Deadly costly consequences for skimping on the maintenance?...


PG&E to stand trial over deadly California wildfire
wrote:

A California utility giant must face trial for manslaughter for its role in a 2020 wildfire that killed four people, a state judge has ruled. It is the latest legal trouble for Pacific Gas & Electric, which has been blamed for a series of deadly wildfires in the state in recent years.

A judge found prosecutors had presented enough evidence during a preliminary hearing for the company to stand trial.

PG&E - the state's biggest utility provider - has pleaded not guilty...

... PG&E filed for bankruptcy in 2019 after its faulty equipment sparked several fires in California, including the 2018 Camp Fire which killed 84 people. The company reached a $13.5bn (£11bn) settlement with the victims of that wildfire and several others in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

But what of the Directors and their directions?...

Stay safe folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

It looks like the little leprechaun's push for profits (and personal bonuses) is finally taking its toll on our national airline's reputation.

Electrical fire at Melbourne Airport surrounds Qantas plane in smoke.

This is just another incident in a long line that have been happening of late.

... To me, that sounds and smells like a total cover-up.


How conveniently convenient?

Don't look too deeply??

[...]

It said it was hoping for a response within two weeks...

Here's hoping that coverup has been blown soon enough!

Except:

Shellfish deaths: Minister rejects call for further probe
wrote:

The government will not carry out further investigations into what killed thousands of shellfish off the North East and North Yorkshire coast.

Since late-2021, thousands of marine life, including crabs, have washed up between Hartlepool and Whitby.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee wrote to Environment Secretary Therese Coffey asking for an urgent study into the mass die-off...

... We have childish lame excuses to deliberately not look...

Don't look down?

Hopefully some lab will volunteer to test a few samples to blow the whole polluting scam out of the water?...


All on our only one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

An idea for self diving cars in the UK run by the Smart Mobility Living Lab, London and Nissan is to move some of the technology to the side of the roads so that the cars can be warned well in advance of obstructions and road blockages and therefore can change lanes or the route.

https://smartmobility.london/

However was this allowed to run onwards?...


Ajax armoured vehicle project back on track, says defence secretary
wrote:

The Army's "troubled" programme to build the new Ajax armoured vehicle "has turned a corner" according to the defence secretary.

Ben Wallace said he was confident recent fixes had put the project back on track after a series of embarrassing setbacks and delays.

The £5.5bn Ministry of Defence (MoD) project has been running for 12 years...

... Initial trials were plagued with problems, including excessive noise and vibration. Some of those testing the vehicle complained of hearing loss and others suffered injuries like white finger - a numbness linked to the use of heavy machinery. More than 300 individuals taking part in trials had to be assessed for hearing loss, with some found to be suffering longer term damage...

... The fixes include remounting hand controls to avoid [transmitting] excessive vibration and a redesign of seat mountings and cushions. Noise has been reduced [hidden] thanks to dual-layer hearing protection for soldiers operating the vehicle...

To me, that sounds like no fix at all...

The squaddies won't even be able to hear their own guns go off...

How did such a farce become so long running...?


All in our deadly greedy world?
Maritn

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

What do they care, it's only taxpayers funds.

What were they thinking?

Indian police arrest three Marion Biotech employees linked to toxic cough syrup.

Indian police have arrested three employees of a pharmaceutical firm whose cough syrups were linked to the deaths of 19 children in Uzbekistan, a police officer says, as the country looks to recover from recent setbacks to the industry.

The arrests were made after tests by an Indian government laboratory found 22 drug samples of Marion Biotech Pvt Ltd, based near New Delhi, "adulterated and spurious," according to a police document seen by Reuters.

Police said they arrested Marion's head of operations and two chemists on the basis of a complaint received by an inspector of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), which investigated the company three times in December and once in January.

"The adulterated and spurious drugs can cause grievous hurt to the public and it is suspected that related material/records may be disposed of," CDSCO drug inspector Asheesh Kaundal said in his complaint.

Two Marion directors were "out of the country and will be arrested as soon as they land in India," senior police official Ram Badan Singh told Reuters....

....The same toxin was found in cough syrups exported to Gambia by another Indian company, Maiden Pharmaceuticals.

India in October suspended production at Maiden for violations of manufacturing standards after the World Health Organization said four of its cough syrups may have killed dozens of children in Gambia.

The company has denied that its drugs were at fault for the deaths in Gambia and tests by an Indian government laboratory found there were no toxins in them....

The cost savings of avoiding better practices and rules for profit has its costs in other forms that arn't good for anyone, but greed overrules good sense.

Rail boss tells train crew to skip inspections, limit reports in leaked audio.

And Donny's policies while he was in charge have a lot to do with letting it happen.

Toxic train wrecks are the high cost of rigged cost-benefit analysis.

...But cost-benefit analysis itself is a con. It’s a corporate-lobbyist-backed pseudoscience — only slightly better than gazing into a crystal ball — that for decades has misled regulators into delaying, diluting, and denying urgently needed public protections, including higher safety standards for trains.

Cost-benefit analysis is rigged to favor industry and breathtakingly easy to manipulate — vastly overcounting the costs and undercounting the benefits of proposed safeguards. Indeed, many benefits are intangible values like freedom, equality, future safety, and peace of mind that are impossible to monetize. In the Trump years, cost-benefit analysis frequently morphed into cost-only analysis, in which the benefits of stronger standards to regular people were altogether ignored.

That’s what happened with a Trump-era analysis that became at least part of the basis for throwing out a rule that would have required trains to install modern electronic brakes. Shockingly, the Trump administration’s analysis omitted up to $117 million in estimated future damages from train derailments that could be avoided by installing electronic brakes, the Associated Press found and the U.S. Department of Transportation then admitted....

Unbelievable.

Norfolk Southern CEO refuses to support rail safety bill in Senate testimony.

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw refused to endorse bipartisan rail safety legislation Thursday in his first congressional testimony since last month’s toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

During the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing, Chairman Tom Carper, D-Del., asked Shaw if he would support the Railway Safety Act.

“We are committed to the legislative intent to make rail safer,” Shaw said. When asked if there were provisions he did support, Shaw cited tighter standards on tanker cars, more funding for first responders and an increase in the number of railside detectors that monitor trains...


...Shaw was also pushed on the company’s previous lobbying against safety measures. “Since 2002, the rail industry has spent more than $650 million on federal lobbying, with another $60 million spent on state lobbying,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said, adding that Norfolk Southern was the fifth-biggest spender among rail companies. The company said it had “opposed additional speed limitations and requiring [upgraded electronic] brakes” in a 2015 lobbying disclosure.

Norfolk Southern says it has provided more than $21 million to East Palestine in the weeks since the crash. (The company had initially pledged $25,000 to support “the efforts of the American Red Cross and their temporary community shelters” and offered affected residents $1,000 “inconvenience fees.”) In 2021 and 2022, the company spent billions on stock buybacks and had announced intentions to spend billions more....

Apple and Foxconn turn back the clock to use slavery working hours:


Apple, Foxconn convince Indian state to loosen labor laws
wrote:

Lobbying leads to landmark legislation that anticipates iPhone production

Apple and its manufacturing partner Foxconn were among the companies behind a landmark liberalization of labor laws in the Indian state of Karnataka last month...

... application of the factories act [newly] allowing for 12-hour shifts, up from the previous limit of nine hours. It also eased rules on night-time work for women, who dominate electronics production lines in China, Taiwan, and Vietnam but are under-represented in India’s workforce. The legislation caps maximum working hours at 48 per week but also expands the number of allowable overtime hours to 145 over a three-month period, from a previous 75...

... able to run production with two 12-hour shifts around the clock...

Chinese-style workers work prison camp working comes next?

Do you know where your i-thingie comes from?...

All in the name of unhealthy greed and profit...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

What 'game' is greedy profits vs your health?


Eli Lilly cuts insulin prices after years of outrage
wrote:

Advocates say it's a long overdue start to fixing outrageously high prices...

... The price cap matches the one set by the federal government for Medicare, which went into effect this year via the Inflation Reduction Act.

While Lilly's announcement comes just two months after enactment of the government's $35 cap, it follows years of blistering outrage over the skyrocketing prices of insulin in the US, widely seen as price gouging...

... Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines program at Public Citizen, a public advocacy and watchdog organization that has fought alongside other groups for affordable insulin, called Lilly's announcement "overdue" and "an acknowledgment that insulin prices are a deadly outrage."...

But, he added, "There’s much more to do. Novo Nordisk and Sanofi should follow suit with price reductions immediately."

All a game of deadly Marketing with no morals?...

Can Marketing ever be healthy?...


Stay healthy folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

I simply note in the workers paradise of California, USA a worker can be on the clock for 16 hours.

YMMV especially in the EU.

Another chemical fire, this time in Pasadena, Texas. No doubt releasing a lot of pollution into the air and ground.
At least one person injured.

Associated Press.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0bZtjXQHms

Another case of profits over safety?

New leak of radioactive water detected at nuclear plant.

A Minnesota nuclear plant where 400,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked last year is temporarily shutting down after discovering a smaller leak this week.

Xcel Energy said it will begin powering down its plant in Monticello on Friday to expedite repairs needed to permanently resolve a leak of tritium-contaminated water. The length of the shutdown has not yet been determined but should not impact customers' electric service, the Minneapolis-based utility company said.

Xcel Energy and state agencies publicly announced last week the initial leak of roughly 400,000 gallons of water containing tritium -- a byproduct of the production of electricity by nuclear power plants that emits low levels of radiation.

The initial leak was detected in late November through routine groundwater monitoring systems and occurred in a water pipe that runs between two buildings at the plant, which is located along the Mississippi River about 40 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

The leak does not pose any health and safety risk to the local community or the environment and the tritium levels are below Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety thresholds, Xcel Energy said. State officials monitoring the cleanup of the water also said the leak had not reached the Mississippi River or contaminated drinking water sources.....

How can such profiteering skimming be reconciled against those lives dangerously impacted?...


Record revenue for staff agencies supplying NHS
wrote:

Companies providing freelance staff to the NHS to cover for big shortages of doctors and nurses have seen their income rise by tens of millions of pounds since 2019.

Two companies, amongst the largest providing workers to the NHS, saw their turnover rise by 80% and 77.5%...

... total spending on agency staff in England had been £3bn in 2021, up 20%...

... revealed one hospital had paid £5,200 for a single shift by a freelance doctor...

... "the largest supplier of locum doctors to the NHS", reported an 80% increase in sales, to £160.9m, between 2019 and 2021...

... Hospitals need freelance doctors and nurses to fill gaps in rotas - but demand for patient care is now outstripping the supply of staff, health leaders say, which is why agency bills have increased...

... The cost of agency staff was a "major factor for NHS organisations who want to see a much more sustainable approach". Less should be spent on agency provision and more converted into permanent staff. In England, trust leaders are allowed to pay a maximum of 155% of normal staff rates for any agency replacements - unless paying more is the only way to maintain safe staffing levels ...

All an expensive and deadly game of "crisis management"?

Something needs fixing...

Better management needed, and more realistic politics needed, to properly provision what is needed both inside and outside our hospitals?

This is no way to run a service for life!


Stay healthy folks!!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Now that Officials say water and air are safe after train carrying highly flammable ethanol derails in Minnesota the EPA, DOJ sue Norfolk Southern over East Palestine train derailment and most of the blame now is attributed to Longer trains, fewer workers: Minnesota derailment follows years of railroad cost cutting.

....Some train accident rates have risen nearly 25% in the past decade, and union workers say further cuts to staffing imperil the nation's safety in the wake of the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment in February and a fiery derailment Thursday morning in rural Minnesota.

Railroads cite statistics that show total derailments are down, and that accidents on the mainline rails are also at historic lows.

Both positions can be true in part because there are longer but fewer trains than there used to be, and because the measurements are complicated by whether they include minor rail yard accidents and crashes caused by vehicles illegally crossing tracks.

For now, despite the recent high-profile derailments, freight rail crashes remain relatively rare compared to past decades. But union officials say the string of crashes nationwide are an increasingly visible warning sign the system is faltering.....

An ongoing deadly reminder:


YouTube - Bhopal: The Worst Industrial Accident in History


YouTube - After Bhopal: Cleaning up the World's Worst-Ever Industrial Disaster



Really?

Cleaned up?

Ignoring the ongoing ill health, death, and misery?...


All in our deadly greedy business world...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

J&J and their Texas 2 step shuffle.

Johnson & Johnson subsidiary LTL Management files for bankruptcy for a second time after company agrees to pay $13.1 billion to settle lawsuits.

... Yet another corporate example of how we need to rework responsibility to act upon the actual people who profit from their deadly actions...

Stay healthy folks!
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)