Evacuation follows rail car crash, fire
Four runaway rail cars struck two parked locomotives Monday in east-central Kentucky, causing a fire and spilling a chemical that prompted a limited evacuation and orders that others stay indoors.
The crash released butyl acetate, a flammable liquid, from a burning tanker car, authorities said. The fire produced a huge column of black smoke, and a section of the Kentucky River where fuel or chemicals had spilled caught fire. No injuries were reported, authorities said.
The fire in the tanker car was extinguished by 3 p.m. EST, and smaller fires in the locomotives would be allowed to burn themselves out, authorities said.
ROCHESTER, N.Y.
Deadly storm ices up Northeast
A storm blamed for at least 41 deaths in six states spread into the Northeast on Monday, coating trees, power lines and roads with a shell of ice up to a half-inch thick and knocking out power to more than half a million homes and businesses.
Icy roads cut into Martin Luther King Jr. holiday observances from Albany, N.Y., to Fort Worth and Austin, Texas, where officials also canceled Gov. Rick Perry’s inauguration parade today because another round of ice was expected overnight.
The weight of the ice snapped tree limbs and took down power lines, knocking out electricity to about 145,000 customers in New York state and New Hampshire.
In hard-hit Missouri, the utility company Ameren said it would probably not restore everyone’s power until Wednesday night. Overnight temperatures were expected to drop into the single digits. As of Monday afternoon, about 312,000 homes and businesses still had no electricity.
WASHINGTON
Skull may provide evolutionary mark
A skull found in a cave in Romania includes features of both modern humans and Neanderthals, possibly suggesting that the two may have interbred thousands of years ago.
Neanderthals were replaced by early modern humans. Researchers have long debated whether the two groups mixed, though most doubt it. The last evidence for Neanderthals dates from at least 24,000 years ago.
The skull bearing both older and modern characteristics is discussed in a paper by Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis. The report appears in today’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The skull was found in Pestera cu Oase – the Cave with Bones – in southwestern Romania, along with other human remains. Radiocarbon dating indicates it is at least 35,000 years old and may be more than 40,000 years old.
The researchers said the skull had the same proportions as a modern human head and lacked the large brow ridge commonly associated with Neanderthals.
However, there were also features that are unusual in modern humans, such as frontal flattening, a fairly large bone behind the ear and exceptionally large upper molars, which are seen among Neanderthals and other early hominids.