Investigators in Spain are saying the driver of the train that derailed last Wednesday, killing 79 people, was using his cell phone at the time of the accident. It has also become clear that the train was going 94 mph on a sharp bend of track where the speed limit was only 49 mph. It doesn’t matter if a driver is operating a train, car, tour bus, airplane, tug boat or bicycle — I think we can all agree he or she should be giving their undivided attention. In this instance, it appears the driver received a call on his work phone to take direction on an approach to the train’s final destination, and it seems he was also consulting a paper document. It’s still unclear whether a computer failure is partly to blame for the accident, especially since the brakes should have been applied 2.5 miles before the train hit the dangerous curve. Either way, the train company should have had procedures that would have prevented this from happening.
Family Finds Rare Animal on Vacation, Then Serves It For Dinner
Nothing like catching your own food and eating it on vacation. Except for when you find out that your nightly catch is an extremely rare species.
That’s what happened recently in Greece. While vacationing in the sunny southern European country, Labros Hydras captured an octopus while snorkeling, and not knowing that it happened to be an extremely rare hexapus, killed it and ended up preparing it for family dinner.
For those not in the know, a hexapus is an octopus with six legs instead of eight. There is dispute on where the first one was sighted, but it was either in the early nineties or 2008. And now there would have been yet another, if it hadn’t been consumed for dinner instead.
But when you have had a vacation tradition for years of catching your own seafood, should you be held responsible for your actions?
“It tasted just like a normal octopus, but now I feel really bad,” Hydras told The Telegraph. “When we caught it, there was nothing to suggest it was any different or had been damaged. I thought it had just been born with six tentacles.”
And in light of his actions, Hydras is insistent on doing what he can to remedy the situation. “Now I want to pursue the scientific angle to make scientists aware of the existence of the wild hexapus. It is the least that I can do given my ignorance and guilt that I feel for killing such a rare animal.”
Lesson: eating locally isn’t always the best policy.
Heathrow Is Now Tracking How Late You Are
Is your flight in 30 minutes or 45? You don’t have time to look at your boarding pass, so you hustle as fast as you can, awkwardly managing your oversized carry-on which you know that you are going to get scolded for. When you get to security, instead of being waved through you are turned right back around and sent off to the check-in gate. You won’t be making your plane, and the pilot of your flight knows it.
Creepy or helpful?
While it might feel Big Brotherish, Heathrow Airport’s new “positive boarding” initiative is intended to help not only keep flights on time, but also ensure that passengers have up to date information to know how much they need to hustle or not.
When a passenger passes through a security checkpoint now, individual information about that passenger will pop up on the screen, showing which flight they are on and whether or not they are going to be able to make it. Passengers who are too late will be turned around, and the information will be passed along to the airline so that they can immediately begin removing the passenger’s bag.Although Heathrow claims it’s the first technology of its kind, tracking passengers is nothing new. In Italy, a couple of airports track Bluetooth signals, and SITA is a known service that provides real-time tracking software and line management.
This all might sound like an excessive use of technology, but Heathrow claims that in the first week of using its new service, 35,000 passengers used the positive boarding technology as part of their trip. Data shows that of the airlines using the technology, 44% of the flights had passengers who could have delayed the final departure. 10 passengers who were running very late were turned around and told they didn’t have the time to make it through security. Those 10 passengers probably weren’t too happy, but I’m sure that the passengers on the flights that departed promptly were satisfied. All the more reason to give yourself ample time to get to the airport and board your plane.
Is This The Tree That Gave Birth To The Multi-Million Dollar Coffee Industry?
The man standing on the mule road between the four-wheel drive I was in and, supposedly, the tree that gave birth to the global multi-billion dollar coffee industry, bore a striking resemblance to actor Jimmy “J.J.” Walker of the 1970s sitcom “Good Times.” So much so that I almost didn’t notice the 2-foot-long machete in his hand. “Dyno-mite,” I sarcastically muttered to myself, as our idling car and the Ethiopian version of Jimmy Walker continued their staring contest. I’d just endured an hour’s drive over bumpy oft-unpaved roads from Jimma, a town of 130,000 in western Ethiopia, whose main renown might be that the countryside surrounding it produces some of the best coffee in the world. I knew we were close when we passed a small billboard showing an illustration of a woman plucking coffee cherry from a tree with the words underneath it: “The birthplace of coffee Arabica, 10km.”
But now I was just short of reaching the caffeine-scented Garden of Eden, stuck in an apparent showdown between us and a machete-wielding man.I had come to Ethiopia for one reason: coffee. Specifically, I wanted to find out what made Ethiopian coffee among the best in the world. AFAR magazine had sent me to write a feature article about it. Needless to say, while I was here I drank enough java to make my head spin around a few times.
But for a quick minute I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it out of Ethiopia alive. The man with the machete began walking toward our vehicle, a sideward glance in tact, and began talking to the driver in Oromiffa, the language of western Ethiopia. And then suddenly he was in the car with us. His machete still resting on his shoulder, he barked out directions to the driver. A few minutes later, there we were, standing around a 10-foot-high tree, rotting coffee cherry dangling from its limbs, like cotton pills on an old sweater. Jimmy “J.J.” Walker, whose real name I would learn was Awol Abagojam, a local coffee farmer, gave a swan-like sweep of his arm and said: “This is it, the first coffee tree.”
“But really right here?” I asked. “This very tree?”
Unless this man is to believed, no one really knows where the first coffee tree is, only that coffee supposedly originated from Ethiopia. Which is now shrouded in myth: one day a ninth-century goatherd named Kaldi noticed his goats were “dancing.” He remembered that the animals had been munching on the fruit of a tree and so he plucked a few himself and delivered it to the monks of a nearby monastery. It didn’t take long for the monks to realize the uplifting power of the fruit. And soon, as the story goes, coffee was born.
I have to admit, it was an underwhelming sight, even if this was the tree that changed what we drink in the morning (and in the afternoon and, when it calls for it, in the evening). I waved goodbye to the friendly farmer with the machete, got back in the car, and headed back to Jimma where I would, naturally, drink more coffee.
How Much Does It Cost To Build A Metro In Saudi Arabia?
If you live in a cosmopolitan city with a good subway system, it can be easy to take your public transportation for granted. Many of the world’s most famous subway systems have been around for decades, and most of us have forgotten the price and political willpower it took to put them in place.
Building a completely new metro or subway system nowadays isn’t only a longterm commitment, it’s a large financial one. Saudi Arabia is the latest place to jump on board the public transportation train. So how much does it cost to build a Saudi Arabian metro? $22 billion apparently. That’s the number attached to the new system proposed for the capital city of Riyadh. Construction will begin next year and trains should be running by 2019.The design alone is a major cost — one of the main stations will be done by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid — not to mention the construction and other expenses. But investing in infrastructure is smart, even in oil-rich countries of the Middle East. As the president of the Arriyadh Development Authority (ADA) Ibrahim bin Mohammed al Sultan said, the project will be “a major driver of employment and economic development.”
But how does the cost of the new metro system compare to others around the world? Two years ago Africa’s second metro opened up in Algiers, and came in at a final price of only $1.2 billion. But in the Western World, that doesn’t cover a whole lot. In Singapore, the new Circle Line which runs 22 miles, cost $4.8 billion. In New York City the Second Avenue subway line is projected at over $17 billion — and that’s just one line. Meanwhile in Paris, $39 billion is being spent to build 200 kilometers of new metro lines with 72 stations in and around Paris. How long does that take? The project should be finished by 2030. That makes 2019 seem like it’s just around the corner.