• YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) -- An engineer whose speeding commuter train ran off the rails along a curve, killing four people, experienced a hypnotic-like "daze" and nodded at the controls before suddenly realizing something was wrong and hitting the brakes, a lawyer said.
• Attorney Jeffrey Chartier accompanied engineer William Rockefeller to his interview with National Transportation Safety Board investigators Tuesday and described the account Rockefeller gave. Chartier said the engineer experienced a nod or "a daze," almost like road fatigue or the phenomenon sometimes called highway hypnosis. He couldn't say how long it lasted.
• What Rockefeller remembers is "operating the train, coming to a section where the track was still clear -- then, all of a sudden, feeling something was wrong and hitting the brakes," Chartier said. "... He felt something was not right, and he hit the brakes."
• He called Rockefeller "a guy with a stellar record who, I believe, did nothing wrong."
• "You've got a good guy and an accident," he said. "... A terrible accident is what it is."
• ___

• BEIJING (AP) -- U.S. Vice President Joe Biden opened a two-day visit to China Wednesday by urging young Chinese students to challenge their government, teachers and religious leaders.
• Arriving midday in Beijing, Biden paid a visit to the U.S. embassy, where he surprised Chinese citizens waiting to get visitor visas processed in the embassy's consular section. Thanking a group of mostly young people for wanting to visit the U.S., Biden said he hoped they would learn during their visit that "innovation can only occur where you can breathe free."
• "Children in America are rewarded -- not punished -- for challenging the status quo," Biden said. "The only way you make something totally new is to break the mold of what was old."

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