News of the World

[kyonides]

NTSB Releases First Report on Train Derailment in East Palestine, Points to ‘Overheat Failure’

The report, which is preliminary and subject to change as investigators deepen their probe, suggests that blame for the accident lies in a wheel bearing that severely overheated before the train went off the rails.

The crew operating the freight train did not receive a critical warning about the overheated axle until moments before the derailment, the report states.

After getting a “critical audible alarm message” from the wayside defect detector—or hot bearing detector (HBD)—instructing the crew to stop the train to inspect a hot axle, the engineer slowed and stopped the train.

When the train came to a halt, the crew saw smoke and fire and alerted dispatch of a possible derailment.

Toxic Wastewater From Ohio Train Derailment Now Going to Texas

“I and my office heard today that ‘firefighting water’ from the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment is slated to be disposed of in our county,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a statement on Twitter on Wednesday.

Questions remain on when the contaminated water will be disposed of, what is being transported, and how it will be disposed of, she said.
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Hidalgo also stated her office is closely coordinating with the mayor of Deer Park, Texas, located in Harris County.
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The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality told KTRK-TV that Texas Molecular “is authorized to accept and manage a variety of waste streams, including vinyl chloride, as part of their … hazardous waste permit and underground injection control permit.” Vinyl chloride was one of the materials that the train was carrying before it was derailed.

Tesla Moves Global Engineering Headquarters to California

The announcement comes after Tesla moved its corporate headquarters from Fremont, California, to Austin, Texas, in 2021, following a turbulent relationship with Golden State.

At the time, Musk said the decision was based in part on California’s soaring housing costs which were hindering Tesla’s ability to scale up in the Bay Area.
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Tesla’s Fremont-based manufacturing plant has the highest automotive production output in North America and will likely produce more than 600,000 vehicles in the coming year.
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Tesla also said Wednesday that it is moving its battery cell production from Germany to the United States to take advantage of federal incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act.
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Electric vehicle maker Tesla is establishing its global engineering headquarters in California, CEO Elon Musk announced on Feb. 22.

In a joint press conference with California governor Gavin Newsom, Musk said the new engineering headquarters will be at the former offices of Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto.

Project Veritas Says James O’Keefe Could Return as It Asks Supporters to ‘Give Us a Chance’

Project Veritas said on Feb. 23 that founder James O’Keefe could return as it asked supporters to “give us a chance” following O’Keefe’s ouster.

O’Keefe spoke to staff members at the organization’s headquarters in New York on Feb. 20, announcing that he was leaving after being stripped of his position as CEO and chairman of the board of directors.

“I’m intending to start anew,” he said.

The board has stated that it didn’t fire him and that it didn’t want him to resign.
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The board had stated that it uncovered “financial malfeasance” and that O’Keefe “left us no choice but to suspend him in the last few weeks when he unilaterally fired the CFO, who can only be fired with Board approval.”

Even if the internal rules say that the board should fire the CFO, wasn't his duty to protect the NGO from a conspirator that wanted it to go broke?  Couldn't the board simply hear his case against the CFO instead of directly suspending the CEO?

Harvey Weinstein Sentenced to 16 Years on LA Rape Conviction

The charges stemmed from an assault on a former model and actress, identified in court as Jane Doe 1, at a Los Angeles hotel in February 2013.

Weinstein, the powerful co-founder of Miramax Films, a movie production and distribution house, will serve the sentence after completing his 23-year sentence for a sexual misconduct conviction in New York.
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Prosecutors called for a “high-term” penalty of 24 years because of the prior conviction, rather than a “mid-term” sentence of 18 years that California law would otherwise prescribe, absent additional “aggravating” factors.
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The jury acquitted Weinstein of charges relating to a second alleged victim and failed to reach a unanimous verdict on charges arising from two other accusers.

One of them, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, now the wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, had disclosed she was the alleged rape victim referred to in court records as Jane Doe 4.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench declared a mistrial on the deadlocked charges.

US Considered Blocking Exports of Taiwanese Microchips to Russia

“A year ago, we led a coalition of 36 countries to align export controls against Russia,” said Raimondo at an event at Georgetown University in Washington.

“We could have done … we have the tools to do the extraterritorial controls,” she continued. “And I thought about it.”
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“Semiconductors, for example, almost all of the semiconductors made in Taiwan are made with American machinery and software. So technically, we could have said to Taiwan, ‘You can’t sell any of that to Russia because if you do, you can’t use our hardware and software,” she said.

“We prefer not to do that. We prefer to go to our allies, as we did in Ukraine, and say instead, ‘You should control it; you should use your own controls. We don’t want to reach in and do that,’” continued Raimondo. “So that’s the way we want to operate, always with our allies, build consensus, build a coalition.”
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd.—enacted its own export controls on Russia. TSMC produces 92 percent of the chips used in the United States.

Iraq to Allow Trade With China in Yuan Amid Shift Away From Dollar

The Iraqi central bank plans to allow trade with China to be settled directly in yuan as opposed to the U.S. dollar for the first time, it announced on Feb. 22, as part of efforts to reduce pressure on the falling dinar.
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Under the plan, the central bank could boost the balances of Iraqi banks that have accounts with Chinese banks in the yuan.

However, this option would largely depend on the size of the central bank’s yuan reserves, Mudhir Salih, the Iraqi government’s economic adviser, told Reuters.

Another option would be to boost the balances of Iraqi banks through the accounts of the central bank to the final beneficiary in the Chinese yuan, via the central bank’s U.S. dollar reserves accounts with J.P. Morgan and Development Bank of Singapore, according to the statement.

The two banks would convert the dollars to yuan and pay the final beneficiary in China, Salih explained.
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The total bilateral trade value between China and Iraq exceeded $24.8 billion in the first half of 2022, according to China Daily.

The new plan would cover private sector imports and not oil trade in Iraq.