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Many city officials agree that changes to taxi regulations would reduce chances that a cab ride will end in tragedy.
The federal government does not require U.S. railroads to have comprehensive plans for a worst-case oil disasters, according to the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.
That means no one knows if the railways that carried 4.2 million barrels of crude oil through the state last year are prepared for a catastrophe.
A handful of factors – including a declining number of volunteer firefighter/first-responders and a lack of information – complicate planning efforts in rural states like Maine.
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Yet another university community has been accused of denying justice to a female sexual assault victim in order to protect a star male athlete. The New York Times today chronicled the shortcomings of an investigation by Tallahassee police into a reported sexual assault in which Florida State University quarterback Jameis Winston was the alleged assailant.
Police failed to conduct a proper investigation when the incident was reported, the Times found. Even after the accuser identified her attacker to the police, Winston was never interviewed and DNA evidence was not collected. By the time prosecutors began to investigate 11 months later, the trail had gone cold.
The university also failed to conduct any investigation of its own into the incident, though there is evidence that the athletics department was aware that there was an open police investigation.
Read the story here.
Government health officials were initially slow to study the extent of the West injuries. When they did, they limited their survey to those treated at hospitals and urgent care clinics. They did not canvass private medical practices, where blast victims were also treated. Nor did they track problems that may have surfaced later, such as brain injuries, hearing loss and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Dallas Morning News, by calling a West clinic and contacting a few medical practices, found at least 40 people not included in the government’s official count.
More than 300 people banned from owning guns were able to buy them last year because the state police were overwhelmed with background check requests, police said Wednesday.
People with histories of mental illness or convictions for violent misdemeanors, felons and fugitives were able to obtain and keep guns for three months or longer before state police reviewed the sales, according to records released by request to The Baltimore Sun.
New York's regulations include no requirement that school districts test buildings for radon. Applicants for a day care license must test for radon unless the day care is located in a public school. The newspaper analyzed nearly 70,000 pages of state records to create its own database and a map showing readers which school buildings have been tested, and which have not.
The Virginian-Pilot reports that investigators are trying to figure out how Jeffrey Tyrone Savage, a 35-year-old truck driver with a violent criminal record, accessed the Navy’s largest base.
Savage Monday night climbed aboard the guided missile destroyer Mahan, disarmed a guard and used the weapon to kill a sailor who tried to intervene.
According to the Pilot:
“Savage had a valid Transportation Worker Identification Credential, commonly known as a TWIC card. The TWIC program was created by the Department of Homeland Security primarily to ensure security at civilian marine terminals, but the government ID can also be used to access military bases.
To get a TWIC card, a worker must provide personal information, including fingerprints, and pass a background check conducted by the Transportation Security Administration. More than 2 million people nationwide hold valid TWIC cards.
Some felonies disqualify applicants from receiving the security pass, but manslaughter is not listed among them. Savage’s drug conviction might have disqualified him had it happened within the past seven years, according to TWIC guidelines.”
Read the entire story here.
Snohomish County officials in a 2010 report were warned that neighborhoods along the Stillaguamish River were ranked “as one of the highest risk areas for deadly and destructive landslides," according to The Seattle Times.
The document contradicts claims from an emergency-management official that the area “was considered very safe” and that the slide “came out of nowhere.”
The Times also found state records showing that the plateau that gave way Saturday had been logged for almost a century. Scientists in recent decades had warned that the slope was becoming unstable and could potentially lead to calamity.
More coverage: Before and after map | Photos | Victim list
Leaks, like the one that is believed to have led to the explosion that killed eight people in East Harlem this month, are startlingly common, numbering in the thousands every year, federal records show.
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