QUOTE OF THE DAY “I woke up when the car started rolling several times.Then I saw the gravel coming at me, and I heard people screaming.” Joel Zaritsky, a passenger on a commuter train that derailed in the Bronx, killing four Article, 1A
U.S. lawmakers:
Terror threat up
WASHINGTON - The terrorism threat against the United States is increasing, and Americans aren’t as safe as they were a year or two ago, the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said there are more terrorist groups than ever, with more sophisticated and hard-to-detect bombs.
“There is huge malevolence out there,” she said.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said there’s enormous pressure on U.S. intelligence services “to get it right, to prevent an attack.”
Rogers said that job is becoming more difficult because al-Qaida is changing, with more affiliates around the world. He said some groups that once operated independently have joined with al-Qaida.
Rogers said terrorists are adopting the idea that “maybe smaller events are OK” and still might achieve their goals.
“That makes it exponentially harder for our intelligence services to stop an event like that from happening,” he said in a joint interview on CNN’s State of the Union that aired Sunday.
Although neither lawmaker offered specifics about what led them to their conclusions, Feinstein spoke of “a real displaced aggression in this very fundamentalist jihadist Islamic community.”Fatal N.M. freight train wreck probed
LAS CRUCES, N.M. - Authorities are investigating a freight train derailment in southern New Mexico that killed three railroad employees when the train’s locomotive plunged 40 feet down a ravine.
Police on Sunday identified the three as 38-year-old Donald White, 60-year-old Steven Corse and 50-year-old Ann Thompson. White lived in Silver City, N.M., and Corse and Thompson lived in the northern Arizona community of Paulden.
No other people were on the train.
State police spokesman Emmanuel Gutierrez said it’s unknown what caused Saturday afternoon’s derailment near the community of Bayard, about 75 miles northwest of Las Cruces. It’s also unclear what preceded the derailment.Investigators reach site of plane crash
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Federal investigators Sunday started documenting the wreckage of a plane crash in remote southwest Alaska that killed four people and injured six Friday night.
A break in weather conditions allowed two investigators - from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration - Sunday to reach the scene where a single-engine aircraft went down near the village of Saint Marys, said Clint Johnson, the chief of the safety board’s Alaska regional office.
The single-engine Hageland Aviation Cessna 208 crashed about 6:30 p.m. Friday about 4 miles from Saint Marys. It left Bethel on a scheduled flight for Mountain Village and eventually Saint Marys.
Investigators will be at the site for at least a day or two, collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses, Johnson said. Another safety board investigator in Anchorage is planning to interview survivors of the crash.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 12/02/2013