Tom: Hey everyone. It is Thursday, May 14. I am Tom Hanson and Channel One News starts right now.
First up today, investigators are looking into a deadly train crash that happened on Amtrak’s most popular route. More than 11 million people take the Amtrak rail from Washington DC to Boston along the Northeast Corridor every year. And Maggie Rulli has the details about what happened.
Maggie: Passengers inside Amtrak train 188 described chaos as they tried to make their way out of the wreckage.
Male: A lot of people were just in shock. They couldn't believe what was happening. You see the blood on people's faces. They can’t move. Their knees were out.
Maggie: Two-hundred and thirty-eight passengers and five crew members were on board the train. It was traveling to New York City when it went off the tracks on a curve in Philadelphia, killing at least seven people and leaving hundreds more injured.
Mayor Michael Nutter: I've been down on the tracks on the scene with my staff. It is an absolute disastrous mess. Never seen anything like this in my life.
Maggie: All seven of the train cars came off the track.
Male: We have people on the tracks and a couple of cars overturned.
Maggie:The derailment was so violent the front car landed several yards away from the rest of the train.
Nutter: I've never seen anything so devastating. They're in pretty bad shape. You can see they've been completely, completely derailed from the track.
Maggie: Investigators are looking into several factors, including that the train was traveling at over 100 miles per hour around a turn with a 50 miles per hour speed limit.
This tragedy is the most recent in a series of train derailments along the same route. And across the country, the U.S. Department of Transportation has reported more than 1200 derailments and nearly 160 collisions in 2013 on both passenger and cargo trains.
But there is some good news. Train derailments have become less common over the years, and accidents are not normally fatal.
Critics are quick to point to America's old infrastructure as a potential problem.
Steve Israel: Last night we failed them. We failed to invest in their safety. We failed to make their safety a priority.
Maggie: Yesterday, less than 24 hours after the deadly Amtrak crash, lawmakers in Washington voted against a proposal that would have increased funding for America's rail system.
Many worry that means the U.S. will continue to fall further behind more advanced train systems in other countries. Yet, others say Amtrak should not rely on government funding, but instead be self-sufficient like a private company.
For now, the cause of the crash is still under investigation.
Maggie Rulli, Channel One News.
Tom: Thanks Maggie. We will be sure to keep an eye on that.
Alright coming up, bees are dying off faster than ever, and it could affect what's on your plate.
Alright let's go ahead and rundown some other news making headlines.
Police are on high-alert in the country of Pakistan today, aftera bus attack that killed dozens of people. It happened in the southern city of Karachi, and it appears to be a religious attack.
Gunmen on motorbikes attacked the bus yesterday, killing at least 43 people and wounding 19 others. The bus was carrying men, women and children who belong to the minority group of Shiite Muslims
The attack is the deadliest Pakistan has seen in months. Police say the bus was traveling to a community center when six gunmen boarded the bus and opened fire on everyone.
The attackers then fled on their motorcycles.
A violent extremist group that aligned itself with ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack and vowed to carry out more. The attack adds to the conflict between the two major groups in Islam, the Sunni’s and Shiite.
Some Sunni Muslims, who are the majority in Pakistan, view Shiites as deserters of the Muslim faith.
Meanwhile here in America, religion has its own problems and is struggling. A new study finds Americans, mainly young adults, are losing faith and walking away from church.
The Pew Research poll found that the percentage of Christians is declining with more and more people not linking themselves to an organized religion.
While nearly eight out of 10 Americans called themselves Christians in 2007, the number is just over seven out of ten today.
That's a drop of nearly five million adults.
Eighty-five percent of American adults were raised Christian, but today nearly a quarter of them no longer identify that way. Infact, 56 million and mostly young adults now call regard themselves as unaffiliated or nonbelievers.
Male: Now that I've grown up, I don't live with my parents. I am busy day to day. I don't choose to go to church or anything like that at all.
Tom: And the survey found that the decline is taking place in every part of the country.
And last up, bees are dying off, and it's still a mystery as to why. But it could impact our nation's food supply.
The rate of dead bees has tripled since the year 2006 and it is all due to a condition called colony collapse disorder or CCD. The latest research shows that the United States lost more than 40 percent of their honeybee colonies between April 2014 and April 2015.
And scientists really don't know why that is, still unable to find a cause to the bee collapse. But one theory says the bee die-offs are related to pesticides commonly used on corn, as it is believed the pesticide blocks the nerve ending of the bee, paralyzing it and forcing it to starve to death.
The problem impacts our food supply because at least 70 percent of our crops rely on bees to pollinate the plants.
Alright after the break, $1.50 in your pocket, and that's all you get for the entire day. We will show you how one chef is getting by.
Now, we hear the statistic all the time. Worldwide, more than a billion people live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than two dollars a day. Now, some Americans are trying it out as a challenge and a mission to bring awareness to the cause. Arielle Hixson caught up with one young person who finds out what it is like.
Arielle: You may have seen Gabe Kennedy before. Winner of “The Taste,” world traveler, and now visiting executive chef at Bon Appetit.
You can say he has had a taste of the finer things.
Gabe Kennedy: This apple would essentially cost me 40 cents.
Farmer: Yeah
Gabe: so can I give you 40 cents for this apple?
Farmer: If you feel like it you can.
Gabe: I feel like it. I have to get the deal.
Arielle: But right now, he is on a tight budget.
Gabe: Oftentimes I come from this place of a lot of privilege. And it's important to look at the realities of the world.
Arielle: That's why Gabe is taking on the challenge to survive on just a $1.50 a day for a week. That's what extreme poverty looks like in the U.S. He is one of many “living below the line” to bring awareness to poverty around the world.
What was the most difficult part of living on $1.50 a day?
Gabe: Living in this perpetual state of hunger.
Arielle: Gabe gave us a glimpse of his frugal lifestyle at a local farmer’s market. He tried to buy some food, but it was pretty tough. Bread was too expensive. And cheese, out of the question. The only thing he could afford was a single apple.
Gabe: There’s always this line of how do we get food and how do we get the proper nutrition and nourishment without compromising the quality or integrity of where it's coming from.
Arielle: Around the world, 1.2 billion people are living in extreme poverty. That’s nearly four times the population of the U.S. And some live on as little as 20 cents a day.
Gabe: When you are poor, you are not just poor financially. You are poor in opportunity. You are poor in access, you are poor in education. You know, it is not just one faceted thing.
Arielle: After the farmer's market we went to the kitchen where Gabe prepped a meal that would cost less than a dollar per person.
He bought a week’s worth of food and then rationed it out, specifically getting items that were cheap but nutritious, like lentils, eggs, cabbage, and that special apple from the market.
Gabe, you are using every, single bit.
Gabe: I mean, why would we not? It took a lot of time and energy for the world to produce this for us, I feel like it's kind of our responsibility to eat it.
Arielle: And soon, a delicious and affordable meal was served.
Gabe: Even if we’re eating a 70 cent meal, we want to enjoy the process.
Arielle: The “Live Below the Line” campaign has raised over $300,000in the U.S with a goal of eight million worldwide. Money from the challenge will go to the world’s leading anti-poverty organizations;hopefully helping those with little in their pockets have a little more on their plates.
Gabe: I want to challenge myself, and I want to learn what it's like to live in a situation like 1.2 billion people on this planet do. Every meal that I have, I have to think about. And that's something that not everyone experiences every day.
Arielle: Arielle Hixson, Channel One News.
Tom: Now do you think you can live below the line? Well, head on over to Channelone.com to try it out and put yourself to the challenge.
Alright guys we are all out of time today, but we will see you right back heretomorrow.
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