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YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) — A commuter train that derailed over the weekend, killing four passengers, was hurtling at 82 mph as it entered a 30 mph curve, a federal investigator said Monday. But whether the wreck was the result of human error or brake trouble was still unclear, he said. Asked why the train was going so fast, National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener said: "That's the question we need to answer." Weener said the information on the locomotive's speed was preliminary and extracted from the Metro-North train's two data recorders, taken from the wreckage after the Sunday morning...

Where’s Bloomy? While Gov. Cuomo, NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly and FDNY commissioner Sal Cassano rushed to the deadly Metro-North crash in the Bronx, lame duck Mayor Bloomberg was nowhere to be found. It took five hours for Bloomberg’s office to tweet: “Thoughts and prayers with those impacted by today’s train derailment. If you are looking for a loved one who was onboard, call 311.” It’s not known where Bloomberg was on Sunday morning, and City Hall staffers declined to reveal their boss’ whereabouts.

Four people were killed and 63 injured when a Metro-North commuter train derailed Sunday morning in the Bronx, officials said. All of the train’s seven cars came off the curved track about 100 feet north of the Spuyten Duyvil station around 7:20 a.m., MTA officials said. One car came to rest feet from the water.

My dad emailed this to me. It's obviously a joke, but I really really REALLY think USPS should go for it!

President Barack Obama has gamely acknowledged that the HealthCare.gov disaster is “on me,” and surely this is one of the more accurate assertions he’s made related to his signature health care program. But no president could have pulled off HealthCare.gov alone. After all, as he put it, “I don’t write code.” It truly takes a team effort to come up with something so impressively catastrophic. Indeed, this serving of Pasta Fiasco was whipped up by a cadre of chefs, toiling together in spectacular incompetence, each doing their part to create one of the greatest flops in modern political history. Each...

The Obama administration's rollout of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been an "unacceptable" failure that's disappointed supporters and invigorated critics, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) charged Tuesday. "This was not done the way it should have been done. Period," he said during a news conference in the Capitol. Hoyer, the minority whip, emphasized that the ongoing problems with the ACA's federal insurance exchange website are technical, and warned that there's no substance to the GOP claims that those troubles are reflective of the underlying law. "But the implementation of that Act in terms of the web access and capabilities is...

The irony is rich. President Obama told Maryland college students just days before the launch of his healthcare "marketplace" that it would take just a few keystrokes to compare prices and policy details. "Don't take my word for it, go on the website," Obama told a crowd at Prince George's Community College in Largo, MD, five days before the launch. "See for yourself what the prices are. See for yourself what the choices are and then make up your own mind. That's all I'm asking." But the bureaucrats in his administration clearly weren't listening. They created a website that is...

WASHINGTON — As the battle over the health care law was grinding on — Republicans no closer to victory than when they forced the government shutdown — a different fight was rising on a recent Saturday from inside Sharkey's, a bar near the campus of Virginia Tech, 260 miles away. Lured by free beer, gift cards and the chance to win an iPad, 100 students heard a pitch from the young staffers of a group named Generation Opportunity: Obamacare is a bad deal and you should opt out. With enrollment in the insurance marketplaces under way, and tens of millions...

In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration’s new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site’s debut. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience,” he told them. Two weeks after the rollout, few would say his hopes were realized. “These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he...

House Republicans, now seeking a way out of the current fiscal impasse, fear that the government shutdown robbed them of a chance to highlight the problems in ObamaCare's rollout. Oct. 1 should have been a layup for Republican opponents of President Obama’s signature healthcare law, who watched as new insurance exchanges were beset by a slew of technical snafus. But in a harsh bit of irony for the GOP, that was also the first day of a government shutdown driven largely by their own efforts to defund ObamaCare – a standstill that has dominated headlines all month. To make matters...

On health care, the president's pile of broken promises keeps getting higher. Consider this gem from Aug. 20, 2009: “Let's be clear about the fact that nobody has proposed anything close to a government takeover of health care.” Well, yes, somebody did. President Obama is now well on his way to orchestrating the federal government's takeover of Americans' health care. Commandeering the resources of major federal departments, particularly the Department of Health and Human Services and the IRS, the administration and its allies in Congress have created numerous federal bureaus, commissions and programs and have issued thousands of pages of...

Some insurance experts warn that the federal Obamacare marketplace has a month or so to heal itself or risk harming enrollment. Others say it could be months, if not much longer, before the website is free of tech problems. "I think it could easily take up to two years before all these things are working smoothly," said Lisa Carroll, president of the Mosaic Insurance Exchange and the Small Businesses Service Bureau in Massachusetts. "This is just an ecommerce project of epic proportion," said Carroll. Carroll said the complicated task of getting all facets of the federal health insurance market to...

For starters, some insurance companies have received faulty enrollment data from the US-run insurance exchange, according to insurance industry consultants. Either the plans have been unable to open files forwarded to them from the exchange or have found that the information on the enrollees is incomplete. The IRS helps establish the eligibility of applicants for subsidies and will fine people who don't obtain health insurance. But the federal exchange cannot yet communicate online with Medicaid agencies in the 36 states where it is operating. Federal officials said that connectivity will not be in place before November 1, due to technical...

The insurance exchange — a key component of President Barack Obama’s federal health care overhaul — hasn’t been able to sell any insurance in Hawaii because of problems with the software at the heart of the marketplace. Consumers can’t see plans, even though a variety of options from two insurers have been approved to be sold by the state’s insurance division. Hawaii’s health insurance marketplace is hoping to turn around a stalled start by providing plans and pricing to consumers by Oct. 15 — but there are no guarantees, its executive director said Wednesday. Coral Andrews, executive director of Hawaii...

There are radio and television commercials galore, along with Twitter and Facebook posts and scores of highway billboards. There are armies of outreach workers who speak Spanish, Tagalog, Cambodian, Mandarin and Cantonese, all flocking to county fairs, farmers markets, street festivals and back-to-school nights across the state. There are even dinner parties in Latino neighborhoods designed to reach one family at a time. With enthusiastic backing from state officials and an estimated seven million uninsured, California is a crucial testing ground for the success of President Obama’s health care law.

For 18 months, Joe Titus constantly worried about getting seriously ill after he lost his medical coverage after he was laid off from his job as a drug and alcohol counselor. Titus was able to sign up for a Premera Blue Cross plan. The plan’s monthly premium is $349.13. However, because Titus has no income he qualified for tax credits to cover his premium and co-pays for his diabetes and asthma medication and doctor visits, reducing his co-pay and premium to zero. Vancouver resident Guy Kirchgatter also said he had a good experience with in-person navigators, getting help at the...

Behold the Hollywood bubble. This week, actress Olivia Wilde starred in an Obamacare propaganda video targeting young people. "You can sign up for health care online in 10 minutes," her co-propagandist chirped as she cheered. Cue the laugh track. Back on planet Earth, Americans nationwide are still struggling with the $634 million online health care exchange nightmare. One reader asked me to share his story. Like me and 22 million other citizens in the private individual market for health insurance, he recently received his You Can't Keep It cancellation notice. Here's what happened when he went online to find alternatives....

Obamacare's main signup engine attracted just 6,200 new customers on its launch day and 51,000 after the first week At the same rate, the 6-month open enrollment period would sign up just 2 million Americans, including 14 states and D.C., which have their own insurance exchanges The Congressional Budget Office says Obamacare needs at least 7 million customers to stay afloat financially Numerous Obama administration officials have denied seeing any enrollment figures at all MailOnline's sources are two Health and Human Services workers who have access to the data as it's crunched Texas congressman says anemic national enrollment numbers are...

<p>Until glitches plaguing the online rollout in Pennsylvania of the Affordable Care Act are corrected, the uninsured should enroll by phone or mail, a high-ranking federal health official said here.</p> <p>"You can actually go through the whole application process over the phone," said Joanne Corte Grossi, a regional director for the Department of Health and Human Services. "I really encourage that."</p>

More than a week after the launch of the new federally run health-insurance marketplaces, Mary Webster joked yesterday that her enrollment headaches seem to be turning into a “chronic condition." Health insurers in Ohio told The Dispatch they have had Ohioans successfully enroll in their marketplace plans. CareSource said it has had enrollees from six regions in Ohio, with “double-digit” enrollment to date. “Enrollment appears to be slow,” said Ed Byers, a spokesman for Medical Mutual of Ohio.