1. An "investigative hearing" is underway, about that deadly mid-air crash back in January, between a Black Hawk helicopter and an American Eagle plane. This is "Day One" of the NTSB hearing, it's scheduled to go three days. Transportation safety officials are hearing testimony from the key players, whose pilots were involved in the accident. Witnesses are also scheduled to testify. At the start today, the NTSB took a moment to acknowledge the families of the victims. The plane and the Army helicopter crashed into each other, over the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport. 67 people were killed including the two pilots, two flight attendants, 60 passengers, and the three crew members on the Black Hawk. A couple key questions: Why was the Black Hawk flying too high? What was going on at the Air Traffic Control tower that night? And would a real-time 'aircraft location' broadcasting system have made a difference? We hope to learn those answers over the next three days.
2. Following an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off Russia's far eastern coast, a tsunami threat is causing concern across the Pacific. A tsunami warning remains in effect for parts of Northern California, parts of Mexico and Chile. Advisories exist in Oregon, Washington state and Alaska. Warnings have been downgraded in Hawaii, Russia and Japan though some towns in each location have been evacuated. A tsunami's receding water is a warning sign that a tsunami wave is approaching. This dramatic withdrawal of the sea can expose the seafloor, sometimes for hundreds of meters, and is caused by the trough of the tsunami wave arriving first.
3. Data breaches are getting costlier. That's the finding from a new IBM report just released today. The average data breach in the U.S. now costs a company more than 10 (m) million dollars and takes eight months to recover. IBM’s Troy Betten-court says many companies are moving so fast to get into A-I that security is an afterthought. Many companies also have ransomware payment fatigue because they've paid hackers before and still got burned. We’ve all gotten those letters about our data being compromised and offers of free credit monitoring. That’s free for us, but not free for the companies.