• Freight train derailment in Maryland kills 2

    On Monday night two college students died during a freight train accident in Ellicott City, Md. NBC's Brian Williams reports.



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    By Andrew Mach, Staff Writer, NBC News

    At least two people were killed when a freight train hauling coal derailed west of Baltimore late Monday.

    Police and fire department personnel responded to an emergency call at about 11:45 p.m. Monday and reported that 21 of the train’s 80 cars flipped over and fell from a bridge in Ellicott City, Md, a city just 14 miles from Baltimore. The cars contained coal but were not carrying any hazardous materials.

    The CSX train left from Grafton, W. Va., and was bound for Baltimore.

    “Many of those train cars fell onto automobiles, literally fell onto automobiles with the coal, so you have massive piles of coal and heavy train cars on top of automobiles,” Howard County Executive Ken Ulman said.

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    The victims were identified Tuesday as Elizabeth Nass, 19, and Rose Mayr, 19, both of Ellicott City. Howard County police said the young women were sitting on the ledge of a bridge with their backs to the side of the passing train at the time of the derailment, but were not railroad employees; officers did not know why they were there.

    Both Mayr and Nass both tweeted and posted pictures about sitting on the bridge around 9 p.m.

    Their bodies were found buried under a pile of coal that spilled out from the open cars.

    Witnesses said the coal on the ground was about a foot high.

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    Nass attended James Madison University in Virginia. Mayr was a student at the University of Delaware, NBCWashington reported.

    The train’s three operators were not harmed in the incident, police said. Rescue crews are still working to clean up the coal and searching for more possible victims.

    “A CSX [Rail Corp.] has brought in heavy cranes to move those train cars so we can search the vehicles to see if we have any additional victims,” Ullman said. “We hope and we do pray that we do not.”

    Jim Southworth with the National Transportation Safety Board said at a news conference Tuesday the operators saw and felt nothing before the train’s emergency brake was activated.

    The eastbound train had two locomotives, weighed 9,000 tons and was 3,000-feet-long.

    It fell into a parking lot near Main Street in Ellicott City. Several other streets have been closed because of the crash, Ellicott City Patch reported.

    The damaged cars are being removed from the scene. Southworth said investigators will review video taken from inside the train and conduct an inspection of the track and signal system.

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    Representatives from the Maryland State Department of the Environment surveyed the scene and tentatively said that there was no serious impact on the nearby Patapsco River.

    “It could have been a lot worse when it comes to chemicals,” Ulman said.

    It’s not known what caused the derailment

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  • Charlotte protesters: Bank of America is 'worst of the worst'

    Jason Miczek / Reuters

    Demonstrators march on the Bank of America headquarters in in Charlotte, N.C. during a protest timed to coincide with the company's annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday.

    By Kari Huus, msnbc.com

    Hundreds of protesters converged on the Bank of America shareholder meeting in Charlotte, N.C. on Wednesday, dozens of them entering the proceedings to criticize the behemoth financial institution’s policies on mortgages, worker rights, tax avoidance, banking fees, foreclosures and energy financing.


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    Organizers said there were so many reasons to dislike the bank that it was relatively easy to pull together a large group, some from as far away as Portland, San Francisco and New York.

    "It was a convergence," said Jen Soriano, a member of UNITY Alliance, a group under the umbrella protest organizer called 99 Percent Power.

    "Whether it is workers who have been laid off, homeowners and also tenants who have been evicted from foreclosed homes … or people who live in coal country in the Appalachia whose home in a broader sense are being destroyed by mountain top removal mining …," Soriano said. "Bank of America is pretty much the worst of the worst in terms of banks."

    About 750 people marched from three directions to the Bank of American corporate headquarters, and six people had been arrested by 3 p.m. ET, according to the Charlotte Observer.

    Some of the protesters — organizers estimated more than 100, but there was no way to confirm that — had purchased one share of Bank of America stock so they could enter the meeting and make their complaints directly before the bank’s CEO Brian Moynihan.

    Thirty 99 Percent Power activists spoke during the 90 minute meeting, according to the group.

    Unlike similar proceedings at a Wells Fargo shareholders meeting a few weeks earlier, the protesting shareholders were not forced to leave, but instead allowed to voice their objections to the bank’s policy — many related to its financing of coal related projects.

    The Bank of America is the top financier of the U.S. coal industry "from cradle to grave," according to Kerul Dyer, communications manager for the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network. According to the group, in the past two years, Bank of America has poured $6.7 billion into funding companies engaged in a range of coal-related activities, including mountain-top removal to access coal in the Appalachian Mountains, energy generation and building coal export terminals.

    "As the leading financier of coal, Bank of America funds birth defects, disease and death when it lends money to coal companies,” Bob Kincaid, president of the Appalachian Health Community Emergency. "I intend to see that Bank of America and its shareholders confront these brutal realities and demand that the bank stop financing this assault on our communities."

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    A Bank of America spokesperson said the bank finances a broad range of energy projects, including a renewable energy initiative launched in 2007, through which it has invested $17.9 billion, including money spent on two of the world’s largest solar power projects.

    "In 2011 alone we invested $3.65 billion in renewable energy, energy efficiency and other forms of low-carbon energy," said Brittany Shehan, a spokesperson on the company's environmental policies. "Environmental groups would have it be a bank issue; it’s really a national issue."

    Coal — which has adverse environmental impacts but is relatively inexpensive — is used to generate about half of the electricity consumed in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

    "Any way you slice the numbers there are so many other companies that have a stake in this value chain. Coal is a part of our economy and a big part of our energy supply," Shehan said. She did not confirm the coal-investment number provided by environmental critics.

    The environmental groups also protested Bank of America’s funding of companies that extract coal by mountain-top removal using explosives.

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    Shehan said that the bank in 2008 adopted a new policy on mountain-top removal. But the policy to "phase out financing of companies whose predominant method of extracting coal is through mountain top removal" does not rule out all finance of the companies engaged in the practice.

    The bank was also under attack over its lending and foreclosure practices, as it has been since the start of the mortgage crisis. The protesters from 99 Percent Power called on the bank to halt foreclosures and offer principal reduction for homeowners whose properties are underwater.

    Bank of America is the second largest U.S. bank holding company as measured by assets.

    The bank on Tuesday announced that it had sent letters to more than 200,000 customers "who may be eligible for forgiveness of a portion of the principal balance on their mortgage" under the terms of a recent settlement among five major banks, 49 state attorneys general and the federal government.

    In a news release, it said that customers who qualify for the program will save an estimated 30 percent on their mortgage payments.

    Event organizers said they would have 1,000 protesters, but Estes said Wednesday's crowd in Charlotte was closer to 750, the Charlotte Observerreported, citing Charlotte-Mecklenberg police Maj. Jeff Estes.

    "There's been no property damage, and nobody was injured," Estes told the Observer. "We're pleased with the outcome."

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  • End of coal power plants? EPA proposes new rules

    M. Spencer Green / AP

    This coal-fired power plant is used by the city of Chicago, which last month decided to close it down by the end of 2014. A second coal plant will be closed by the end of this year. Chicago is the only large U.S. city with coal-fired power plants operating within its city limits.

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed the first-ever standards to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants -- a move welcomed by environmentalists but criticized by some utilities as well as Republicans, who are expected to use it as election campaign fodder.

    "Right now there are no limits to the amount of carbon pollution that future power plants will be able to put into our skies -- and the health and economic threats of a changing climate continue to grow," Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement.

    While the proposed rules do not dictate which fuels a plant can burn, they would require any new coal plants essentially to halve carbon dioxide emissions to match those of plants fired by natural gas.

    The proposed standards have divided the power industry between companies that have moved toward natural gas, such as Exelon and NextEra, and those that generate most of their power from coal, such as Southern Co. and American Electric Power.

    Record low prices for natural gas and the looming air rules already have pushed many companies to put older coal plants into retirement.

    "There are areas where they could have made it a lot worse," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of power companies. Still, "the numerical limit allows progress for natural gas and places compliance out of reach for coal-fired plants" not planning to capture and sequester carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas.

    Steve Miller, CEO and President of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a group of coal-burning electricity producers, took a more dismal view, saying it "will make it impossible to build any new coal-fueled power plants and could cause the premature closure of many more coal-fueled power plants operating today."

    Other opponents of the long-delayed EPA proposal say it will limit sources for electricity by making coal prohibitively expensive.

    "This rule is part of the Obama administration's aggressive plan to change America's energy portfolio and eliminate coal as a source of affordable, reliable electricity generation," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., who as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has led the charge against environmental regulations. "EPA continues to overstep its authority and ram through a series of overreaching regulations in it attacks on America's power sector."

    Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail have claimed that Obama-era rules affecting power plants in recent years could cause blackouts. Numerous studies and an Associated Press survey of power plant operators have shown that is not the case.

    Environmentalists were quick to welcome the proposals, which will be finalized after an undetermined period that will include public comments.

    Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called it a "historic step ... toward protecting the most vulnerable among us — including the elderly and our children — from smog worsened by carbon-fueled climate change." 

    The American Lung Association agreed. "Scientists warn that the buildup of carbon pollution will create warmer temperatures which will increase the risk of unhealthful smog levels," said board chairman Albert Rizzo. "More smog means more childhood asthma attacks and complications for those with lung disease."

    The proposed rules would affect only new plants, not existing plants, which was a concession to industry. In addition, they would not apply to units that will start construction within the next 12 months.

    Still, the proposals could set the stage for the EPA to regulate existing plants in the coming years.

    The EPA is moving forward on the climate rules, which do not need approval by Congress, after a wide-ranging climate bill died in the Senate in 2010.

    The proposal, which was due to be released last July but was held up at the White House, stemmed from a settlement with environmental groups and states. The government already controls global warming pollution at the largest industrial sources, has adopted the first-ever standards for new cars and trucks and is working on regulations to reduce greenhouse gases at existing power plants and refineries.

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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