Anantnag: Drug use and addiction have become a growing problem in many countries around the world. The use of drugs not only contributes to serious health problems but also has negative social and economic consequences. Addiction to drugs has become a major issue that affects individuals, families, and communities.
The root cause of this growing drug menace is the accessibility and availability of both illegal and prescription drugs. The use of drugs has been popularized by modern culture, the media, and the entertainment industry. Drug addiction is also often fueled by stress, mental health issues, and a lack of proper support and guidance.
The increase in drug use often leads to criminal activities such as theft, money laundering, drug trafficking, and violence. The negative social consequences include poverty, family breakdown, child neglect, and a rise in homelessness.
The most commonly used illegal drugs include heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. These drugs are highly addictive and can lead to major health problems, such as heart disease, liver damage, and depression.
Prescription drug addiction is also a growing problem. Prescription drugs are often prescribed for legitimate medical reasons, but they can be abused when taken beyond the recommended dosage. The most commonly abused prescription drugs include opioids, tranquilizers, and stimulants.
To tackle the growing drug menace, it is essential to educate people about the dangers of drug use and addiction. Governments and non-governmental organizations need to make treatment facilities and therapy programs available for drug users to help them overcome addiction and rebuild their lives.
It is also necessary to address the root cause of drug addiction by promoting mental health support, stress management techniques, and providing individuals with safe and healthy alternatives to drug use.
In conclusion, the growing drug menace is a major problem that affects individuals, families, and communities around the world. It is crucial to address this problem by educating and supporting individuals, and providing appropriate treatment and therapy programs to help them overcome addiction and rebuild their lives.
Anantnag: Drug use and addiction have become a growing problem in many countries around the world. The use of drugs not only contributes to serious health problems but also has negative social and economic consequences. Addiction to drugs has become a major issue that affects individuals, families, and communities.
The root cause of this growing drug menace is the accessibility and availability of both illegal and prescription drugs. The use of drugs has been popularized by modern culture, the media, and the entertainment industry. Drug addiction is also often fueled by stress, mental health issues, and a lack of proper support and guidance.
The increase in drug use often leads to criminal activities such as theft, money laundering, drug trafficking, and violence. The negative social consequences include poverty, family breakdown, child neglect, and a rise in homelessness.
The most commonly used illegal drugs include heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. These drugs are highly addictive and can lead to major health problems, such as heart disease, liver damage, and depression.
Prescription drug addiction is also a growing problem. Prescription drugs are often prescribed for legitimate medical reasons, but they can be abused when taken beyond the recommended dosage. The most commonly abused prescription drugs include opioids, tranquilizers, and stimulants.
To tackle the growing drug menace, it is essential to educate people about the dangers of drug use and addiction. Governments and non-governmental organizations need to make treatment facilities and therapy programs available for drug users to help them overcome addiction and rebuild their lives.
It is also necessary to address the root cause of drug addiction by promoting mental health support, stress management techniques, and providing individuals with safe and healthy alternatives to drug use.
In conclusion, the growing drug menace is a major problem that affects individuals, families, and communities around the world. It is crucial to address this problem by educating and supporting individuals, and providing appropriate treatment and therapy programs to help them overcome addiction and rebuild their lives.
Police representatives, members of the judiciary and politicians in Germany are calling for harsher penalties for climate activists, including preventive detention and longer prison terms, in an effort to halt their disruptive protests.
This week has seen the most intense protests yet by the campaign group Letzte Generation (Last Generation), with hundreds of its members blocking scores of roads during rush hour in Berlin.
Rainer Wendt, the head of Germany’s police trade union, led the calls for what he called the “Bavarian model” to be rolled out across the country. In the southern state, activists can be placed in preventive detention for up to 30 days in anticipation of their participation in a blockade.
In Berlin, the maximum preventive detention is currently 48 hours. “It is no accident that activists have chosen to centre their protests on Berlin and not on Munich [the capital of Bavaria],” Wendt told the news network RND.
He said the penalties in Berlin were too mild. “I consider this to be way too little … We will only get this situation under control if the punishments are harsher.”
Benjamin Jendro, of the Berlin police, said that as the protests had increased in number, alternative ways of controlling them were necessary. “We don’t want Bavarian-type rules, but we would like to have more ability to get to grips with the protests,” he told Welt TV.
Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, of the Social Democrats, has urged the 16 states to come together to create a unified stance on preventive detention.
It has been more than a year since Letzte Generation started its protests, which have mainly involved sit-ins in front of traffic, and activists sticking themselves to the road. The actions have earned them the nickname Klimakleber or “climate stickers”.
Other protests have included throwing mashed potato at works of art in galleries, lopping off the top of a municipal Christmas tree, turning off a gas pipeline, throwing fake oil at the German constitution, spraying paint on political party headquarters, and cutting through the perimeter fence of Berlin airport.
Letzte Generation activists who glue themselves to roads have been nicknamed ‘Klimakleber’ or ‘climate stickers’. Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP
The group has repeatedly said its main aim is to highlight how imminent a climate catastrophe is, and to press the government for more urgent action, in particular to stop the use of fossil fuels.
It wants to see the establishment of a people’s council, made up of 150 Germans representing every level of society, who would create realistic ideas to tackle the emergency and present them to parliament. It also wants the government to introduce a 130kmh (80mph) speed limit on motorways.
Letzte Generation points to recent surveys in which four-fifths of Germans have called for the government to take more and swifter action on the climate emergency.
Initially, penalties against participants in the protests included cautions or fines. But German courts have started to raise the stakes in recent weeks, imposing prison sentences on some campaigners.
On Wednesday, a woman identified as Maija W, who has been a participant in Letzte Generation actions for more than a year and who last August glued herself to the frame of an oil painting by Lucas Cranach in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie, was sentenced to four months in prison without probation.
The judge, Susanna Wortmann, said: “It is not acceptable that parts of society make reference to their objectives as the reason for breaking the law.” She said a suspended sentence was out of the question because the woman had shown “intransigence” and said she intended to take part in future protests, so that “there is no positive social prognosis”.
The woman, a 24-year-old design graduate, told the court that her protest had been symbolic and she and her fellow protester knew the painting would not be damaged as it was protected behind glass. “My participation in these actions isn’t frivolous or impetuous,” she said, adding that it was meant to throw light on the threat posed by inaction on the climate.
Earlier this month, three other protesters were sentenced to several months each in jail in Heilbronn for halting traffic. The judge, Julia Schmitt, accused the participants of coercion, for which she could have given a sentence of up to three years.
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Critics have drawn comparisons between the sentences handed down to Letzte Generation and myriad far milder penalties given for traffic accidents caused by careless driving in which people have died.
A Letzte Generation march in Berlin on Wednesday. Photograph: Christian Mang/Reuters
Members of the German government have been increasingly vocal in their criticism of the group’s actions. The Green party’s Katharina Dröge questioned how they wanted to achieve their goals, saying their main success had been to “get on the nerves of normal people going about their day-to-day lives”.
The economy minister, Robert Habeck, of the Greens, told NTV he believed the actions were wrong. “This protest doesn’t win a majority for climate protection; instead it irritates people, divides society, and in that sense it’s not a helpful contribution to climate protection,” he said.
Members of the government have compared the group to the Taliban, the Nazis and the RAF, a far-left guerrilla group that terrorised Germany in the 1970s and 80s and murdered 34 people.
The head of Berlin’s Greens, Bettina Jarasch, who has just lost her position in the government, said that while she was keen to “keep a distance” from the group, she rejected the proposals to extend preventive detention.
“Preventive detention means putting people in prison for crimes they have not yet committed,” she said in an interview with RBB Inforadio. “That is very questionable and must be strictly controlled.”
In a recent survey, 86% of participants said they were against the methods of protest used by Letzte Generation.
Anger has been heightened over accusations that the blockades hold up emergency vehicles. During this week’s Berlin protests, the fire brigade said 15 of its vehicles had been held up in one day, seven of them on their way to an emergency.
Letzte Generation insists it always leaves space for emergency vehicles. It has said membership and general support for the group has only increased the longer it has been protesting.
Carla Hindrichs, a spokesperson for the group, said: “I don’t want to stick myself to roads. I’m not doing it for fun but because we can see from examples in history that disruptive, nonviolent action can be the most effective type of action. We are like a fire alarm, which is annoying but necessary.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
New Delhi: With India becoming the most populous country in the world, its need for water is increasing, Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said here on Thursday.
The central government is working towards fulfiling the country’s water requirement, the Jal Shakti minister said at the 16th Civil Services Day.
According to United Nations estimates, India has become the most populous country in the world with 142.86 crore people.
“We have become the most populated country in the world though the official figures are yet to come out. We are also the fastest growing economy in the world and our need for water is also increasing,” he said.
Underlining that water-bearing capacity has to be increased, Shekhawat said while the country’s present requirement of water stands at 1,100 billion cubic metres, it is likely to exceed the 1,500 billion cubic metre-mark by 2050.
The minister highlighted that the BJP-led central government concentrated on the last mile saturation.
“But achieving last mile saturation needed a lot of work and bureaucrats played a very important role in fulfilling India’s target set under the Jal Jeevan mission,” he said, adding, “This government gave freedom to bureaucrats to work freely”.
Shekhawat added that development work done by India has inspired the whole world.
New Delhi: Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and stressed that the company is committed to growing and investing across the country.
Cook, who is in India to launch the company’s flagship retail stores in Mumbai and Delhi, thanked PM Modi for the warm welcome.
“Thank you Prime Minister @narendramodi for the warm welcome. We share your vision of the positive impact technology can make on India’s future – from education and developers to manufacturing and the environment”, Cook said in a tweet, posting a picture with PM Modi.
Thank you Prime Minister @narendramodi for the warm welcome. We share your vision of the positive impact technology can make on India’s future — from education and developers to manufacturing and the environment, we’re committed to growing and investing across the country. pic.twitter.com/xRSjc7u5Ip
“We are committed to growing and investing across the country,” Cook added.
Apple is ramping up its manufacturing in India, along with growing its retail presence.
Apple began manufacturing iPhone in India in 2017, and since then, the company has worked with suppliers to assemble new iPhone models and produce a growing number of components.
Amid the local manufacturing push and an upcoming widespread retail store strategy, Apple shipped $7.5 billion worth iPhones and iPads in India in FY22-23, according to CMR data accessed by IANS.
In FY23, Apple shipped more than 7 million iPhones and half a million iPads in the country, registering a 28 per cent growth for iPhone shipments, according to initial estimates provided by market intelligence firm CMR.
Trump has been ramping up attacks on the likely 2024 contender. On Wednesday, he posted three new videos on Truth Social, the social media company he helped found, criticizing the governor for both his past policy decisions and his falling poll numbers.
The Fox poll was one of a handful released in recent days that show the former president widening his lead over DeSantis. In a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, Trump had the support of 47 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters, well above DeSantis’ 33 percent. A Morning Consult survey from earlier this month showed Trump with a 54-to-26 percent lead over DeSantis among potential GOP primary voters.
Trump’s growing lead in the polls comes amid a flurry of news over a potential indictment of the former president in a case related to a $130,000 hush money payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016. Though an indictment appeared imminent earlier this month, it was reported Wednesday that the Manhattan grand jury investigating the allegations isn’t expected to hear additional evidence in the case for the next month.
In the Fox GOP poll, former Vice President Mike Pence drew 6 percent, followed by former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at 3 percent each, with other Republicans trailing behind.
The poll also showed President Joe Biden with an approval rating of 44 percent, same as last month.
Fox polled 1,007 randomly selected registered voters from March 24 to March 27. The margin of error of the poll was plus or minus 3 percentage points, though that margin was slightly larger — plus or minus 4.5 percentage points — for the results of the Republican primary ballot.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
SRINAGAR: Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha chaired a high-level meeting of Public Sector Banks, Administrative Departments and other Financial Institutions, at Civil Secretariat on Thursday.
The meeting was chaired to review the action taken on the directions passed in the previous meeting on seamless credit to potential entrepreneurs and saturation of other government schemes aimed to facilitate the dreams of aspiring society.
Calling banking sector the backbone of Jammu and Kashmir’s growing economy, he said, “Collective efforts should be made to facilitate common man, farmers, industries, SHGs and young entrepreneurs. Banks need to cooperate & complement government’s efforts in reaching out to beneficiaries of all flagship schemes,” the Lt Governor said.
He also observed that during the Back to Village-4 and My Town My Pride Programme, JK Bank ensured a major share of 90 percent in extending the financial support to 75,000 youth recently, while other banks had merely 10 percent contribution.
“This situation needs to change. All the Banks must increase the lending to promote entrepreneurship amongst youth, women and people from marginalised sections of society,” the Lt Governor further said.
The Lt Governor also reviewed the progress achieved to extend the benefits of Kisan Credit Cards to all the eligible farmers.
The banks were instructed to follow the delivery channels of RBI and saturate the distribution of Smart Cards to the KCC account holders by June, 2023.
The Lt Governor emphasized on support and guidance to the farmers in preparing project reports required by the banks through nodal agencies. He also emphasized on holding regular meetings at the district level with mission youth and other government departments to understand requirements of diverse sectors.
The Chair was also briefed on the upcoming ‘Citizen’s portal for Government Sponsored Schemes’. The soon to be launched portal, prepared by JK Bank will ensure that all the Banks operating in Jammu Kashmir seamlessly extend all the benefits of government schemes to the eligible beneficiaries.
The portal will enable a citizen to apply for a Government Sponsored Schemes directly online with OTP Authentication and check the status of his/her application online.
It will forward/route the applications from citizens to appropriate departments and teams in an integrated workflow and enable departments and teams to process and forward/route these applications to the concerned financing agencies.
Further the financing agencies can update status for these applications post processing. It will also facilitate generation of MIS/Reporting Dashboards, it was informed.
Directions were passed to explore possibilities to integrate all the schemes and other portals on a single platform and make the portal more interactive, multilingual and having a module of grievances redressal mechanism.
Dr Arun Kumar Mehta, Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo Additional Chief Secretary, Agriculture Production Department; Sh Baldev Prakash, MD & CEO JK Bank; Administrative Secretaries, HODs, Heads and representatives of several banks operating in the UT attended the meeting.(GNS)
Liars are supposed to appall us, but in practice, they don’t. America loves its scoundrels. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which is about a prolific liar, ranks near the top polls of America’s best-loved novels. Its enduring lesson teaches that if you can’t make it, fake it, and nobody will be any the wiser by the time you succeed. Spoiler alert if you slept through high school English: Gatsby climbs to the top by lying about his name (it’s James Gatz), the origin of his wealth (bootlegging; moving counterfeit stocks; bribing public officials; working with gangsters), and his past (he was born poor in North Dakota, not rich in San Francisco). He ultimately gets knocked off, not in comeuppance for his lies, but in an act of revenge. (His killer mistakenly thinks Gatsby hit and killed his wife in traffic when actually Gatsby’s mistress Daisy was the wheelwoman.) The moral of The Great Gatsby is if you want to get ahead in American life, lie profusely — but make sure your sweetheart drives safely.
The Gatsby Directive has long been observed in corporate America, with executives routinely getting busted for resume padding. Academia, too, is shot through with professors who doctor their curriculum vitae. And you could fill a roadside Little Library with bestselling memoirs that turn out to be fake. In spinning their exaggerations and embroideries to political success, Santos, Luna and Ogles resemble President Joe Biden, who has dispensed one large dip of double-fudge after another throughout his entire political career. In a recent unrelenting column, the Washington Post’s Marc A. Thiessen truth-squaded Biden. The president’s many lies include those about his family history; about his college achievements; about getting arrested while trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison; about getting arrested for protesting civil rights; about getting arrested for sneaking into the U.S. Capitol; about getting shot at inside Baghdad’s Green Zone; about pinning a Silver Star on a Navy Captain in Afghanistan; about cutting the federal deficit in half. And that’s just a partial list.
Of course, the volume and scale of Biden’s lies don’t compare to those of Donald Trump, who completely untethered himself from the truth during his administration. According to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column, Trump made at least 30,573 false or misleading comments during his four years in the White House. Trump maintained such a unique relationship with the truth that it might have been simpler for the Post to tabulate his truthful statements than his lies. When the fact-checker first got going at Trump during the 2016 campaign, it looked like their accountings would fracture his credibility with voters, but it didn’t — or at least not enough to turn the election. Trump supporters discounted the fact that he was full of it because they liked many of the things he said about immigrants, foreign entanglements, Hillary Clinton, trade, economic growth and race. The same — although on a radically different scale — appears to be true with Biden supporters. When Joe blunders or overstates, they cover for him by saying, “Oh, that’s just Joe,” and change the subject.
If Santos, Luna and Ogles studied the political career of Donald Trump before composing their personal histories, nobody should be surprised. Trump established that while journalists care about the truth, voters can be more forgiving. If voters cared that much about campaign lies, the Democrats would have made the 2020 election an exercise in public shaming about Trump’s lies. But they didn’t. The only lies politicians must avoid are the ones that might trigger legal proceedings against them, like the iffy campaign finance statements Santos filed that have spurred investigations and might result in prosecution. Garden variety lies that aren’t prosecutable are regularly forgotten by voters by the time their speakers run for reelection.
Politicians lie, lie and lie some more because they’ve learned voters seem not to care much about it when the lies are uncovered. (In a perfect world, the press would fully vet every politician’s every statement, but even before the industry’s decline it didn’t have the resources to perform mass lie detection.) In the long run, voters seem not to care whether a candidate’s credentials are legitimate or if they really climbed Mt. Everest in their stocking feet as they attest on the husting. So why bother fluffing your resume in the first place if voters will only shrug when they discover you stretched the truth? Could it be that, like committing minor acts of vandalism or petty shoplifting, telling lies about ourselves feels too good to resist, especially when engaged in the contest that is politics, where every day brings another public exercise in resume comparison?
When it comes to politics, a candidate’s lived experience should be less important than where they stand on the issue. For that reason alone, we’d be better off if politicians competed by deflating their resumes instead of ballooning them.
******
I do, however, want my neurosurgeon’s resume to be accurate. Send neurosurgeon references to [email protected]. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed pitched in the World Series. My Mastodon account has invented a cure for cancer. My Post account saved a baby from being run over in traffic. My RSS feed has accomplished nothing and has no ambitions.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Beijing: Efforts to revive China’s economy have become “complicated” with growing global competition to attract investment, President Xi Jinping has said, calling for steps to forestall and defuse major economic and financial risks, including those arising from the property sector and the piling local government debt.
In an article published in the official media on the subject “State of the Country’s Economy”, Xi said that more efforts should be made to attract and utilise foreign investment.
In a tacit admission of the disquieting state of the world’s second-largest economy which last year shrank to three per cent registering its second lowest growth rate in 50 years, Xi said that economic work in 2023 is complicated and the efforts to revive it should focus on the major problems and start with improving public expectations and boosting confidence in development.
In the article that is originally in the Chinese language and published in an official magazine, Xi, also the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China, noted that international competition for attracting investment is becoming more intense.
China, regarded as the factory of the world for decades, faced an increasing shift of international investments to several countries, including India, in the last few years due to three years of zero Covid policy as well as the government crackdown on big tech industries.
Last year the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of China totalled USD 17.94 trillion in 2022, falling below the 5.5 per cent official target.
The slow pace was blamed mainly on the strictly implemented zero-Covid policy leading to periodic lockdowns and the ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on big industrial firms besides the lingering real estate crisis.
This is the slowest growth of the Chinese economy since the 2.3 per cent registered in GDP in 1974.
Last year, China’s GDP in terms of dollars declined from USD 18 trillion in 2021 to USD 17.94 trillion last year mainly due to a sharp rise of the dollar against RMB (the Chinese currency) in 2022.
Public unrest due to economic slowdown is resulting in rare protests in the Communist country. Besides protests against the zero Covid policy in December last year, China in the last few weeks witnessed unprecedented protests by thousands of pensioners over health insurance cuts highlighting risks from an ageing population.
Pensioners in the central Chinese city of Wuhan city have taken to the streets twice over the past week to protest against cuts to medical services.
The rare protests underscore the challenge facing Beijing as it comes to terms with an ageing population, a shrinking workforce and the long-term financial health of its social security system, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
China is ageing rapidly, with the number of people aged 60 years and above reaching 267 million by the end of last year accounting for 18.9 per cent of the population, Wang Haidong, director of the National Health Commission’s Department of Aging and Health said.
It is estimated that the elderly population will top 300 million by 2025 and 400 million by 2035, he told official media here in September last year.
In his article, Xi noted that international competition for attracting investment is becoming more intense and urged more efforts to attract and utilise foreign capital.
Efforts should be made to expand market access, comprehensively improve the business environment, and provide targeted services to foreign-funded enterprises, he said.
He called for efforts to effectively forestall and defuse major economic and financial risks, including the systemic risks arising from the property sector, financial risks and local government debt risks.
According to 2019 estimates, China’s local governments’ debt rose to USD 2.58 trillion, which remained a constant worry for the central government. Xi said that there is still a lot of important work to be done in 2023 citing tasks such as advancing rural revitalisation on all fronts and planning a new round of reform across the board.
The Ohio derailment is still under investigation by multiple agencies, including the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB, an independent agency, has said preliminarily that an overheated wheel bearing on one of the cars is partially the culprit for the derailment.
However, derailments like these typically have multiple points of failure, and the NTSB’s investigation will likely take over a year to complete. Such NTSB probes typically examine any conceivable cause that could have led to a crash, including equipment malfunctions, poor system design, the lack of safety precautions, inadequate training, crew fatigue and myriad other factors.
“One hundred fifty cars is a really, really significant [number of cars],” said Sarah Feinberg, who dealt with multiple oil-train disasters and a fatal Amtrak derailment as leader of the Federal Railroad Administration under Barack Obama. “For years, the FRA and other safety regulators have raised concerns about trains of that size.”
Indeed, 150 cars is the FRA’s threshold for classifying a train as “very long,” even though no formal definition exists. In a 2019 study, the Government Accountability Office said 150 cars is more than twice the average length of freight trains operated by major railroads from 2008 through 2017. The GAO found that average freight train lengths had increased by 25 percent since 2008, and noted that some stretch to nearly three miles long.
The freight rail industry’s main trade group dismissed concerns about length. “Comparable length trains have been safely operating for decades and the industry’s safety record has seen dramatic improvements over those same decades,” said Jessica Kahanek, a spokesperson for the Association of American Railroads.
But the GAO authors note multiple concerns about train length, including that it can hamper crews’ ability to operate the trains, it can take longer for brakes to stop them, and safety risks can arise when firetrucks can’t get past multiple blocked rail crossings. The FRA wrote in a December report that it lacks the data “to determine safety consequences” of long trains, and in some cases doesn’t have enough authority to act on them.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is also studying the issue.
Others, especially labor unions, say the trains are too long for crews on opposite ends to communicate with each other, and that workers on board sometimes can’t hear track-based warning alarms up ahead. “Our radios aren’t built for the distances that these trains are built for,” Cassity said.
At the same time, one industry analyst noted, freight railroads such as Norfolk Southern, which operated the trains in the Ohio disaster, cannot refuse to carry hazardous materials such as vinyl chloride, one of the toxic, flammable chemicals released in East Palestine. That’s because railroads are considered “common carriers,” which are obligated to transport any legally permitted product.
“The government does not allow Norfolk Southern and the other railroads to carry hazardous materials,” said rail analyst Tony Hatch. “It compels them to carry them.”
Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine pledged during a television interview Wednesday to make Norfolk Southern “pay for everything” needed to deal with the aftermath of the disaster, while Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said in a statement that questions remain about the train’s brakes and DOT’s “regulatory approach to our nation’s rail system.”
Feinberg also touched on the brake issue, saying she believes that a type of advanced brake could have lessened the damage from the Ohio disaster.
The DOT under Obama had issued a rule in 2015 requiring railroads to use those kinds of electronically controlled pneumatic brakes on certain especially dangerous trains, in response to a spate of fiery derailments of freight cars transporting crude oil. But the Trump administration repealed the braking mandate in 2017, after a National Academy of Sciences study failed to conclusively determine that ECP braking technology was superior to others.
The type and location of locomotives used to brake trains is especially important for long trains. The NTSB final report on a 2017 derailment in Pennsylvania faulted the use of hand brakes and the arrangement of freight cars in that accident involving a 178-car train, which also released hazardous chemicals and forced the evacuation of a nearby town.
“I and many others have said for many years that an ECP braking system is a much safer braking system to have on” any kind of “significant” train load, Feinberg said.
Norfolk Southern defended the integrity of the train in the Ohio derailment, including its braking configuration. Spokesperson Thomas Crosson told POLITICO that the weight distribution of the train that derailed in Ohio “was uniform throughout” and that a braking locomotive was placed mid-train to help it stop properly.
The Ohio derailment has also brought intensifying criticism of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, including from conservative media outlets that slammed him for not speaking publicly about the accident until 10 days after it happened. Progressives like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) are also laying the incident in Buttigieg’s lap and calling on him to take “direct action.”
After days of calls for Buttigieg to engage more, the secretary weighed in Monday on Twitter to express concern about the people in and near East Palestine, whose “lives were upended through no fault of their own.” He also rattled off the multiple federal agencies involved in responding.
Railroad unions say the main problem is that corporate cost-cutting measures are eating into safety and raising the likelihood of disaster. This theme — corporate cost-cutting over safety — also underpinned part of why railroad unions threatened to strike last year.
Unions in particular target railroads’ implementation during the past decade of “precision scheduled railroading,” an operating model that focuses on minimizing workforce costs and maximizing equipment efficiency, including not leaving train cars idle.
Among the workforce cuts produced by this drive for efficiency were 40 percent of equipment maintenance workers, as GAO reported in December.
“We’ve heard reports from inspectors that the time they are allotted to inspect both sides of a rail car has decreased by 75 percent — from 2 minutes to as little as 30 seconds — thanks to the rail industry’s profits-over-people business model,” said Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department.
Kahanek from AAR responded that not only are trains inspected before departing a rail yard, technology along the track constantly assess each train’s soundness and safety as they move throughout the system.
Precision scheduling and other cuts made in the name of efficiency have worsened freight rail’s problems, said former Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), who chaired the House railroad subcommittee. “That was a huge change that reverberated throughout the entire North American freight rail industry,” he said. “And I think there has not been enough of a response by Congress to those changes.”
Railroads have been losing workers since 2015 and 2016, when waves of layoffs started and those who remained were made to work longer and less predictable hours under challenging conditions. Union officials say they’ve seen many seasoned workers with decades of experience leave the industry in frustration — even forgoing lucrative railroad retirement benefits — and railroads are now scrambling to hire novices to take their place.
The EPA has told Norfolk Southern it’s potentially liable under the Superfund clean law. But the agency said Sunday that the air in East Palestine is now safe to breathe.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
