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The driver of a Spanish train that derailed and killed 79 people was speaking on the phone and had taken the train to nearly twice the speed allowed on the stretch of track where the crash occurred, according to court investigators who reviewed the train's "black box" recorders.

After reaching speeds of 119 miles per hour, train conductor Francisco Jose Garzon Amo tried to slow the train down "seconds before the crash," according to an Associated Press report on the court's preliminary findings, which were released Tuesday.

Amo was speaking on the phone with staff members of the state rail service Renfe, the BBC reports.

The speed limit in the area of the crash is around 50 mph; investigators say they believe the train was going around 95 mph when it derailed.

The crash occurred Wednesday near the city of Santiago de Compostela. Amo faces dozens of charges of homicide and causing injury by professional neglect; those charges were announced Sunday.

The train had been carrying more than 200 people in northwestern Spain when it derailed. A mass was held Monday to memorialize those who lost their lives in the crash. As NPR's Lauren Frayer reported from Madrid on Monday, more than 70 people remain in the hospital, some of them in critical condition.

The train was a kind of hybrid that can run on either new high-speed rails, where they are known to reach speeds in excess of 100 mph, or on older tracks. As Lauren says, the portion of track where the crash occurred did not have newer safety systems that can override drivers' actions.

The investigation into the crash is ongoing, officials say.

For decades, Koreans have been pushing to preserve the legacy of women forced to provide sex to Japanese army soldiers during World War II. Glendale, Calif., will dedicate a statue memorializing the victims, known as "comfort women," on Tuesday. But the statue has spurred controversy in this Southern California city, where some area residents say it is a divisive reminder of the horrors of war.

The sculpture is a bronze statue of a young girl. She looks about 14 — around the same age as many comfort women when they were forced into military brothels run by Japan's imperial army.

Ok-seon Lee, 86, was one of them. She's in California, visiting with Korean-American activists. These activists don't say "comfort women" when she's around. Instead, they call her halmoni, Korean for "grandmother."

As she tells her story, Lee stares out at no one through her red-tinted glasses. She's back inside her darkest days, decades ago. Lee says she was taken to a facility in Yanji, China, at age 15, where she was abused for three years until the end of the war.

"The comfort station where we were taken was not a place for human beings to live," Lee says through an interpreter. "It was a slaughterhouse. I'm telling you, it was killing people."

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Comfort Women: Untold Stories Of Wartime Abuse

It's going to be a party in Minneapolis.

With gay marriages becoming legal in Minnesota on Thursday, courthouses in major cities across the state will be open after midnight to accommodate dozens of same-sex couples eager to tie the knot.

"It's good for our business," says Ron Stein, a jeweler in Minneapolis, where the mayor plans to conduct weddings for approximately 40 couples. "We've had orders already."

In recent days, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has published articles about the coming "boon" to the state's wedding industry, as well as the phenomenon of same-sex couples facing the same sort of pre-wedding "jitters" long known to straights.

But many people in the state are still shocked by the whole idea. When a gay marriage ban was on the ballot last fall, only a dozen among Minnesota's 87 counties opposed it.

Most rural counties supported the idea of banning gay marriage by margins of 3-to-2, or even 3-to-1. They were outvoted statewide by the urban centers.

In May, Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton signed a bill allowing gay weddings to go forward. Some parts of the state aren't ready for it.

"Away from the cities, you're going to see a lot of legislators voted out," says Dean Walters, a teacher in Owatonna. "People in rural areas are unhappy."

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The U.S. economy grew by an annualized rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter of 2013, according to Gross Domestic Product data released Wednesday morning. The Commerce Department says the rise stems from business investments, particularly in buildings, and an upturn in exports and the civilian aircraft industry.

The data represents the agency's first estimate of the value of all goods and services produced in the United States. The growth exceeds economists' expectations, which had called for a 1 percent rate of expansion, as Bloomberg News reports.

The new data shows a modest increase over the results for this year's first quarter, which were revised downward to 1.1 percent, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. It also reported gains in Americans' income.

"Real disposable personal income—personal income adjusted for taxes and inflation—rose 3.4 percent in the second quarter after falling 8.2 percent in the first quarter," the Bureau of Economic Analysis says.

Purchases of goods and services by U.S. residents rose by 2.4 percent in the second quarter, from 1.4 percent growth in the first.

Personal saving also rose by half a percentage point, from 4 to 4.5 percent. Rises in prices for goods and services were slight, at 0.3 percent, compared to a 1.2 percent rise in the first quarter of 2013.

In other economic data released today, the payroll firm ADP says U.S. companies added 200,000 new jobs from June to July. That means American businesses "hired in July at the fastest pace since December," according to the AP.

The payroll company also revised its June figures upward, from 188,000 to 198,000.

By industry, the biggest job gains were in professional and business services, as well as in trade, transportation, and utilities, ADP says. The construction sector added 22,000 jobs in the month, while manufacturing lost 5,000 jobs.