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After anti-Semitic acts by Lazio fans earlier this week, an excerpt from Anne Frank's diary will be read before soccer matches in Italy.
A passage from Anne Frank's diary will be read before professional soccer matches in Italy this week, the Italian soccer federation announced on Tuesday. The move comes in response to anti-Semitic acts by Lazio fans earlier this week.
The Italian soccer federation, FIGC, will also require a minute of silence before Serie A, B and C matches this week.
MORE: Major League Soccer playoff rankings: Who has the best MLS Cup shot?
Former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi called the Anne Frank images by Lazio fans a "shameful gesture."
“Obviously, we’re talking about a small minority, but not shedding light on this news would be a mistake,” he said in a public statement.
The Anne Frank Center denounced Lazio's fans, calling their actions "abhorrent" on Twitter.
The New Mexico State baseball and softball teams each picked up important Western Athletic Conference series wins over the weekend.
The Aggies softball team split Saturday's doubleheader against Utah Valley the week after losing a WAC series to Seattle.
The NM State baseball won two straight games against Grand Canyon to win this weekend's WAC series 2-1 at Presley Askew Field.
NM State closed the series with a 9-2 victory in Sunday's series finale.
The Aggies play at No. 11 Texas Tech on Tuesday at 6 p.m., in Midland, Texas at Security Bank Ballpark, home of the Oakland Athletics Double-A affiliate Midland Rockhounds. This is the second meeting of the year between the Aggies and Texas Tech.
New Mexico State softball closed out a Western Athletic Conference series with Utah Valley at the NM State Softball Complex on Saturday. The Aggies dropped the first contest 9-7 before picking up the 6-1 victory over the Wolverines to clinch the series.
The Aggies hit the road for a series at California Baptist this weekend. New Mexico State faces the Lancers in a doubleheader on Friday, beginning at 1 p.m. NM State closes the series with a second twin bill on Saturday with first pitch scheduled for 11 a.m. The first three game are set to count towards league play.
March 6, 2019, 1:56 p.m.
March 21, 2017, 3:26 p.m.
New York \|What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?
What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?
We asked experts what they thought it would take to fix the subway. Here are six suggestions.
1 Redesign stations to get more people on and off trains faster.
This photo shows the L train platform at the 14th Street-Union Square station during the evening commute.
Many stations like this one are not prepared to accommodate a larger volume of passengers, even if a new traffic control system allowed trains to come more frequently.
Starting in April 2019, the L is scheduled to stop going to Manhattan for 15 months, so that the tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn, damaged because of Hurricane Sandy, can be repaired. But the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has not announced any plans to upgrade most stations along the line.
Two of the L stations are slated to be be upgraded. But a November 2016 analysis of the Regional Plan Association, an urban research group that has studied how to improve the subway, said in its recommendations that the closure of the line could be used to upgrade all the L stations in Manhattan.
The L platforms at these stations provide many examples of the problems that are common throughout the system.
At the 14th Street-Union Square station, the fourth-busiest station in the city, the Regional Plan Association recommended that the platforms be widened or decluttered to increase capacity.
The center of the L-train platform at Union Square is about 24 feet wide. By comparison, the platform at the 34th Street-Hudson Yards station, one of the newest in the system, is more than 10 feet wider, even though it has less than one-tenth the ridership of Union Square.
The areas under the two staircases at the ends of the platform at Union Square are used for storage. In many other stations, the space under the stairs is open to riders, increasing platform capacity.
The space under these stairs is used for storage. In many stations, similar space is part of the passenger waiting area.
stairs is used for storage.
One of the main contributors to passenger traffic jams here are two staircases that empty into a small section at the center of the platform. Riders are forced to funnel through narrow passageways along the edge of the platform to get to less crowded areas.
In some areas, the platform is so narrow that it is nearly impossible to avoid stepping on the yellow safety strip.
At the Sixth Avenue station, there is no wheelchair access, even though it is a transfer hub for six subway lines and a connection to the PATH train.
At 8th Avenue, the L train’s last stop, the tracks end at a wall, not far from where the train is supposed to stop. This forces drivers to slow down much earlier than they would have to at other stations, where the tracks are extended.
The Regional Plan Association suggested that if the terminal was extended, trains would be able to arrive into the station faster.
Richard Barone, vice president for transportation at the association, also suggested that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that runs the subway, should consider adding exits at the ends of the platform and tunnels connecting to the A, C and E lines, as well as to the 14th Street station at 7th Aven...
at the ends of the platform.
2 Modernize the signal system.
Much of the subway’s signal system uses antiquated parts like the electromechanical relays shown above from the West Fourth Street-Washington Square station in Manhattan.
Train traffic for about two-thirds of the subway system is monitored in rooms like the one shown below at West Fourth Street. Little has changed in a century.
The old signal system uses a network of switches and cables along the track to keep trains a safe distance apart. The technology is outdated and expensive to maintain.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has estimated that it will finish replacing half of the signal system by 2034. But the Regional Plan Association concluded that it would take until at least 2067 for the entire system to be upgraded at the current pace.
A new signal system would allow trains to run closer together, increasing the number of trains that could run on a line at once. But it could cost $20 billion to make the whole subway compatible with the new signals, and the phase-in would require both the old and new systems to operate simultaneously for years.
Some experts think that the investment would eventually pay off, because new signals would reduce maintenance costs and would allow costs reductions in other areas, like cutting the number of train operators.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has indicated that it is exploring alternatives that may be deployed more quickly and cost less.
The authority began experimenting this month with a new signal technology called ultra-wideband radio. The technology is in a proof-of-concept phase, The New York Daily News reported, and is different from the modern signal systems that are currently in use on the L train and being installed on the 7 line.
3 Add, replace and upgrade subway cars.
With a new traffic control system, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will also need to upgrade most of its trains. In its most recent 20-year capital needs assessment, the agency estimated that it would take until 2027 to make the entire fleet compatible with a new traffic-control technology.
The authority is also considering ways to increase the number of people that can fit in a train. One idea is to remove seats, which the agency recently did on some trains on the E Line, below, and on the shuttle between Times Square and Grand Central stations.
The open design is similar to the one in the photo below, from Toronto.
The authority has ordered as many as 750 of these types of cars and plans to put them in service by 2020. But the transit authority has struggled to ensure that train vendors would keep car upgrades on schedule and on budget.
In addition to buying new trains, the authority is looking to expand its fleet by modernizing older trains. Train renovation has always been a part of its regular maintenance, but the authority is examining ways of making construction faster.
4 Implement a new fare collection system.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in the initial stages of phasing out the MetroCard. In October, the authority began testing a smartphone payment reader using the same cell phone application available to riders on the Long Island Railroad and Metro North.
The transit authority said that the new system, shown below at the Wall Street station, would allow passengers to pay by using their mobile phones or by tapping a bank card. The agency expects to have the system available to some passengers in 2019 and fully implemented in five years or more.
Experts agree that a new fare collection system is crucial to modernizing the subway.
Jamison Dague, an infrastructure researcher at the Citizens Budget Commission, said that a new fare collection system could cost less. “You can do certain things like peak pricing, offering lower fares for when demand is not as high,” said Mr. Dague, whose organization is a nonpartisan group focused on improving financ...
A new fare system could be used to reduce overcrowding by offering discounts or credits for riders willing to use less-crowded subway lines, the bus or commuter rail. For example: During an event at Madison Square Garden, a temporary discount at the subway lines at Herald Square could reduce pressure on the 1, 2, 3, A,...
Robert E. Paaswell, an engineering professor at the City College of New York who ran the Chicago Transit Authority in the 1980s, said the M.T.A. should consider letting a financial institution take over ticket sales.
“I’m not a privatization guy. I think the system belongs to the people. But certain maintenance aspects and things like financing can be done by the private sector,” Mr. Paaswell said.
5 Create a bigger budget and reduce bureaucracy.
Continuous investment during the 1980s lifted the subway from the brink of collapse. But a New York Times investigation found that since the mid-1990s, politicians have diverted $1.5 billion in dedicated transit funds to other purposes and pressured the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to spend billions more in ex...
The M.T.A. is run by New York State and the subway is owned by the City of New York. Both the city and the state are proposing ways to increase funding for the subway. New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, has proposed a tax on wealthy people. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is exploring a toll for drivers trying to reach some of the...
But both proposals will face significant hurdles. The governor said that the mayor’s tax proposal is unlikely to pass in Albany. And a proposal similar to the governor’s congestion pricing was shut down in the state capital a decade ago.
Another idea to increase funds, championed by members of the M.T.A. board, is to pay for expansion projects by using a tax on the increased value of the real estate served by new or extended lines.
In addition to acquiring more money, the M.T.A. also needs to become more efficient in spending the money it has, said Mr. Dague of the Citizens Budget Commission. He cited billions of dollars in capital funding that are available but that have not been put to use.
“The board has already authorized, but they haven’t spent it or committed it yet,” Mr. Dague said.
Of the total of $88.7 billion authorized for use in the M.T.A’s last three capital plans, about $43.8 billion have been spent.
“We can’t make an expenditure until we're billed by the contractor, and sometimes we don’t spend on a project when we have a dispute with a contractor,” said Shams Tarek, a spokesman for the M.T.A. explaining why some of the money has not been used.
6 Persuade workers to accept job changes as part of modernization.
Much of the M.T.A.’s work force will need to learn new job skills if technological changes like driverless trains are implemented.
The subway is one of the few transit systems in the world still operating trains with a two-person crew. Most transit systems around the world have moved to one-person operation, and most newer subways are being built fully automated from the start.
London is upgrading its fleet to become automated in the mid-2020s. In Paris, driverless trains are in operation on two lines.
In New York, the L train is the only line where the new traffic control system has been fully implemented and where trains could, in theory, be automated. But after a brief experiment using only one train operator in 2005, the M.T.A. had to bring back two-person crews to the L after losing a labor dispute.
The workers’ union sees the moves toward automation as dangerous. “Automated train operation in the N.Y.C. subway will only end in tragedy,” said John Samuelsen, the president of the Transport Workers Union International.
“Terrorist attacks, natural disasters, blackouts, derailments and criminals are all daily threats to riders’ safety and require trained transit workers on trains at all times,” Mr. Samuelsen said.
Mr. Barone believes that changes in job descriptions and a progressive move of staff members off the trains to other types of work in the system are necessary steps to take full advantage of technology.
“Without changes here, we won’t be able to find the resources to make system changes,” Mr. Barone said.
Additional work by Mika Gröndahl.
North Dakota State, one of two new members in the nine-member Missouri Valley Football Conference, has been tabbed to win the 2008 league title in a poll conducted by league coaches, media and sports information directors.
The Bison, as high as No. 2 nationally in some preseason football publications, earned 289 points and 13 first-place votes, to edge defending league champ Northern Iowa in the poll. The Panthers received 275 points, including 15 first-place tallies.
The next three teams were tightly bunched for the third-, fourth- and fifth-place spots, as 10 points separated Youngstown State (3rd-209), Western Illinois (4th-202), and Southern Illinois (5th-201). Each of the top-five teams in the poll received at least one vote to finish first.
The league’s other new team, South Dakota State, is picked sixth with 149 points. The Jackrabbits, with North Dakota State, competed in the Great West Football Conference last year.
The poll has Missouri State picked seventh (105 points), followed by Illinois State (104) and Indiana State (41).
October 19, 2018 On their first date, Irakere Picon told Arianna Hermosillo that he was undocumented. He works as an immigration lawyer, and the couple, now married, face anxieties related to his status.
October 18, 2018 A new Pew poll shows that there are few issues that Democrats and Republicans agree need to be fixed — and even then, they often don't agree on how to fix them.
October 17, 2018 A new state law took effect earlier this year essentially making California a sanctuary state. It has split parts of the state into cities that comply with the law and those that are defying it.
October 11, 2018 "No one in our city should live in fear," said Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh. The Catholic archdiocese program is modeled on one in Dallas, which aims to alleviate immigrants' fears of police stops.
September 28, 2018 In 2012, a Justice Department probe shut down law firms that helped Chinese asylum-seekers fabricate or inflate claims of persecution. The clients were left alone, but now 13,500 may have to leave.
September 25, 2018 Internal investigators at DHS said 132 doctors employed to examine immigrants could pose health or safety risks. Before he was hired, one physician tried to recruit a hit man to kill a patient.
Federal Agents Board Buses 100 Miles From Border To Ask, Are You A U.S. Citizen?
September 20, 2018 U.S. Border Patrol agents are boarding buses and stopping cars from private lines like Greyhound and Concord Coach within 100 miles of a U.S. border, asking passengers if they're American citizens.
September 20, 2018 Far more immigrants and asylum-seekers are crossing the Spanish border than those entering other usual Mediterranean entry points Greece and Italy.
September 15, 2018 Jose Antonio Vargas' new book is a memoir about living in the U.S. as an "undocumented citizen" — a secret he himself didn't discover until he was 16.
August 31, 2018 Federal District Judge Andrew Hanen had ended a similar Obama-era program, but he declined to halt DACA, saying the coalition of opposed states waited too long to bring their lawsuit.
August 31, 2018 The minors are aged 12 to 17 and were abused by workers at facilities in Arizona, authorities said. The announcement is the latest in a series of abuse allegations.
Since they have scale and standardization, you can get them to disclose nutritional information and many already do so to at least some extent voluntarily. What’s more, there’s nothing impossible in principle with the idea of a chain serving organic foodI get salads from these guys all the time. And with large chains a...
Sure, McDonald's, Chili's, The Cheesecake Factory, and countless other chains disclose their nutritional information - and their customers ignore it. Meanwhile, they're serving enormous portions of relatively unhealthy food. The public health benefits seem rather theoretical.

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