http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/01/bronx-train-derailment/3795231/

A train derailed Sunday morning at a station in the Bronx, media outlets are reporting.

CNN, citing the New York Fire Department, said about 100 firefighters are responding to the scene in the Bronx. The Associated Press, quoting a woman at the scene, is says the some cars of the Metro-North passenger train toppled into water. A woman at the scene, Rebecca Schwartz, told AP that numerous emergency vehicles have responded.
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http://gizmodo.com/what-we-found-at-hart-island-the-largest-mass-grave-in-1460171716

It’s a place where few living New Yorkers have ever set foot, but nearly a million dead ones reside: Hart Island, the United States’ largest mass grave, which has been closed to the public for 35 years. It is difficult to visit and off-limits to photographers. But that may be about to change, as a debate roils over the city’s treatment of the unclaimed dead. Never heard of Hart? You’re not alone—and that’s part of the problem.

Hart Island is a thin, half-mile long blip of land at the yawning mouth of Long Island Sound, just across the water from City Island in the Bronx. Depending on who you ask, it was named either for its organ-like shape or for the deer (or hart) that thrived here after trekking across the frozen sound in the 18th century. Hart is dense with history; it’s been used as a prison for Confederate soldiers, a workhouse for the poor, a women's asylum, and a Nike missile base during the Cold War.

Its most important role has been to serve as what’s known as a potter’s field, a common gravesite for the city’s unknown dead. Some 900,000 New Yorkers (or adopted New Yorkers) are buried here; hauntingly, the majority are interred by prisoners from Riker’s Island who earn 50 cents an hour digging gravesites and stacking simple wooden boxes in groups of 150 adults and 1,000 infants. These inmates—most of them very young, serving out short sentences—are responsible for building the only memorials on Hart Island: Handmade crosses made of twigs and small offerings of fruit and candy left behind when a grave is finished.

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http://www.rr.com/articles/2013/11/02/b/burns-explores-roosevelt-legacy-in-new-documentary

WARM SPRINGS, Ga. (AP) — Filmmaker Ken Burns said Saturday that he wants to tell the story of three of the most famous Roosevelts, their strengths and weaknesses, in an upcoming documentary on one of America's most famous political families.

He previewed part of the 14-hour series that will air next year during a reunion of the extended Roosevelt family at the former polio clinic in rural Georgia that President Franklin Roosevelt purchased after coming to seek a cure for his crippled legs. Roosevelt built a home here known as the Little White House, where he died in 1945.

Burns' film explores the political and family ties between President Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor. The filmmaker acclaimed for documentaries on the Civil War, baseball and World War II said he aimed for an honest portrayal of political figures who were sometimes reduced to caricatures.

Contrasting American ideals of heroism with those of the heroes of ancient Greece, Burns remarked that the Greeks "saw heroes as having very obvious strength but also very obvious and sometimes equal weaknesses."

"Achilles had his heel," Burns said. "And so I think for us, it's always been what kind of American history do you show? One that's sort of treacly and superficial or one that gets deeper?"

Defining a common legacy between the three figures is tricky since their lives span from 1858 to 1962. The political populism of Theodore Roosevelt — for example, his anti-monopoly stances and efforts to improve food safety and regulation — arguably found a new expression in the New Deal politics championed by Franklin Roosevelt to alleviate the suffering inflicted by the Great Depression.

The film follows Eleanor Roosevelt as she emerged from her role as first lady after Roosevelt's death and successfully worked to adopt a United Nations declaration of human rights. She was the niece of Theodore Roosevelt and a distant relation to Franklin Roosevelt.
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http://auburnpub.com/blogs/eye_on_ny/updated-auburn-native-amy-dacey-named-ceo-of-the-democratic/article_b323479e-4230-11e3-8ab7-001a4bcf887a.html



The Democratic Party's new chief executive officer has Cayuga County and central New York ties.

Amy Dacey, a 1989 graduate of Auburn High School who was inducted into the Auburn Education Foundation's Hall of Distinction this year, has been named CEO of the Democratic National Committee by DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Dacey will begin serving as the party's CEO in January 2014.

"I'm honored to join Chair Wasserman Schultz and the great team at the Democratic National Committee as we help advance the president's agenda and support Democrats all over the country," Dacey said in a statement provided by the DNC. " It's an exciting time to be a Democrat as we work to implement the Affordable Care Act, pass common sense immigration reform, create jobs and continue our economic recovery.

"I'm thrilled to come aboard as we focus on maintaining control of the Senate, taking back the House, expanding our map and electing Democrats up and down the ballot and all across the country. We have lots of work to do and are building the team to ensure Democrats have the tools and resources they need to be successful."

Dacey currently serves as executive director of EMILY's List, a post she has held since 2010. Before EMILY's List, she was the director of government relations for the Service Employees International Union, a leading labor organization. Her work experience includes stints as traveling political director on John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign and national political director at Kerry's Keeping America's Promise political action committee during the 2006 election cycle.

She also worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2000 election cycle and served as deputy political director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Senate Democrats' campaign arm, during the 2002 cycle.
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