Police say TSA agent Gerardo Hernandez was shot and killed last Friday at the base of the escalators of LAX Terminal 3, and not at the checkpoint gates.  Paul Ciancia is accused of killing Hernandez and wounding several others.  Ciancia remains hospitalized in critical condition.

Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, how did the airlines respond to shooting and its aftermath?

Mark Lacter: Generally pretty well, Steve, considering that the airport was effectively closed for several hours on Friday, and most of Terminal 3 was out of commission until Saturday afternoon.  You know, there's always this precarious balance in operating airlines and airports, even in the best of circumstances.  Just so many flights coming in and going out, and so many thousands people using the facility at any given time - and it really doesn't take much to upset the balance.  So, when you have something horrific take place and you see all those travelers stranded outside the terminals, the ripple effects are enormous - not just at LAX but all over the country.

Julian: More than a thousand flights were either canceled or delayed on Friday.

Lacter: And, there was a further complication because the airlines flying out of Terminal 3 are not the legacy carriers like United, American, and Delta that have all kinds of resources, but smaller operations with less flexibility.  It's not like there's an empty aircraft just sitting in a hangar waiting to take passengers wherever they want to go.  Actually, the airlines have gotten better at arranging re-bookings when there's a snowstorm or some other emergency that gives them advance warning.  But obviously, there was no advance warning last Friday, so the carriers needed to improvise in handling passengers whose flights were cancelled.

Julian: What did they do?

Lacter: One step was waiving the fees normally charged to re-book flights (and that's gotten to be a pretty penny).  Another was waiving the difference in the price of the original ticket and the re-booked ticket.  But, the policies varied according to the airline, and we heard about travelers not receiving hotel or food vouchers, or having to buy a brand new ticket on another airline if they wanted to avoid the wait - and that can be expensive.  Which raises another issue: planes tend to be completely full these days because airlines have been cutting back on the number of flights.  And that can be a problem if you're taking a route that doesn't have too many flights in the first place.  So, it gets really complicated.

Julian: Why do you think we haven't we heard more horror stories from passengers?

Lacter: Well, look at the cities that the airlines in Terminal 3 fly to - New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas.  They're all served by several other carriers.  L.A. to New York, in particular, is one of the busiest routes in the world, which means that it's also one of the most competitive.  So, even if your flight was cancelled, there's a good chance you'd be able to find space by Saturday (which is normally a slower day for air travel).  This is a big reason, in general, why people like LAX.

Julian: Why don't other local airports handle more of the load?

Lacter: You might remember a few years ago local officials were promoting something called "regionalization" - the idea was that as LAX maxed out on the number of passengers it was allowed to handle each year, then other airports would make up the difference - places like Ontario, Bob Hope in Burbank, and John Wayne in Orange County.

Julian: Right, and they talked about easing traffic congestion by spreading around the flights.

Lacter: Well, regionalization never happened because, first of all, passenger levels at L.A. International didn't come close to maxing out.  But, more importantly, because the airlines decided that using LAX was more efficient for everything from handling baggage to arranging international connections.  So, through the first nine months of the year, passenger traffic at LAX is up 4.2 percent from a year earlier, while at Ontario traffic was down 9.3 percent.  And, we've seen that John Wayne, Bob Hope, and Long Beach are all struggling.  Of course, the challenge at a busy place like LAX is making it as safe as possible, and that will no doubt become a priority in the weeks ahead.

Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Screengrab from video on XY Lee's YouTube channel.; Credit: via YouTube

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

I like the philosophy behind shooting with primes; that a photographer shouldn’t stand still but instead, continuously move closer, further, lower, or higher relative to his/her subject as a means of establishing a deeper connection. ????????
—
Save 50% on my custom Lightroom presets with HOLIDAY50. Link in profile. (at Toronto, Ontario)

Event Begins: Thursday, November 14, 2024 3:00pm
Location: Michigan Union
Organized By: Information and Technology Services (ITS)

Join us for some expert guidance on DIY troubleshooting. Our Tech Help expert will teach you how to recognize problems and how to find answers to some common technical issues. We will focus primarily on computer troubleshooting (Windows, Mac, and Linux), but techniques and approaches would also be applicable to other kinds of devices such as smartphones, smart watches, or gaming consoles.

BYOD: mobile computing device (optional)

Who: Open to all
When: Thursdays at 3 p.m. (lasting 20-30 minutes, with option for Q&A and personal consulting to follow)
Where: Michigan Union | Ground Floor

It would be great if you registered to let us know you’re coming, but drop-ins are also welcome!

Data recording can help less experienced technicians troubleshoot refrigeration systems. 

TBILISI, 27 May 2016 – The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Special Representative on the South Caucasus Kristian Vigenin (MP, Bulgaria), today concluded a two-day visit to Georgia.

The Special Representative met with Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili, Chairman of the Georgian Parliament David Usupashvili, and Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze, as well as Members of the OSCE PA delegation and representatives of various political forces in the country. Vigenin also participated in events commemorating the 25th anniversary of the restoration of Georgia’s independence.

“In just 25 years, Georgia has achieved a great deal, and I look forward to seeing what further progress the next 25 years will bring,” said the Special Representative. He noted that the upcoming OSCE PA's 25th Annual Session to be held in Tbilisi, 1-5 July, is an opportune moment for Georgia to demonstrate its achievements to hundreds of parliamentarians from across the OSCE region.

“With parliamentary elections later this year, this is a sensitive period. Following incidents of violence against opposition leaders a few days ago during the local by-elections, a thorough and transparent investigation is necessary. While it is the government’s responsibility to hold those responsible accountable, I also call on all political forces to act with restraint in the coming months so that the October elections can take place in a calm and peaceful environment,” said the Special Representative, encouraging all efforts aimed at consolidating democratic progress.

Interlocutors welcomed OSCE observation of the parliamentary elections, expected on 8 October.
Vigenin discussed a range of security challenges faced by Georgia, and visited the Administrative Boundary Line in Khurvaleti, where the de facto authorities of South Ossetia have erected barbed wire fences dividing the village.

“The recent killing of a Georgian citizen in Khurcha, at the Administrative Boundary Line, is a reminder of the significant security challenges Georgia continues to face. I condemn this shooting unconditionally, and expect that those responsible will be brought to justice,” said Vigenin.

Reports indicate that on 19 May at the Khurcha-Nabakevi crossing point on the Administrative Boundary Line, armed men crossed from the Abkhaz side of the bridge and carried out the fatal shooting.

The Special Representative’s visit to Georgia follows meetings earlier this week in Armenia. He continues his travels with a visit to Azerbaijan today where high-level meetings are expected.

Vigenin was appointed Special Representative by OSCE PA President Ilkka Kanerva in February 2016. In his mandate, he is tasked with promoting dialogue in all segments of society, in particular at the parliamentary level, in order to encourage reconciliation and rehabilitation with regard to the protracted conflicts in the region.
This week’s visit is his first visit to the region as Special Representative.

Vigenin is a former Foreign Minister of Bulgaria and currently serves as Deputy Head of the OSCE PA’s Bulgarian Delegation.

To watch a recent interview in which he discusses his priorities as Special Representative, please click here. 

For photos of Vigenin's visit to the region, click here.

Related Stories

• OSCE PA human rights committee Chair Ignacio Sanchez Amor follows up on developments in Turkey
• Assembly’s work on migration presented to OSCE ambassadors by Ad Hoc Committee Chair Lombardi at special Permanent Council
• OSCE PA human rights committee Chair Ignacio Sanchez Amor deplores the killing of journalist Pavel Sheremet, calls for exhaustive investigation

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a notice on Tuesday banning all flights to Haiti for at least 30 days following three gun attacks on planes flying to the capital city of Port-au-Prince.

The post U.S. Flights to Haiti Halted After Gangs Start Shooting Commercial Airliners appeared first on Breitbart.

A man who fired a gun on University Hill in 2022 before being shot by police accepted a plea deal on Friday and was sentenced to two years in jail and eight years of community corrections.

Prosecutors plan to re-try Douglas Harroun on the second-degree assault charge, a lower-level felony, and a new jury trial has been set for Jan. 21, said Eric Ross, spokesman for the 18th Judicial District Attorney's Office.

A 28-year-old woman from Winnipeg is now the third person charged in a shooting on a summer night at a home in the city's North End. Raine Jannelle Dakota Gauthier has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Colin Bernardin Hebert.

Mr. Mattia's death is a tragedy that harmed his family and community greatly, and his family plans to hold CBP accountable for the outrageous killing of their beloved family member.

A few tips for making a connection with your Mac modem and the modem at the office.

In light of what such atrocities reveal about the human condition, it is obviously not enough to affirm religious beliefs, to perform certain acts of outward piety, or merely to identify ourselves as Orthodox Christians. Indeed, it is entirely possible to do all those things while remaining blind, embracing the darkness, and becoming all too comfortable with the forces of death and destruction.

The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel's clearheaded "endorsement of democracy, solving problems, and Kamala Harris" #

A man in his 20s remains in hospital with serious facial injuries after shots were fired at a park.

Screen-shooting will lead to information leakage. Anti-screen-shooting watermark, which can track the leaking sources and protect the copyrights of images, plays an important role in image information security. Due to the randomness of shooting distance and angle, more robust watermark algorithms are needed to resist the mixed attack generated by screen-shooting. A robust digital watermarking algorithm that is resistant to screen-shooting is proposed in this paper. We use improved Harris-Laplace algorithm to detect the image feature points and embed the watermark into the feature domain. In this paper, all test images are selected on the dataset USC-SIPI and six related common algorithms are used for performance comparison. The experimental results show that within a certain range of shooting distance and angle, this algorithm presented can not only extract the watermark effectively but also ensure the most basic invisibility of watermark. Therefore, the algorithm has good robustness for anti-screen-shooting.

Faraz lost control of car due to speeding, rammed into tree

A man accused of having a machine gun at Tuskegee University during a hail of gunfire that left one man dead and at least 16 others hurt told a federal agent that he fired his weapon during the shooting, but denied aiming at anyone.

Former NFL player-turned-celebrity chef Tobias Dorzon was hospitalized this week after he was shot during a stickup in Prince George's County.

The Terrapins' struggles last season were rooted in the most basic of problems: They couldn't shoot, finishing 320th nationally in field goal percentage (41.3%) and 340th in 3-point percentage (28.9%).

by Suzette Smith

The Mercury provides its readers with interesting and useful news & culture reporting every single day. If you appreciate that, consider making a small monthly contribution to support our editorial team. If you read something you like, something you don't like but are glad to know about, and/or something you can't find anywhere else consider a one-time tip. It all goes in the same pot and it all goes to the editorial team. Thanks for your support!

Good Morning, Portland! When they told me a bat could be beautiful I didn't believe, but now I believe.

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• As October comes to a close, so too does the Bureau of Land Management’s annual Bat Beauty Contest, which asks where the "most stunning bat photographed on BLM public lands" can be found? It's Oregon, motherfuckers! For the third year running WE HAVE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BAT. YES! Despite J. K. Rowling's tarnished-as-hell legacy, we can still celebrate this feisty male hoary bat, Hoary Potter. It's also worth noting that this is the second year a bat photographed by wildlife technician Emma Busk took top beauty honors. Busk wrote, "anyone who knows me knows that I’ve been wanting to photograph a hoary bat,"—a sentiment we can all echo.

BLM's most beautiful bat is from Oregon, and I love him. pic.twitter.com/T8qQgsz5kT

— Suzette Smith (@suzettesmith) November 1, 2024

• There's also terrible news, unfortunately. Yesterday evening, a shooting at Vancouver Mall, in Vancouver, WA, killed one person and injured two in the building's food court.  A witness who spoke to KOIN described "a harrowing scene, as the shopping center was full of kids trick-or-treating." So far, police have said they do not have a suspect in custody and the person may still be armed. They told KOIN they were reviewing surveillance footage, but have not yet released a description of the shooter.

• Oh my god, Clark County are you okay? KPTV reports that Clark County Elections Office is warning voters to beware of unofficial ballot boxes. Unofficial ballot boxes are not illegal in Washington! (This also appears to be true of Oregon!) Clark County Elections encouraged voters official ballot return locations.

• The Oregonian is returning to broadsheet size, they announced yesterday in a post that did not explain what that is for readers who didn't go to graphic design school / work in at newspaper with some old dude named Phil. Somewhat surprisingly, Willamette Week's Nigel Jaquiss stepped in to clarify. Tabloid is hotdog style fold; broadsheet is burger. Both WW and the Mercury are hotdogs. The New York Times is burger fold.

• NPR's Up First weirdly tried to do a report on Vice President Kamala Harris "highlighting Trump's own language and using it against him," as if that's somehow something of which to be critical? Gave me the vapors of the new Hasaan Hates Portland sketch from this week:

• In two week's the city's beloved queer documentary festival QDoc will host the Oregon debut of The World According to Allee Willis, which explores the complicated life of a queer "song doctor" who co-wrote not only Earth, Wind and Fire's "September," but the Friends TV show theme. Check out Melissa Locker's review of the film.; she says it's not to be missed!

• Did you take this week's local news quiz? 

          View this post on Instagram                      

A post shared by Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury)

IN NATIONAL NEWS:
• Atlanta rap star Young Thug, born Jeffery Williams, finally walked free last night, after pleading guilty to "six counts, including possession of drugs and firearms... leading a criminal street gang and conspiracy to violate the RICO act, the state’s racketeering law," the New York Times reports. As part of the plea, the judge sentenced Williams to a total sentence of 40 years, but commuted the five years of prison time to the two and a half years that Williams has already served. Williams will remain on probation for 15 years, and will "be required to stay away from metro Atlanta for the first 10 years of his probation." He is also required to take random drug tests, make anti-gang presentations for children's organizations four times a year, perform 100 hours of community service a year, and "refrain from promoting gangs or being around known gang members." The ongoing Young Slime Life (YSL) court proceedings—which caused NYT's Joe Coscarelli to ask "is YSL was a record label, street gang, or both?"—have stretched into what is now the longest trial in Georgia history. Despite three other plea deals this week, it appears the trial will continue with the two remaining co-defendants.

• Mark Zuckerberg dressed as Fran Lebowitz for Halloween, and that's just what happened.

Mark Zuckerberg dressed as John Wick for Halloween but I thought it was Fran Lebowitz pic.twitter.com/zdXaomOMPR

— Meech (@MediumSizeMeech) November 1, 2024

• You're going to see some stuff today about "explosive new audio" recordings where Donald Trump speaks candidly to the reviled Jeffrey Epstein about his White House Staff and his disdain for the position itself. It's only really on the Daily Beast, the podcast of journalist Michael Wolff, and a few other sites. I'd rather wait til a super solid source gets it—seems like maybe they're holding off because they're checking it?—but the story is out there. Don't sound like anything particularly new, but people are saying "October surprise" because they want attention.

• Also in weird news about guys we already thought were corrupt, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is apparently pledged to some secretive religious traditionalist organization. That tracks.

• Flashback to this masterpiece, which has been floating around the zeitgeist all week.

Cyrell Boyd is headed to treatment at the Red Wing juvenile facility for his role in the Nudieland shooting in August 2023. At a hearing Tuesday, victims spoke to him about the shooting’s impact.

On December 7, a girl student, an eighth-grader, went on a shooting spree at Bryansk School No. 5. Five people were injured, two were killed, including the girl shooter herself. The girl's motive for the attack is yet to be established. According to unconfirmed reports, the girl suffered from bullying at school. This is the first time in the history of school shooting incidents in Russia, when the shooter was a girl. No incidents of school shooting were known in Russia before 2014. Before 2014, many in Russia believed that the phenomenon of school shooting was inherent with the United States. After 2014, however, episodes fo school shooting began to occur throughout Russia on a regular basis. 2014, Moscow

You're driving out of a parking lot when you suddenly feel that you're having problems with the power steering. Learn about how to diagnose power steering problems in this article.

President Biden signed a memorial bill to recognize the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting and offered his condolences to people who are awaiting news on their loved ones in the wake of the deadly Surfside, Fla., partial condo collapse.

Biden — who was vice president when a 29-year-old man killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in the nightclub mass shooting — signed the bill to enshrine a monument to the dozens killed in the Latin Night massacre.

The shooting occurred at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in June 2016. The month of June is celebrated annually as LGBTQ Pride Month in the United States.

"May a president never have to sign another monument like this," Biden said.

Biden also offered his thoughts to the victims and loved ones of those affected by the catastrophic collapse this week of a Miami-Dade County condo. Authorities say four people have been declared dead and an additional 159 are considered missing in the rubble.

"I just want to say, I've spoken to Gov. [Ron] DeSantis, and we've provided all the help that they have, they need," Biden said. "We sent the best people from FEMA down there. We're going to stay with them."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Police tape blocks access from a street leading to the building complex where the Capital Gazette is located on June 29, 2018, in Annapolis, Md. The suspect barricaded a back door in an effort to "kill as many people as he could kill," police said.; Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Jury selection in the trial of the gunman who fatally shot five employees at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Md., on June 28, 2018 gets underway on Wednesday.

Jarrod Ramos, 41, has pleaded guilty — but not criminally responsible for reason of insanity — in the killings of John McNamara, Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters and Rebecca Smith. The mass shooting was one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in modern U.S. history.

"There is a sense that you don't want this to be the thing that makes your life change," Phil Davis, the paper's former criminal justice reporter who now works at the Baltimore Sun, told NPR.

Davis was hiding under his desk while live tweeting the shooting that day. Later, he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that put out a paper the very next day.

"That's kind of what drove me to continue as a criminal justice reporter. Once I got the feeling of like, 'no we're going to get back to exactly what we do. We're going to tackle this how we would even if it wasn't us and try to go at it from the perspective of a local community newspaper,'" Davis said.

Bruce Shapiro, the executive director of the Columbia University's Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, said what made this shooting reverberate in newsrooms across the U.S. was "the idea of a newsroom full of colleagues being murdered just because they are journalists. It's an identity based attack."

Attacks on journalists in the U.S. haven't stopped there. During his time in office, President Donald Trump tweeted that the news media is the enemy of the people. Associated Press journalists were threatened and had their equipment damaged by supporters of Trump during the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. And last year, during the protests in Minneapolis over the murder of George Floyd by police, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker reported at least 160 threats to journalists across the country in one week--mostly by police.

Shapiro says the trial is a reminder to the public of the risks and costs local reporters take daily.

"The reality is that local newsrooms all over the country cover extraordinarily difficult events affecting their own families, neighbors, kids, schools whether that is wildfires, whether that is mass shooting, whether that is COVID-19," Shapiro said.

The Capital Gazette trial has been delayed several times due to COVID-19, turnover in the public defender and state's attorney's offices, and rounds of court hearings. Davis says he hopes the long-awaited trial brings some closure.

"Certainly for the families of the victims themselves, I look forward to being on the other end of this trial," he said. "And whatever the outcome is, being able to embrace them and support them just to bring them some sort of closure."

Today, less than a week before the third anniversary of the shooting, the judge has called a pool of 300 people to determine the 12 that will sit as jurors. They will then determine Ramos's mental sanity during the attack.

Steve Mercer, a former Maryland public defender, said the defense has the burden to prove Ramos's sanity. He said that in cases like these, the defense will look at motive and intent. One possible motive, Mercer says, is Ramos' "long-simmering feud with the paper."

Ramos sued the paper for defamation in 2012 after reporters wrote about his guilty plea on charges of criminal harassment and 90-day suspended jail sentence. But that motive might not hold up.

"I think there's a big gap between sort of being upset about a story that's published ... and then going in and committing a mass shooting," Mercer said.

Mercer adds what presents a challenge to both the defense and prosecution is Ramos's conduct after the shooting. He was found by police under a desk at the scene of the shooting with a pump-action shotgun which was purchased legally a few years before.

"The defense may point to it and say that it shows just a disconnect from reality and a lack of awareness of what was going on," Mercer said.

Circuit Court Judge Judge Michael Wachs will ultimately decide if he ends up in prison or a state psychiatric hospital.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

While the world waits for a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 infection, international and multigenerational teams of engineers have come together through the National Academy of Engineering’s COVID-19 Call for Engineering Action to find creative solutions to problems caused by the pandemic.

When I look at any replacement hydronic boiler project, my tenet is always to assume the existing system is installed improperly. I like to pretend I am a famous detective, such as Sherlock Holmes, and my job is to uncover the hidden mistakes.

When troubleshooting a hydronic system, the piping layout is often confusing. To understand the system, I sometimes sketch the piping to help me visualize the flow of water. 

Troubleshooting hydronic systems can be challenging, as the pipes are hidden behind walls. Your imagination has to help you “see” the routing of the piping. 

New technologies can fill the deadly gap of time from when shootings begin to when law enforcement arrives on scene.

The website offers everything to hunters, from basic accessories to high-precision hunting weapons, hunting tips, and tricks.

The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled that an employer can face civil liability for the death of an employee who was shot at work by a colleague. Solo Cup Operating Corp.

The family of the Army reservist who committed the October 2023 massacre in Lewiston wants to bring awareness to traumatic brain injuries among military members.

Known for their reliability, speed, and user-friendly interface, Macs are a staple among creative professionals and casual users alike. However, like any other machine, they are not immune to problems and slow-downs. A proactive approach towards regular maintenance and a good understanding of troubleshooting techniques can go a long way in ensuring your Mac stays […]

The post Keeping Your Mac Healthy: A Comprehensive Guide to Maintenance and Troubleshooting appeared first on 404 Tech Support.

Microplate readers play a crucial role in the life sciences and biotechnology industry due to their ability to measure biological, biochemical or chemical

Microplate readers play a crucial role in the life sciences and biotechnology industry due to their ability to measure biological, biochemical or chemical

In this month’s troubleshooting situation, you are responding to a customer’s complaint that their walk-in cooler “isn’t cooling enough.”

In this month’s troubleshooting situation, you are responding to a restaurant manager’s call for service, and the equipment is a walk-in freezer.

Repairing reach-in coolers and freezers with electronic temperature controllers can be challenging at times.

Comprehensive troubleshooting can help technicians determine whether the compressor is working properly.

If a potential relay is malfunctioning, the compressor motor is in danger of not starting, stalling, locking rotor, or even burning out. That is why technicians should understand how to troubleshoot potential relays.

Learning how to troubleshoot a system that is experiencing leaky valves or worn rings can be challenging, so technicians need to take careful measurements in order to isolate the problem.

Occasionally while servicing refrigeration equipment, technicians may come across a system utilizing a water-cooled condenser instead of an air-cooled condenser.

The higher the inlet water temperature, the more sensible heat must be removed from the water and the longer the freeze cycle. The latent heat removed causes the water to change state, thus producing ice.

In this puzzle, a restaurant manager complains that one of the ice machines in his high-volume establishment isn’t producing enough ice.

How does a tech know the a/c compressor he or she is diagnosing is actually failed and that the problem is not a crankcase heater, condenser fan, or rubbed out wire?