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COVID-19 extends sentences for some incarcerated people
Nearly every day, Jan Salvay checks for her nephew’s name on the Nevada Department of Correction’s website: Nicholas, 39, jailed in a credit card forgery case. Then she checks the state’s list of deaths in custody — just to make sure his name isn’t there. “He’s ... scared he’s going to get sick, and he’s going to die,” Salvay said. When she last visited him, in February at a work camp, he was expected to be released in time to vote in the general election. Not long after that visit, he was transferred to a regular state prison because of an illness; then the pandemic hit and work camps closed....
Stateline.org
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Self-driving vehicles allowed to skip some crash safety standards under new rule
WASHINGTON — The Trump Administration issued final rules Thursday that will allow self-driving vehicle manufacturers to skip certain federal crash safety requirements in vehicles that aren't designed to carry people. It marks the first major update to existing federal safety standards to accommodate innovations in driverless technology. While no fully autonomous vehicles are for sale for consumers now, industry experts expect that market share for self-driving cars and trucks will expand in the coming decade. The rule — months in the making — also allows manufacturers more leeway to design sel...
The Detroit News
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Chief of Capitol police blasts pro-Trump assault as ‘criminal riotous behavior’
In his first public comments since Wednesday’s siege of the U.S. Capitol, the department’s Chief of Police Steven Sund condemned the riots as the worst day in his 30-year career. " (USCP) officers and our law enforcement partners responded valiantly when faced with thousands of individuals involved in violent riotous actions as they stormed the United States Capitol Building,” Sund said in a statement. “These individuals actively attacked United States Capitol Police Officers and other uniformed law enforcement officers with metal pipes, discharged chemical irritants, and took up other weapons...
New York Daily News
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The 'Why' behind those airline safety videos
It appears that we are flying again, with over 1.2 million passing through TSA checkpoints the Sunday after Christmas. Sure, it’s far less than in previous years because many people don’t think it’s safe. I’ve argued elsewhere that flying, even with COVID-19 potentially on board, might be safer today than it was in the 1960s, a decade during which over 8,000 passengers and crew (and some on the ground) died in commercial aviation disasters. But I sometimes wonder how seriously airline passengers take safety anyway, considering that they never watch the pre-flight safety video. Let me make a wi...
Tribune News Service
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Editorial: FAA reforms reassert primacy of Boeing oversight, safety
At last, Congress has undone disastrous Federal Aviation Administration policy that abetted Boeing’s lapses in pushing the unsafe 737 MAX to market. The restoration of trusted FAA oversight is a necessary step to set Boeing back on course as aviation’s longtime leader. Legislation that passed Congress Dec. 21, championed by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., rolls back Boeing’s ability to control much of the certification process for its aircraft. Misguided attempts to streamline federal policy and help Boeing over the years had improperly ceded too much of the FAA’s responsibilities to the manufac...
The Seattle Times
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Federal judge won't stop removal of encampment at Seattle park
SEATTLE — A federal judge has denied a call for an emergency restraining order to stop Seattle police and park workers from clearing the hold-out remnants of a large homeless encampment at Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill. U.S. District Judge Richard Jones had taken the matter under advisement following a nearly two-hour emergency hearing Wednesday evening in which the judge referred to Seattle's miserable December weather and said it was a "horrible time" for the court to be deciding whether the clearing of the park should go forward. Lawyers representing both the city and the plaintiff in t...
The Seattle Times
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Canada validates Boeing 737 MAX design changes
Canadian air-safety regulator Transport Canada announced Thursday its approval of the Boeing 737 MAX design changes that were developed after two crashes killed 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia. In a message Wednesday to the families of the Canadian victims of the Ethiopian crash, Nicholas Robinson, director general of Transport Canada, wrote that his agency "has now completed our independent review of the design changes and we have notified the FAA today that we have validated these changes with some unique Canadian differences." It's one of the final steps in the process of clearing the ...
The Seattle Times
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Brazil aviation agency is first foreign regulator to clear Boeing 737 Max to fly
Brazil’s national civil aviation authority on Wednesday became the first foreign air safety regulator to join the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in approving the Boeing 737 Max to fly passengers again.The agency indicated that, like Europe’s aviation regulator, it too is asking Boeing to make some further design improvements that would be retrofitted to the Max later.In a statement, the Brazilian authority said that after “long independent work to reauthorize the operation of the aircraft,” it agreed with and adopted the FAA evaluation that the immediate safety issues with the Max ...
The Seattle Times
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Fabiola Santiago: Gov. DeSantis mishandled COVID — and we're back to widespread transmission in Florida
This is the story of another coronavirus tragedy foretold.At the end of October, during a road trip to north Florida, I began to double mask.The anti-maskers, the mask danglers — and the geniuses who wear them below their noses and under their chins — ruled the scene everywhere, except hospitals and doctors’ offices. From service plazas on the turnpike and rest stops on I-95 to the aisles of stores and indoor cafes, people disregarded signs telling them that masks were required.I felt that I had to compensate for such stupidity with extra safety precautions. Needless to say, I was the only per...
Miami Herald
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Editorial: A milestone for 737 MAX, but Boeing has more to do
Federal approval for Boeing’s 737 MAX to resume service is an enormous milestone for the company, its workers and Washington’s aerospace industry.Yet there is still much more work ahead for Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration to repair their reputations as world leaders in aviation safety.The FAA on Wednesday approved Boeing’s fixes for flaws in its bestselling plane that led to crashes in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.Substantial changes were made to the problematic flight control system implicated in the crashes. New pilot training is required and both Boeing and the FAA pledg...
The Seattle Times
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