Two Commuter Trains Collide In Boston

Breaking Now:

Two commuter trains collide on the Green Line in Massachusetts near Brae Burn Country Club Wednesday evening, trapping and seriously injuring the operator of one of the trains.

MBTA officials said an outbound commuter train slowed to a stop on the tracks and was hit from behind by a second outbound train. The operator of the second train is trapped inside and has suffered serious injuries, though she is conscious, officials said. Emergency crews have been working to pull the woman out of the train.

It is unknown as of this writing how many other injuries there are, we will try to make an update as soon as more information becomes available.

Video from the aftermath of the train accident is below.

The story is still breaking but an update of 8 injuries is being reported now.

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As pointed out by the comments below (thank you Adam) the Green Line is an Elevated Trolley in the Suburbs.
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Chicago Train Derailment Injures 24

An elevated commuter train in Chicago derailed today injuring 24 people. 25 people were on the four car train including one CTA employee and 14 were taken to the hospital.

The injuries were not life threatening but at least one passenger seemed to be in serious condition according to reports.

Chicago EMS sent 10 ambulances to the scene for the derailment which occured at aproximately 10:10 AM local time and all passengers were removed from the train by 11:08 AM and the scene secured.

For Photos of the derailment.
For Video of the derailment.

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Another Strain of Bird Flu H7 May Increase Risk of Pandemic

Another strain of Bird Flu, sub-type H7 seems to have adapted to more easily spread among humans and other animals.

Scientists said that a few strains of the H7 type virus have caused minor, untransmissible infections in people in North America between 2002 and 2004 have increased their affinity for the sugars found on human tracheal cells.

Subsequent tests in ferrets suggested that these viral strains were not readily transmissible.

But one strain of the H7N2 virus, a low pathogenic avian flu strain isolated from a man in New York in 2003, replicated in the ferret's respiratory tract and was passed between infected and uninfected ferrets suggesting it could be transmissible in humans.

The investigators said the evidence suggests that the virus could be evolving toward the same strong sugar-binding properties of the three worldwide viral pandemics in 1918, 1957 and 1968.

"These findings suggest that the H7 class of viruses are partially adapted to recognize the receptors that are preferred by the human influenza virus," said Terrence Tumpey, a senior microbiologist with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The authors said that if the viruses continue to evolve in this direction, the avian flu viruses could travel more easily between other animals and humans. They called for strict surveillance of avian flu viruses and continuing federal preparations for a possible future pandemic.

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Among the H7 viruses the CDC scientists studied were H7N3 viruses recovered from the two British Columbians infected during an outbreak in the poultry farm-dense Fraser Valley in 2004. More than 17 million chickens were destroyed in the efforts to stop that outbreak.

Of all the H7 viruses studied for this work, the New York man's seemed most adapted to humans. It bound more easily to the receptors found in the lining of the human upper respiratory tract and had decreased binding to bird receptor cells. And when ferrets were inoculated with the virus, it spread from the infected animals to healthy animals placed in the same cages.

But in general H7 viruses from North America that have been isolated from about 2002 onwards seem to have developed an increasing affinity for the human-type receptors, said Dr. Terrence Tumpey, the CDC scientist who led the work.

Tumpey also said in his statement that the study shows that while there is no direct indication that the H7 virus is about to aquire potentially damaging mutations, it is vital that global inspection and research covers this virus class as well as the more obvious H5N1.

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Latest Update on Eathquake in China

China had two aftershocks over the weekend further damaging the countries infrastructure and causing another 60 injuries, 6 of which are critical and destroyed another 420,000 homes.

The current death toll as of this writing is now above 67,000. Such a large number of dead and injured are children that China is making the unprecedented step of issuing certificates to parents to have a second child if the parents had a child killed or seriously injured in the earthquake.

Many areas are being evacuated either due to large scale flooding from massive amounts of debris blocking rivers in what are being called quake lakes. In some cases large parts of mountains literally fell into the rivers blocking the flow of the water. Currently the numbers being evacuated are around 150,000.

Also in a reversal from earlier reports China is saying that about 69 dams are on the verge of collapse after they down played the damage for the last two weeks. China is home to more dams than any other country and also constitutes about half of the worlds dams.

Fears are also rising about outbreaks of disease since survivors are living in cramped and sometimes unsanitary spaces. Officials say there have been cases of diarrhea, tuberculosis, and hepatitis among survivors, and they are monitoring the cases closely.

Help is badly needed in China, if you can please make a donation to one of the organisations below, to help.

Red Cross
Doctors Without Borders

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Update: Myanmar Relief

Though we just posted that all relief workers are being allowed into the country. It is also being reported by CNN that both U.S. and British relief supply ships are being refused.