Nation roundup for December 3

Drones might be future of delivery

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is working on a way to get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less — via self-guided drone.

Consider it the modern version of a pizza delivery boy, minus the awkward teenager.

Amazon.com Inc. says it’s working on the so-called Prime Air unmanned aircraft project but it will take years to advance the technology and for the Federal Aviation Administration to create the necessary rules and regulations.

The project was first reported by CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday night, hours before millions of shoppers turned to their computers to hunt Cyber Monday bargains.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in the interview that while his octocopters look like something out of science fiction, there’s no reason they can’t be used as delivery vehicles.

Bezos said the drones can carry packages that weigh up to five pounds, which covers about 86 percent of the items Amazon delivers. The drones the company is testing have a range of about 10 miles, which Bezos noted could cover a significant portion of the population in urban areas.

Bezos told “60 Minutes” the project could become a working service in four or five years.

Unlike the drones used by the military, Bezos’ proposed flying machines won’t need humans to control them remotely. Amazon’s drones would receive a set of GPS coordinates and automatically fly to them.

Man sentenced in hepatitis case

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A traveling medical technician was sentenced Monday to 39 years in prison for stealing painkillers and infecting dozens of patients in multiple states with hepatitis C through tainted syringes.

“I don’t blame the families for hating me,” David Kwiatkowski said after hearing about 20 statements from people he infected and their relatives. “I hate myself.”

Kwiatkowski, 34, was a cardiac technologist in 18 hospitals in seven states before being hired at New Hampshire’s Exeter Hospital in 2011. He had moved from job to job despite being fired at least four times over allegations of drug use and theft. Since his arrest last year, 46 people have been diagnosed with the same strain of hepatitis C he carries.

U.S. Attorney John Kacavas said the sentence “ensures that this serial infector no longer is in a position to do harm to innocent … people.”

Ex-UNC teacher charged in scam

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (AP) — A former professor at the center of an academic scandal involving athletes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been charged with a felony, accused of receiving $12,000 in payment for a lecture course in which he held no classes.

A grand jury on Monday indicted Julius Nyang’Oro with a single felony count of obtaining property by false pretenses.

Nyang’Oro was chairman of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies. He resigned from that post in 2011 during a campus investigation that found certain classes in the department that instructors did not teach, undocumented grade changes and faked faculty signatures on some grade reports.

The scandal contributed to the departure of football coach Butch Davis and the resignation of a former chancellor, Holden Thorp.

Nyang’Oro, who retired in 2012, could face up to 10 months in prison if convicted. The university said it recouped the $12,000 from his final paycheck.

Calls to two numbers listed for Nyang’Oro rang busy. A man answering a call to a third number for Nyang’Oro on indictment documents hung up without comment and follow-up messages weren’t returned.

Orange County District Attorney James Woodall said the professor’s 2011 summer course was supposed to have had regular class meetings. But he said Nyang’oro instead ran an independent study class that required students to write papers but not show up. The school found that the course, a late addition to the schedule, had an enrollment of 18 football players and one former football player.

A campus investigation into academic fraud released last year blamed the scandal solely on Nyang’oro and a department administrator who also has since retired. The probe led by former Gov. Jim Martin concluded that alleged fraud didn’t involve other faculty or members of the athletic department.

Martin, a former college chemistry professor, was aided by consultants with experience in academic investigations. After shortcomings of the report’s method were highlighted, Martin and university officials said they lacked the subpoena powers of State Bureau of Investigation, or SBI, to force people to answer questions and produce evidence.

“Both the university and Mr. Woodall relied on the SBI to help determine whether any criminal acts had occurred, since the SBI had broad investigative powers not available to the university,” said Tom Ross, president of the state university system.

He added in his statement Monday that the university’s ongoing cooperation with the criminal process will continue to its conclusion.

Martin said there was no evidence the university’s athletics department pushed students into courses with known irregularities that would allow athletes to remain eligible for competition. Unauthorized grade changes in the African studies department were not limited to student-athletes, Martin said, and athletes generally didn’t flock to problematic African studies courses.

The NCAA sanctioned the university’s football program in March 2012 with a one-year bowl ban and scholarship reductions for previously discovered improper benefits including cash and travel accommodations. The NCAA reviewed irregularities in the African studies department after an earlier campus probe found 54 problem classes between 2007 and 2011. The collegiate sports oversight body told university officials it had found no new rules violations.

The school’s chancellor issued her own statement Monday on the indictment.

“The action described in today’s indictment is completely inconsistent with the standards and aspirations of this great institution,” Chancellor Carol Folt said in a statement. “This has been a difficult chapter in the university’s history, and we have learned many lessons.”

NTSB: Train going too fast at curve before wreck

YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) — A commuter train that derailed over the weekend, killing four passengers, was hurtling at 82 mph as it entered a 30 mph curve, a federal investigator said Monday. But whether the wreck was the result of human error or brake trouble was unclear, he said.

Asked why the train was going so fast, National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener said: “That’s the question we need to answer.”

He would not disclose what the engineer operating the train had told investigators. Weener said investigators were examining the engineer’s cellphone — apparently to determine whether he was distracted.

Weener said the information on the locomotive’s speed was preliminary and extracted from the Metro-North train’s two data recorders, taken from the wreckage after the Sunday morning accident in the Bronx.

He said the throttle went to idle six seconds before the derailed train came to a complete stop — “very late in the game” for a train going that fast — and the brakes were fully engaged five seconds before the train stopped.

Asked whether the tragedy was the result of human error or faulty brakes, Weener said: “The answer is, at this point in time, we can’t tell.”

He said investigators are not aware of any problems with the brakes during the nine stops the train made before the derailment.

As investigators mined the data recorders for information, workers righted the fallen cars along the curve, a bend so sharp that the speed limit during the approach drops from 70 mph to 30 mph.

It takes about a mile for a train going 70 mph to stop, according to Steve Ditmeyer, an adjunct professor of railway management at Michigan State University and a former official with the Federal Railroad Administration.

The wreck came two years before the federal government’s deadline for Metro-North and other railroads to install automatic-slowdown technology designed to prevent catastrophic accidents caused by human error.

Metro-North’s parent agency and other railroads have pressed the government to extend the deadline a few years because of the cost and complexity of the Positive Train Control technology, which uses GPS, wireless radio and computers to monitor locomotives’ position and speed and stop trains from colliding, derailing or going the wrong way.

“Assuming the braking system was working normally, this crash would not have happened” if a PTC system had been in place, said Grayd Cothen, a former safety official with the Federal Railroad Administration.

He said the system would probably have alerted the engineer to the speed of the train and the approaching curve, and if the engineer had failed to brake manually, the PTC would have probably forced the train to stop.

“This incident, if anything, heightens the importance of additional safety measures, like that one,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, which is also served by Metro-North. “And speaking for myself, I’d be very loath to be more flexible or grant more time.”

Margie Anders, a spokeswoman for Metro-North’s parent, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said that the agency began planning for a PTC system as soon as the law was put into effect.

“It’s not a simple, off-the-shelf solution,” she said.

The engineer, William Rockefeller, was injured and “is totally traumatized by everything that has happened,” said Anthony Bottalico, executive director of the rail employees union. He said Rockefeller, 46, was cooperating fully with investigators.

“He’s a sincere human being with an impeccable record that I know of. He’s diligent and competent,” Bottalico said. Rockefeller has been an engineer for about 11 years and a Metro-North employee for about 20, he said.

While the train’s seven cars and locomotive were gradually returned to their tracks Monday, the 26,000 weekday riders on the railroad’s affected Hudson Line faced a complicated commute.

Many used shuttle buses and cars to get to work. But no major delays were reported during the early rush hour.

On Sunday, the train was about half full, with about 150 people aboard, when it ran off the rails around 7:20 a.m. while rounding a bend where the Harlem and Hudson rivers meet. The lead car landed inches from the water. In addition to the four people killed, more than 60 were injured.

Many victims had been released from hospitals by Monday afternoon.

Seven were still in an intensive-care unit at St. Barnabas Hospital, some with spinal injuries, emergency department director Dr. David Listman said. And two patients were reported in critical condition at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

The injured included five police officers who were heading to work, according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and a 14-year-old boy who was taking a weekend ride with his father on the same train the youngster usually takes to school.

The train’s assistant conductor, Maria Herbert, suffered an eye injury and a broken collarbone, Bottalico said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on NBC’s “Today” show that he thinks speed will turn out to be a factor in a crash he called “your worst nightmare.”

The MTA identified the dead as Donna L. Smith, 54, of Newburgh; James G. Lovell, 58, of Cold Spring; James M. Ferrari, 59, of Montrose; and Ahn Kisook, 35, of Queens. Three of the dead were found outside the train; one was inside.

Lovell, an audio technician who had worked the “Today” show and other NBC programs, was traveling to Manhattan to work on the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, longtime friend Janet Barton said. The tree-lighting ceremony is Wednesday night.

“He always had a smile on his face and was quick to share a friendly greeting,” ”Today” executive producer Don Nash said in a message to staffers.

The NTSB has been urging railroads for decades to install Positive Train Control technology. Congress in 2008 required dozens of railroads, including Metro-North, to do so by 2015.

The MTA awarded $428 million in contracts in September to develop the system for Metro-North and its sister Long Island Rail Road. But the MTA has asked for an extension on the deadline to 2018, saying it faces technological and other hurdles in installing such a system across more than 1,000 rail cars and 1,200 miles of track.

The derailment came amid a troubled year for Metro-North, and marked the first time in the railroad’s 31-year history that a passenger was killed in an accident.

In May, a train derailed in Bridgeport, Conn., and was struck by a train coming in the opposite direction, injuring 73 passengers, two engineers and a conductor. In July, a freight train full of garbage derailed near the site of Sunday’s wreck.

___