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The air traffic controllers in the Washington region, who direct more than 1.5 million flights, have made a record number of mistakes this year, triggering cockpit collision warning systems dozens of times.
Errors recorded by air traffic controllers have increased by 51 percent nationwide, and the Federal Aviation Administration this week cautioned that warning systems aboard more than 9,000 planes may not be keeping track of all the nearby planes in busy airspace. The FAA wants to require software upgrades to ensure that the emergency units don’t make mistakes that “could compromise separation of air traffic and lead to subsequent midair collisions.”
Washington’s regional control facility recorded its 52nd error of the year on Christmas Eve when a controller mistakenly put two Southwest Airlines 737s approaching Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport on converging courses. The facility, known as the Potomac Terminal Radar Approach Control center, recorded 21 errors in 2009. The increase corresponds with what the acting director of the center described in an internal document as “a definite increase in sloppy or poor adherence to SOP and handbook procedures.”
A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that noncitizens in criminal cases must be advised of the possible consequences of a conviction has sparked a flurry of appeals by defendants who claim that they didn’t know that conviction would lead to deportation.
But in Virginia, a similar battle has emerged over whether judges can revisit and reopen old cases or even summarily revise the sentences to avoid a convict’s removal from the country.
A Loudoun County General District Court judge recently reopened four cases involving defendants who say they would not have pleaded guilty if they had known that they would be deported. In one instance this month, Loudoun prosecutors sought a court order to stop the judge from reopening such cases, but a Circuit Court judge refused.
The Web may seem like the land of something for nothing. Free video. Free news. Even free tools such as word processing and spreadsheets.
But almost two-thirds of adult Internet users in the U.S. have paid for access to at least one of these intangible items online, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Whether people will pay for different types of material on the Web is among the most pressing questions facing media companies in the 21st century.
As Maryland crawls another year closer to the proposed 2015 run date for Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant’s third reactor, the parties involved with seeing its fruition may have another item to add to their list of New Year’s resolutions.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board released a report on Tuesday responding to a new contention submitted in June by five environmental groups challenging UniStar Nuclear Energy’s CC3 project. The board’s three-judge panel reviewed the contention and admitted one aspect must be further addressed in the NRC staff’s draft environmental impact statement for the project — that is, the ASLB agreed more discussion is needed on possible alternative solutions to nuclear power, as required by the National Energy Policy Act.
For six weeks, what might be the future of fuel-efficient vehicles was tooling around Charles County, running errands and taking people to work. Now, it’s moved on.
Toyota lent a prototype of its Prius plug-in hybrid to Mark Czajka, chairman and acting president of the Charles County Technology Council, for testing under normal conditions. While he had it, he drove it to his job in Washington, D.C., and showed it to merchants, students and anyone who was interested.
Charles County Government
Department of Fiscal & Administrative Services
For Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2010
It will be a happier New Year for nearly 650,000 workers earning minimum wage. They’re getting small raises in seven states that tie their salaries to the cost of living.
The minimum wages in those states will go up 9 cents to 12 cents an hour Saturday because their consumer price indexes rose in 2010.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says five states had widespread reports of flu last week, up from zero two weeks earlier.
A CDC report released Thursday says four of the states were in the South _ Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Virginia. The other was New York.
Statistics show, on average, about 800,000 children are reported missing each year in the United States, more than half of those children having been abducted.
[...]
Well, my teachings finally paid off. On Dec. 15, my 7-year-old son was sent home as a bus rider instead of remaining in school for his scheduled weekly piano lessons, which he has been attending since the school year began. He was on the bus and realized I wasn’t waiting for him and no one was home. He began to cry.
When the bus pulled up to our home, my son was still crying and informed the bus driver no one was home, yet she still had him exit the bus. We live on a state highway where the speed limit is 55 mph and traffic regularly travels around 65 mph, and we have no neighbors my son could go to for help.
VanGO’s specialized services are now available in each service area three days a week around Charles County.
VanGO operates specialized transportation services under a variety of programs for senior citizens and persons with disabilities who are unable to use the fixed route system. Because VanGO is not a taxi service and is much more expensive to operate than the public transportation routes, people wishing to use specialized services must complete an application and demonstrate why they are unable to use the fixed route system if VanGO public transportation routes are available in their area.
Indian Head Navy base celebrates 120th
One hundred and twenty years ago, U.S. Navy Ensign Robert Brooke Dashiell traveled to Southern Maryland in search of a safe and remote place to test guns being built at the U.S. Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.
“Rooted in Indian Head’s Beginnings,” a profile story that appeared in the Sept. 16 issue of the South Potomac Pilot, affirmed that Dashiell transformed a swampy piece of land near the junction of the Mattawoman Creek and the Potomac River into a naval proving ground.
St. Mary’s resident flees in Waldorf, leaves car in Calvert
A Lexington Park man on Tuesday led police on a miles-long chase as he headed from a traffic stop in Waldorf to Calvert County, all the while with a 5-year-old girl in his car, police reported.
Antwaun Somerville, 21, took off from a traffic stop near the intersection of Post Office Road and Huntington Circle at about 3:30 p.m., Diane Richardson, spokeswoman for the Charles County Sheriff’s Office, said. Police followed Somerville to Route 231 in Hughesville, where the man was able to avoid the stop sticks authorities tried to put in his path, she said. Stop sticks have spikes on them to flatten tires on fleeing vehicles.
More bad housing news hits county
Once again Charles County appeared at the top of the list for steepest declines in home property values.
According to numbers from the state’s Department of Assessments and Taxation, this year only Prince George’s County had a bigger residential value decrease than Charles County, with a drop of 35 percent versus a 27 percent negative change. The state average was a decrease of 21.9 percent.
In terms of total full cash value — which is the combined worth of residential and commercial property — Charles County lost $1.4 billion from its 18,209 total properties, or $3.8 billion, down from $5.2 billion. In Prince George’s case, the drop was 28.7 percent, or a roughly $13 billion loss.
Adjacent counties have varied results
Charles County government leaders have put a lot of resources and political capital into the fledgling Indian Head Science and Technology Park in Bryans Road.
County officials have touted the park, which is not yet ready to house tenants, as an important cog in the county’s economic future, catering to the U.S. Navy’s Naval Support Facility Indian Head base, which employs more than 2,000 people.
But the experience with industrial space in adjoining Calvert and St. Mary’s counties has been mixed.
Top stories of the year
2010 was a tumultuous year in Charles County politics, with the resignation of former commissioners’ president F. Wayne Cooper in July followed by a whispering campaign of negative rumors about him.
Four out of the five sitting commissioners will not return to their seats in 2011, with only Reuben B. Collins II successfully defending his District 3 position.
Defying a nationwide trend, a Democratic tide rolled in Charles County, with all state and local public officials coming from the blue side of the aisle.
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