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LOS ANGELES -- A moderate earthquake rattled dishes and bolted Southern Cailfornians out of bed today.
The magnitude 4.4 earthquake had initially been rated at 4.7, but was downgraded about 20 minutes after the jolt, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
No damage was immediately reported from the quake that struck at 6:25 a.m. PT. The quake's epicenter was about 6 miles north-northwest from Westwood, an enclave in West Los Angeles,, the survey said. That actually would put it closer Encino in the San Fernando Valley.
It was the largest earthquake to strike near Los Angeles in years. Next to Los Angeles International Airport, the quake lasted several seconds, shaking furniture and causing ripples in swimming pools just as many Southern Californians were awaking.
Los Angeles Police sent out a tweet asking residents not to call 911 to report the earthquake. "We are well aware of it. Lines need to be kept open for emergencies," the message said. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the region's massive bus and rail system, said that operations were coming back to normal after some quick checks to look for damage just as the morning commute was starting. 

1. Impact
 2. This article represents impact because it reflects how the community was impacted by the earthquake.
 3. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/17/earthquake-california-westwood/6517749/



Story #4

Updated: Q. and A. on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

By 



    A Vietnamese military helicopter on Monday flew over the Gulf of Thailand. Planes and copters from nine nations are scouring the waters near a Malaysia Airlines flight’s last reported location.Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters



    The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has left investigators, aviation experts and the authorities in several countries at a loss to explain what happened. And the few slender clues that have emerged only seem to lead to more questions. As the search broadens and the international inquiries continue, Matthew L. Wald, a correspondent for The New York Times, answers some basic questions:
    Q. The Times has reported that Malaysian military radars saw the plane climb and dive. Does this indicate that a hijacker was at the controls?
    A. Not necessarily. Aerodynamics experts say that if an airplane is set up to fly a straight path at a given altitude, it will eventually vary from that altitude, for two reasons. First, it will burn off fuel, and a lot of that fuel is stored in the tanks at the jet’s wingtips, which are behind the airplane’s center of gravity. As the back of the plane gets lighter, the tail will rise and the nose will fall. As the plane dives, it will pick up speed. But with more speed there will be more lift and the nose will rise. The aircraft will then climb until speed decreases and the nose will point down again, repeating the cycle in an oscillation. Second, if the plane flies close to the speed of sound, then the center of pressure and the center of lift will move toward the back of the aircraft, pushing the nose down. Other factors at play include the accuracy of the military radar in estimating altitude. The Malaysian military has not described its radars’ capabilities, so if the plane were recorded at 45,000 feet, what is the range of uncertainty in that measurement? Turns would be much harder to explain without human intervention, but a plane that encounters natural weather phenomena can turn.


    A member of the military looked out of a helicopter during a search-and-rescue mission off the Tho Chu Islands of Vietnam on Monday. Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

    Q. How easy is it to switch off the communications equipment on the plane?
    A. You have to know what you are looking for, but it is not that difficult. Just about everything on the plane has a circuit breaker, which is accessible to the pilots. The equipment could be legitimately shut off for several reasons. One reason is that if the equipment stops working, the solution often involves powering down the equipment and then powering it up again, the way someone would do with a frozen computer. Also, if a component has a short circuit and overheats or catches fire, there has to be a way to turn it off. This is why transponders (most planes carry more than one) can easily be switched off from the cockpit.
    Q. If the communications equipment has been switched off, is there anything else onboard that could still send a signal?
    A. The plane is built to communicate with satellites and there is a second system, not easily controlled from the cockpit, to accomplish that. Even when it is not in use, the system goes through a “handshake” procedure with satellites, about once an hour. This procedure is akin to a cellphone that trades messages with the nearest cell tower, even though it never leaves the user’s pocket, so the cell system knows where to find it should a call come in. That handshake does not encode data, experts say, but it does establish the approximate location of the plane once an hour. American experts say they knew little about this system until this week, when it developed as a clue, albeit a weak one, to the Malaysian plane’s location.
    Q. Will we ever know what happened?
    A. Some investigators are warning that we may not ever know what happened. The cockpit voice recorder, which would be crucial in determining if the crash were the result of a hijacking or some other criminal act, captures just two hours of sound, continuously recording over earlier information. But this flight lasted six hours and the most informative period probably was not within the final two hours. Recovering the voice recorder also presumes that searchers locate the wreckage. The cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder (which has a 25-hour loop) have battery-powered “pingers” attached that emit a sound that can travel several miles through the water. Their battery life, however, averages 30 days. Searchers in other crashes have found boxes without the help of “pingers,” but it is much more difficult.
    Q. How could a Boeing 777 simply vanish? Aren’t they always tracked by radar or satellites?
    A. Radar coverage is not universal, especially over water. In areas without radar, pilots are generally required to radio in their positions at fixed intervals, mostly to assure that air traffic controllers can keep aircraft out of one another’s way. Between intervals, something could go wrong.


    MYANMAR
    THAILAND
    SEARCH AREA
    CAMBODIA
    29,500 FEET
    Gulf of
    Thailand
    Possible turn
    35,000
    FEET
    Indian
    Ocean
    Penang
    Strait of
    Malacca
    MALAYSIA
    South China
    Sea
    Kuala Lumpur
    INDONESIA
    International Airport
    Military radar detection Military radar detected blips 200 miles northwest of Penang that might have been from the missing aircraft. The last signal came at 2:15 a.m. Saturday, at 29,500 feet.
    Known path The plane stopped communicating with controllers at around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, at 35,000 feet.
    By SERGIO PEÇANHA and DEREK WATKINS
    Sources: Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation (search areas); flightradar24.com (flight path); Malaysia Airlines; GEBCO (water depth)
    Note: Altitudes on the diagram are exaggerated 10 times for clarity.

    Planes like the 777 also have automatic systems that send out data on engine performance and other technical functions. Those signals go to a maintenance base, not to air traffic control. Air France used those signals to help determine what happened when its Flight 447 disappeared over the equatorial Atlantic. Investigators may be doing something similar in Kuala Lumpur.
    Q. Plane crashes most often happen on landing or takeoff, but this flight vanished almost an hour after takeoff, when it was cruising. What could cause a plane to crash at that point in a flight?
    A. In three crashes at sea in the last few years, the aircraft’s speed-sensing systems have malfunctioned. In two of those cases, crews failed to diagnose and cope with the problem. (In the third, there was probably nothing they could have done.) A deliberate act by a pilot, terrorism or an attack in the cockpit could be other causes.
    Q. Shouldn’t the signals from transponders or “black boxes” have pinpointed the aircraft by now?
    A. If the black boxes are in water, “pingers,” which emit a tone, are activated. But these are audible only in a limited area. And the plane may not be in the water.
    The aircraft’s transponder, which signals its identity to other aircraft and to monitors on the ground, apparently stopped functioning about 40 minutes after takeoff, which is why the plane no longer appeared on the radar screens of ground controllers.
    Q. Why would the authorities not have found debris from the plane after so many days of searching?
    A. They may not be looking in the right place. The plane flies at 10 miles a minute, and no one knows exactly when it crashed, or whether it departed its assigned track before doing so. The Malaysian authorities said on Wednesday that military radar data suggested the plane might have turned and flown west for an hour or more after ground controllers lost contact with it; as a result, they greatly expanded the area of the search and may do so again.

    Detecting a Plane

    Two kinds of radar are used to keep track of air traffic from the ground.

    Primary radar
    Sends out radio signals and listens for echoes that bounce back from objects in the sky.
    TRANSPONDER
    Secondary radar
    Sends signals that request information from the plane’s transponder. The plane sends back information including its identification and altitude. The radar repeatedly sweeps the sky and interrogates the transponder. Other planes in flight can also receive the transponder signals.
    THE NEW YORK TIMES

    Q. How far from its last known location could the aircraft have strayed?
    A. While we know where the last radio contact was, we do not know how long after that the airplane came down, so it is hard to say. The plane had enough fuel on board to complete its scheduled journey to Beijing, 2,500 miles from Kuala Lumpur, so it conceivably could have kept flying for hours after breaking off contact with ground controllers. Even if it lost engine power, a jetliner cruising at 35,000 feet could glide as far as 80 or 90 miles if the pilots still had control.
    Q. Are there any signs that terrorism might have been involved?
    A. No group is known to have claimed to have destroyed the plane. Beyond that, not enough is known to speculate.
    Q. If the plane had a major malfunction, wouldn’t the pilots have called for help and sent distress signals?

    A. Pilots have a mantra for setting priorities in an emergency: aviate, navigate, communicate. The first priority is to fly the airplane. Telling air traffic controllers on the ground what is going on comes third, since doing so is unlikely to instantly yield any help with the crisis in the cockpit, whatever it may be. If the pilots are fighting to keep the plane aloft, they may not have time to use the radio.
    Q. Could one of the pilots have crashed the plane deliberately?
    A. It’s been known to happen: The crashes of an EgyptAir flight from Kennedy International Airport in 1999 and a SilkAir flight in Indonesia in 1997 were attributed to intentional acts by cockpit crew members. But nothing is yet known publicly to suggest that that happened on the Malaysia Airlines flight.


    Debris from Air France Flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean. Brazil's Air Force, via Associated Press

    Q. Have other planes disappeared in this way in recent years?
    A. There is no record of big planes simply disappearing, though they may take some time to find. A few pieces of debris from Air France Flight 447 were spotted floating in the Atlantic the day after the plane crashed in June 2009, but it took five days to find most of the wreckage. Small aircraft may be missing for much longer if they go down in remote areas. Steve Fossett, the daredevil adventurer who flew around the world solo in a plane and set records in a balloon, took off in his private plane in Nevada on Sept. 3, 2007, and his remains were found in October 2008.

    1. Human Interest 

    2. This article represents the Human Interest because it has Q’s and A’s from the public and communities around the world asking about the planes disappearance. 

    3. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/world/asia/q-and-a-on-the-disappearance-of-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370.html?ref=world


    Story #5

    An Engineering Landmark Faces Demolition

    Architects Try to Save a Tower in Moscow




      The Shabolovka radio tower in Moscow was built in 1922.Richard Pare

      Critic’s Notebook
      By 

      One of the great feats of 20th-century engineering, a landmark of modernist architecture is facing demolition. Late last month, the Russian State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting agreed to the dismantling of the Shabolovka radio tower in Moscow.
      This is the Eiffel Tower ofRussia, a 50-story conical structure of steel latticework, shaped roughly like a collapsing telescope, designed by the engineer Vladimir Shukhov. Commissioned by Lenin and completed in 1922, the tower was intended to spread the word of Communism through the new radio technology and to stand for the regime’s revolutionary ambition. Supported on a shallow ring of concrete, the tower is a diaphanous web rising into the sky. Only a shortage of materials thwarted plans to make it more than twice as tall — higher than Gustave Eiffel’s earlier creation in Paris. Even at that greater height, Shukhov’s construction was so efficient and elegant that his tower would have been a quarter of the Eiffel Tower’s weight.


      The Shabolovka radio tower in Moscow was designed by the engineer Vladimir Shukhov.Richard Pare

      A few miles from the Kremlin, inaccessible to tourists, the radio tower has been allowed to deteriorate for years, corroding while government authorities in Moscow debate its fate. In 2009, the Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin expressed support for restoring the tower and making it a tourist attraction, but nothing came of that. The next year, the British architect Norman Foster joined a campaign to save the tower, which hecalled “a structure of dazzling brilliance and great historical importance.” Shukhov’s work is said to have partly inspired Mr. Foster’s so-called Gherkin, built for Swiss Re in London.
      The tower has been a subject of debate in the Russian news media and a topic of round-table discussions. Now an array of international architects, engineers, academics and cultural leaders has signed apetition pleading with President Putin to override the committee’s decision and spare the tower, whose destruction makes way for reckless development. Proponents for dismantling the tower say it’s a wreck; the situation is a classic case of demolition by neglect. The chief architect of Moscow, Sergey Kuznetsov, has suggested the tower could be rebuilt elsewhere, and the ministry of culture more or less endorsed that idea in late February. But petitioners argue that moving the tower would strip the work of its context.
      Replacing the tower with a building of up to 50 stories would be out of keeping with the historic neighborhood near the Shabolovskaya metro station, an area of distinguished early-Soviet-era housing, the petition says. The tower, “a beacon and symbol of progressive, forward-looking civilization,” the petition adds, deserves nomination to the Unesco World Heritage List. Mr. Putin could authorize the rezoning of the area around the tower to prevent construction of a large building, a step that might prevent demolition. The city government could also halt demolition.
      Protesters are planning a demonstration on Tuesday. The Russian Parliament may take up the issue next week, according to Shukhov’s great-grandson, also named Vladimir, who has helped organize the petition. There is no announced date for taking the tower down, but a final decision by Russian authorities is expected by March 24.

      Among the signatories to the petition are the architects Tadao Ando, Henry N. Cobb, Elizabeth Diller, Rem Koolhaas and Thom Mayne; the engineers Guy Nordenson and Leslie E. Robertson; and the Tate Museums director Nicholas Serota. The petition was written by Jean-Louis Cohen, the architectural historian, along with Richard Pare, the British photographer, both specialists in buildings and monuments of the Soviet era.
      “The impression when you stand beneath it is unforgettable,” Mr. Pare wrote in an email over the weekend. “The elements surge upwards, creating a rush of optimism and elation.” He contrasted it with the Lenin Mausoleum, “a space that stands at the opposite pole to the brilliance of Shukhov’s masterpiece,” he wrote, adding, “From light to dark in eight years.”
      A model of transparency and structural ingenuity, the tower consists of a series of stacked hyperboloids of diminishing size. Its geometric complexity belies the simplicity of its profile. A pioneer of modern engineering, Shukhov (1853-1939) devised the first oil pipeline for the Russian Empire, its first seaworthy oil tanker, and dozens of bridges, barges, buildings and boilers. The United States Navy acquired Shukhov’s patents a century ago to build lattice masts on its dreadnoughts. His groundbreaking work on hyperboloid geometry, a continuing influence on architects and engineers in the digital age, reached its apotheosis with the radio tower, commonly known as theShukhov Tower.
      1. Prominence

      2. This article represents prominence because it talks about how by demolishing the Eiffel tower of Russia,  Vladimir Shukhov’s contributions will be ruined. 

      3. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/arts/design/an-engineering-landmark-faces-demolition-in-moscow.html?ref=world




      Story #6

      Investigators Seek Data Deleted From Malaysian Pilot’s Flight Simulator

      By CHRIS BUCKLEY and MICHELLE INNIS
        A relative of a passenger on the lost flight cried while speaking with members of the news media on Wednesday at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Azhar Rahim/European Pressphoto Agency
        SEPANG, Malaysia — The authorities here said Wednesday that they were trying to recover data deleted from a flight simulator custom-built by the pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, whose actions, along with those of his first officer, have fallen under growing scrutiny.
        At a news briefing Wednesday that began after Chinese protesters representing relatives of passengers on the lost flight burst in and demanded information from the Malaysian government, officials said that investigators had recruited “local and international expertise” to examine the flight simulator taken from the home of the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah. They discovered that its data records had been cleared on Feb. 3, more than a month before the March 8 flight that vanished with 239 people on board after veering off its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
        “The experts are looking at what are the logs, what has been cleared,” said Tan Sri Khalid Bin Abu Bakar, inspector general of the police, who declined to comment further. Flight simulators, computer programs often used in pilot training, can often replicate specific airports and flight paths.

        Tracking Flight 370

        The sequence of events known by the authorities, in local times.
         

        Mar. 8, 2014 12:41 a.m.

        A Boeing 777-200 operated by Malaysia Airlines leaves Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing with 227 passengers, of which two-thirds are Chinese, and a Malaysian crew of 12.
        The Malaysian defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said the authorities had received background checks from the countries of all the passengers on the plane except Ukraine and Russia. “So far, no information of significance on any passengers has been found,” he said.
        Because of evidence suggesting that whoever diverted the missing Boeing 777-200 knew how to disable the plane’s communications systems and make course changes, investigators have been closely examining Mr. Zaharie, 53, a veteran pilot with more than two decades of experience, and his co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27. But Mr. Hishammuddin cautioned that “the passengers, the pilots and the crew remain innocent until proven otherwise.”
        “For the sake of their families, I ask that we refrain from any unnecessary speculation that might make an already difficult time even harder,” he said.
        Earlier Wednesday, Australian organizers of one part of the vast search for the missing jet said that they had reduced their search area in the southern Indian Ocean by half. John Young, general manager for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s emergency response division, said the focus had been narrowed using new data analysis of the plane’s likely fuel consumption.
        The revised area of focus in the Australian-led part of the search covers 89,000 square nautical miles, roughly 1,200 nautical miles southwest of the Australian city of Perth, Mr. Young said. He said the airborne searchers had found no traces of debris that could be from the jet. The searchers’ view of the water was good and they were able to spot marine life, “so we know we can make sightings, but there were no results relevant to the search,” Mr. Young said.
        Like other officials involved in the multinational search, Mr. Young stressed the difficulty of finding the plane, let alone possible survivors, more than a week and a half after the jet disappeared.
        PLAY VIDEO
        VIDEO|0:59
        Ahmad Yusni/European Pressphoto Agency

        Search Area Expanded for Missing Plane

         
        Malaysia’s defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said countries including Australia, China, Indonesia and Kazakhstan were working together in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
        “We still have grave fears for the safety of anyone that may have managed to escape the aircraft in the southern ocean. It remains a big area,” Mr. Young said. “There is a lot of work to be done yet.”
        Advertisement
        The frustrations felt by family members and friends of the missing passengers, who have waited 11 days for some indication of what happened, erupted before the briefing Wednesday in a hotel conference room in Sepang. As reporters waited for the briefing to begin, several protesters who said they represented families of the passengers unfurled a banner that read, “We oppose the Malaysian government concealing the truth. Delaying time for saving lives.”
        “We’ve waited, and waited, and waited, and Malaysia Airlines says kind words, but the Malaysian government hasn’t told us anything,” said one of the protesters, Xu Dengwang, a middle-aged man from Beijing who said a relative was on Flight 370. After a struggle, the police eventually removed the banner and forced the protesters from the room.
        About two-thirds of the missing passengers are Chinese citizens, and some of their family members have come to Malaysia hoping for news about the plane. The protesters said that until now they had been prevented from telling the press of their mounting frustration with the Malaysian government’s erratic response.
        Mr. Young of Australia said four military aircraft used for surveillance had been assigned to the search area on Wednesday: two long-range Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orions, one P-3K Orion from New Zealand and a P-8 Poseidon from the United States.
        “We are getting some reasonable coverage of the area,” he said. “We have also had three ships in the area.”

        Graphic: The Search Area West of Australia

        But searchers are confronted with sobering limits on their reach across the seas. The plane’s whereabouts remain little more than a matter of educated guesswork, based on satellite signals and other data gleaned by analysts.
        “A needle in a haystack remains a good analogy,” Mr. Young said Tuesday.
        A satellite over the Indian Ocean received a final transmission from an automatic data system on Flight 370 hours after the last radio or radar contact, leading investigators to deduce that the plane had sent it from somewhere along one of two long, arcing corridors that together encompass 2.24 million square nautical miles, Mr. Hishammuddin, the Malaysian defense minister, said Tuesday. That is an area the size of the continental United States, excluding California.
        The jet, which had been headed to Beijing, abruptly turned back over the Gulf of Thailand early on March 8. Around that time, its communication links were severed, and it cut across peninsular Malaysia and out over the Strait of Malacca. The plane’s final blips to a satellite indicate it headed west toward the Indian Ocean and then turned to take one of two possible corridors, either north or south.
        One of the two arcs reaches from northern Laos to Central Asia. At the time of the last satellite contact, the plane would be at the Laotian end of the arc if it traveled at the slow end of its possible speed, or in Kazakhstan near the Caspian Sea if it traveled at top speed. Any speed in between would have put the plane somewhere in western or southwestern China, including remote, mountainous terrain in Tibet. By then, more than seven hours after it took off, the plane was most likely running low on fuel.
        If the plane had instead traveled on the southern arc, it may have been anywhere from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean, west of Australia, when it was last in contact with a satellite.
        Officials have said that the plane’s abrupt deviation from its normal flight path most likely involved deliberate intervention by an experienced aviator, making the two men assigned to the cockpit — Mr. Zaharie and Mr. Fariq — focal points of attention.
        American officials have said that the sharp turn to the west was achieved using a computer system on the plane, and that the turn was most likely programmed into it by someone in the cockpit who was knowledgeable about airplane systems.

        1.Timeliness

        2. This article talks about the facts of the story of the missing plane and keeps broadening the new information as they still search.

        3. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/world/asia/missing-malaysia-flight.html?ref=world&_r=0







        Story #7
        2 dead in helicopter crash near Seattle’s Space Needle
        By Manuel Valdes and Phuong Le ASSOCIATED PRESS
           SEATTLE — A news helicopter crashed into a street and burst into flames Tuesday near Seattle’s Space Needle, killing two people on board, badly injuring a man in a car and sending plumes of black smoke over the city during the morning commute.
           The Eurocopter AS350 helicopter was taking off from a helipad on KOMO-TV’s roof when it went down at a busy downtown intersection and hit three vehicles, setting them on fire and spewing burning fuel down the street.
           Kristopher Reynolds, a contractor working nearby, said he saw the helicopter lift about 5 feet off the low-rise building before it started to tilt. The chopper looked like it was trying to correct itself when it took a dive.
           “Next thing I know, it went into a ball of flames,” Reynolds said.
           Witnesses reported hearing unusual noises coming from the helicopter as it took off after re-fueling, said Dennis Hogenson, deputy regional chief with the National Transportation Safety Board in Seattle. They also said the aircraft rotated before it crashed near the Seattle Center campus, which is home to the Space Needle, restaurants and performing arts centers.
           Mayor Ed Murray noted the normally bustling Seattle Center was relatively quiet at the time. Had it been a busier day, “this would have been a much larger tragedy,” he said.
           Murray added the city will review its helicopter pad permitting policies.
           Investigators were working to document the scene and clear the wreckage, and will examine all possibilities as they determine what caused the crash, Hogenson said. A preliminary analysis is expected in five days, followed by a fuller report with a probable cause in up to a year.
           KOMO identified the pilot as Gary Pfitzner, of Issaquah, Wash. The other man killed in the crash was Bill Strothman, a former longtime KOMO photographer.
        KIRO-TV
        At top, smoke rises at the scene of a helicopter crash outside the KOMOTV studios near the Space Needle in Seattle on
        Tuesday
        KOMO-TV
        . Above, a car burns
        at the scene. The helicopter hit several vehicles on Broad Street and spewed burning fuel as it crashed.


        1. Timeliness 

        2. This article talks about the facts and walks you through step by step of the situation. 

        3. Found at the Austin American Statesmen.