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ExxonMobil Pipeline Spill Leaks Oil Onto Santa Barbara Beaches

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ExxonMobil Pipeline Spill Leaks Oil Onto Santa Barbara Beaches

A four-mile-long sheen of oil extended about 50 yards into the waters along Refugio State Beach in Goleta, Tuesday afternoon. Emergency officials and ExxonMobil found the cause to be a ruptured pipeline that was leaking crude oil into the ocean off the Santa Barbara County coast.

The ruptured pipeline, which runs along the coast near Highway 101, was first reported to county fire officials about noon.

According the a spokesman for the Coast Guard, crews arrived and halted the flow of oil a few hours after it was reported.

It’s unclear at this stage how much oil streamed into the ocean, and officials could not confirm the type of oil that had been flowing through the pipeline.

University of Oklahoma Patron Harold Hamm Tried To Have Fracking Researchers Fired

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University of Oklahoma Patron Harold Hamm Tried To Have Fracking Researchers Fired

University of Oklahoma benefactor Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder and CEO of Continental Resources, told a dean he wanted scientists fired who were researching links between fracking for oil and the state’s earthquake surge.

“Mr. Hamm is very upset at some of the earthquake reporting to the point that he would like to see select OGS staff dismissed,” wrote Larry Grillot,a geology dean, in a July 16, 2014, e-mail.

The emails were obtained through and Open Records Act request, refer to a 90-minute meeting held in July 2014 about scientists at the Oklahoma Geological Survey, a state agency that is hosted by the University of Oklahoma, Bloomberg reports:

Hamm was very involved in stifling research into quakes being caused by oil companies as he also expressed an interest in joining a search committee to find a new director for the geological survey, according to Grillot’s e-mail.

When he didn’t seem to be getting his way, Hamm threatened that he would be “visiting with Governor [Mary] Fallin on the topic of moving the OGS out of the University of Oklahoma.”

While Hamm’s request wasn’t fulfilled, it shows the lengths to which rich, powerful patrons of education will go to make sure academic research doesn’t impact their business interests.

The new story comes just days after Hamm defended another scrutinized meeting with OU officials — a 2013 “coffee” attended by Hamm, state seismologist Austin Holland of the OGS and OU president David Boren. Hamm claims he wasn’t there to “bully” a scientist studying earthquakes linked to fracking and disposal wells, but his past conduct suggests otherwise.

Six Chinese Nationals Charged With Economic Espionage

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In a sign the U.S government is losing patience with Chinese industrial espionage, it charged six Chinese nationals with economic espionage, saying they stole secrets from two military contractors, the Department of Justice said on Tuesday.

The arrests mark the third time in as many years that U.S. authorities have made accusations of economic espionage toward China.

Professor Hao Zhang, one of the suspects, was arrested on Saturday in Los Angeles after he arrived on a flight from China. The other five suspects have already fled to China.

Zhang and two other professors from Tianjin University were charged with stealing source code from chipmakers Avago Technologies Ltd and Skyworks Solutions Inc, where they worked.

Tianjin, one of China’s oldest university institutions, is located about 100 miles southeast of Beijing.

Both companies manufacture Film Bulk Acoustic Resonator (FBAR) technology, which is used in mobile devices like cellphones, tablets and GPS devices, but also has military applications.

Between 2006 and 2007, the spies hatched a plan to start manufacturing the technology in China and met with Tianjin University officials, prosecutors said.

If convicted, the spies could be sentenced to up to 50 years in prison each.

The indictment against the six was released at a time of intense diplomatic activity between the two major world powers and comes as Secretary of State John Kerry was in China for the weekend, partly to prepare for a U.S. visit by President Xi Jinping coming later this year.

Two Russian Special Forces Officers Caught In Ukraine Invasion

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Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed the identity of two fighters captured in Ukraine as former members of the Russian military. The admission is further proof that Russian, not rebel, troops are fighting in the Donbass area of Ukraine.

The Russian soldiers, Alexander Alexandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, whom were captured in the rebel-controlled Luhansk area, “were not active servicemen in the Russian armed forces at the moment of their capture on May 17,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Monday.

“We have checked up on the information of the Ukrainian side — these boys previously have in fact served in one of the Russian military units and have military training,” Konashenkov said.

The Russian army is going to some trouble to obscure its leading the annexation of Crimea, with separatists in Luhansk releasing photos of their rebel-issued military IDs, both dated this year, to ‘prove’ they are not Russian military.

However Ukraine identified the fighters as officers of the GRU, the foreign military intelligence arm of Russia’s army, and released video showing the men confessing they had been part of a special forces spying mission.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Both we and the Defense Ministry have said multiple times that there are no Russian servicemen in the Donbass.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also repeatedly denied that Russian troops invaded Ukraine, saying “I am telling you openly and unambiguously: There are no Russian troops in Ukraine.”

All this despite sophisticated Russia missile systems, tanks, small arms and military servicemen clearly observable invading Ukraine.

Largest Ever Consumer Recall Begins Over Failed Airbags

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Largest Ever Consumer Recall Begins Over Failed Airbags

An estimated 33.8 million vehicles are defective thanks to Japanese air bag manufacturer Takata Corp. it was announced Tuesday. The company acknowledged wide-ranging problems with its airbags in a move that is expected to lead to the largest U.S. recall of any consumer product, surpassing the 1982 recall of 31 million bottles of Tylenol following a poison scare.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx confirmed the decision by Takata. The sweeping announcement is a major victory for the National Highway Safety Administration, which has been pressing Takata since November to declare millions of vehicles defective.

The faulty bags are linked to at least six deaths and more than 100 injuries. The issue is caused when propellant explodes with too much force and sends dangerous metal shrapnel flying like a bomb. Officials link the problem to high humidity and moisture, though the precise root cause is still not known.

Takata will announce it has filed four defect information reports with U.S. auto safety officials declaring that 33.8 million vehicles with both driver and passenger airbag inflators are defective. The news follows the 13 million vehcile that have been recalled since 2003 over similar issues, which Automakers recalled vehicles even as Takata refused to admit the parts were defective.

The total number of vehicles impacted could be even higher but vehicle owners will not know for days whether their vehicles are affected.

10 automakers — BMW AG, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Honda Motor Co., Mazda Motor Co., Mitsubishi, Nissan Motor Co., Subaru Motors USA and Toyota Motor Corp. — launched an industry-wide joint testing initiative to determine which of their models are affected.

The announcement came as NHTSA was preparing to demand that Takata declare the bags defective, but NHTSA Administrator Rosekind praised Takata for making the decision.

“Today is a major step forward for public safety,” Foxx said Tuesday. “The Department of Transportation is taking the proactive steps necessary to ensure that defective inflators are replaced with safe ones as quickly as possible, and that the highest risks are addressed first. We will not stop our work until every air bag is replaced.”

Possible fines and other sanctions remain some time away, as the exact root cause if being determined and a final tally of the damage is calculated.

Facebook’s Internet.org Scheme Blasted By Rights Activists

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Facebook’s thinly disguised plan to control all content on the internet, Internet.org, received more harsh criticism on Tuesday. Rights activist group The Electronic Frontier Foundation condemned the Internet.org project, saying it runs “a real risk” of turning the few websites Facebook selects, “including, of course, Facebook itself”, into a “ghetto” for poor internet users – instead of being a stepping stone to the full world wide web.

Internet.org’s stated goal is to “bring the two thirds of the world who don’t yet have internet access” onto the network, but just what that network constitutes is entirely up to Facebook.

Because of bandwidth restrictions due to the rural location and large number of users, something must be done to ensure there is enough internet for all. Yet Facebook has chosen to limit access to what can be browsed in order to save resources. This puts Facebook into the position of grand arbiter of what gets seem on the ‘internet’ and what does not. The company has already made clear it intends to exclude competitors like Google and Youtube.

A fair way to allocate net resources is via access cards – get cheap internet access and use it for whatever you want – even if that mean. But Facebook is looking to play favorites, effectively indoctrinating a who generation of new users that the Facebook Web is the real Web.

The EFF took issue with exactly this, stating that:

We agree that some Internet access is better than none, and if that is what Internet.org actually provided—for example, through a uniformly rate-limited or data-capped free service—then it would have our full support. But it doesn’t. Instead, it continues to impose conditions and restraints that not only make it something less than a true Internet service, but also endanger people’s privacy and security.

The group is particularly critical of Internet.org’s plan to disallow HTTPS connections, the EFF breaks down a recent announcement by the Zuck regarding the expansion of the platform.

The EFF complains that only some devices, such as Android phones running the official app, will have the technical ability to make encrypted connections through Internet.org, which would easily expose political parties and activists, among others, to spying by governments.

Such spying, in places like West Africa, have led to mass slaughter of political rivals or abductions and harassment for aid groups or rights activists. The fear is that under Internet.org’s plan the spying will become pervasive and could enable coups or other violent conflicts thanks to easy information collection.

But regardless of the inherently flawed technical details of the program, there are other more troubling issues according to the EFF

Even if Facebook were able to figure out a way to support HTTPS proxying on feature phones, its position as Internet gatekeepers remains more broadly troublesome. By setting themselves up as gatekeepers for free access to (portions of) the global Internet, Facebook and its partners have issued an open invitation for governments and special interest groups to lobby, cajole or threaten them to withhold particular content from their service. In other words, Internet.org would be much easier to censor than a true global Internet.

The EFF concludes: “We have confidence that it would be possible to provide a limited free Internet access service that is secure, and that doesn’t rely on Facebook and its partners to maintain a central list of approved sites. Until then, Internet.org will not be living up to its promise, or its name.”

It’s always wise to beware of billionaires bearing gifts, it seems.

Google – Uber War Heats Up As Uber Joins Baidu In Nokia Maps Bid

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Google – Uber War Heats Up As Uber Joins Baidu In Nokia Maps Bid

The battle between Uber and its largest investor, Google, heated up as Chinese search giant Baidu, Google’s largest Asian rival, joined Uber in bidding for Nokia’s mapping data unit, HERE.

Uber kicked off the bidding war for HERE less than two weeks ago but the price has escalated and the alliances are said to have shifted.

It was initially reported in the New York Times that Chinese Web search giant Baidu was bidding with the big three of Germany’s car business, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

Now, its rumored that Baidu and Uber linking arms, along with Apax Partners.

Bloomberg, the news outlet with the source, says the German manufacturers appear to be behind in the running while the key rival bid is now China’s Tencent Holdings, NavInfo, and Swedish fund EQT Partners.

The price is said to have risen from US$3 billion to $4 billion, and Nokia looks likely to keep the bidding war going for awhile longer. The three German manufacturers are still in the race, and the next round of bids are due in two weeks.

“Microsoft Corp. has offered to buy a minority stake, while three US private-equity firms – Hellman & Friedman, Silver Lake Management and Thoma Bravo – are also in the running”, Bloomberg reported.

Does 1.3 Homicides Per Day Make Baltimore Secure?

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The riots, looting, and arson may not currently be an issue in Baltimore, but severe violence has persisted. While after three weeks most of America has moved on, believing that the drama is for the large part over, the reality is that since the riots, the murder rate in the city has skyrocketed, with 23 homicides in the last 18 days alone.

Yet slayings have attracted little notice compared to the mass protests and violence over the death of Freddie Gray. They come as the city works to recover from the unrest and a police force fights being demoralized by the arrests of six of its members — three of whom face murder or manslaughter charges in Gray’s death.

From mid-April to mid-May, 31 people were killed, and 39 others were wounded. 10 people were shot on a single day on two separate occasions. As of Friday, the city’s homicide count is 91, 21 above last year at the same time.

In the District, 40 people had been slain as of Friday, excluding four people found dead Thursday in cases police said are being investigated as homicides.

Clearly, something is deeply wrong in Baltimore and nobody is doing anything about it.

Term Limits Needed: 79 Members Of Congress Have Been In Office Over 20 Years

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It’s little wonder Washington never changes when you look at how long elected officials stay in office. New data from site RollCall.com shows fully 79 members of Congress have been there since the early 90s.

Worse is that much of this dead wood is now seriously powerful, helping shape our country for decades to come, despite being out of touch with working Americans. Names like Reid, Feinstein, McConnell, McCain, Pelosi, Boehner, Rangel and Boxer show just how bad the situation has become.

While they no doubt believe that they are “serving” us well, they appear to be mostly just serving themselves. Given congress has a 15 percent approval rating it appears without a doubt most Americans wish for true change to come to Washington.

The problem isn’t new, either, as the approval rating has been consistently below 20 percent since mid-2011.

Yet while the overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of congress, incumbents were re-elected at a 95 percent rate in 2014, showing just how broken and corrupt our system has become.

The American people absolutely hate what congress is doing, and yet the same crooks keep getting sent back to Washington time and again.

Our founding fathers never intended for service in congress to become a career, but that is precisely what it has become. In addition to the 79 members of congress that have been in office over 20 years, and there are 16 members that have been in office over 30 years.

So remember these names the next time you get the opportunity to tell congress how you feel.

Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Jan. 4, 1977
Thad Cochran, Miss. Dec. 27, 1978
Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Jan. 5, 1981
Mitch McConnell, Ky. Jan. 3, 1985
Richard C. Shelby, Ala. Jan. 6, 1987
John McCain, Ariz. Jan. 6, 1987
James M. Inhofe, Okla. Nov. 30, 1994

Patrick J. Leahy, Vt. Jan. 14, 1975
Barbara A. Mikulski, Md. Jan. 6, 1987
Harry Reid, Nev. Jan. 6, 1987
Dianne Feinstein, Calif. Nov. 4, 1992
Barbara Boxer, Calif. Jan. 5, 1993
Patty Murray, Wash. Jan. 5, 1993

Don Young, Alaska March 6, 1973
Jim Sensenbrenner, Wis. Jan. 15, 1979
Harold Rogers, Ky. Jan. 5, 1981
Christopher H. Smith, N.J. Jan. 5, 1981
Joe L. Barton, Texas Jan. 3, 1985
Lamar Smith, Texas Jan. 6, 1987
Fred Upton, Mich. Jan. 6, 1987
John J. Duncan Jr., Tenn. Nov. 8, 1988
Dana Rohrabacher, Calif. Jan. 3, 1989
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Fla. Aug. 29, 1989
John A. Boehner, Ohio Jan. 3, 1991
Sam Johnson, Texas May 18, 1991
Ken Calvert, Calif. Jan. 5, 1993
Robert W. Goodlatte, Va. Jan. 5, 1993
Peter T. King, N.Y. Jan. 5, 1993
John L. Mica, Fla. Jan. 5, 1993
Ed Royce, Calif. Jan. 5, 1993
Frank D. Lucas, Okla. May 10, 1994
Rodney Frelinghuysen, N.J. Jan. 4, 1995
Walter B. Jones, N.C. Jan. 4, 1995
Frank A. LoBiondo, N.J. Jan. 4, 1995
Mac Thornberry, Texas Jan. 4, 1995
Edward Whitfield, Ky. Jan. 4, 1995

John Conyers Jr., Mich. Jan. 4, 1965
Charles B. Rangel, N.Y. Jan. 21, 1971
Steny H. Hoyer, Md. May 19, 1981
Marcy Kaptur, Ohio Jan. 3, 1983
Sander M. Levin, Mich. Jan. 3, 1983
Peter J. Visclosky, Ind. Jan. 3, 1985
Peter A. DeFazio, Ore. Jan. 6, 1987
John Lewis, Ga. Jan. 6, 1987
Louise M. Slaughter, N.Y. Jan. 6, 1987
Nancy Pelosi, Calif. June 2, 1987
Frank Pallone Jr., N.J. Nov. 8, 1988
Eliot L. Engel, N.Y. Jan. 3, 1989
Nita M. Lowey, N.Y. Jan. 3, 1989
Jim McDermott, Wash. Jan. 3, 1989
Richard E. Neal, Mass. Jan. 3, 1989
José E. Serrano, N.Y. March 20, 1990
David E. Price, N.C. Jan. 7, 1997 Also served 1987-95
Rosa DeLauro, Conn. Jan. 3, 1991
Collin C. Peterson, Minn. Jan. 3, 1991
Maxine Waters, Calif. Jan. 3, 1991
Jerrold Nadler, N.Y. Nov. 3, 1992
Jim Cooper, Tenn. Jan. 7, 2003 Also served 1983-95
Xavier Becerra, Calif. Jan. 5, 1993
Sanford D. Bishop Jr., Ga. Jan. 5, 1993
Corrine Brown, Fla. Jan. 5, 1993
James E. Clyburn, S.C. Jan. 5, 1993
Anna G. Eshoo, Calif. Jan. 5, 1993
Gene Green, Texas Jan. 5, 1993
Luis V. Gutierrez, Ill. Jan. 5, 1993
Alcee L. Hastings, Fla. Jan. 5, 1993
Eddie Bernice Johnson, Texas Jan. 5, 1993
Carolyn B. Maloney, N.Y. Jan. 5, 1993
Lucille Roybal-Allard, Calif. Jan. 5, 1993
Bobby L. Rush, Ill. Jan. 5, 1993
Robert C. Scott, Va. Jan. 5, 1993
Nydia M. Velázquez, N.Y. Jan. 5, 1993
Bennie Thompson, Miss. April 13, 1993
Sam Farr, Calif. June 8, 1993
Lloyd Doggett, Texas Jan. 4, 1995
Mike Doyle, Pa. Jan. 4, 1995
Chaka Fattah, Pa. Jan. 4, 1995
Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas Jan. 4, 1995
Zoe Lofgren, Calif. Jan. 4, 1995

Get Ready For More WhatsApp Spam

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WhatsApp, the popular mobile messaging service owned by privacy monetizer Facebook, will be opening its platform up to businesses, allowing them to communicate with their customers. While its a way to monetize the service it will also leave users vulnerable to spam.

The reports come directly from Facebook chief financial officer David Wehner, who spoke about the plans at a tech conference in Boston.

“We think that enabling that B2C [business-to-consumer] messaging has good business potential for us. As we learn those things, I think there’s going to be opportunities to bring some of those things to WhatsApp, but that’s more longer term.”

Facebook already opened its Messenger service up to developers, allowing them to create apps and allowing shoppers to communicate directly with retailers.

WhatsApp, an arm of Facebook, will likely use some functions that are being tested with Facebook Messenger.

The popular messaging service, acquired by Facebook for $22 billion, has a user base of 800 million.

Boko Haram Joins ISIS In Using Mass Rape As Strategy

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Boko Haram Joins ISIS In Using Mass Rape As Strategy

While Islamic terror groups preach about high morals and strict adherence to middle ages law it seems almost all of them have rape as a founding value. ISIS, the middle eastern terror network, commonly traffics in children and women while in Nigeria another terror outfit, Boko Haram, are also using the technique.

Boko Haram, officials say, have been raping kidnapped schoolgirls in the hopes of breeding a new generation of fighters

In interviews published in Monday’s New York Times, some of the hundreds of women kidnapped said they were locked in houses by the dozen and forced to engage in sexual relations with the Islamist fighters.

“They chose the ones they wanted to ‘marry’,” said a 25-year-old Hamsatu, who is four months pregnant with one of the Islamist’s babies. “If anybody shouts, they said they would shoot them.”

Dozens of newly freed girls, many pregnant, have been showing up at a refugee camp near Maiduguri, as Nigerian soldiers continue to repel Boko Haram forces from the region and free their sex slaves.

Most of the 15,000 people who are at the camp are women of which over 200 are pregnant. Many more may be carrying the unwanted children of militants.

“The sect leaders make a very conscious effort to impregnate the women,” Borno governor Kashim Shettima said. “Some of them, I was told, even pray before mating, offering supplications for God to make the products of what they are doing become children that will inherit their ideology.”

Many contracted HIV from the rapes and were subjected to sexual violence while as young as 11.

The Nigerian army rescued hundreds of women and children from the Islamist fighters in northern Nigeria’s Sambisa Forest several weeks ago. It was a major operation that has turned international attention to the systematic rape of hostages.

Hundreds of enslaved girls were released into the care of authorities at a refugee camp in the eastern town of Yola.

“They didn’t allow us to move an inch,” said one of the freed women “If you needed the toilet, they followed you. We were kept in one place. We were under bondage.

“We thank God to be alive today. We thank the Nigerian army for saving our lives,” she added.

UK Government Secretly Changes Laws To Allow Illegal Spying

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If anyone still thought legal challenges to surveillance are possible, think again. After, against all odds, succeeding in the United Kingdom it appears lawmakers will simply change the laws to allow for the otherwise illegal spying – even resorting to secret methods that blatantly short circuit democracy.

The UK has seen several cases against the GCHQ (their NSA) by rights group Privacy International. In May 2014 it had the GCHQ’s activities ruled illegal under the Computer Misuse Act (CMA), which criminalizes breaking into digital systems.

But a year later, and mere hours before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal hearing of Privacy International’s complaint against GCHQ, the UK government

quietly introduced legislation on June 6th 2014 that would amend the CMA to provide a new exception for law enforcement and GCHQ to hack without criminal liability. The change not only affects Privacy International’s claim, but also grants UK law enforcement new leeway to potentially conduct cyber attacks within the UK.

So while the UK government conceded that GCHQ’s activities were illegal they ‘fixed’ that problem by simply changing the law to make them legal.

But the real issue here is the fact that this change was pushed through with no debate or formal hearing on laws, which is the hallmark of democracy. Instead, according to Privacy International

it appears no regulators, commissioners responsible for overseeing the intelligence agencies, the Information Commissioner’s Office, industry, NGOs or the public were notified or consulted about the proposed legislative changes. There was no published Privacy Impact Assessment. Only the Ministry of Justice, Crown Prosecution Service, Scotland Office, Northern Ireland Office, GCHQ, Police and National Crime Agency were consulted as stakeholders. There was no public debate.

This is secret law-making, where the only people consulted are those who will benefit. It shows that along with secret surveillance comes secret courts making secret laws. The UK case illustrates the slippery slope of secret police, in that once they start it becomes necessary to make secret vast swaths of the democratic process, turning it from democracy into rule by a few.

Supreme Court Rules Felons Can Transfer Or Sell Their Guns

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Supreme Court Rules Felons Can Transfer Or Sell Their Guns

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday in Henderson v. United States that felons may transfer firearms to independent third parties or have them sold. The move is a strong support of property rights as prior to the ruling felons were usually required to forfeit their guns to the state.

Convicts with significant firearms collections have long faced disproportionate penalties with current forfeiture policies. The more guns owned, the greater the penalty. In many cases the collections can be a significant portion of their net worth and forfeiture prevents a collector from mounting a proper legal defense.

The new decision reverse that of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which ruled that a felon might still exert control over those firearms if they were not seized.

In its ruling, the supreme court rejected the government’s main premise based on the theory of “unclean hands,” and concluded that the prohibition on firearm possession did not extend to firearm transfers. The court did say that justice officials are permitted to “seek certain assurances” that may still “fail to provide adequate safeguard, [in which case] a court should then disapprove of the transfer.”

The man lodging the case, Tony Henderson, was arrested for a felony offense in 2006 and was forced to turn over his collection of firearms to federal agents as a condition of his release. The collection included a number of valuable items and antiques.

In 2008 Henderson requested that the court transfer ownership of his weapons to his wife or a third party that agreed to pay for them, and clearly stated he would not possess any of the weapons personally or via proxy.

What The U.S. Government Isn’t Telling You About Online Drug Marketplaces

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The leader of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, was convicted in February of operating the world’s largest online drug marketplace, Silk Road, under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts.

Law enforcement and the Justice Department have publicly vilified but Ulbricht and the marketplace he ran. Yet while there were no doubt serious misdeed by Ulbricht, namely soliciting murder-for-hire schemes, his drug marketplace was actually far safer than any corner drug dealer.

So while the government trumpets their case and tries to scare online drug users, they’re actually causing more harm than the marketplaces themselves.

Why? Because Ulbricht’s marketplace had a doctor on staff. They paid a licensed doctor to help keep the site’s customers healthier, safer, and better informed—even if it meant quitting drugs all together—according

And there’s now a whole dark net project devoted to helping drug users to reduce harm.

The man who filled this role is Dr. Fernando Caudevilla, a Spanish physician specializing in drugs and addiction

Known in the underworld as ‘DoctorX’, he began in early 2013 by offering free professional advice to the drug users of Silk Road. Unlike everyone else on the site, DoctorX revealed his real identity from the start.

“Dread Pirate Roberts never censored my views or advice in any way,” Caudevilla wrote in a sworn statement, “even when I espoused views that Silk Road users should not use or buy certain drugs sold on the site (particularly Legal High or Research Chemicals, new synthetic drugs that have not been tested in humans and that have a higher potential for harm compared with other drugs), discouraged drug use, or helped Silk Road customers to reduce or cease drug use entirely.”

Lead defense attorney Joshua Dratel argued that Silk Road “consciously and deliberately included recognized harm-reduction measures,” like product testing and physician counseling, making the black market “significantly safer than traditional illegal drug purchases.”

New filings from Ulbricht’s case show support for this position from notable academics: Monica Barratt, a research fellow at Australia’s National Drug and Alcohol Research Center, and independent researcher Tim Bingham.

Both argue that Silk Road was a dramatic and conscientious improvement over all other options for the drug users who patronized it.

After five months as a volunteer, Caudevilla informed Ulbricht that “the time commitment required to answer all questions and keep up with the forum thread had become too great.” Immediately the man behind Silk Road offered a $500 paycheck to keep Caudevilla working on Silk Road. This rate was consistent for anyone else who worked on the site and meant at least a part-time commitment from the doctor.

Caudevilla accepted the offer and took the money—paid in Bitcoin, of course.

“He’s amazing. A gift to this community,” one user wrote about DoctorX on the Silk Road 2.0 forum. “His knowledge is invaluable, and never comes with any judgment.”

Ulbricht had bigger plans, recognizing the value such medical advice would bring to drug users to he sought a partnership with Caudevilla “to send the drugs sold on the Silk Road out to laboratories for independent testing as part of an effort to ensure that only safe, non-toxic substances were being sold on Silk Road,” Caudevilla explained.

Caudevilla began developing a drug-testing project, now known as Energy Control, to help dark net customers better understand if their drugs were safe or not.

“At the time the Silk Road website was shut down by law enforcement, we were still working on the project,” Caudevilla said.

Yet today, Energy Control provides just such an anonymous drug testing service. Since the fall of Silk Road, Caudevilla’s work and that of his professional successors has attracted greater attention around the world.

Why? Because by studying, rather than vilifying, online drug marketplaces Caudevilla has found that drugs from the Dark Net are “much higher quality” than what you’re going to find on the street.

While that means a better high it also, more importantly, means they are safer because they’re less likely to be cut with dangerous extra ingredients.

So while the government locks Ulbricht up and throws away the key its important to remember that online drug marketplaces are, in fact, safer and better for public health than local drug dealers.

Super Star President Putin Scores 8 Goals In ‘All Star’ Hockey Game

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Super Star President Putin Scores 8 Goals In ‘All Star’ Hockey Game

The latest propaganda for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin dropped this weekend in none other than Sochi, Russia, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. The Russian dictator squared off against retired NHL players in a celebrity All-Star ice hockey game on Saturday that yielded a predictable result: Putin won.

Featured on a line alongside Pavel Bure, one of the greatest goal scorers in NHL history, and former Colorado Avalanche ace Valeri Kamensky, the 62-year-old Putin scored eight goals. His team won 18 to 6.

While both the play and the outcome are laughable, it shows the degree to which the Russians will go to advance both Pro-Russian and Pro-Putin propaganda. American defense planners have taken note of a recent uptick in Russian propaganda – fake or otherwise – in order to better defend against blatant lies turning into accepted fact. Putin also uses the propaganda to legitimize his personal rule over the country and retain control of key backers.

Here are some of the strange highlights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN2FMGRTvoc

European Countries To Build Drone In Effort To End Reliance On U.S. Models

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European Countries To Build Drone In Effort To End Reliance On U.S. Models

Germany, France and Italy signed a deal Monday to start technical work and end their reliance on US- and Israeli-made drones. The project is looking to build a military drone by 2025.

The project would be worth up to $1.2 billion if it gets airborne, officials said after the deal was signed in Brussels.

“The goal of the Euro-drone is that we can decide by ourselves in Europe on what we use it, where we deploy the Euro-drone and how we use it,” German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said.

“This makes us, the Europeans, independent.”

European powers have tried and failed to come up with a common drone project for over a decade, forcing Britain, Italy and France to rely on U.S. Reaper drones. Germany and France also use Israeli-built models.

The European drone will be medium-altitude, long-endurance and designed for intelligence and reconnaissance missions. It will also be able to carry a “variety of payloads,” according to a statement after the signing.

Airbus, France’s Dassault Aviation and Italy’s Alenia Aermacchi are the key drivers of the proposal.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the deal was a “very important step for European cooperation.”

A two-year technical assessment will try to find common ground between Germany, France and Italy on operational needs, performance, timing and cost, they said.

Yet the project will likely end the same way most pan-European defense initiative end: compromised, over budget, delayed and lacking world-beating features.

South Korean Law Forces Spyware On Teen Mobile Phones

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South Korea has adopted the highly repressive North Korean regime as its personal freedom reference point.

As the North blocks sites and web pages with gusto, South Korea is now telling parents they must install government-approved and manufactured spyware on the smartphones of any children under the age of 19.

Yet nobody has seen the inner workings of the app, named “Smart Sheriff”, raising serious questions about just what the app does.

A similar app named “Smart Relief” allows parents to monitor their teen’s smartphone activities and sends alerts triggered by any of the 1,100+ words on its watchlist.

Some terms it monitors (both in text messages and searches) would obviously raise concerns in parents while others seem to do nothing more than give parents a reason to lock their kids up until they’re old enough to move out:

Girl I like, boy I like, dating, boyfriend, girlfriend, breakup

In short, the level of spying is extreme.

It gives government agencies access to minors’ communications, and does so to nearly every child in the country; 80% of South Korean schoolchildren own smartphones.

It doesn’t even relate to national security, the usual bogey man cited for such privacy invasion. Communications will likely be delivered to law enforcement and intelligence agencies but also to parents, schools and service providers.

The app effectively indoctrinates children that personal freedom is unimportant and that spying is just a normal part of life. A whole generation will grow up thinking spying is normal and to be expected.

Yet children who haven’t grown up with such spying are experiencing a chilling effect.

Smartphones are now no longer viewed as essential equipment by teenagers, with students saying they will wait until they turn 19 to get a new phone.

“I’d rather not buy a phone,” said Paik Hyunsuk, 17. “It’s violation of students’ privacy and oppressing freedom.”

Home Brewed Morphine Is Coming To A City Near You

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Home Brewed Morphine Is Coming To A City Near You

Over 90 percent of the world’s opium comes from poppies grown in Afghanistan but that may be about to change as scientists have engineered brewer’s yeast to synthesize opioids such as codeine and morphine from a common sugar, it was reported on Monday.

“It is going to be possible to ‘home-brew’ opiates in the near future,” Christopher Voight of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told reporters about the latest discovery.

While process, described in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, is inefficient right now, requiring 300 litres of genetically engineered yeast to produce a single 30 milligram dose of morphine, improvements that are well within reach.

So close, in fact, that a dose could be obtained from “a glass of yeast culture grown with sugar on a windowsill,” Voight said.

The trick behind the breakthrough is that yeast cells have been genetically engineered to carry out the second part of the complex 15-step opioid-producing reaction. All that remained was just the hurdle of coaxing yeast to carry out the first part.

That is what scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Concordia University in Montreal have accomplished.

The team, led by John Dueber at the University of California, Berkeley, isolated a crucial enzyme from sugar beets, mutated its gene to make it more productive, and inserted it into yeast.

They then added more foreign DNA to achieve their goal: the yeast carried out the first half of the reaction that produces opioids.

While the new yeast could synthesize cheaper, less addictive, and more effective pain-killers, the creation of morphine-making yeast will likely increase access to illegal opiates.

The findings could make illegal drugs “easy to grow, conceal and distribute,” with little more than a home-brew beer-making kit, policy analysts at MIT warned.

While the analysts called for policies to regulate engineered-yeast strains, the cat may be out of the bag.

The recipe for opiate-producing yeast is now public and “anyone trained in basic molecular biology could theoretically build it” Dueber said.

Facebook Creates Payment Platform To Steal Your Payment Data

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It’s well known Facebook loves slurping your data. The content-ad network knows more about you than any other company on earth. It then sells this data to marketers, hence its multi-billion dollar valuation.

But Facebook’s data isn’t perfect and it could always use more.

The missing piece? Payments.

If it could connect all the personal facts and connections it knows about you to what you buy it would present marketers with the perfect data set.

And that’s exactly what the company announced Monday, when it confirmed a new peer-to-peer payment feature it will deploy in the U.S. over the next few months.

The money transfer service ‘offers’ to store a user’s Visa or MasterCard information, which the company promises to store securely in its vast database. The company said in a statement

These payment systems are kept in a secured environment that is separate from other parts of the Facebook network and that receive additional monitoring and control. A team of anti-fraud specialists monitor for suspicious purchase activity to help keep accounts safe.

But the real value here isn’t getting a cut of transactions. It’s to insert itself between you and your credit card, so that it can track you more efficiently. Were it to collect all your spending information and pair with its location, life-stage and personal connections data, it would truly have a fearsome set of data. Which is exactly what big marketers want and will pay absolute top dollar for.

It will be interesting to see how the ad-network updates its privacy policy to reflect the latest data grab.

FBI Charge Researcher With Hacking United Airlines Flight, Taking Control Of Plane Mid-Flight

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The FBI has charged a security researcher with hacking into the entertainment system of a United Airlines plane mid-flight and causing the aircraft to fly “sideways”.

The revelations are both a damning indictment of airline security and a sharp warning that the internet of things could cause more problems than it solves.

Information security researcher Chris Roberts allegedly told FBI special agent Mark Hurley that he not only hacked the in flight entertainment system but that he was also able to issue commands to the flight control computers.

By issuing a ‘CLB’ or climb command to one of the engines, he was able to increase its power output which in turn made the plane fly sideways, with nothing the pilots could do to control it.

Roberts was also able to intercept and monitor the cockpit communications systems.

In fact, he hacked the entertainment systems of both Airbus and Boeing aircraft roughly 15 to 20 times between 2011 and 2014.

Roberts had thirteen items, including thumb drives, a MacBook Pro laptop and an iPad Air were confiscated from him on April 15th, after he exited a United Airline flight in Syracuse, New York.

He now stands accused of admitting to tampering with and compromising the systems.

In response to the allegations, he stated on Twitter:

Over last 5 years my only interest has been to improve aircraft security…given the current situation I’ve been advised against saying much.

Sorry it’s so generic, but there’s a whole 5 years of stuff that the affidavit incorrectly compressed into 1 paragraph….lots to untangle

Belgian Police Warn Facebook Is Seriously Violating Privacy Of Both Users And Non-Users

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Belgium’s privacy watchdog, The Commission de Protection de la Vie Privée (CPVP), condemned Facebook for its tracking of users and non-users, saying the company is in breach of EU privacy laws.

The commission said it was staggered by how agressively Facebook tramples users’ rights and tracks them across the web, whether they consent to this or not.

Specifically, the CPVP claims:

Facebook violates European and Belgian legislation on privacy. It is in a unique position and can easily connect the browsing habits of its users to their real identity, their interactions on social networks and sensitive data such as medical information, preferences religious, sexual and political

The CPVP does not have the power in Belgium to impose fines directly but it has demanded more details about how it monitors users, what information it collects and how it uses cookies.

The privacy Commission also took the unusual step of advising people to use “do not track” services like Ghostery, Blur and Disconnect to protect themselves from Facebook’s mass data collection. In essence, the commission is saying that Facebook’s main business is so abusive to personal privacy that people should use tools designed to thwart it.

The biggest concerns raised in the report is with Facebook’s ability to profile non-users simply through their interaction with those who are signed up. Interactions can include email and Whatsapp messages, which aren’t generally thought of as connected to Facebook.

The Belgian regulator isn’t the first to hit back hard against Facebook’s pervasive abuse of privacy. Dutch and German agencies are also investigating Facebook in addition to the European Commission.

Facebook denies any wrongdoing and insists it is compliant with EU law yet hides in Ireland, which uses a controversially lax interpretation. Many social media companies, like Twitter as well as other tech privacy abusers like Dropbox, have moved to Ireland for their open attitude towards abusing user privacy.

The EU is planning a continent-wide data protection regulation, which is currently being negotiated. Such a regulation would be applied the same throughout the EU, while currently each country takes working guidelines by the EC and applies it to their own country-specific laws.

The commission will forward its findings to the national prosecutor’s office and said that a criminal case could be in the works.

Fear Of Accusations Stopping Congressmen From Being Alone With Female Staffers

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Fear Of Accusations Stopping Congressmen From Being Alone With Female Staffers

While our elected officials tend to be predominately male, the staffers who handle them – young, energetic go-getters fresh from grad school – are increasingly female. Yet fear of the political rumor mill is causing some congressmen to never meet one on one with female staffers.

The National Journal conducted an anonymous survey with female staffers in order to gather information on the difficulties they face in their careers.

While many reported usual issues, such as long hours, whether to have families and similar concerns, several aides reported being barred from being with their male bosses at evening events, driving alone with them, or even sitting down one-on-one in his office behind a closed door.

The issue is interesting because it shows both a sensitivity to gender issues and also the intractability of the issues facing our elected officials.

Male educators or child workers, for instance, will almost never meet females in their care on one on – most meetings are done with third parties involved to ensure no impropriety or false accusations of such behavior.

But in the workplace, where one-on-one time leads to career advancement, it may not be sufficient to simply avoid such meetings as is possible in other professions. Equal opportunity is well entrenched in employment law and attorneys contact regarding this issue were clear: even if erring on the side of safety, such policies are probably against employment law and could open up those who practice them to discrimination accusations.

Yet fortunately the issue is hardly the norm. Numerous staffers contacted in the survey and by subsequent media inquiries, both male and female, said they had never experienced or even heard of such a policy.

Saudi Arabia To Purchase Nuclear Weapons From Pakistan

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Saudi Arabia To Purchase Nuclear Weapons From Pakistan

Troubling reports surfaced over the weekend that Saudi Arabia is actively lobbying its ally Pakistan to supply it with “off-the-shelf” atomic weapons, in response to a nuclear arms race with Iran and Israel.

“For the Saudis the moment has come,” a former U.S. defense official told a major UK newspaper. “There has been a longstanding agreement in place with the Pakistanis and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward.”

The former official said the U.S. did not have evidence that “any actual weaponry has been transferred yet,” but stated that “the Saudis mean what they say and they will do what they say.”

Saudi Arabia has been increasingly dis-cordial towards both friends and foes in recent months after new leadership was appointed in the coutry. It has stepped up its air campaign against Iran-sponsored Houthi rebels in Yemen and King Salman refused an invitation to attend a landmark summit hosted by President Obama last week.

Former Saudi intelligence head Prince Turki bin Faisal said that “whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,” according to The New York Times.

Faisal also warned of the Iranian nuclear deal “opening the door to nuclear proliferation.”

The Saudi – Pakistan deal is longstanding, with the Arab nation supplying Pakistan discounted oil in exchange for ready-made nuclear weapons.

“Nuclear weapons programs are extremely expensive and there’s no question that a lot of the funding of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program was provided by Saudi Arabia,” said Lord David Owen, who served as England’s foreign secretary from 1977-1979..

“Given their close relations and close military links, it’s long been assumed that if the Saudis wanted, they would call in a commitment, moral or otherwise, for Pakistan to supply them immediately with nuclear warheads,” he added.

Millions Of Spiders Rain Down On Australian Town

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Millions Of Spiders Rain Down On Australian Town

An area in Australia recently has millions of baby spiders raining down from the sky in Southern Tablelands, an area near Sydney, New South Wales. Webs fell from the sky and covered entire houses and fields for dozens of square miles.

“The whole house was covered in these little black spiderlings,” said local resident Ian Watson “And when I looked up at the sun it was like this tunnel of webs going up for a couple of hundred meters into the sky.” While the phenomenon was described as beautiful there were also some drawbacks.

“I was annoyed because … you couldn’t go out without getting spider webs on you. And I’ve got a beard as well, so they kept getting in my beard,” he told the Morning Herald. Watson, and others in the area, posted hundreds of images to social media sites.

Martyn Robinson, a naturalist from the Australian Museum, said that while the spiders appeared to be raining down from the sky, they were actually using a technique called ballooning, where they climb to a high point and then release a stream of silk that allows them to be carried in the air. Such mass migrations lead to the “angel hair” phenomenon, which can cover many square miles with the silky webs.

Southern Tablelands was generally spiderweb free by morning because of cold overnight temperatures. Spiders can travel great distances with the ballooning method and have been observed more than 1.8 miles above the ground.

Ramadi Falls, ISIS Now Eyes Baghdad In Route Of Iraqi Government Forces

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Ramadi Falls, ISIS Now Eyes Baghdad In Route Of Iraqi Government Forces

Despite having relatively advanced U.S. weaponry, Iraqi security forces attempting to defend the key city of Ramadi were routed in heavy fighting all day Sunday. It is worst defeat for Iraq’s central government since ISIS militants stormed the country last June.

Events on Sunday played out similar to last year’s military debacle; supposedly elite units abandoned their U.S.-made weaponry to Islamic State fighters and then promptly fled the area.

The so-called ‘elite’ unit’s cowardice left several hundred soldiers surrounded in what is sure to be a massacre.

Security sources, who for obvious reasons wanted to remain anonymous, described the fight for control of Anbar province’s capital as over.

“Only God can save us,” said one officer via phone from inside the Anbar operations center, where officers had been managing the battle.

The officer described a scene in which several hundred policemen and soldiers were surrounded inside the command center, which was repeatedly struck by suicide bombers and heavy artillery fire while the Islamist militants cut off their last routes of escape.

Hours later ISIS social media accounts proclaimed victory and confirmed that the operations center had been overrun. After the ISIS reports efforts to reach sources inside the facility were not successful.

Ramadi was attacked late Thursday evening and was mostly in the control of militants by Saturday. Residents and soliders were in the process of fleeing the city and had abandoned dozens of U.S.-supplied armored vehicles, as well as artillery, heavy machine guns and other military gear as they fled mostly on foot.

“Ramadi has fallen to Daash,” said one Iraqi officer. “There were many suicide bombers and many soldiers and officers are dead.”

ISIS Assault Forces U.S. To Speed Weapons Shipments To Iraq

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The White House announced Friday that the U.S. military is “expediting” weapons shipments to Iraq in light of the ISIS assault on the Iraqi city of Ramadi, which occurred late last week.

Vice President Joe Biden informed Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi about the faster shipments in a telephone call on Friday.

The news comes after a flurry of new airstrikes against ISIS, also known as ISIL, as Iraqi troops desperately try to hold Ramadi, the capital of the strategically important Anbar province.

On Friday, the terror group captured the provincial government building and the city’s police headquarters as well as the Ramadi Great Mosque. The city is located in the middle of Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland, just 70 miles west of Baghdad.

The U.S. weapons shipments will include AT-4 shoulder-held rockets as well as ammunition and other supplies.

“The vice president assured the prime minister of continued and expedited U.S. security assistance to confront ISIL,” the White House statement said. “Both leaders agreed on the importance and urgency of mobilizing tribal fighters working in coordination with Iraqi security forces to counter ISIL and to ensure unity of effort among all of Iraq’s communities.”

The situation in Ramadi has deteriorated quickly over the last weeks, with senior U.S. officials giving Iraqi forces just a 50/50 chance of maintaining control of the city. Eight new airstrikes were launched against ISIS targets in Ramadi since 7 p.m. local time on Friday, as the coalition ramps up its efforts to maintain control of the region.

The ISIS push began Thursday with armored bulldozers and at least 10 suicide bombings to burst through gates and blast through walls, according to a security source who has since left the city. Dozens of militants spilled into the city center in what the U.S. military called a “complex attack.”

Thousands In Guam Left Without Power And Water After Typhoon Dolphin

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Thousands In Guam Left Without Power And Water After Typhoon Dolphin

Guam was hit by a powerful typhoon over the weekend which destroyed homes, knocked down trees and left thousands without power or water by early Sunday morning.

Government utility crews worked through the night and into the morning so that 80% of residents’ power is back up, according to Joint Information Center spokeswoman Jenna Gaminde.

Over 10,000 homes were back online Sunday morning, she said, adding that crews will be moving through the villages throughout tonight to restore individual homes.

Residents were being asked to conserve water, as the Guam Waterworks Authority (GWA) worked to repair damaged lines and reconnect residents in order to prevent the spread of disease which accompanies such disasters if water is not immediately reconnected.

Hundreds remained in island storm shelters as the crews worked through the night to fix the damaged utilities system.

Over 3,300 GWA subscribers experienced water outages and 40 percent of Guam Power Authority customers experienced power outages that lasted through yesterday, according to GPA and GWA spokeswoman Heidi Ballendorf.

While GWA had installed backup generators prior to the storm making landfall more than five of the emergency generators experienced malfunctions, which left about 8.2 percent of the agency’s 41,000 customers without water.

FDA To Lift Blood Donation Ban On Gay And Bisexual Men

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FDA To Lift Blood Donation Ban On Gay And Bisexual Men

In response to a record shortage of blood donations and improved blood testing procedures, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have proposed lifting the ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men.

Every year there are 15.7 million blood donations while the risk of contracting HIV from a blood transfusion sits at just 1 in 2 million.

The ban was enacted in 1983 during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, banning all men who have had sex with other men since 1977 from donating blood.

In December 2014 the agency proposed lifting the man, so long as the men donating the blood have not had sex with another man in the past 12 months.

On Friday the FDA issued a draft guidance recommending the change, which would bring the U.S. in line with blood donation regulations for gay and bisexual men in the UK, Australia, Sweden and Argentina, and many other developed countries.

Men who have tested positive for HIV, engaged in commercial sex work or non-prescription injection drug use would still remain indefinitely banned from blood donation.

There is a major need for blood donations, with am American needing a blood transfusion every 2 seconds across the country. The American Red Cross, the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) and America’s Blood Centers all welcomed the FDA’s draft guidelines.

“The top priorities of the blood banking community are the safety of our volunteer blood donors and the ultimate recipients of blood,” the organizations said in a joint statement. “This change in policy would align the donor deferral period for men who have sex with men with criteria for other activities that may pose a similar risk of transfusion-transmissible infections.”

Gay rights activists, who have campaigned for changes in blood donation regulations for many years, believe these new guidelines are still not acceptable.

Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights group in America, said that while the new policy is a “step in the right direction,” he believes it “falls far short” as it continues to stigmatize gay and bisexual men.

Yet such changes may be slower than prevailing social attitudes because medical science tends to lag behind popular opinion or knowledge. Understanding new diseases, their risk factors and then developing effective mitigation strategies can take decades, while changes to regulations can take years.

Penn State Victim Of Sophisticated Chinese Cyber Attack

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Penn State University is the latest U.S. institution to be attacked by Chinese government hackers as its school of engineering went offline Friday after falling victim to a malware attack.

The school was alerted to the problem by the FBI and upon auditing its systems found that PCs on the network of its College of Engineering were infected with malware that was harvesting research data and personal information.

The outage is expected to last for several days after the college announced it needed to take the entire network down for days in order to disinfect its computers. Classes are continuing as normal.

“In a coordinated and deliberate response by Penn State, the College of Engineering’s computer network has been disconnected from the Internet and a large-scale operation to securely recover all systems is underway,” the school said in a statement.

“Contingency plans are in place to allow engineering faculty, staff and students to continue in as much of their work as possible while significant steps are taken to upgrade affected computer hardware and fortify the network against future attack.”

The shutdown was made following a six-month investigation by both the school and the FBI. The school says that after being notified in November, it began to investigate its networks to find the source of the breach.

After months of research, two persistent malware infections were found within the school of engineering’s network. It was found have been in place as far back as September 2012.

Penn State said that over 10,000 student records, including Social Security numbers, were compromised in the attack. Other research data may have been stolen as well.

“While investigators have found that only a small number of these accounts have been used by the attackers to access the network, as a precaution and beginning immediately, all College of Engineering faculty and staff at University Park, as well as students at all Penn State campuses who recently have taken at least one engineering course, will be required to choose new passwords for their Penn State access accounts,” the school said.

Amtrak Installs New Speed Controls At Site Of Deadly Crash

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Amtrak Installs New Speed Controls At Site Of Deadly Crash

As news that Amtrak spent the weekend installing new speed controls on the section of track where one of its passenger trains derailed near Philadelphia, questions began to emerge about why, exactly, the safety equipment wasn’t installed in the first place?

Such systems have been around for years and installed many other places on the busy commuter trains. Known as Automatic Train Control (ATC), these systems work to slow speeding trains regardless of driver input using wireless technology. The federal railroad administration has now mandated these to be installed near the site of the crash.

As investigators pondered this question, other examiners were looking into reports that the New York-bound train was hit by an unknown object shortly before the fatal crash. This object-strike was the third such impact reported that day, on the third separate train.

The railroad administration also has forced Amtrak to assess the risk of all curves on the corridor where the approach speed is significantly higher than curve speed, the condition under which more crashes are likely to occur. The administration is looking to have more signs posted in such conditions and also reduce approach speeds to reduce the likelihood of a crash.

The acting administrator of the FRA, Sarah Feinberg, said Amtrak is looking to resume Northeast Corridor service at full capacity on Monday or Tuesday, so long as the mandated measures can be fully implemented by that time.

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