Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 112, No. 246, Ed. 1 Monday, April 4, 2016 Page: 3 of 16
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3A
Denton Record-Chronicle
Monday, April 4, 2016
Recommendations could allow more drones
The Federal Aviation Admin-
istration currently prohibits most
commercial drone flights over
populated areas, especially
crowds. That ban frustrates a
host of industries that want to
take advantage ofthe technology.
“Every TV station in the coun-
try wants one, but they can’t be
limited to flying in the middle of
nowhere because there’s no news
in the middle of nowhere,” said
Jim Williams, a former head of
FAAs drone office who now ad-
vises the industry for Dentons, an
international law firm.
Cellular network providers al-
so want to loosen restrictions so
drones, also known as unmanned
aerial vehicles, can inspect cell
towers, which often are in urban
areas. Amazon’s vision for pack-
age deliveries entails drones
winging their way over city and
suburban neighborhoods.
The AP obtained a copy of
the recommendations, which
were sent to the FAA late Friday.
The agency is not bound by the
recommendations and can
make changes when it writes fi-
nal rules.
The recommendations call
for creating four categories of
small drones that commercial
operators can fly over people, in-
cluding crowds in some cases.
The first category of drones
would weigh no more than
about a half-pound. They essen-
tially could fly unrestricted over
people, including crowds. Drone
makers would have to certify
that if the drone hit someone,
there would be no more than a 1
percent chance the maximum
force of the impact would cause
a serious injury.
For the three other catego-
ries, the drones would have to fly
at least 20 feet over the heads of
people and keep a distance of at
least 10 feet laterally from some-
one.
According to the recommen-
dations:
■ Drones in the second cate-
gory are expected to be mostly
small quadcopters
with multiple arms and propel-
lers, and weighing 4 pounds to 5
pounds — but there is no weight
limit. Flights over people, in-
cluding crowds, would depend
on the design and operating in-
structions,
would have to demonstrate
through testing that the chance
of a serious injury was 1 percent
or less.
■ Drones in the third catego-
ry could not fly over crowds or
densely populated areas. These
drones would be used for work
in closed or restricted sites
where the people that the drones
fly over have permission from
the drone operator to be present.
Those people would be inciden-
tal to the drone operations and
flights over them would be brief,
rather than sustained.
■ Drones in the fourth cate-
gory could have sustained flights
over crowds. Working with the
FAA and engaging the local
community, the operator would
have to develop a “congested ar-
ea plan” showing how flight risks
would be mitigated.
Committee calls
for categories for
commercial uses
drones
By Joan Lowy
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A gov-
ernment-sponsored committee
is recommending standards that
could clear the way for commer-
cial drone flights over populated
areas and help speed the intro-
duction of package delivery
drones and other uses not yet
possible, The Associated Press
has learned.
Manufacturers
Analysis
finds state
pay gap
Transgender activists
spurred by setbacks
^ \
Amtrak in-
vestigators
inspect a
train that
struck a
piece of con-
struction
equipment
Sunday in
Chester, Pa.
*
that trans people build our
own political power and
speak with our own voices.”
Last November, by a deci-
sive margin, voters in Hous-
ton repealed a municipal
nondiscrimination ordinance
that provided protections for
LGBT people.
On March 23, North Car-
olina Gov. Pat McCrory
signed a hastily drafted law
that barred Charlotte and
other cities in the state from
implementing similar ordi-
nances.
In both cases, conserva-
tives opposed to the ordi-
nances focused their argu-
ments on bathroom access —
contending that allowing
transgender people to use
public bathrooms based on
their gender identity would
expose women and girls to
discomfort and possible mo-
lestation.
“It’s been an alarming
wake-up call since Novem-
ber,” said Dru Lavasseur,
Transgender Rights Project
director for the LGBT-rights
group Lambda Legal. ‘We
need to prioritize bringing
transgender people into the
movement in leadership posi-
tions, with transgender voices
leading the way.”
By David Crary
AP National Writer
NEW YORK - Stung by
setbacks related to their ac-
cess to public restrooms,
transgender Americans are
taking steps to play a more
prominent and vocal role in a
nationwide campaign to cur-
tail discrimination against
them.
AUSTIN (AP) - Women
and minorities working in state
government make less than
their male counterparts in simi-
lar jobs, a newspaper review of
state salary data has found.
According to The Dallas
Morning News, women earn 92
cents on the dollar compared
with men. The gap actually has
grown by 2 cents since 2006,
even as gender and racial pay in-
equity have gotten more atten-
tion in recent years. Black wom-
en make 86 cents on the dollar
compared to white men, and
Hispanic women earn 87 cents.
The newspaper found that
white men are more likely to get
top agencyjobs that carry higher
salaries and fewer restrictions
on raises. It also spoke to state
employees who said they’ve seen
in practice what the data sug-
gests overall: Most low-paid co-
workers are women of color.
The gaps in state salaries are
lesser than the national difference
according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, which estimated in No-
vember that women working
frill-time earn about 83 cents on
the dollar compared to men.
In Texas, the salary gap ap-
pears to be wider for workers
making higher salaries than
low-wage workers.
■«Tl
*
.
I
Michael Bryant,
The Philadelphia
Inquirer/AP
_
2_:_
Two such initiatives are
being launched this week —
evidence of how transgender
rights has supplanted same-
sex marriage as the most vola-
tile, high-profile issue for the
broader movement of lesbi-
an, gay, bisexual and trans-
gender activists.
One initiative is a public
education campaign called
the Transgender Freedom
Project that will share the
personal stories of transgen-
der people.
The other, the Trans Unit-
ed Fund, is a political advoca-
cy group that will engage in
election campaigns at the fed-
eral and state level, pressing
candidates to take stands on
transgender rights.
“We welcome the support
of our allies,” said Hayden
Mora, a veteran transgender
activist who is the director of
Trans United. “But it’s crucial
Amtrak train derails; 2 die
that none of the injuries was
deemed life-threatening.
Schumer said it’s unclear
whether the equipment was be-
ing used for regular mainte-
nance, which usually is sched-
uled on Sunday mornings be-
cause there are fewer trains on
the tracks, or whether it was
clearing debris from high winds
in the area overnight. But he said
Amtrak has “a 20-step protocol”
for having such equipment, de-
scribed by Amtrak as a backhoe,
on the track, and no trains are
supposed to go on a track when
equipment is present
An Amtrak spokeswoman
said in an email to The Associat-
ed Press any information about
the type of equipment on the
track and why the train was us-
ing that track would have to
come from the NTSB.
Chester Fire Commissioner
Travis Thomas said two people
were killed. A National Transpor-
tation Safety Board official con-
firmed one was the operator of
the equipment. U.S. Sen. Chuck
Schumer, D-N.Y., said Amtrak
board Chairman Anthony Coscia
told him the other person killed
was a supervisor and both were
Amtrak employees.
The Delaware County medi-
cal examiner’s office said no in-
formation would be released un-
til after autopsies today.
NTSB investigator Ryan Fri-
go said at an evening news con-
ference the event data recorder
and forward-facing and inward-
facing video from the locomo-
tive have been recovered.
He said the locomotive engi-
neer was among those taken to
hospitals. Officials said earlier
Train struck heavy
equipment on rails
in Pennsylvania
CHESTER, Pa. (AP) - An
Amtrak train struck a piece of
heavy equipment just south of
Philadelphia on Sunday, causing
a derailment that killed two Am-
trak workers and sent more than
30 passengers to hospitals, au-
thorities said.
Train 89 was heading from
New York to Savannah, Georgia,
about 8 a.m. when it hit the
equipment that was on the track
in Chester, about 15 miles out-
side Philadelphia, officials said.
The impact derailed the lead en-
gine of the train that was carry-
ing more than 300 passengers
and seven crew members.
ico border, many of her class-
mates were virtually quiet all
day, or they would be punished
for speaking Spanish.
“I even saw a report card,
which actually had a grade
printed on it —‘Speaks English
only at school.’ They had a grade
for that.”
built a solid foundation, but it
wasn’t as sophisticated as it is to-
started out as the earliest gradu-
ates of a bilingual education
program in Texas.
Some of these graduates from
the Texas Woman’s University
program will gather for a reunion
on the campus April 15-16.
They are likely to talk about
how proud they are to have been
part of a historic period in the
education of Latino kids in Tex-
with a strong emphasis on Eng-
lish,” Morolez-de Anda said.
Many of the graduates, like
Narcedalia Uribe Scott, would
go to work in the Fort Worth
school district.
Scott, who now lives in Mich-
igan, was a second-grade teach-
er for 36 years before she retired
in 2009.
She recalled how glad she
was to be in a program that let
the children speak the only lan-
guage they knew while on the
school grounds.
When she was growing up in
Mercedes, near the Texas-Mex-
on a subject, we would help
them out in their own language,
and they could keep on leam-
From Page 1A
day.’
Bilingual
Nowadays, bilingual educa-
tion has evolved and expanded
into dual-language programs.
But a new problem has
emerged.
“We have the data, the re-
search and the skills,” said Mo-
rolez-de Anda, “but not enough
bilingual education teachers.”
MERCEDES OLIVERA is a
columnistfor The Dallas
Morning News. She can be
reached at oliveramercedes@
ymail.com.
mg.
Rudy Rodriguez Sr., a retired
UNT education professor, was
the first director of a bilingual
education program in North
Texas — the Bilingual Educa-
tion Centro de Accion, a TWU-
based program that collaborat-
ed with the Fort Worth school
curriculum to implement back
then.
So what did those first bilin-
gual education teachers do?
They improvised.
“We had to create every-
thing,” recalled Martha Moro-
lez-de Anda, now a retired ad-
junct education professor at the
University of North Texas.
It’s been 40 years since she
and 21 other young Latinas
But at the Fort Worth grade
school, it was a different world
entirely.
as.
“We were just beginning, and
we were using all the tools at our
disposal to prepare our Hispan-
ic children, to help them in the
classroom using their language,
‘It became evident that there
district.
was a new way of thinking, and
it was a very positive experience
for the children and for us,” she
said. “If the children got stuck
“It was cold turkey back
then,” he said.
‘We finally got it up and run-
ning after a couple of years. We
I ' —
^ " 1
2N
From Page 1A
YOUTH IS
WASTED
ON THE
YOUNG.
Eureka
7-
The new playground meets
current safety and ADA require-
ments the old structure did not.
Sarah and Bobby Zettler,
who brought their daughter and
her friends to the park for the af-
ternoon, remember when the
old playground was tom down
in October.
“I think this one is bigger,
more expanded, and there’s defi-
nitely more to do,” Bobby Zettler
said.
mil
-
Who says the young get to
have all the fun? You have
worked hard to get where
you are, and now you finally
have the time to enjoy it. Let
loose. Live a little, and don’t
let anything get in the way...
especially your vision.
.»•
.0
■
■
_
David Minton/DRC
Stefanie Lindlau spins a group of kids on a merry-go-round as
committee members for the Eureka 2 project and their fami-
lies tour the new playground Saturday.
The kids in the group agreed
their favorite additions are the
two zip lines — including a seat-
ed version suitable for kids who
are younger and those with mo-
bility impairments. The parents,
however, preferred the safer,
seated merry-go-round.
“I used to always get splinters
when I came here as a little kid,
and it was painful, but now I
don’t,” 11-year-old Ava Carson
said. “I definitely like that part.”
Ava noted that the ground
beneath the zip lines is covered
in wood chips — something to
keep in mind if one falls, like she
■A
'i
-/
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Center specializes in eye
care for adults over 50 and
laser cataract procedures.
you get that brown stuff on your
hands. I’m not sure if that was
the stain they’d used on the
wood, or what,” Bobby Zettler
said. “Whatever it was, it
smelled kind of funky.”
More than 3,000 volunteers
helped build the playground in
November, but Denton Parks
Foundation director Molly
Tampke said that for the foun-
dation and the Denton Parks
and Recreation Department,
the project has been a year-and-
a-half-long process.
‘We started working on it
long before anyone knew. It’s
been over a year, and seeing that
playground, it never ceases to
amaze me,” Tampke said. “It was
created by volunteers, and it was
built by volunteers, and it’s
beautiful.”
The playground requires
some minor final touches. For
instance, a sign displaying the
names of the project’s donors
will be added to the left side of
the playground’s entrance, op-
posite the original Eureka
plaque on the right side. Maflouf
said the parks department plans
to have the sign in place in time
for the playground’s grand
opening, which is currently slat-
ed for April 16 at 4 p.m.
RHIANNON SAEGERT can
be reached at 940-566-6897
and via Twitter at @miss
musetta.
Schedule Your Free
Cataract Screening
Today. 940.220.7854
did.
KLEIMAN | EVANGELISTA
“I wasn’t the first one to fall
off, but I’m OK,” she said. “It
didn’t really hurt.”
Parents and kids alike are
fans of the rubber flooring, and
the recycled plastic used to build
the structure.
“At the old one, playing
around on the wooden parts,
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 112, No. 246, Ed. 1 Monday, April 4, 2016, newspaper, April 4, 2016; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1127503/m1/3/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .