(VOR News) – Based on statements made by the corporation, it has been claimed that Amtrak has made the decision to suspend all of its services between New York Penn Station and Boston South Station for the entirety of Saturday.

The decision to take this action was decided in light of the fact that the organization has been suffering power outages.

In response to a widespread power outage that was caused by “a malfunctioning circuit breaker” on all of Amtrak’s lines that span between Penn Station and New Haven Union Station in Connecticut, the corporation has announced that trains will be canceled.

One of the reasons for this is that the power loss was brought on by a circuit breaker that was not functioning properly. This notification was made on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time, during the course of a service update that was released on the website of Amtrak Corporation.

The corporation has issued a statement in which it states that it will continue to offer its clients with information that is up to date to the extent that new information becomes available.

Customers who have train tickets that are affected would “typically be accommodated on trains with similar departure times or another day,”

According to Amtrak, if they have tickets that are affected.

This is the case if they have tickets that are affected. Individuals who have affected train tickets are the ones who are affected by this situation.

The company has announced that it would not impose any additional fees on customers who desire to make revisions to their train tickets as a result of the incident. This is an additional precaution that the company has taken. The company has taken this additional measure as part of its overall strategy.

As the reason for the decision that was made by the organization, which declared that all services were “suspended until further notice” on Saturday morning, the power outage was mentioned as the cause for the decision.

According to the Amtrak Northeast account on X, a number of delays and cancellations had already began earlier in the morning, and these delays and cancellations continued throughout the day.

Additionally, the account noted that these delays and cancellations continued to occur. It was during the morning announcement that this information was made available to the audience. Not only that, but the account also mentioned that these troubles continued for the entirety of the day.

On the other hand, the company continued to postpone trips throughout the afternoon, as evidenced by updates that were posted on the X account regarding the situation. In spite of the fact that they had anticipated that services would restart at approximately twelve o’clock Eastern Time, this was the situation that played out.

Amtrak stopped all trains leaving Boston just before noon.

A decision was made regarding this matter during the early morning hours. In order for the organization to be able to carry on with their operations, they anticipated that the service would be restored by three o’clock Eastern Time within that time frame.

According to estimates provided by the American Automobile Association (AAA), the number of people who would be moving around throughout the holiday weekend of the Fourth of July would be greater than it has ever been before.

It was anticipated that this number would break the previous record by reaching 71 million individuals. Moreover, it was expected that there would be 5.7 million more individuals traveling than there were before the pandemic.

This was a significant increase. A comparison was conducted between this number and the levels that were present before to the onset of the sickness.

A total of more than 4.6 million passengers are expected to travel by means of transportation, according to the projection given by the organization. The group made this prediction in accordance with its findings. Individuals who were going by bus, railroad, or cruise were included in this category of travelers.

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A former Boeing quality-control manager claims that for years, workers at the company’s 787 Dreamliner facility in Everett, Washington, routinely retrieved parts deemed unsuitable for flight from an internal scrap yard and reassembled them on factory assembly lines.

Merle Meyers, a 30-year Boeing veteran, described to CNN an elaborate off-the-books practice used by Boeing managers at the Everett factory to meet production deadlines, including the removal of damaged and improper parts from the company’s scrapyard, storehouses, and loading docks.

Former Boeing Inspector Alleges ‘Scrap’ Parts Ended Up On Assembly Lines

This year, several whistleblowers have raised concerns about Boeing factory lapses, including an official federal complaint from a current employee alleging that Boeing concealed potentially defective parts from Federal Aviation Administration inspectors and that some of those parts may have ended up in aircraft.

This comes on the heels of a string of public safety issues that have shaken the firm.

Meyers argues that the errors he witnessed were intentional, organized attempts to defy quality control mechanisms and meet rigorous production timetables.

Meyers claims that for more than a decade, starting in the early 2000s, about 50,000 parts “escaped” quality control and were utilized to manufacture airplanes. These parts range from minor components like screws to more complicated assemblies like wing flaps. For example, a single Boeing 787 Dreamliner contains almost 2.3 million pieces.

According to Meyers, most rejected parts were often painted red to indicate they were unfit for assembly lines. However, in certain circumstances, this did not prevent them from being loaded onto planes being constructed, he claimed.

“It’s a huge problem,” Meyers told CNN. “A core requirement of a quality system is to keep bad parts and good parts apart.”

Airplanes are highly engineered equipment with far greater safety standards than trains or automobiles. Their components, materials, and production procedures are heavily regulated.

Meyers, whose job was to uncover quality problems at Boeing, claims he was forced out last year and was given a severance settlement he cannot discuss due to a confidentiality agreement he signed with Boeing.

Since leaving the business, Meyers has interacted with current Boeing employees. He believes that while employees no longer remove parts from the scrapyard, the practice of putting other unauthorized parts in assembly lines remains.

“Now they’re back to taking parts of body sections – everything – right when it arrives at the Everett site, bypassing quality, going right to the airplane,” Meyers told me.

According to company correspondence dating back years, Meyers frequently raised the matter to Boeing’s corporate investigations team, citing what he calls flagrant violations of Boeing’s safety guidelines. However, Meyers claims that investigators consistently failed to enforce those restrictions, including dismissing “eye witness observations and the hard work done to ensure the safety of future passengers and crew,” he said in an internal 2022 email shared with CNN.

Meyers has also expressed concerns about Boeing’s quality difficulties to federal investigators, a Senate committee, and the New York Times.

Boeing did not deny Meyers’ claims in a CNN response. The corporation stated that it investigates “all allegations of improper behavior, such as the unauthorized movement of parts or the mishandling of documents,” and makes corrections as needed.

A swirl of controversy.
Meyers’ charges come as Boeing is embroiled in a scandal over its safety culture, including a criminal inquiry into whether it misled the FAA during the 737 Max’s 2017 approval. Two 737 Max crashes killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019. As CNN reported over the weekend, the Justice Department is negotiating an agreement with Boeing to address potential criminal culpability.

In January, a 737 Max’s door stopper blew off in mid-flight, provoking a wave of intensive scrutiny of the aircraft manufacturer, including federal and congressional inquiries. Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun has stated that he will step down before the end of the year. To address its safety concerns, Boeing has agreed to buy supplier Spirit AeroSystems.

Since January, other whistleblowers have come forward with new charges against Boeing.

Sam Mohawk, a current Boeing quality investigator, filed an official complaint last month, citing “a number of non-compliant parts making their way back to the airplanes for installation.” A Senate subcommittee probing Boeing made his complaint to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration publicly available.

According to Mohawk’s complaint, the disappearance of nonconforming parts continues. “Boeing is still losing parts to this day,” his legal complaint states.

This week, a different whistleblower, Richard Cuevas, expressed concerns that Boeing and its key supplier, Spirit Aerosystems, utilized compromised parts and made alterations to “reduce bottlenecks in production and speed up production and delivery.”

Pulled from the scrapyard.
Boeing management’s pressure to keep production lines flowing is no secret. The 245-page House investigation report into the 737 Max deadly crashes includes a full chapter titled “Production Pressure.” Following the January 5 door plug blowout on a 737 Max, the FAA limited Boeing’s production line speeds.

Meyers recalls a high-pressure situation at the Everett factory, where assembly teams competed to find the necessary parts.

Meyers claims that after hours, employees would ask security guards to unlock doors and slip parts out of supply rooms or take newly delivered components that awaited quality tests by Meyers’ team. Similar parts meant for a different airplane model were available for the taking.

According to paperwork Meyers shared with CNN, in the early 2000s, Boeing personnel began collecting parts from the company’s scrapyard in Auburn, Washington, roughly an hour south of the nearly 100-acre industrial complex where Dreamliners were manufactured. According to Meyers, nonconforming items are only sent to the reclamation yard once rejected.

Meyers states that by 2002, staff at the reclamation yard were anxious that they would be held liable if scrap pieces were later discovered on an aircraft. So they requested staff to sign off on the removals, but their form was not an official Boeing document, so the removal was never recorded in the company’s quality management database.

Former Boeing Inspector Alleges ‘Scrap’ Parts Ended Up On Assembly Lines

“These are bootleg forms that are not Boeing authorized,” Meyers confirmed. “The procurement organization would go down to our scrap reclamation yard and intimidate the employees there and say we need these parts bad.”

Lack of enforcement
Meyers claims he routinely flagged infractions for investigation but deemed the company’s attempts to investigate them inadequate.

“Their investigations are about analyzing excuses by process violators, and not taking action against those committing compliance violations,” Meyers stated in a 2002 email to Boeing’s corporate HR.

According to Boeing, Meyers worked on a quality team that “plays an important role in identifying issues, improving processes, and strengthening compliance in our factories.”

“We appreciate employees who raise their voice and we have systems in place to encourage them to speak up confidentially or anonymously,” according to a statement.

Meyers claims his Boeing superiors did not know how to deal with employees who had problems and that after decades with the company, he was eventually given a list of management complaints about his performance and offered a vague option to improve – or take a monetary compensation and quit.

“I was given a list of things to correct – my behaviors and my practices as a manager,” he told me. “It seemed like a personal development program…” But there was a financial incentive – or you could take the money and quit.”

Meyers stated that he never planned to become a whistleblower, but is now working with anyone who ask, including a Senate subcommittee investigating Boeing, to build momentum for reform.

SOURCE – CNN

As Google has pushed to incorporate artificial intelligence into its main businesses, with sometimes disappointing results, a problem has emerged behind the scenes: the systems required to run its AI tools have significantly increased the company’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Artificial intelligence systems require a large number of computers to function properly. Data centers, essentially warehouses full of powerful computing equipment, need massive amounts of energy to process data and handle the heat generated by all of those machines.

Google’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Soaring Thanks To AI

According to Google’s annual environmental report, its greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 48% since 2019. The IT giant attributed the spike primarily to “increased data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions.”

Google now describes its aim of reaching net-zero emissions by 2030 as “extremely ambitious,” and says the vow will likely be influenced by “the uncertainty around the future environmental impact of AI, which is complex and difficult to predict.” In other words, the company’s sustainability push, which formerly contained the tagline “don’t be evil” in its code of conduct, has become more challenging due to artificial intelligence.

Like other internet companies, Google has invested heavily in artificial intelligence (AI), which is widely regarded as the next major technological revolution ready to revolutionize how we live, work, and consume information. The business has integrated its Gemini generative AI technology into some of its core products, including Search and Google Assistant, and CEO Sundar Pichai has described Google as an “AI-first company.”

However, AI has a significant drawback: the power-hungry data centers that Google and other Big Tech companies are investing tens of billions of dollars each quarter to develop to feed their AI goals.

To demonstrate how much more demanding AI models are than traditional computing systems, the International Energy Agency estimates that a Google search query requires 0.3 watt-hours of electricity on average, whereas a ChatGPT request typically consumes approximately 2.9 watt-hours. According to a study published in October by Dutch researcher Alex de Vries, the “worst-case scenario” implies that Google’s AI systems might someday consume as much electricity as Ireland per year, assuming full-scale AI adoption in their existing hardware and software.

“As we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging due to increasing energy demands from the greater intensity of AI compute, and the emissions associated with the expected increases in our technical infrastructure investment,” said Google in its report, released Monday. It also stated that data center electricity use is currently outpacing the ability to bring carbon-free electricity sources online.

Google’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Soaring Thanks To AI

Google expects greenhouse gas emissions to climb before declining as it invests in clean energy sources like wind and geothermal to power its data centers.

The vast amounts of water required to cool data centers to prevent overheating also pose a sustainability concern. Google plans to refill 120% of the freshwater consumed in its offices and data centers by 2030; last year, it recovered only 18% of that water, a significant increase from 6% the previous year.

Google is among the companies using AI to combat climate change. A 2019 Google DeepMind research study, for example, trained an AI model on weather forecasts and historical wind turbine data to estimate wind power availability, thereby increasing the value of renewable energy to wind farmers. The corporation has also utilized AI to recommend more fuel-efficient routes to vehicles using Google Maps.

“We know that scaling AI and using it to accelerate climate action is just as crucial as addressing the environmental impact associated with it,” according to Google’s report.

SOURCE – CNN