General Motors said Tuesday it will close an underutilized factory in Gunsan, South Korea, by the end of May as part of a restructuring of its operations.

The move is a setback for the administration of President Moon Jae-in, who has made jobs and wages a priority.

A GM statement said Monday the company has proposed to its labor union and other stakeholders a plan involving further investments in South Korea that would help save jobs.

“As we are at a critical juncture of needing to make product allocation decisions, the ongoing discussions must demonstrate significant progress by the end of February, when GM will make important decisions on next steps,” Barry Engle, GM executive vice president and president of GM International, said in the statement.

The company’s CEO Mary Barra has said GM urgently needs better cost performance from its operations in South Korea, where auto sales have slowed.

South Korea’s government expressed “deep regret” over the factory’s closure. It said it plans to study the situation at the business and will continue talks with GM.

Korea’s finance ministry said earlier this month that GM had sought government help. The government has denied reports that South Korea will raise the issue in trade talks with the U.S.

The factory in Gunsan, a port city about 200 kilometers (125 miles) southwest of Seoul, has been making the Cruze, a sedan, and the Orlando model SUV. It employs about 2,000 workers, and only used about 20 percent of its full production capacity in 2017, rolling out 33,982 vehicles.

GM Korea has made 10 million vehicles since it was set up in 2002. In 2017, it sold 132,377 units in Korea and exported 392,170 vehicles to 120 markets around the world.
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From: MeNeedIt

It’s a long way from Abidjan in the Ivory Coast to the interstate highway near Chicago where trucker Mamoudou Diawara relishes the advantages that come with traveling the open road.

“Trucking is the freedom,” Diawara says. “It is the freedom and the money is right. I am not going to lie to you. You make more than the average Joe.”

Increasing demand for long-haul truckers in the United States is drawing more African immigrants like Diawara onto America’s roads. He says truckers in the United States can make as much as $200,000 a year. The sometimes dangerous work involves long hours, but it’s a chance to make a new life in a new country on his terms.

“You got to get the goods to the people,” he says. “This is how the country is built. It does not matter where you were born, you can be whatever you want. This is what this country teaches me everyday.”

Elias Balima took a similar journey from Burkina Faso. He saved for years to buy this truck and now not a day passes without someone offering him work.

“People like me who did not go far in the school system, it is an opportunity for us,” Balima says. “It is tiresome. But after the labor, the result is good.”

After several days on the road stuck inside a five-square-meter compartment, it’s the little things that count — like a free shower. And a good night’s sleep after a long day’s drive.

But time is money so Balima is up early. On this morning, he’s thinking of home.

“I am almost 34 years old now. I am still not married,” he says. “Because I cannot make my mind up. My mind is between Africa and America. Sometimes I see younger brothers newly arrived from Africa telling me, ‘I will not stay more than two years in the States.’”

WATCH THE VIDEO:

As much as Balima and Diawara have grown to love McDonald’s french fries and the opportunities and freedoms in America, they believe that in the current political climate, many Americans will always see them as Africans.

Balima says he tries to stay out of the U.S. immigration debate.

“I know they are all politicians,” he says. “I am not afraid of him. If Americans did not like Trump, he would not be where he is today.”

Most of the time there’s no room for politics inside Balima’s cab. For these African immigrants turned American truckers – keeping their eyes on the road is the key to success.
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From: MeNeedIt

Industrial pollution is making life difficult in Iran, adding to a long list of economic and political grievances, according to Hamid Arabzadeh, an Iranian-born environmental health expert who teaches at UCLA. Pollution is among the reasons for the protests in Iran in December and January, Arabzadeh said.

The pollution “started with water resources,” he noted. “It led to air pollution, and now in some of the very large cities in Iran, people literally don’t have the air to breathe.”

Arabzadeh said one of the largest salt lakes in the world, Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran, is drying up because of dams diverting water and the pumping of groundwater.

“The government has been promising for many years that they are going to reverse some of the ill-conceived policies,” he said. “And it never happened.”

Pollution has led to decades of protests in China and officials have responded, making environmental protection a priority, said Alex Wang, who teaches environmental law at UCLA. He has worked in the Beijing office of the environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council.

“There’s a new concept that the (Chinese) state is calling ecological civilization,” he said, “and it’s been all over the official propaganda and the state leadership messaging.” Wang explained that the approach has been “top-down,” with the officials taking the lead and sometimes limiting the flow of information on environmental problems through media censorship.

Thanks to citizen-activists, however, the process has also been bottom-up. Chinese farmers in a village in Heilongjiang province won the first round of a lawsuit against the Qihua Group, arguing that its chemical plant was contaminating their land. The lawsuit was spearheaded by Wang Enlin, a farmer with just three years of formal schooling who spent 16 years studying law on his own. The farmers won compensation in early 2017, but an appeals courts reversed the verdict, and the case continues.

Chinese officials are moving too slowly for many. A 2015 internet documentary called “Under the Dome,” by former Central China Television journalist Chai Jing, shows the devastating impact of pollution. The documentary was widely circulated online, but pushed the limits for government censors who monitor the web for signs of unrest and challenges to state authority.

“That video within three days of being posted garnered by some estimates up to 300 million viewers, and within three or four days had also been blocked,” Wang said.

The stakes are higher in countries where corruption and the scramble for resources can lead to violence against the people, but the repression hasn’t stopped the activists who demand a voice, said Billy Kyte of the London-based organization Global Witness.

“Mining industries, agribusiness, logging, hydrodams are being built and imposed on people without their consent,” says Kyte. “This leads to them campaigning or protesting.”

Global Witness counted 200 killings in 24 countries in 2016 alone. The numbers recently released for 2017 were nearly as bad, with 197 killings. Kyte noted that the problem is worse in areas where corruption is common, with Latin America seeing the largest number of killings both years.

“Murder is just the sharp end of a whole range of attacks and tools used by industries and states to try and silence environmental activism,” he said, adding that threats and intimidation are also tools against activists.

Yet from Pakistan to Indonesia, activists are pressing their demands and are sometimes prompting action, often finding more success in societies that are open, said Arabzadeh.

“It has a lot to do in an organic and dynamic relationship with democratic institutions, with women’s rights, and with citizen’s empowerment,” he argued.

In the United States, activists have found a new target in President Donald Trump, who is withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement that limits the release of so-called greenhouse gases, unless he can secure better terms. Trump is a global warming skeptic and calls the agreement unfair.

The U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which most scientists say lead to climate change. China is the worst emitter.

Chinese protests usually focus on the regional impacts of industrial pollution, and environmental law professor Alex Wang is worried about limitations on activists and controls on the flow of information in China.

“While it’s good that the state, by all accounts, seems to be investing tremendous amounts of resources on pollution reduction, in order to keep it going, you need that public attention and public support, he said.”

Kyte of Global Witness said the activists his group calls Defenders of the Earth brave threats and violence in corrupt regimes, and harassment in others, where their activism is “criminalized.” And yet, they continue to speak out.
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From: MeNeedIt

The lawyers for the daughter of late French rocker Johnny Hallyday say she plans to contest her father’s will, which leaves all his property and artistic rights “exclusively” to his widow Laeticia.

Laura Smet was said to have discovered the contents of Hallyday’s will “with amazement and pain” in a communique from her lawyers that was seen Monday by The Associated Press. The note says “not a guitar, not a motorbike, and not even the signed cover of the song ‘Laura’ which is dedicated to her” has been left to Smet.

Her lawyers say the will — which uses law from California, where the singer spent time — is contradicted by French law.

Laetitia Hallyday was the fourth wife of the man dubbed the “French Elvis,” who died in December.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Author, actress and activist Eve Ensler has dedicated her life and work to women’s issues around the world. She’s spent years visiting war zones and developed a special connection with victims of rape and torture in the Democratic Republic of Congo when she was invited there in 2007.

“I think what really struck me about the Congo,” Ensler recalled, “was the kind of synergistic cauldron of colonialism, capitalism, racism, insane misogyny. You know that all of those violences kind of being enacted on the bodies of women.”

She worked with local activists in the DRC to create a women’s leadership community and sanctuary for survivors of gender violence in Bukavu called City of Joy.

“And it’s almost impossible building something in the middle of a war zone. You don’t have roads, you don’t have electricity. You don’t have … it was just… it was madness!” she said.

In the midst of that chaos, her own life got upended. “I got diagnosed with stage III-IV uterine cancer. The alchemy of it all was just: you know, change or die,” she said with a rueful laugh.

Medicine to memoir

Ensler turned the months of harrowing treatment — and years of painful memories — into a book: In the Body of the World: A Memoir of Cancer and Connection.

Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus read the book, and wanted to collaborate with her on turning it into a one-woman show.

“It was signature Eve,” Paulus said of the memoir. “Philosophy, politics, feminism, all told through humor and her point of view, which she does not shy away from. But it was so deeply personal.”  

So, Paulus arranged to meet Ensler in her Manhattan loft, and they began an intense process to translate it into a play.

In the Body of the World toggles between the harrowing journey Ensler took to fight the cancer, her own painful family history, and her connection to women and nature in the outside world. Ensler says her own experiences with rape and abuse caused her to mentally disconnect from her body.

Watch a scene from In the Body of the World, as Eve Ensler talks about the support of friends during her cancer treatment (Courtesy Manhattan Theatre Club)

“I think my whole life, not only have I been trying to get back into my body, but I’ve been really working to find ways to support women coming back into their bodies,” she said. “And cancer did the trick, as well as building a City of Joy because those two things together … you know, we were building a place where women could come back into their bodies.”

The show, which just opened off-Broadway, has received glowing reviews. But it’s a tough performance schedule for a 64-year-old cancer survivor, so Ensler doesn’t plan to tour the play, like she did with her signature work, The Vagina Monologues. 

A play that launched a movement

Ensler wrote The Vagina Monologues in 1994 as a celebration of vaginas and femininity. She says the purpose of the changed, becoming a movement to stop violence against women. Twenty years ago this February 14, the first V-Day was held: productions of the play in professional theaters, colleges and even living rooms, raised millions of dollars toward women’s causes.

“I’m so emotional right now, coming up on the 20th anniversary,” Ensler said. “You know, when I think 20 years ago, how hard it was to say the word vagina, you know, how crazy everybody thought it was. And then to see how women – amazing women – across the world, across this country took this play brought it into their communities, were brave enough to put it on.”

For the 20th anniversary, 3,000 performances are scheduled.
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From: MeNeedIt

Forget the Winter Olympics, the Champion’s League or the Super Bowl. The real competition right now is who’s going to be invited to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding.

Everyone who is anyone in Britain is angling for an embossed royal ticket.

British heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua, who is seeking to add two more world championships to the three he already owns, says he would be happy to interrupt his high-level training for a trip to Windsor Castle on May 19. The ebullient Joshua has not been shy, tweeting a picture of himself and Harry with the question “Need a best man?”

“I’m single,” the 28-year-old told the BBC, expressing an interest in seeing if the elegant, raven-haired Markle’s “got any sisters.”

(For the record Anthony, she has a half sister, 53-year-old Samantha Grant, a divorced mother of three who has called Markle “a social climber.”)

The actual guest list is a closely guarded secret – and details about it may not be released until the event is underway. But that hasn’t stopped speculation about who’s in or who’s out from becoming a national parlor game and the subject of wagers in Britain’s legal betting shops.

Any bride and groom run into parental interference in their guest list, whether it’s adding random cousins or forgotten neighbors. Yet Harry and Markle are enduring this phenomenon at a cosmic level due to the royal expectations that come along with being a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II.

At least Harry and Markle won’t face the 3,500 guests that his parents, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, welcomed to their 1981 “wedding of the century” in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.They also avoided the warehouse-sized Westminster Abbey, where Harry’s brother Prince William and Kate Middleton packed in 1,900 guests for a 2011 royal wedding extravaganza televised around the world.

Their wedding venue, St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, holds a mere 800 guests. Even so, it’s going to be tough to cut that list.

The British royals’ close relatives alone number over 50 – and this time Princess Eugenie gets to bring a plus-one, fiance Jack Brooksbank. Harry also won’t forget non-royals like Kate’s sister, Pippa Middleton, her husband James Mathews, and brother James Middleton.

At William’s wedding, 45 foreign royals from 20 countries were invited from nations as diverse as Spain, Norway, Malaysia, Thailand and Saudi Arabia. William also invited governor generals from Commonwealth countries (23 seats); foreign dignitaries (27); U.K. politicians (42); religious figures (31); senior military officers (14) and 80 workers from charities that he backs. Oh – and don’t forget the ambassadors from countries with ties to Britain.

William barely could squeeze in A-listers like David Beckham and TV adventure host Ben Fogle – who may return for Harry’s nuptials.

Britain’s governing elite – Prime Minister Theresa May, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond – would normally expect a Windsor invite. But with turmoil over Brexit roiling the ruling Conservative Party, perhaps the bride and groom should just wait until a week before the wedding, then invite whoever is still left standing.

The juiciest debate has been over invites for rival U.S. presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Harry and Obama have obvious chemistry and have worked together promoting Harry’s Invictus Games competition for wounded soldiers. Some British officials, however, fear that an invite to Obama would anger Trump.

The royals could note that Obama, the U.S. president in 2011, was not invited to William’s wedding. And they have a bit more leeway because Harry’s wedding is not considered a state event. Markle, meanwhile, is a Hillary Clinton fan.

“We’ve changed our minds on this. We think Harry is in a position that he does not have to worry about the political implications of an invite,” said Rupert Adams, a spokesman for the betting agency William Hill PLC. “We feel strongly that the Obamas will get an invite.”

As for Trump?

“We’d be very surprised to see him on the guest list,” Adams said.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a trifecta of ties to the bride and groom:He’s the head of a Commonwealth country, host of Harry’s latest Invictus Games and leader of the nation where Markle had been living.

On the celebrity front, Elton John, who turned his song “Candle in the Wind” into an anthem for the late Princess Diana, is considered a 1-50 lock for an invite (98 percent chance) and singer James Blunt comes in at 1-4. Singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran is also reportedly close to Harry’s royal cousins and his U.K. tour doesn’t start until a few days later.

The betting for wedding performer includes John, Sheeran, Coldplay, Joss Stone and Adele.

Violet von Westenholz who introduced the couple will get a nod, along with Harry’s buddies Thomas and Charlie van Straubenzee, Thomas Inskip and Arthur Landon.

Yet A-listers could find themselves outnumbered by British military members and charity workers. Look for dress uniforms from both the Blues and Royals regiment and the Army Air Corps, because Harry served as a former Apache helicopter co-pilot in Afghanistan.

“You create significant bonds in a war zone,” noted Adams.

Among the 10 guests that Markle is allowed to pick [just kidding] will be her mom Doria Ragland, dad Thomas, half brother Thomas Jr. and possibly Grant. Markle’s friends include tennis star Serena Williams, stylist Jessica Mulroney, “Suits” star Patrick J. Adams and former “Made in Chelsea” cast member Millie Macintosh.

Markle’s ex-husband, producer Trevor Engelson, is not expected to receive an invitation.

But William Hill spokesman Adams admits that British bookies don’t really have a clue about who the 36-year-old American will invite.

“The simple reality is … we have been focusing on Harry over here,” Adams said.
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From: MeNeedIt

The World Health Organization is calling for resolute action to end violence against children. WHO’s appeal comes in advance of a meeting in Stockholm, Sweden this week that will seek solutions to the problem of violence, which affects one out of every two children on this planet.

The upcoming conference will explore ways to achieve the U.N.’s sustainable development goal of ending violence against children by 2030. But, the statistics weigh heavily against this aspiration.

The World Health Organization reports one half of the two billion children on earth, aged between two and 17, are victims of physical, sexual or emotional violence, or neglect. This violence, it says, occurs in the home behind closed doors or in schools. It involves bullying and violent behavior between young people. It says violence thrives in situations of conflict and other fragile settings.

The ultimate consequence of violence is death. WHO Director of Non-Communicable Diseases, Etienne Krug, says homicide is one of the three leading causes of death for adolescents.

“But, beyond that, there are also for those that survive, which is the vast majority a wide array of health consequences — mental health consequences, depression, anxiety, insomnia, changes in behavior,” he said. “They are more likely to smoke, to drink alcohol, to engage in risky sexual behavior, which leads to HIV, NCDs, etc.”

Krug says violence is not inevitable.It is predictable and preventable. He says the Stockholm conference will consider seven strategies for ending violence against children.

These include the enforcement of laws against this practice, changing norms so violence is no longer acceptable, dealing with aggressive behavior of boys, creating safer environments and teaching young parents how to be good parents.
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From: MeNeedIt

Ziad Doueiri’s film ‘The Insult’ is one of this year’s Oscar nominees in the Foreign Film category. The film, largely a courtroom drama, tackles the cultural, religious and political rifts that exist in Lebanon since 1948. Doueiri spoke with VOA’s Penelope Poulou about the film’s hard-hitting elements and its message of reconciliation between Moslems and Christians.
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From: MeNeedIt

Ziad Doueiri’s film The Insult is one of this year’s Oscar nominees in the Foreign Film category. The film, largely a courtroom drama, tackles the cultural, religious and political rifts that have existed in Lebanon since 1948. Doueiri told VOA about the film’s hard-hitting elements and its message of reconciliation between Muslims and Christians.

Ziad Doueiri is very passionate about his work. His story about the verbal dispute between two men from two different ethnic and religious backgrounds in Beirut, Lebanon, reveals his anxiety about his country, which he feels is fragmented and has not reconciled with its past.

“Lebanon is still a volatile place. Lebanon is so dynamic. But also, we had a past. Beirut, Lebanon had a rough past. We had a lot of conflict with the Syrians, the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the Left, the Right, the Conservatives, the Liberals. The pro-West, the pro-East. Lebanon is such a tiny place, but it really absorbs all those kinds of things,” he said.

“So, whenever you have that many conflicts and such a tiny place surrounded by so many countries we are on a hot bed of problems. Things can get out of hand because since the end of the civil war the Lebanese never sat down with each other to say, ‘ok the war is over, let’s talk about it.’ There is stability, but it can explode any time.”

His film The Insult conveys this combustible political climate. In the middle of a heated political campaign in Beirut, a small dispute about a drainpipe between Tony, a Christian Lebanese car mechanic and Yasser, a Palestinian construction foreman, takes on monstrous proportions. After Tony’s faulty drainpipe gets him wet, Yasser fixes it, only to see it destroyed by Tony, who does not want a Palestinian close to his property. Yasser loses his temper and curses Tony out.

Despite his pregnant wife’s advice to avoid a confrontation, Tony goes to Yasser’s boss and demands Yasser apologize and be fined for his behavior. Like most Palestinian refugees who’ve lived in Lebanon since 1948, Yasser does not have a work permit. His boss pressures him to apologize or lose his job. When he goes to meet Tony, instead of a reconciliation, the argument escalates. This time it is Tony who insults Yasser. Yasser punches Tony and breaks two of his ribs. Tony takes Yasser to court.

Filmmaker Doueiri said the idea for his film came from personal experience. “Just like the film starts, I was watering my plants. It’s an old apartment so the water leaked and fell on one of the construction workers and he yelled because the water fell on him and we had a heated exchange of words and we ended up yelling at each other,” he said.

Doueiri said, thankfully, the argument was settled. “Couple of days later, it started dawning on me, ‘What if I start a story where there is such a silly insignificant incident, but it does not get resolved. And actually, becomes more complicated.’ And I start asking myself the questions, ‘could such an insignificant problem in Lebanon develop into a national crisis?’ It can.”

The Insult escalates into a serious courtroom drama, as the two men, looking for justice, take the dispute all the way up to the country’s Supreme Court and the Lebanese government.

“When the film came out, it split the country in a way, because the Christian population flooded the movie and it became number one, [at the box office] but certain part, a big part of the Muslim community boycotted the movie.”

As a filmmaker, Doueiri is no stranger to controversy. His previous film, The Attack, was banned in 22 countries, including Lebanon, because he had shot it in Israel. He said The Insult has also been boycotted in some Arab countries, including Jordan and the Palestinian territories.

“It is very unfortunate that the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah banned the movie. Even though one of the main actors who plays the Palestinian got a huge award at the Venice film festival, for Best Male Performance,” he said.

Doueiri, who was raised by an intellectual leftist pro-Palestinian Lebanese family, said his film offers a balanced study between Christian Lebanese and Muslim Palestinians. His script, part character drama, part courtroom drama, was co-written with his Christian Lebanese partner Joelle Touma.

“She wrote all the scenes of the Palestinian, she grew up hating those Palestinians, but all the scenes where they had the lawyer defending the Palestinian, she wrote them. And all the scenes, the Christian lawyer defending the Christian, I wrote them. So, we crossed,” he said.

The Insult is an elegantly told story that peers into the psychological makeup of Lebanon and its inhabitants. Despite the controversy it has created, the Lebanese government chose it to represent the country at the Oscars.
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From: MeNeedIt

Federal investigators are still looking at how CSX railway crews routed an Amtrak train into a parked freight train in Cayce, South Carolina, last weekend. But even if CSX should bear sole responsibility for the accident, Amtrak will likely end up paying crash victims’ legal claims with public money.

Amtrak pays for accidents it didn’t cause because of secretive agreements negotiated between the passenger rail company, which receives more than $1 billion annually in federal subsidies, and the private railroads, which own 97 percent of the tracks on which Amtrak travels.

Both Amtrak and freight railroads that own the tracks fight to keep those contracts secret in legal proceedings. But whatever the precise legal language, plaintiffs’ lawyers and former Amtrak officials say Amtrak generally bears the full cost of damages to its trains, passengers, employees and other crash victims — even in instances where crashes occurred as the result of a freight rail company’s negligence or misconduct.

​No ‘iron in the fire’

Railroad industry advocates say that freight railways have ample incentive to keep their tracks safe for their employees, customers and investors. But the Surface Transportation Board and even some federal courts have long concluded that allowing railroads to escape liability for gross negligence is bad public policy.

“The freight railroads don’t have an iron in the fire when it comes to making the safety improvements necessary to protect members of the public,” said Bob Pottroff, a Manhattan, Kansas, rail injury attorney who has sued CSX on behalf of an injured passenger from the Cayce crash. “They’re not paying the damages.”

Beyond CSX’s specific activities in the hours before the accident, the company’s safety record has deteriorated in recent years, according to a standard metric provided by the Federal Railroad Administration. Since 2013, CSX’s rate of major accidents per million miles traveled has jumped by more than half, from 2 to 3.08 — significantly worse than the industry average. And rail passenger advocates raised concerns after the CSX CEO at the time pushed hard last year to route freight more directly by altering its routes.

CSX denied that safety had slipped at the company, blaming the change in the major accident index on a reduction of total miles traveled combined with changes in its cargo and train length.

“Our goal remains zero accidents,” CSX spokesman Bryan Tucker wrote in a statement provided to The Associated Press. CSX’s new system of train routing “will create a safer, more efficient railroad resulting in a better service product for our customers,” he wrote.

Amtrak’s ability to offer national rail service is governed by separately negotiated track usage agreements with 30 different railroads. All the deals share a common trait: They’re “no fault,” according to a September 2017 presentation delivered by Amtrak executive Jim Blair as part of a Federal Highway Administration seminar.

No fault means Amtrak takes full responsibility for its property and passengers and the injuries of anyone hit by a train. The “host railroad” that operates the tracks must only be responsible for its property and employees. Blair called the decades-long arrangement “a good way for Amtrak and the host partners to work together to get things resolved quickly and not fight over issues of responsibility.”

Amtrak declined to comment on Blair’s presentation. But Amtrak’s history of not pursuing liability claims against freight railroads doesn’t fit well with federal officials and courts’ past declarations that the railroads should be held accountable for gross negligence and willful misconduct.

​Maryland crash, backlash

After a 1987 crash in Chase, Maryland, in which a Conrail train crew smoked marijuana then drove a train with disabled safety features past multiple stop signals and into an Amtrak train — killing 16 — a federal judge ruled that forcing Amtrak to take financial responsibility for “reckless, wanton, willful, or grossly negligent acts by Conrail” was contrary to good public policy.

Conrail paid. But instead of taking on more responsibility going forward, railroads went in the opposite direction, recalls a former Amtrak board member who spoke to the AP. After Conrail was held responsible in the Chase crash, he said, Amtrak got “a lot of threats from the other railroads.”

The former board member requested anonymity because he said that Amtrak’s internal legal discussions were supposed to remain confidential and he did not wish to harm his own business relationships by airing a contentious issue.

Because Amtrak operates on the freight railroads’ tracks and relies on the railroads’ dispatchers to get passenger trains to their destinations on time, Amtrak executives concluded they couldn’t afford to pick a fight, the former Amtrak board member said.

“The law says that Amtrak is guaranteed access” to freights’ tracks, he said. “But it’s up to the goodwill of the railroad as to whether they’ll put you ahead or behind a long freight train.”

A 2004 New York Times series on train crossing safety drew attention to avoidable accidents at railroad crossings and involving passenger trains — and to railroads’ ability to shirk financial responsibility for passenger accidents. In the wake of the reporting, the Surface Transportation Board ruled that railroads “cannot be indemnified for its own gross negligence, recklessness, willful or wanton misconduct,” according to a 2010 letter by then-Surface Transportation Board chairman Dan Elliott to members of Congress.

That ruling gives Amtrak grounds to pursue gross negligence claims against freight railroads — if it wanted to.

“If Amtrak felt that if they didn’t want to pay, they’d have to litigate it,” said Elliott, now an attorney at Conner & Winters.

Same lawyers

The AP was unable to find an instance where the railroad has brought such a claim against a freight railroad since the 1987 Chase, Maryland, disaster. The AP also asked Amtrak, CSX and the Association of American Railroads to identify any example within the last decade of a railroad contributing to a settlement or judgment in a passenger rail accident that occurred on its track. All entities declined to provide such an example.

Even in court cases where establishing gross negligence by a freight railroad is possible, said Potrroff, the plaintiff’s attorney, he has never seen any indication that the railroad and Amtrak are at odds.

“You’ll frequently see Amtrak hire the same lawyers the freight railroads use,” he said.

Ron Goldman, a California plaintiff attorney who has also represented passenger rail accident victims, agreed. While Goldman’s sole duty is to get the best possible settlement for his client, he said he’d long been curious about whether it was Amtrak or freight railroads which ended up paying for settlements and judgments.

“The question of how they share that liability is cloaked in secrecy,” he said, adding: “The money is coming from Amtrak when our clients get the check.”

Pottroff said he has long wanted Amtrak to stand up to the freight railroads on liability matters. Not only would it make safety a bigger financial consideration for railroads, he said, it would simply be fair.

“Amtrak has a beautiful defense — the freight railroad is in control of all the infrastructure,” he said. But he’s not expecting Amtrak to use it during litigation over the Cayce crash.

“Amtrak always pays,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

For years, doctors have been warning of a post-antibiotic age with resistant mutations leading to so-called superbugs — multidrug-resistant infections that can evade the medicines designed to kill them. Faith Lapidus reports that the race is on to develop new drugs to treat these emerging, mutating infections.
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From: MeNeedIt

Billionaire CEO Elon Musk is off to a big 2018. He’s chief executive of both SpaceX and Tesla. His space-travel company launched off the planet and into orbit a roadster from his electric car company. It was the latest milestone for an executive who looks to revolutionize space travel and technology. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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From: MeNeedIt