BART UPDATE: Embarcadero station closed, Powell open to exiting customers, Montgomery and Civic Center fully open
Protesters in San Francisco stopped a BART train Monday evening at the Civic Center Station, which was shut down as authorities tried to quell the demonstration.
The station was closed and cleared about 5:30 p.m., authorities said, citing safety concerns. No arrests had been reported.
"Once the platform becomes unsafe, we can't jeopardize the safety of patrons and employees," BART Deputy Police Chief Dan Hartwig said.
People were angry that the transit agency cut underground cellular phone service for three hours last week in an effort to quell a protest over alleged BART Police brutality and the shootings of Charles Blair Hill and Oscar Grant by transit police.
SFPD was seen clearing entrance at Embarcadero BART
As President Obama cruises through the Midwest the next three days, he'll be riding in two buses -- sleek and black, with dark-tinted windows -- that cost $1.1 million, the Associated Press reports. A Secret Service spokesman explained that the agency has to protect politicians riding in buses all the time anyway, and it plans on using the buses for future candidates and officials.
The White House says Obama will spend the roadtrip listening to voters vent their frustration with Washington and talk about their economic struggles. The full length of the bus:
A few minutes before the city's 9 o'clock curfew went into effect Friday night, 16-year-old Ryan Stanton was pretty sure he wouldn't be arrested for violating it on South Street.
"They shouldn't be able to violate my rights," said Stanton, who came from Mount Laurel to hang out with friends. "If the cops ask me, I'm gonna explain why I have the right to assemble peacefully."
That didn't work out too well for him. By 9:15 p.m., Stanton was in a police van at 5th and South streets waiting to go to the 3rd District station at 11th and Wharton so his parents could pick him up.
"We're going to take this very seriously," said police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers as officers did paperwork for Stanton and a few other kids. "We're setting a tone, and that's important."
Mayor Nutter set the curfew for kids younger than 18 in Center City and University City earlier this week in response to the recent rash of teen mobs.
On South Street, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey drove down the street at the start of the curfew, and officers could be seen enforcing it, checking the ID of anyone who appeared younger than 18.
Evers said parents of some violators might receive warnings, but a first offense could cost $150. A second, he said, costs $300.
"I have a feeling we're going to have to make some arrests tonight," Lt. Joseph Bologna, commander of the South Street mini- station, said. But Bologna said he didn't anticipate many arrests, since police put the message out.
A sergeant in Center City's 6th District said police planned to continue bringing them in all night.
As of 10:30 p.m., 15 were being held there and an estimated 15 were on the way. At the 3rd District, police said a group of 20 was en route. But in West Philadelphia's 18th District, police reported no curfew arrests as of 10:30.
"The steps we're taking are definitely gonna pay off," Evers said, surveying the corner. "I don't see that many juveniles.
In July, an allegedly rogue band of members started a YouTube page and Twitter account stating that Anonymous would launch a cyber attack on Nov. 5, the day in 1605 when Guy Fawkes famously tried to blow up London's House of Lords and kill England's King James I but was instead arrested.
Rioters took advantage of a vigil for a man killed by police and turned violent Saturday night, tossing petrol bombs and "missiles" at officers and looting stores, London's Metropolitan Police said Sunday.
"The behavior by a criminal minority put police officers, fire brigade personnel and the public at significant risk," Cmdr. Adrian Hanstock said in a statement.
At least 42 people were arrested and 26 officers were injured, police said.
The violence came amid protests over the killing of Mark Duggan, who was riding in a cab when he was killed Thursday. Police stopped the cab in an attempted arrest, and soon shots were fired, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said.
The commission did not say who shot the 29-year-old, nor why the cab was stopped.
"The death of Mr. Duggan is extremely regrettable," Hanstock said. "It is absolutely tragic that someone has died, but that does not give a criminal minority the right to destroy businesses" and "steal from their local community."
Demonstrators Saturday night burned police cars, a bus and buildings to protest Duggan's death. They pelted officers with bottles and bricks as police in riot gear charged at the crowd and blocked off streets.
A double-decker bus and some buildings were also set ablaze, sending bright orange flames shooting into the night sky.
"The rioting in Tottenham last night was utterly unacceptable," Downing Street Sunday. "There is no justification for the aggression the police and the public faced, or for the damage to property."
The protests started peacefully Saturday night when about 30 friends and relatives of the victim gathered outside Tottenham police station to protest the fatal shooting.
Hanstock said "there was no indication that the protest would deteriorate into the levels of criminal and violent disorder that we saw. We believe that certain elements, who were not involved with the vigil, took the opportunity to commit disorder and physically attack police officers, verbally abuse fire brigade personnel and destroy vehicles and buildings."
Police have "recovered excellent" surveillance video of the incident, and "those who committed disorder and criminal acts will be identified" and held accountable, he said.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission has appealed to witnesses to come forward.
"We already have one grieving family in our community and further violence will not heal that pain," said David Lammy, member of parliament for Tottenham.
"The Tottenham community and Mark Duggan's family and friends need to understand what happened on Thursday evening when Mark lost his life," he said. "To understand those facts, we must have calm."
Still, pockets of unrest lingered early Sunday in the Tottenham area, police said.
"These are very distressing scenes for Londoners in general and the local community in particular," said Cmdr. Stephen Watson. "For those who involved themselves in this level of violence, there is no excuse."
A British police watchdog group announced plans to meet Sunday with Duggan's family.
This photo of what looks like a minor case of Prius-on-Prius vehicular violence may actually be a piece of automotive history: the first accident caused by Google's self-driving car. Whose name should the cop write down on the ticket? UPDATE!
Sent in by a Jalopnik tipster, the photos were snapped earlier this week near Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. The Prius — recognizable as a Google self-driving prototype from the roof equipment that's smaller than a typical Google Streetview image collector — appears to have rear-ended another Prius.
This is precisely why we're worried about self-driving cars. Perhaps the complicated set of lasers and imaging systems that Google chief autonomous car researcher Sebastian Thrun called "the perfect driving mechanism" thought it was just looking at its shadow.
Earlier this year, Google convinced the state legislature of Nevada to create a special license allowing self-driving cars on the state's freeways, and its been racking up hundreds of thousands of miles in California,where there's no law banning them.
Yet Google has never answered the question of who's ultimately responsible for any accidents that happen while the software controls the vehicle. There's a driver in all of Google's tests who can take control, and probably gets the ticket in this case — but Google imagines these vehicles spreading far beyond its corporate campus.
Google can't be hoping to have its software legally blamed for a slice of the traffic crashes that cost more than $160 billion a year in this country. Yet if the operators of Google's self-driving cars retain all legal responsibility, simply turning the system on would be seen in court as a sign they weren't paying attention.
Already some of the more forward-thinking technologists have questioned whether autonomous vehicles should be smart enough to sacrifice its own passengers to save other people in an imminent crash. Aside from promising the worst of a "Blade Runner" future, such thought experiments illustrate why self-driving cars will require such a huge conceptual hurdle to catch on in the United States.
The biggest battle in auto safety today involves keeping drivers focused on driving. Google's self-driving car seems like the ultimate distracted driving machine.
UPDATE: The boys at Business Insider received the following quote from a Google spokesperson about the accident: "Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car."
Of course, how would we actually know whether it was being manually-driven at the time? Now that we've got confirmation that this was one of Google's self-driven cars, it's high time we got a closer look at the details of how they're trying to make it happen — and any evidence that this actually was being driven by a real, live human being.
UPDATE #2: NBC's San Francisco station spoke with a woman who witnessed the crash and reported that in addition to the two Priuses, the crash also involved three other vehicles:
Google's Prius struck another Prius, which then struck her Honda Accord that her brother was driving. That Accord then struck another Honda Accord, and the second Accord hit a separate, non-Google-owned Prius.
Striking a car with enough force to trigger a four-car chain reaction suggests the Google car was moving at a decent clip. Google says its unable to provide us with a copy of any official accident report, but that may be the only way to know what happened for sure.
The dog days of summer aren't here just yet. At least not for the undisputed two best teams in the National League. No, no, there's a playoff atmosphere at AT&T Park for the big weekend series, and the San Francisco Giants and Philadelphia Phillies are fighting each other tooth-and-nail with playoff intensity.
With an emphasis on the word fighting.
It all went down in the sixth inning on Friday night. Jimmy Rollins(notes) had just singled home two, pushing Philadelphia's lead to a pretty comfortable 8-2. Rollins would then steal second base, which apparently rubbed a few Giants the wrong way. Hey, I guess when you're only expecting to score six runs in a series you can't expect to score six in four innings.
Unhappy about being the target, Victorino flipped the bat away and took one threatening step towards Ramirez. Catcher Eli Whiteside(notes) quickly hopped in front of Victorino as a human shield for Ramirez, and then appeared to challenge any and all members of the on-charging Phillies, before attempting to take down the smaller Placido Polanco(notes) with a double leg.
He failed.
Soon thereafter the benches were completely emptied and a giant rugby scrum broke out on the first base side of the pitching mound. Victorino, who at that point was still being restrained by home plate umpire Mike Muchlinski, broke free and dove recklessly into the pile, colliding with Giants hitting coach Hensley Meulens. Amazingly, neither were injured as the entire blob seemed to roll over them to the third base side of the mound.
When all was said and done, Victorino, Whiteside and Ramirez were all ejected from the game. But Victorino insisted afterward that he never intended to incite a brawl.
"Yeah, absolutely, I think he did," Victorino said of Ramirez plunking him intentionally. "That's why I took a step forward. I had no intentions of going out there and charging the mound. I just wanted to go out there and get an answer. … Obviously, Eli felt like, from looking at his reaction, I was going to go. He started jumping around. Polanco came in and he tackled Polanco. Everything escalated from there."
While I agree that Whiteside's actions escalated the situation, I can't really fault him for misreading Victorino's body language. That, along with Victorino's reentry into the fray that risked injury to several, will likely earn the Flyin' Hawaiian the stiffest penalty. Though Whiteside is sure to get a healthy one himself.
By the way, the Phillies held on to win the game 9-2. Oh, and the two teams will hook up again the next two afternoons. More fireworks? Stay tuned.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Insurgents shot down a NATO Chinook helicopter during an overnight operation in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 37 people on board, a coalition military official said on Saturday. It was believed to be the deadliest helicopter crash in the nearly decade-long war, punctuating a surge of violence across the country even as American and NATO forces begin a modest drawdown of troops.
Afghan military officials put the death toll at 38, including 31 Americans and 7 Afghan commandos. President Hamid Karzai’s office, in a statement, described the American casualties as members of the Special Operations forces. The coalition official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it, confirmed that most of the dead were NATO forces, but could not immediately identify their nationalities or the units to which they belonged.
“The president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has expressed his condolences to the U.S. President Barack Obama and to the families of the victims,” Mr. Karzai’s office said in the statement.
The helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in the Tangi Valley of the Wardak Province just west of Kabul, the coalition official said. The Taliban claimed credit for the attack.
If confirmed, Saturday’s crash would be the deadliest day for American forces since the war began. A NATO spokesman, Capt. Justin Brockhoff of the United States Air Force, confirmed the crash but could provide no further information, including what caused the crash or whether there were casualties.
There were conflicting accounts about when the helicopter went down. A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, said insurgents shot down the helicopter around 11 p.m. Friday as it was starting an operation on a house where the militants were gathering in the Tangi Joyee region of the district of Saidabad in the eastern part of the province. Eight militants were killed in the fight, which continued after the helicopter fell, Mr. Mujahid said.
“The fresh reports from the site tells us that there are still Americans doing search operations for the bodies and pieces of the helicopter are on the ground,” he said.
Although the nationality of the NATO soldiers killed was not confirmed, Americans were known to be carrying out most of the operations in the area.
Gen. Abdul Qayum Baqizoy, police chief of Wardak, said the operation began around 1 a.m. Saturday as NATO and Afghan forces attacked a Taliban compound in Jaw-e-mekh Zareen village in the Tangi Valley. The firefight lasted at least two hours, the general said.
“It was at the end of the operation that one of the NATO helicopters crashed,” he said. “We don’t know yet the cause of the crash, and we don’t know how many NATO soldiers were on board.”
The Tangi Valley runs along the border of Wardak and the neighboring province of Logar. Taliban activity has been heavy in both provinces, which border the capital of Kabul.
Prior to Saturday, the biggest single-day loss of life for the American military in Afghanistan came on June 28, 2005 during Operation Red Wing in Kunar Province, when a Chinook helicopter carrying Special Operations troops was shot down in eastern Kunar Province as it tried to provide reinforcements to forces trapped in heavy fighting. Sixteen Special Operations troops, most of them Navy Seals, were killed in the crash. Three more Seals were killed in fighting on the ground.
Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting from Kabul.
A man is dead after a shooting in Delaware County.
The incident happened Friday night on 9th Street in Chester.
Authorities say that Police shot a man in his early 20s. He was taken to the Crozer-Chester Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.
A witness claims that police shot the man in the back while he ran away. The witness also claims that police said the man had a gun. However, a gun has not yet been found at the scene.
The witness' claims have not been confirmed by police.
URGENT:Credit rating agency Standard and Poor's says it has downgraded the U.S. credit rating from a top AAA rating to AA+, the first debt downgrade in U.S. history.
The United States has lost its sterling credit rating.
Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's on Friday lowered the nation's AAA rating for the first time since granting it in 1917. The move came less than a week after a gridlocked Congress finally agreed to spending cuts that would reduce the debt by more than $2 trillion -- a tumultuous process that contributed to convulsions in financial markets. The promised cuts were not enough to satisfy S&P.
The drop in the rating by one notch to AA-plus was telegraphed as a possibility back in April. The three main credit agencies, which also include Moody's Investor Service and Fitch, had warned during the budget fight that if Congress did not cut spending far enough, the country faced a downgrade. Moody's said it was keeping its AAA rating on the nation's debt, but that it might still lower it.
This Orange substance was found on the shore of Kivalina, Alaska on Wednesday, residents say.
State and federal scientists are trying to identify a mysterious orange substance that washed up on the shore of a village in northwestern Alaska this week.
Residents on Wednesday noticed an orange sheen in the lagoon in front of Kivalina, Alaska, and clumps of the substance on the beach, city manager Janet Mitchell said.
An orange sheen could be seen in the village
The stuff on the shore had "an oily feel to it, like baby oil," resident Mida Swan said Friday. She said she detected no odor from the substance.
The substance also may have rained down on the village Wednesday evening, because it was found in buckets that some residents used to collect rainwater that night, Mitchell said.
The state Environmental Health Laboratory is preparing to send samples to scientists at various labs, including a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Juneau, said Emanuel Hignutt, the EHL's analytical chemistry manager.
Hignutt said it's not immediately clear what the substance is.
"There doesn't appear to be any evidence of a release of oil or hazardous substances at this time, but we're continuing to investigate and try to get lab determinations on what exactly the material is," Hignutt said.
"What it is - an algal bloom, or something inorganic - that's what we're working to get some more information on," he said.
Mitchell said the substance also was found in the Wulik River, which flows into the lagoon and is a source of the village's drinking water. She said the village would delay topping off its water storage tanks, which it does every summer so that it has enough water for the winter, until the substance is identified.
Kilvalina, a village of about 430 people, is about 650 miles northwest of Anchorage, Alaska.
Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's on Friday downgraded the credit rating of the United States, stripping the world's largest economy of its prized AAA status.
In July, S&P placed the United States' rating on "CreditWatch with negative implications" as the debt ceiling debate devolved into partisan bickering.
In July, S&P placed the United States' rating on "CreditWatch with negative implications" as the debt ceiling debate devolved into partisan bickering.
In its report Friday, S&P ruled that the U.S. fell short: "The downgrade reflects our opinion that the ... plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics."
S&P also cited dysfunctional policymaking in Washington as a factor in the downgrade. "The effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges."
Rating agencies -- S&P, Moody's and Fitch -- analyze risk and give debt a "grade" that reflects the borrower's ability to pay the underlying loans.
The safest bets are stamped AAA. That's where U.S. debt has stood for years. Moody's first assigned the United States a AAA rating in 1917. The country's new S&P rating is AA+ -- still strong, but not the highest.
In the days after lawmakers managed to strike a debt-ceiling deal, the two other major rating agencies have both said the deficit reduction actions taken by Congress were a step in the right direction.
On Tuesday, Moody's said the United States will keep its sterling AAA credit rating, but lowered its outlook on U.S. debt to "negative."
Even after a downgrade, the United States will likely still be able to pay its bills for years to come and remains a good credit risk.
A downgrade really just amounst to one agency's opinion. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke articulated that view in April when S&P placed the United States on credit watch. "S&P's action didn't really tell us anything," Bernanke said. "Everybody who reads the newspaper knows that the United States has a very serious long-term fiscal problem."
Investors have limited options for making safe investments, and Treasuries are effectively as liquid as cash. And other big countries have been downgraded and were still able to borrow at low rates.
At the same time, some experts warn that a downgrade could gum up the banking system and ripple out onto Main Street. Treasuries are used as collateral in many transactions between financial institutions and grease the skids of lending.
Consumers and investors could feel the impact of a downgrade. Interest rates on bonds could rise, and rates on mortgages and other types of loans along with them.
Government-backed agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may also be downgraded. It's also possible that some state and local governments could also face a downgrade.
And investment decisions would become complicated for large institutional investors that are required to hold highly-rated securities.
