"At the completion of the study, our goal is to have conclusive evidence as to whether vitamin D supplementation lowers the risk of diabetes," said D2d Project Manager Patricia Sheehan, RN, MPH, MS. "The first step in reaching this objective is encouraging people at high risk for diabetes to take part in this important clinical trial."

###


D2d at Tufts Medical Center is now inviting people at risk for diabetes in the Boston metropolitan area to join the study. Those at risk for diabetes include people who are overweight, have a family member with type 2 diabetes, live a sedentary lifestyle, or have high blood pressure; members of certain ethnic groups, including African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans; and women who had diabetes during pregnancy. For more information or to enroll in the D2d study, please call 617-636-2843, e-mail d2dtufts@tuftsmedicalcenter.org or visit the study's website at http://www.D2dstudy.org.


D2d (ClinicalTrials.gov number NCT01942694) is supported under NIH grant U01DK098245. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of NIH, is the primary sponsor of the trial, with additional support from the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements and the American Diabetes Association. Support in the form of educational materials is provided by the National Diabetes Education Program.



About Tufts Medical Center and Floating Hospital for Children



Tufts Medical Center is an exceptional, not-for-profit, 415-bed academic medical center that is home to both a full-service hospital for adults and Floating Hospital for Children. Conveniently located in downtown Boston, the Medical Center is the principal teaching hospital for Tufts University School of Medicine. Floating Hospital for Children is the full-service children's hospital of Tufts Medical Center and the principal pediatric teaching hospital of Tufts University School of Medicine. For more information, please visit http://www.tuftsmedicalcenter.org.




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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/tmc-tmc102113.php
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Tablets shipments to mushroom by 53 percent in 2013


Tablets shipments will blast ahead by 53 percent in 2013 as desktop and laptop shipments decline by 11 percent, research firm Gartner forecast on Monday.


The emergence of ultramobile devices, which marries a PC with the form factor of a tablet, will help ease the declines in other PCs, but not by much. When ultramobiles are included, the overall PC market will still decline 8.4 percent in 2013, Gartner said.


[ Understand how to both manage and benefit from the consumerization of IT with InfoWorld's "Consumerization Digital Spotlight" PDF special report. | For a quick, smart take on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld TechBrief -- subscribe today. ]


The news of the fantastic popularity of tablets comes as Apple is set to release revamped iPads and iPad Minis on Tuesday, while Microsoft on the same day begins shipments of its Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 tablets running Windows 8.1, starting at $449 and $899, respectively.


Gartner forecast that Android tablets of all brands will exceed iPads for all of 2013 for the first time, with 91.5 million (49.6 percent) Android tablets shipped compared with 89.6 million (48.6 percent) Apple iPads. Gartner said just over 3 million (1.7 percent) Windows tablets will ship.


Apple's iPads still had the largest share of the worldwide tablet market by manufacturer at 32 percent in the second quarter, according to IDC, followed by Samsung at 18 percent. Samsung builds its tablets primarily on the Android mobile operating system.


Gartner and other analysts have found a strong trend toward smaller tablets, some as small as those with a 7-in. display. In a survey of 21,500 consumers in the U.S. and seven other countries, Gartner found 47 percent owned a tablet with a display of 8 inches or less.


"Continuing on the trend we saw last year, we expect this holiday season to be all about smaller tablets as even the long-term holiday favorite -- the smartphone -- loses its appeal," said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi in a statement.


Mobile phones will reach 1.8 billion shipments in 2013, Gartner said, growing by 3.7 percent over 2012.


For all devices, including desktops, laptops, ultramobiles, tablets and mobile phones, Android has 38 percent of the market, while the Windows OS is second at 4.3 percent due to a decline in traditional PC sales, Gartner said. The total shipments for all devices should reach 2.3 billion in 2013.


By device type, Gartner said shipments of desktops and laptops in 2013 will total 303 million units; ultramobiles, 18.5 million; tablets, 184 million; and mobile phones,1.8 billion. The total of all categories is 2.3 billion.


All products running iOS are third, at 1.2 percent. Gartner noted that Windows will return to growth in 2014, with OS shipments increasing nearly 10 percent to about 364 million that year.


Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/tablets-shipments-mushroom-53-percent-in-2013-229171
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SF transit strike has commuters facing gridlock

Mourners hold candles to honor the memory of two workers who were killed during a train accident in Walnut Creek, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013. Two federal accident investigators arrived in the San Francisco Bay area on Sunday to examine the deaths of two transit workers who on Saturday, were struck by an out-of-service commuter train performing routine maintenance against the backdrop of a labor strike. (AP Photo/Eric Slomanson)







Mourners hold candles to honor the memory of two workers who were killed during a train accident in Walnut Creek, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013. Two federal accident investigators arrived in the San Francisco Bay area on Sunday to examine the deaths of two transit workers who on Saturday, were struck by an out-of-service commuter train performing routine maintenance against the backdrop of a labor strike. (AP Photo/Eric Slomanson)







With the BART transit system on strike, traffic is backed up for blocks on Battery Street leading to an artery of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during the evening commute Friday, Oct. 18, 2013, in San Francisco. San Francisco Bay Area rapid transit workers are on strike for the second time since July, scrambling the morning commute for hundreds of thousands of workers who were up before dawn to clog highways, swarm buses and shiver on ferry decks as they found alternative ways to the office. About 400,000 riders take BART every weekday on the nation's fifth-largest commuter rail system. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)







Nucion Avent, left, and Richard Lazzaro, both members of ATU 1555, hold candles to honor the memory of two workers who were killed during a train accident in Walnut Creek, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013. Two federal accident investigators arrived in the San Francisco Bay area on Sunday to examine the deaths of two transit workers who on Saturday, were struck by an out-of-service commuter train performing routine maintenance against the backdrop of a labor strike. (AP Photo/Eric Slomanson)







A BART police officer looks out of a BART car that struck and killed two people along Jones Road in Walnut Creek, Calif., on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2013. (AP Photo/The Mercury News, Dan Rosenstrauch)







Jack Landes holds a candle to honor the memory of two workers who were killed during a train accident in Walnut Creek, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013. Two federal accident investigators arrived in the San Francisco Bay area on Sunday to examine the deaths of two transit workers who on Saturday, were struck by an out-of-service commuter train performing routine maintenance against the backdrop of a labor strike. (AP Photo/Eric Slomanson)







(AP) — Frustrated San Francisco Bay Area commuters started the work week on Monday with gridlocked roadways and long lines for buses and ferries as a major transit strike entered its fourth day.

At the same time, federal investigators were searching for clues to a weekend train crash that killed two workers.

Traffic leading up the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was already snarled for miles around 6 a.m., as commuters got an earlier start without Bay Area Rapid Transit service. The line for charter buses running out of BART's station in Walnut Creek was at least a hundred-people deep in the pre-dawn hours.

By 7:35 a.m., BART reported that only two of the nine stations it was running charter buses from had available bus seats.

"We need BART to be running right now," said Karen Wormley, who waited for a bus from BART's Walnut Creek station. "I need to get to work."

BART, the nation's fifth-largest commuter rail system, has an average weekday ridership of 400,000.

BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said Sunday that transit officials and labor leaders have been in contact over the weekend, but the two sides did not have any plans to return to the bargaining table.

BART presented what it called its last and final offer to its unions a week ago but is open to restarting the negotiations if that is what the federal mediator overseeing the process wants, Trost said. The system's directors plan to hold a special closed meeting on Monday, she said.

Amalgamated Transit Union local president Antonette Bryant said over the weekend that she would take BART's final contract before members for a vote this week, but expects it will be rejected.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that late Sunday the unions made an offer to BART. The ATU and Service Employees International Union said the proposal would allow for changes in work rules related to implementing new technology, but retain rules related to safety. Trost said that the agency "will take a look at their proposal."

Officials have said that the two sides generally agreed on economic issues but came to an impasse over work rules, including the length of the work day and when overtime pay kicks in, the union said.

Meanwhile, a federal investigator said Sunday that even though the train that killed the two workers didn't have a front-facing video recorder, interviews, inspections, audio recordings and camera footage from the train's cab should provide enough evidence to determine a cause.

Jim Southworth, the National Transportation Safety Board's railroad accident investigator-in-charge, said the Bay Area Rapid Transit train wasn't carrying any passengers when the crash occurred Saturday because of the labor strike.

But whether the work stoppage or the way BART management deployed non-striking workers during the shutdown played a role in the fatalities will not be known for weeks or months, Southworth said.

BART officials said on Sunday that they could no longer discuss the accident because of the ongoing NTSB investigation.

BART's assistant general manager has said that the four-car train with several employees aboard was returning from a routine maintenance trip and was being run in automatic mode under computer control when it struck the workers who were inspecting a section of track in Walnut Creek.

Neither BART nor the county coroner has released the names and ages of the victims — one a BART employee and the other a contractor. They were the sixth and seventh workers to die on the job in the system's 41-year history.

Even if the strike ended immediately, the ongoing investigation at the collision site means it would probably take a few days before trains could run on those specific tracks, he said.

On Sunday evening, transit workers held a candlelight vigil for their colleagues.

The NTSB has been promoting improved safety measures for track maintenance crews since a foreman was killed by a passenger train in May in West Haven, Conn., spokesman Eric Weiss said.

___

Cone reported from Fresno.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-10-21-BART%20Strike/id-a8dc40dccc8044aeabb54bf039b921ed
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