Here’s the latest news for Thursday, March 11, 2010: Obama makes possible final plea for health care reform; Rep. Patrick Kennedy blasts media in House speech; Kentucky mom arraigned in newborn’s killing.
  Posts Tagged ‘Media’
By JIM FITZGERALD, Associated Press Writer
A 2005 Toyota Prius, which was in an accident, is seen at a police station in Harrison, New York, Wednesday, March 10, 2010. The driver of the Toyota Prius told police that the car accelerated on its own, then lurched down a driveway, across a road and into a stone wall. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) The crash heightens the attention surrounding unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles and a recall involving more than 8 million vehicles to address gas pedals that can become sticky or trapped under floor mats. The Department of Transportation is looking into the New York crash, spokeswoman Olivia Alair said Wednesday. Capt. Anthony Marraccini of the police department in Harrison, north of New York City, said that a regional Toyota official asked to collect the Prius involved in the crash but that the police are “not prepared to release it just yet.” He said he wanted to see first if a federal agency wants to join or take over the investigation. “This involved potentially a great safety hazard and could be something of national interest,” he said. Besides, he said, the damaged car belongs to the owner, not to Toyota. When police release the Prius, Toyota will evaluate it to determine the cause of the accident, company spokesman Brian Lyons said. The silver-gray 2005 Prius was taken to a police parking lot. Its front end was severely pushed in, the hood was buckled and the front bumper and one front headlight were broken. Police believe the vehicle was on Toyota’s recall list for the sticky accelerator problem, but they had no immediate proof that this one had the problem, Marraccini said. The vehicle had been serviced by Toyota for the floor mat problem, he said. A large hole is seen in a stone wall in Purchase, New York, Wednesday, March 10, 2010. The driver of a 2005 Toyota Prius told police in suburban New York that the car accelerated on its own, then lurched down a driveway, across a road and into the stone wall. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) The driver, a 56-year-old housekeeper, was going forward in the car on Tuesday, down a curving driveway several hundred feet long with a putting green next to it, when the accident happened, Marraccini said. “She said she doesn’t know whether the accelerator stuck,” Marraccini said. “She said she didn’t depress it that much because she was just pulling out of the driveway.” He said she was lucky to escape serious injury because she could have driven into traffic and the impact with the wall “was pretty substantial.” he said police did not yet know how fast the car was going. The captain said police would consider the possibility that the driver, whose name was not made public, was at fault. But he added, “She appears to have all her faculties. She didn’t appear to be disoriented in any way. There’s nothing at this particular time that would indicate driver error.” He said she appeared to be properly licensed. The air bags deployed when the car hit the stone wall of the estate across the street. On Wednesday, five boulders and smaller filler stones were strewn about, some of them 10 feet from the wall. Broken glass, plastic headlight pieces and metal that looked like part of a window frame were nearby. A California Highway Patrol vehicle (L), and a Toyota Prius (R) owned by James Sikes are shown stopped on the side of a freeway in San Diego in this video frame grab obtained March 9, 2010. Toyota said its own inspectors are also working to try to find out what caused the 2008 Prius to surge uncontrollably to over 90 miles per hour as it was being driven by owner Sikes. The high-speed incident, which involved a dramatic pursuit by a highway patrol car, has raised new questions about the automaker’s damaging string of recent recalls and whether Toyota has done enough to address consumer complaints about unintended acceleration that have damaged its reputation and sales. REUTERS/NBC/Handout Toyota is fighting fears that the crashes are caused by faulty electronics rather than by mechanical problems. On Monday, California police stopped a runaway 2008 Prius going nearly 95 mph after the driver said the pedal jammed. Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are investigating. All 2004-2009 Priuses are covered by a recall Toyota announced in October over floor-mat entrapment. Toyota has advised drivers of the Prius and other affected vehicles to take out any removable driver’s floor mat until they are repaired.
by Arthur Delaney Ernest Nitzberg says he immediately felt cheated when he received a statement from Chase in January that showed he owed $6,200 on a debit card — a card he said he’d signed up for but had not yet received. When Chase refused to refund his money, he sought publicity for his gripe by submitting a blog entry to HuffPost. A man walks past the JP Morgan Chase building in New York City. RBS Sempra Commodities, part-owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, has agreed to sell its European operations to US investment bank JP Morgan for 1.7 billion dollars, the bank has announced. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Chris Hondros) “Someone at Chase or a friend of someone at Chase — there’s no other way to explain it — had gotten hold of my never-received debit card and all my personal information including my PIN number and went on a spree, racking up $6200 in cash advances and credit card charges,” wrote Nitzberg, a 78-year-old resident of the Bronx. “Fourteen transactions were made on the same day that included three trips to an ATM to remove cash and 11 to such places as Juicy Couture, Shalom Dresses, Toys R Us [3x] and to be a bit more upscale, Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue.” Nitzberg and Chase viewed each other with mutual suspicion. “They kindly informed me that I would not get my money back because, according to their algorithms, I fit the profile of a credit card cheat,” Nitzberg wrote. “Mind you, I am, once again, a 78-year-old retired New York City public school teacher with no criminal record; but according to Chase, I was the most likely suspect.” After Nitzberg posted his story on Friday, a HuffPost reporter forwarded it to a Chase spokesman, who said Chase had made its final decision regarding his account. But on Monday, Nitzberg said a Chase employee called him to say the bank was taking another look. Meanwhile, HuffPost spoke to the New York Police Department, which had conducted a brief investigation after Nitzberg complained that he’d been robbed. Whoever was using Nitzberg’s debit card — and PIN number — had done an excellent job of covering his or her tracks. “They did obtain some footage from one of the ATMs,” said the NYPD spokesman on Monday. “The person is all hooded up… The person is all bundled up… There’s no way to identify the individual.” Without a lead, the NYPD gave up on the investigation. But on Tuesday, after taking a second look, the bank reversed itself. Nitzberg said a bank rep called him to say he’d get his $6,200 back: “We examined the account and we saw no reason we should have disbelieved you and the money will be in your account this afternoon.” A Chase spokesman confirmed the refund to HuffPost: “We reviewed the case again and we were able to make a refund of the customer.” Nitzberg is glad to have his money back, but not exactly gleeful. “[The bank rep] expected me to thank her profusely and prodigiously, and I did not,” Nitzberg said. “I said, ‘You have caused me enormous aggravation.’” http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20100310/cm_huffpost/492379;_ylt=Auu2GB7DO3M30m9ThiX_Fd0FO7gF
by Karin Zeitvogel WASHINGTON (AFP) – Dinosaurs were wiped out by a huge asteroid that smashed into Earth 65 million years ago with the force of a billion atomic bombs, scientists said, hoping to lay an age-old debate to rest once and for all. Artist’s rendition released by NASA shows an asteroid belt in orbit around a star. A huge asteroid that smashed into Earth with the force of a billion atomic bombs wiped out the dinosaur, scientists said, hoping to lay to rest a long-running debate over a mass extinction 65 million years ago. (AFP/NASA/File) The definitive verdict came from an international panel of experts who reviewed 20 years’ worth of evidence about what caused the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction that wiped out more than half the species on the planet. They determined it was a massive asteroid, measuring around 15 kilometers (nine miles) wide, which smashed into what is today Chicxulub in Mexico. The event marked a pivotal point in history because it cleared the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth. “The asteroid is believed to have hit Earth with a force one billion times more powerful than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima,” the researchers said in a report published in the journal Science. “It would have blasted material at high velocity into the atmosphere, triggering a chain of events that caused a global winter, wiping out much of life on Earth in a matter of days.” The panel of 41 scientists hope their findings will lay to rest once and for all the debate about what caused the KT extinction. Some scientists have argued that dinosaurs and species including bird-like pterosaurs and large sea reptiles were wiped out by a series of volcanic eruptions in what is now India that lasted some 1.5 million years. The eruptions spewed enough basalt lava across the Deccan Traps in west-central India to fill the Black Sea twice and were thought to have caused a cooling of the atmosphere and acid rain on a global scale. But the evidence gathered for the study published in Science showed that marine and land ecosystems were destroyed rapidly in the KT extinction, leading the scientists to rule out volcanic activity as the culprit, because its effects would have whittled away at dinosaurs and other species over time.
Dinosaurs were wiped out by a huge asteroid that smashed into Earth 65 million years ago with the force of a billion atomic bombs, scientists said Thursday, hoping to lay an age-old debate to rest once and for all. (AFP/Graphic)� “Computer models and observational data suggest that the release of gases such as sulphur into the atmosphere after each volcanic eruption… would have had a short-lived effect on the planet and would not cause enough damage to create a rapid mass extinction of land and marine species.” The Chicxulub asteroid, on the other hand, could very well have made short shrift of dinosaurs, pterosaurs and other species, the scientists said. The impact of the large asteroid would have “triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides which created tsunamis,” said Joanna Morgan, a lecturer in geophysics at Imperial College, London and co-author of the study. The asteroid hit Earth 20 times faster than a speeding bullet and exploded into a deadly mix of hot rock and gas which would have “grilled any living creature in the immediate vicinity that couldn’t find shelter,” said Gareth Collins, a research fellow at Imperial College. “The final nail in the coffin for the dinosaurs happened when blasted material was ejected at high velocity into the atmosphere,” shrouding the planet in darkness and causing a global winter that killed off species that “couldn’t adapt to this hellish environment,” added Morgan. Another clue that the KT extinction was caused by a huge asteroid and not volcanic activity was evidence in geological records of “shocked” quartz in rock layers at KT boundary levels around the world. Quartz is “shocked” when it is hit very quickly by a massive force — such as a 15-kilometer-wide asteroid traveling 20 times faster than a bullet. The KT extinction marked the end of the 160-million-year reign of the dinosaurs and allowed mammals, and eventually humans, to become the dominant species on earth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymGei2qKvsI http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100305/sc_afp/sciencepaleontologydinosaur
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HARRISON, N.Y. – The crash of a Toyota Prius in New York caught the attention of federal regulators Wednesday after the driver said it accelerated on its own, then lurched down a driveway, across a road and into a stone wall.
