Ancient rocks suggest that ice entirely covered our planet on at least two occasions. This theory may help explain the rise of complex life that followed.
"We're not kids anymore," said every boy who ever grew a foot taller and sprouted the beginnings of a wispy mustache over the summer. Hopefully, the surging hormones in Hawkins don't distract the gang from the real threat in their midst come July 4th.
This cash back credit card offers a super long 15-month 0% APR in addition to great cash back perks. Get a $150 bonus, unlimited 1.5x cash back and pay 0% interest well into 2020.
From Nashville to New Orleans to Honolulu, Airbnb is battling local officials over requests to collect occupancy taxes and ensure that the properties listed on its site comply with zoning and safety rules.
The extension the center fielder is reportedly close to finalizing with the Angels will shatter records, but it doesn't come close to compensating him appropriately for his on-field performance.
Rather than figure out the correct way to extinguish his homemade wax melter, he decided to go the classic "pour water on it and see what happens" route.
During your vacation, a hotel room is your home away from home, but it's much better than your actual home because you have fresh sheets every day. Here's how to properly thank, respect, and compensate the person making that happen.
Whether you've got a side hustle and need to take calls from clients, or tend to have bad luck on Bumble, this subscription to Hushed Private Phone Line helps you set up a second number for calls and texts — without committing to another long, expensive phone contract. Get a lifetime phone line for just $25 today.
Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google — known collectively as FAANG — currently have a total market capitalization of $3.1 trillion. But these tech companies haven't always dominated Wall Street.
This cash back credit card offers a super long 15-month 0% APR in addition to great cash back perks. Get a $150 bonus, unlimited 1.5x cash back and pay 0% interest well into 2020.
European authorities on Wednesday fined Google 1.5 billion euros for antitrust violations in the online advertising market, continuing its efforts to rein in the world's biggest technology companies.
"I find that I am bored with anything I understand," Karen Uhlenbeck once said — and that sense of curiosity is part of why she won the prestigious Abel Prize, from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Used iPhones have a much higher resale value than other smartphones, which means that Apple is increasingly competing against the secondary iPhone market.
The heart of the solar resistance is in a gated community called Fawn Lake. Stately homes surround the manmade lake. There's also a golf course, a country club and simmering anger that an industrial-scale solar farm could be the next neighbor.
The process for tracking down instances of comment fraud at the FCC is, as its lawyers accurately portrayed in court, a f**king headache. But what this really means is, if the commission is going to continue to use the ECFS to solicit public comments, the system needs to be retrofitted or completely re-built to facilitate fraud detection.
The staff of Kickstarter announced plans to unionize today. If recognized, Kickstarter would be the first major tech company with union representation in the United States.
Since "The Office," which debuted in 2001, Gervais's output — whether television, film or stand-up — has been divisive, at times drawing criticism for being smug or mawkish but never at any detriment to his popularity.
As the argument for reparations for African-Americans makes its way into the 2020 Democratic primary, you can bet your butt that Fox News will be talking about it. And, uh...
As winter turns to spring, you're going to want a water resistant jacket. This one's guaranteed to keep you dry on your next run — and it fits in your pocket.
In response to a question at a news conference on this day in 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower upheld the use of battlefield nuclear weapons.
Charles S. von Fremd, the White House correspondent for CBS News, noted that on the previous day, John Foster Dulles, the secretary of State, had "indicated" to reporters "that in the event of [a] general war in the Far East, we would probably make use of some tactical small atomic weapons." He asked Eisenhower to comment.
He responded: "I wouldn't comment in the sense that I would pretend to foresee the conditions of any particular conflict in which you might engage; but we have been, as you know, active in producing various types of weapons that feature nuclear fission ever since World War II.
US strikes, which included missiles fired by manned aircraft as well as drones, targeted Somalia's Al-Qaeda linked insurgents, Al-Shabaab AFP/Isaac Brekken
Amnesty International accused the US military on Tuesday of causing civilian casualties in a series of airstrikes in Somalia in 2017 and 2018, claims the US military denies.
The strikes in question came after President Donald Trump eased restrictions on the use of airpower in the East African nation.
US Africa Command, which oversees US military operations on the continent, firmly rejected the allegations, saying it has made efforts to ensure the safety of civilians and that it had reviewed the allegations and found no evidence to support them.
The European Commission on Tuesday (19 March) announced hundreds of millions of EU funds for joint defence industrial projects - but promised that anything prohibited by international law would not be funded.
"Before this commission, the EU budget devoted to defence cooperation was zero," European commission vice-president Jyrki Katainen told reporters in Brussels.
His statement follows announcements of €525m of EU money earmarked for a whole range of military defence projects covering things like "counter-drone systems", "space situational awareness", "ground-based precision strike capabilities", "cyber technologies", and others.
The bulk of the money will go towards some 21 projects.
#UPDATE US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will return to Beijing next week as the United States and China inch toward resolving their trade war https://t.co/MokVDApZHT
VIDEO: In the streets of Bangkok, Thais are getting ready to cast their votes in the country's first election in eight years 🇹ðŸ‡ðŸ—³️ pic.twitter.com/ZstvWNwPHB
— U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet (@USNavyEurope) March 19, 2019
Some colour views of the #meteor that flew over the North Pacific in December 2018, taken by Japan's #Himawari satellite. The meteor is really clear here - bright orange fireball against the blue + white background!
The story of the Yamato is a warning to all armed forces that the march of war technology is merciless and unsentimental.
In early 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy made a difficult decision: it would sacrifice the largest, most powerful battleships ever built to protect Okinawa, the gateway to Japan's Home Islands. The decision sealed the fate of the battleship Yamato and its crew, but ironically did nothing to actually protect the island from Allied invasion.
The battleship Yamato was among the largest and most powerful battleships of all time. Yamato has reached nearly mythical status, a perfect example of Japan's fascination with doomed, futile heroics. Built in 1937 at the Kure Naval Arsenal near Hiroshima, it was constructed in secrecy to avoid alarming the United States. Japan had recently withdrawn from the Washington Naval Treaty, which limited battleship tonnages, and was free to build them as large as it wanted.
One-third of Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska, and home to US Strategic Command, found itself submerged underwater. (Offutt Air Force Base).
In July 2017, Ahmadreza Doostdar, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, visited the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago, where FBI agents surveilled him performing what appeared to be a surreptitious exchange of information — a brush pass — with a woman in one of the museum's rooms.
After leaving the museum, Doostdar walked toward two nearby Jewish centers, snapping photos with his phone camera, appearing to pay particular attention to entrances and exits, including a wrought iron fence at the perimeter of one the buildings. Doostdar then traveled to Los Angeles where, according to U.S. prosecutors, he met with another Iranian man and tasked him with collecting information on U.S.-based members of Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, an Iranian opposition group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States until 2012.
The details of Doostdar's alleged activities in the United States were revealed in August 2018 when the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against him, claiming he was acting as an Iranian intelligence operative.
Members of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces frequently robbed and abused native Afghan personnel hired under three maintenance and operations contracts at ANDSF military bases, according to an alarming new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, confiscating a total of $780,000 in property and equipment and often detaining workers at gunpoint.
Defense officials have asked for $304 million to fund research into space-based lasers, particle beams, and other new forms of missile defense next year.
Defense officials want to test a neutral particle-beam in orbit in fiscal 2023 as part of a ramped-up effort to explore various types of space-based weaponry. They've asked for $304 million in the 2020 budget to develop such beams, more powerful lasers, and other new tech for next-generation missile defense. Such weapons are needed, they say, to counter new missiles from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. But just figuring out what might work is a difficult technical challenge.
The Air Force plans to spend $7.86 billion over the next five years buying 80 F-15EXs, new Eagles to replace aging F-15Cs that service leaders said they did not initially want.
The service will spend $1.05 billion in 2020 to buy the first eight aircraft, and that buy will accelerate to 18 at a cost of $1.65 billion in 2021, with that rate holding steady until 2024, according to new budget documents released Monday afternoon.
The new aircraft will be based on the F-15QA, which Boeing built for the Qatar Emiri Air Force, though it will have USAF-specific capabilities, including the Eagle Passive Active Warning and Survivability System and the Suite 9.1 Operational Flight Program software. The jet will have two seats to be flown by one or two aircrew, and will be multi-role capable, according to the justification document, or J-Book.
Stringer, Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, AFP | Qatari officials (C) take part in meeting between US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad (2nd-L), the US delegation, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai (6th-R), and the Taliban delegation in Doha, February 26, 2019.
Under peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, the administration seems poised to give away everything America has fought for in Afghanistan since 9/11.
Last week, Afghanistan's national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, launched into a broadside against Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief American diplomat responsible for negotiating with the Taliban. Addressing reporters in Washington, Mohib insinuated that Khalilzad is seeking to install himself as the "viceroy" of a new "caretaker government." The State Department quickly issued a sharp rebuke, saying that any condemnation of Khalilzad was really a critique of its leader, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
DEIR AL-ZOR PROVINCE, Syria (Reuters) - U.S.-backed Syrian forces said they were close to defeating Islamic State in its final scrap of territory at Baghouz in eastern Syria after seizing an encampment from the jihadists on Tuesday, though the battle was not over yet.
Hardened militant fighters holed up in the encampment had been mounting a last-stand defense of the Baghouz enclave, all that is left of Islamic State's self-proclaimed "caliphate" that once spanned a third of both Syria and Iraq.
"This is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight against Daesh," said Mustafa Bali, a media official with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Twitter, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
The cruiser San Jacinto is one of the six cruisers the Navy plans to decommission by 2022, according to defense officials. (MCSA Brianna Thompson/U.S. Navy)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is considering canceling six planned service-life extensions on its oldest cruisers, meaning the service will be short six of its current 22 largest surface combatants by 2022, according to defense officials who spoke to Defense News on background.
The plan, as it will be proposed to Congress, is to decommission the cruisers Bunker Hill, Mobile Bay, Antietam, Leyte Gulf, San Jacinto and Lake Champlain in 2021 and 2022, foregoing plans for service-life extensions that have previously seen support in Congress.
All the ships will be at or near the end of their 35-year service lives when they are decommissioned, but the Navy has yet to decide on a replacement for the cruisers, which are the largest combatants in the fleet with 122 vertical launch systems cells. This comes at a time when the Navy needs as many missiles downrange as it can field as it squares off with the threat of Chinese and Russian anti-ship missiles.
WNU Editor: The Pentagon is preaching on the need for more missiles, but here they are cancelling a program to extend the life of 6 cruisers that carry missiles more than anyone else. What am I missing here?
The United States and Russia have held "useful" and "substantive" talks on Venezuela, but the two sides remain split on how to resolve the South American country's crisis, according to the U.S. special representative Elliott Abrams.
Abrams made the comments in Rome on March 19 after meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who described the talks as "difficult" but frank.
Venezuelan opposition leader and parliament speaker Juan Guaido declared himself interim president in January, and was recognized by the United States, most European Union countries, and the majority of Latin American states.
Russia, along with other countries including Iran, Cuba, China, and Turkey, continues to recognize Nicolas Maduro as president.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazil's new far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro forged a bond over their shared brand of conservative and populist politics on Tuesday, with Trump pledging to give more U.S. support to Brazil's global ambitions.
In a joint news conference in the White House Rose Garden, Trump said he told Bolsonaro he would designate Brazil a major non-NATO ally and possibly go further by supporting a campaign to make Brazil "maybe a NATO ally."
Bolsonaro, a former army captain who rode to the presidency with a brash, anti-establishment campaign modeled on Trump's 2016 run, has declared himself an unabashed admirer of the U.S. president and the American way of life.
He praised Trump for changing the United States in a way he said he hopes to change Brazil.
The $5.3 billion price tag is the Pentagon's first public accounting to include the new hangars and various other costs.
The cost of buying, equipping, and preparing to operate the two Boeing 747s that will become the next Air Force One presidential transport aircraft is now pegged at $5.3 billion, nearly one-third more than the figure routinely touted by the White House, according to Air Force officials and Pentagon budget documents.
The projected price tag — included in the Pentagon's fiscal 2020 budget proposal — marks the first time the Defense Department has provided a total cost estimate for the project. It includes not only the cost of the planes themselves, but also work to build a new hangar complex at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland and other administrative, engineering, and development work.
* Berlin's latest budget will see defence spending drop well below two per cent * Donald Trump has accused Germany of freeloading on U.S. military might * Washington's ambassador in Berlin said planned cuts were a 'worrisome signal' * But Angela Merkel said Germany would not cut aid to raise its military outlays
Germany's military spending is set to fall below its NATO targets, in the latest flashpoint in Berlin's long-running row with Washington.
The latest German budget plans, revealed on Monday, will see defence spending drop well below the two per cent of GDP expected from NATO members.
U.S. ambassador Richard Grenell said the cuts were a 'worrisome signal', while President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused Germany of freeloading on U.S. military might.
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected the U.S. criticism, saying Germany will not cut foreign aid to raise military spending.
WNU Editor: Europeans like German Chancellor Merkel are questioning the U.S. commitment to NATO. The real question that should be asked is .... are European leaders like German Chancellor Merkel committed to NATO. If spending money is the metric that one uses to answer this question, I will have to say that their commitment to NATO is based on their own financial and political considerations.
President describes scale of disaster as huge, as Red Cross says most of Beira damaged or destroyed
More than 1,000 people are feared dead in a devastating cyclone that hit Mozambique on Friday, the country's president has said.
Filipe Nyusi told Mozambican radio he had seen "many bodies" floating in the overflowing Pungwe and Busi rivers. "It appears that we can register more than 1,000 deaths," he said, adding that more than 100,000 people were at risk because of severe flooding.
* US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been seen celebrating 'victory' after seizing key ISIS encampment * SDF say some hardened jihadists were using their children as human shields as they defended slither of land * It comes as the SDF said it had arrested alleged terrorists over a suicide bomb that left four Americans dead in the Syrian town of Manbij in January
US-backed forces are celebrating 'victory' after they captured a key ISIS encampment and reduced the terror group's 'caliphate' to a few hundred square yards of bombed-out scrapyard in Syria.
Officials from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were seen singing and dancing and giving 'V for victory' signs as they returned from the frontline in Baghouz in the country's east.
The extremists had retreated in to a tiny parcel of land with some reportedly having used their own children as human shields.
Nursultan Nazarbayev has led oil-rich country since fall of the Soviet Union
Kazakhstan's president has announced his retirement after nearly 30 years as leader of the central Asian nation.
Nursultan Nazarbayev has led the oil-rich country since the fall of the Soviet Union, first as its Communist leader and then as president. He made the announcement in a surprise public address on national television on Tuesday evening.
MAPUTO/HARARE (Reuters) - Cyclone winds and floods that swept across southeastern Africa affected more than 2.6 million people and could rank as one of the worst weather-related disasters recorded in the southern hemisphere, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.
Rescue crews are still struggling to reach victims five days after Cyclone Idai raced in at speeds of up to 170 kph (105 mph) from the Indian Ocean into Mozambique, then its inland neighbors Zimbabwe and Malawi.
Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence. The proposed spending increase comes despite President Trump's sometimes tempestuous relationship with his intelligence agencies.CreditCreditErin Schaff for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — American intelligence spending could rise to nearly $86 billion, a 6 percent increase that reflects the Trump administration's proposed boost in defense and national security spending and a renewed focus on threats from Russia and China.
The director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, released the overall proposed budget for American intelligence agencies on Monday, and the Pentagon also released its proposed intelligence spending for the fiscal year starting in October.
The budget covers expenses as diverse as spy satellites, cyberweapons and the C.I.A.'s network of overseas spies and informants. But neither the administration nor Congress releases details about the so-called black budget, which is classified.
The Ukrainian presidential election is only weeks away, and its outcome is highly uncertain. President Petro Poroshenko is lagging in the polls behind Volodymyr Zelensky, a television actor whose only political experience consists of playing the president of Ukraine in a sitcom. The country will head to the polls while still at war in its eastern region of Donbas, where in 2014, local separatists forcibly seized government buildings and declared people's republics in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Since then, the conflict has taken on elements of both a civil war and an interstate conflict, with Russia arming separatist combatants and sponsoring the breakaway regions. Violence is muted but steady: the number of deaths recently reached 13,000, one-quarter of them civilian.
Unsurprisingly, Ukraine's leading presidential candidates are all running on platforms resisting Russia. The choice is logical given popular anger over President Vladimir Putin's 2014 annexation of Crimea and continued interference in Donbas. But Poroshenko differs from other candidates in that he couches his anti-Russian message in a national identity incorporating elements of Ukrainian ethnicity. Whereas his campaign slogan in 2014 was "A New Way of Living," his current slogan is "Army! Language! Faith!"
WNU Editor: Kudos to Foreign Policy for warning what I have been warning about for a long time. Ukrainian laws and policies that discriminate against the Russian-Ukrainian population is the source of the conflict in Ukraine today. Banning Russian in schools, prohibiting Russian-Ukrainians from government and public jobs, and being told that government services will only be provided in Ukrainian .... all of this is a festering issue for many Russian-Ukrainians. But the new laws that President Poroshenko is advocating for is only going to make a bad situation worse, and developments like this one is only going to guarantee a Russian-Ukrainian backlash .... Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine (The Nation).
Five years after Russia's occupation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea began, President Petro Poroshenko has promised Kyiv will regain control of the peninsula if he is re-elected.
Speaking in an interview on March 17 with TV channel Ukraina, Poroshenko said that "Crimea will be returned to Ukraine, without haggling and behind-the-scenes agreements."
"We will do everything for it to happen as soon as possible, immediately after the presidential election," he said, adding that he doesn't rule out the possibility that Ukraine will also see progress in the deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission to the Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas – also right after the election.
(CHIPINGE, Zimbabwe) — Zimbabwe is retrieving and burying bodies Wednesday as Mozambique begins three days of national mourning for victims of Cyclone Idai.
The death toll is rising in both countries, but the full number of those killed and damage done will only be known when torrential floodwaters recede. Persistent rains are forecast through Thursday so it will be days before the plains of Mozambique drain toward the Indian Ocean.
Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa is to visit on Wednesday the hard-hit mountain community of Chimanimani on the eastern border with Mozambique. Some 300 people may have died in Zimbabwe as a result of the cyclone, say officials.
Mozambican officials say its death toll is 200 and rising. Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said earlier this week he expects fatalities to be more than 1,000.
A 3,000-year-old stone tablet from Babylonia is being flown home after experts in the U.K. verified its provenance and determined that it was likely looted during the Iraq War, Agence France-Presse reports.
The tablet was handed over to Iraqi Ambassador Salih Husain Ali during a ceremony Tuesday, putting an end to years of legal work following an initial discovery at London’s Heathrow Airport in 2012.
“It is a very important piece of Iraq’s cultural heritage,” said British Museum director Hartwig Fischer, praising the “extraordinary and tireless work” of border officials.
The tablet, known as a kudurru, records the gifting of land by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I to one of his subjects, curator Jonathan Taylor told AFP.
The erosion of the stone’s surface makes it hard for historians to glean much more, however.
“The basic identification is quite straightforward,” Taylor said. “More difficult is tying down exactly who the king is and what the circumstances are, for that we need to read the inscription and it’s quite worn.”
“There’s a lot of damage in the middle of the text,” he added, referring to the carvings on one side of the stone. Depictions of two Babylonian gods, Enlil and Marduk, are on the other.
The object supposedly carried “terrible curses” for anyone who tried to claim the territory or destroy the tablet.
It’s unclear how the tablet was taken out of Iraq, but according to Michael Ellis, Britain’s Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism, it was likely stolen about 15 years ago from Nippur, now in central Iraq, during the start of the Iraq War.
“It’s more than just a carved stone,” Ellis said. “It is a testament to the remarkable history of the Republic of Iraq.”
(TOKYO) — Human Rights Watch urged Japan on Wednesday to drop its requirement that transgender people be sterilized to have their gender changed on official documents.
A 2004 law states people wishing to register a gender change must have their original reproductive organs removed and have a body that “appears to have parts that resemble the genital organs” of the gender they want to register. The Supreme Court in January rejected an appeal by a transgender man who wanted legal recognition without undergoing surgery, though the court acknowledged that the practice restricts freedom and could become out of step with changing social values.
Human Rights Watch said the compulsory sterilization requirement is abusive and outdated. A report the international rights group released Wednesday said requiring invasive and irreversible medical procedures violates the rights of transgender people who want their gender identity legally recognized.
“Japan’s government needs urgently to address and fundamentally revise the legal recognition process that remains anchored to a diagnostic framework that fails to meet international standards,” the report said. It said the law, which still defines gender incongruence as a “disorder,” is out of step with international medical standards.
The group based its report on interviews with 48 transgender people and legal, medical and other experts in Japan. It said the country has fallen behind globally in recognizing transgender people’s rights and still enforces “outdated, discriminatory and coercive policies.”
Japanese society has a growing awareness of sexual diversity but it is often superficial. Pressure for conformity forces many LGBT people to hide their sexual identity even from their families, and transgender people often have high obstacles to living outside traditional gender roles.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ultra-conservative supporters have campaigned to restore a paternalistic society based on heterosexual marriages.
Lawmakers in the ruling party have repeatedly been criticized for discriminatory remarks about LGBT people. One said earlier this year that “a nation would collapse” if everyone became LGBT, and another said last year the government shouldn’t use tax money for LGBT rights as those couples aren’t “productive.”
As the Lion Air crew fought to control their diving Boeing Co. 737 Max 8, they got help from an unexpected source: an off-duty pilot who happened to be riding in the cockpit.
That extra pilot, who was seated in the cockpit jumpseat, correctly diagnosed the problem and told the crew how to disable a malfunctioning flight-control system and save the plane, according to two people familiar with Indonesia’s investigation.
The next day, under command of a different crew facing what investigators said was an identical malfunction, the jetliner crashed into the Java Sea killing all 189 aboard.
The previously undisclosed detail on the earlier Lion Air flight represents a new clue in the mystery of how some 737 Max pilots faced with the malfunction have been able to avert disaster while the others lost control of their planes and crashed. The presence of a third pilot in the cockpit wasn’t contained in Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee’s Nov. 28 report on the crash and hasn’t previously been reported.
The so-called dead-head pilot on the earlier flight from Bali to Jakarta told the crew to cut power to the motor driving the nose down, according to the people familiar, part of a checklist that all pilots are required to memorize.
“All the data and information that we have on the flight and the aircraft have been submitted to the Indonesian NTSC. We can’t provide additional comment at this stage due the ongoing investigation on the accident,” Lion Air spokesman Danang Prihantoro said by phone.
The Indonesia safety committee report said the plane had had multiple failures on previous flights and hadn’t been properly repaired.
Representatives for Boeing and the Indonesian safety committee declined to comment on the earlier flight.
The safety system, designed to keep planes from climbing too steeply and stalling, has come under scrutiny by investigators of the crash as well as a subsequent one less than five months later in Ethiopia. A malfunctioning sensor is believed to have tricked the Lion Air plane’s computers into thinking it needed to automatically bring the nose down to avoid a stall.
Boeing’s 737 Max was grounded March 13 by U.S. regulators after similarities to the Oct. 29 Lion Air crash emerged in the investigation of the March 10 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. In the wake of the two accidents, questions have emerged about how Boeing’s design of the new 737 model were approved. The Transportation Department’s inspector general is conducting a review of how the plane was certified to fly and a grand jury under the U.S. Justice Department is also seeking records in a possible criminal probe of the plane’s certification.
The FAA last week said it planned to mandate changes in the system to make it less likely to activate when there is no emergency. The agency and Boeing said they are also going to require additional training and references to it in flight manuals.
“We will fully cooperate in the review in the Department of Transportation’s audit,” Boeing spokesman Charles Bickers said in an email. The company has declined to comment on the criminal probe.
After the Lion Air crash, two U.S. pilots’ unions said the potential risks of the system, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, hadn’t been sufficiently spelled out in their manuals or training. None of the documentation for the Max aircraft included an explanation, the union leaders said.
“We don’t like that we weren’t notified,’’ Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said in November. “It makes us question, ‘Is that everything, guys?’ I would hope there are no more surprises out there.’’
The Allied Pilots Association union at American Airlines Group Inc. also said details about the system weren’t included in the documentation about the plane.
Following the Lion Air crash, the FAA required Boeing to notify airlines about the system and Boeing sent a bulletin to all customers flying the Max reminding them how to disable it in an emergency.
Authorities have released few details about Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 other than it flew a “very similar” track as the Lion Air planes and then dove sharply into the ground. There have been no reports of maintenance issues with the Ethiopian Airlines plane before its crash.
If the same issue is also found to have helped bring down Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, one of the most vexing questions crash investigators and aviation safety consultants are asking is why the pilots on that flight didn’t perform the checklist that disables the system.
“After this horrific Lion Air accident, you’d think that everyone flying this airplane would know that’s how you turn this off,” said Steve Wallace, the former director of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s accident investigation branch.
The combination of factors required to bring down a plane in these circumstances suggests other issues may also have occurred in the Ethiopia crash, said Jeffrey Guzzetti, who also directed accident investigations at FAA and is now a consultant.
“It’s simply implausible that this MCAS deficiency by itself can down a modern jetliner with a trained crew,” Guzzetti said.
MCAS is driven by a single sensor near the nose that measures the so-called angle of attack, or whether air is flowing parallel to the length of the fuselage or at an angle. On the Lion Air flights, the angle-of-attack sensor had failed and was sending erroneous readings indicating the plane’s nose was pointed dangerously upward.
(CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand) — A father and son who fled the civil war in Syria for “the safest country in the world” were buried before hundreds of mourners Wednesday, the first funerals for victims of shootings at two mosques in New Zealand that horrified a nation known for being welcoming and diverse.
The funerals of Khalid Mustafa, 44, and Hamza Mustafa, 15, came five days after a white supremacist methodically gunned down 50 worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch — a massacre that he broadcast live on Facebook.
Hamza’s high school principal described the student as compassionate and hardworking, and said he was an excellent horse rider who aspired to be a veterinarian.
Those present included Hamza’s younger brother, 13-year-old Zaed, who was wounded in an arm and a leg during the attack. The boy tried to stand during the ceremony but had to sit back in his wheelchair, one mourner said.
“We tried to not shake his hand, and not touch his hand or his foot, but he refused, he wanted to shake everybody’s hand, he wanted to show everyone that he appreciated them. And that’s amazing,” said Jamil El-Biza, who traveled from Australia to attend the funeral.
The Mustafas had moved to New Zealand last year, after spending six years as refugees in Jordan. Mustafa’s wife, Salwa, told Radio New Zealand that when the family asked about New Zealand they were told “it’s the safest country in the world, the most wonderful country you can go … you will start a very wonderful life there.”
She added, “But it wasn’t.”
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the family should have been safe.
“I cannot tell you how gutting it is to know that a family came here for safety and for refuge,” she said.
Families of those killed had been anxiously awaiting word on when they could bury their loved ones. Police Commissioner Mike Bush said police have now formally identified and released the remains of 21 of those killed. Islamic tradition calls for bodies to be cleansed and buried as soon as possible.
Four other burials were under way on Wednesday evening. Those victims include Junaid Ismail, Ashraf Ali and Lilik Abdul Hamid. The fourth victim’s name was suppressed by court order.
The burials began soon after Ardern renewed her call for people to speak of the victims rather than the man who killed them.
Also on Wednesday, a man accused of sharing video footage of Friday’s massacre was jailed by a judge until his next court appearance in mid-April. And Bush said he believes police officers stopped the gunman on his way to a third attack.
Ardern’s plea against giving the accused gunman notoriety followed his move to represent himself in court, raising concerns he would attempt to use the trial as a platform for airing his racist views.
During a visit Wednesday to the high school Hamza and another victim attended, Ardern revisited that thought and asked students not to say the attacker’s name or dwell on him.
“Look after one another, but also let New Zealand be a place where there is no tolerance for racism,” she told students at Cashmere High School. “That’s something we can all do.”
Another Cashmere student, 14-year-old Sayyad Milne, also died in the attack.
About 30 people wounded in the attacks remained hospitalized as of Tuesday evening. Around 10 of them were in critical condition, including a 4-year-old girl.
Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian man, has been charged with murder and is next scheduled to appear in court on April 5. Police have said they are certain Tarrant was the only gunman but are still investigating whether he had support from others.
Ardern previously has said reforms of New Zealand’s gun laws would be announced next week and she said an inquiry would be convened to look into the intelligence and security services’ failures to detect the risk from the attacker or his plans.
New Zealand’s international spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, confirmed it had not received any relevant information or intelligence before the shootings.
Philip Arps, 44, appeared in a Christchurch court Wednesday on two charges of distributing the killer’s livestream video of the attack on the Al Noor mosque, the first mosque that was attacked, a violation of the country’s objectionable publications law. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
Arps, heavily tattooed and dressed in a T-shirt and sweatpants, hasn’t entered a plea. He remained expressionless during the hearing, his hands clasped behind his back.
Judge Stephen O’Driscoll denied him bail.
Charging documents accuse Arps of distributing the video on Saturday, one day after the massacre.
Most details of bail hearings are suppressed under New Zealand law. The judge made an additional suppression order regarding the police summary of facts in the case, limiting reporting of the accusations to the charges themselves.
Bush, the police commissioner, said they believe they know where the gunman was going for a third attack when officers rammed his car off the road but won’t say more because it’s an active investigation.
In a 74-page manifesto he released before the attack, Tarrant said he was going to attack two mosques in Christchurch and then one in the town of Ashburton if he made it that far.
Bush also revised his timeline, saying officers rammed the suspect’s car 21 minutes after the first emergency call, rather than 36 minutes. Bush said FBI agents have traveled to New Zealand to help with the investigation.
Abizar Valibhai, of Christchurch, said Wednesday’s burials marked an important moment.
“It’s not only for the Muslim community, but for the whole of New Zealand, and the world as well,” he said. “If we don’t show our support at this time, when are we going to show it?”
He said there would be many waves of emotions to come for the families of the victims.
“They are fathers, they are mothers, they are brothers, they are sisters, they are wives,” he said. “There are a lot of things that will be shattered.”
The terror attack on a mosque in Christchurch may have occurred thousands of miles away, but Meghan Markle and Prince Harry made sure to honor the 50 victims of the tragedy back in the United Kingdom on Tuesday by visiting New Zealand House in London and paying their respects.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex made a surprise visit to the building, which houses the High Commission of New Zealand, the New Zealand consulate in London and a military attaché. Once arrived, the royal pair were photographed signing a book of condolences on behalf of the royal family and laying down bouquets of flowers.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex signed the Book of Condolence @NZinUK, opened following the terrorist attacks in Christchurch.
The Duke and Duchess signed the book on behalf of the @RoyalFamily — Their Royal Highnesses visited New Zealand in October 2018. pic.twitter.com/AzdsmnoS11
Markle and Prince Harry were just in New Zealand in fall 2018 during a Down Under tour that also took them to Australia, Fiji and Tonga. While in New Zealand, they met Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in Wellington, planted trees in honor of environmental conservation causes associated with the Commonwealth and celebrated the local arts scene.
In a statement released jointly with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate Middleton, the royals shared their condolences. “We have all been fortunate to spend time in Christchurch and have felt the warm, open-hearted and generous spirit that is core to its remarkable people. No person should ever have to fear attending a sacred place of worship,” the statement read. “This senseless attack is an affront to the people of Christchurch and New Zealand, and the broader Muslim community. It is a horrifying assault on a way of life that embodies decency, community, and friendship.” The Queen and the Prince of Wales, Harry and William’s father Prince Charles, also published their own statements of sympathy.
"Our hearts go out to the families and friends of the people who lost their lives in the devastating attack in Christchurch." — The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and The Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Since Prince Harry and Markle’s visit to New Zealand in the fall, the pair have continued traveling, making an official visit to Morocco and attending charitable events. Markle, also took a trip to New York for a baby shower with her friends in Manhattan and participated on a panel for International Women’s Day. She is due sometime this spring.
Since 1923, TIME’s magazine covers have featured individuals, topics and events that have had considerable impact on the world around us. Framed by that recognizable red border, the covers have often driven national and global conversations.
And they have taken on a whole new level of visibility in the age of social media, being shared widely online in addition to their distribution in print. D.W. Pine, TIME’s creative director since 2010, designs and produces the covers every week. Under his direction, TIME’s Christine Blasey Ford cover recently won the American Society of Magazine Editors’ 2019 Cover of the Year. Pine was also named as one of Artsy’s “25 People Who Defined Visual Culture in 2018.”
This Friday, Pine will answer your questions about TIME’s weekly covers — and the process that goes into making them — in a Reddit AMA. The AMA will take place from 1 p.m. ET to 2 p.m. ET in the subreddit r/IAmA.
TIMETIME Creative Director D.W. Pine at the TIME Magazine office in New York, NY.
(LONDON) — Facebook says none of the 200 or so people who watched live video of the New Zealand mosque shooting flagged it to moderators, underlining the challenge tech companies face in policing violent or disturbing content in real time.
The social media giant released new details about its response to the video in a blog post. It said the gunman’s live 17-minute broadcast was viewed fewer than 200 times and the first user report didn’t come in until 12 minutes after it ended. Fifty people were killed at two mosques in Christchurch.
Facebook removed the video “within minutes'” of being notified by police, said Chris Sonderby, Facebook’s deputy general counsel.
“No users reported the video during the live broadcast,” and it was watched about 4,000 times in total before being taken down, Sonderby said. “We continue to work around the clock to prevent this content from appearing on our site, using a combination of technology and people.”
Facebook has previously said that in the first 24 hours after the massacre, it removed 1.5 million videos of the attacks, “of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload,” implying 300,000 copies successfully made it on to the site before being taken down.
The video’s rapid spread online puts renewed pressure on Facebook and other social media sites such as YouTube and Twitter over their content moderation efforts. Many question why Facebook in particular wasn’t able to more quickly detect the video and take it down.
On Tuesday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern expressed frustration that the footage remained online four days after the killings. She said she had received “some communication” from Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg on the issue. “It is horrendous and while they’ve given us those assurances, ultimately the responsibility does sit with them.”
Facebook uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect objectionable material, while at the same time relying on the public to flag up content that violates its standards. Those reports are then sent to human reviewers who decide what action to take, the company said in a video in November , which also outlined how it uses “computer vision” to detect 97 percent of graphic violence before anyone reports it. However, it’s less clear how these systems apply to Facebook’s live streaming.
To report live video, a user must know to click on a small set of three gray dots on the right side of the post. When you click on “report live video,” you’re given a choice of objectionable content types to select from, including violence, bullying and harassment. You’re also told to contact law enforcement in your area if someone is in immediate danger.
Before the company was alerted to the video, a user on 8chan had already posted a link to copy of it on a file sharing site, Sonderby said. 8chan is a dark corner of the web where those disaffected by mainstream social media sites often post extremist, racist and violent views.
In another indication of the video’s spread by those intent on sharing it, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a group of global internet companies led by Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft and Twitter, said it added more than 800 different versions to a shared database used to block violent terrorist images and videos.
The group said it added “digital fingerprints” for visually distinct versions of the video to its database. The move came in response to attempts by internet users to share the video by editing or repackaging versions with different digital fingerprints to avoid detection.
“The incident highlights the importance of industry cooperation regarding the range of terrorists and violent extremists operating online,” said the group, which was formed in 2017 in response to official pressure to do more to fight online extremism.
In a series of tweets a day after the shootings , Facebook’s former chief security officer, Alex Stamos, laid out the challenge for tech companies as they raced to keep up with new versions of the video.
“Each time this happens, the companies have to spot it and create a new fingerprint,” said Stamos. “What you are seeing on the major platforms is the water leaking around thousands of fingers poked in a dam,” he said
Stamos estimated the big tech companies are blocking more than 99 percent of the videos from being uploaded, “which is not enough to make it impossible to find.”
Colbert began his opening monologue on a more serious note than his usual jokes, sending his condolences to those who belonged to the Al Noor and Linwood mosques, as well as the people of New Zealand. He then addressed Trump’s reaction to the shootings, after reviewing comments made by New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who asked of Trump in the wake of the tragedy to “send sympathy and love for all Muslim communities.”
“Trump has trouble showing love for things that are not him, and he has a particularly bad record with Muslims,” Colbert said. “So he’s in a bind. On the one hand, after a terror attack to condemn the extremist ideology of the terrorist should be a slam-dunk. On the other hand, he can’t jump.”
Colbert later turned to comments made by Trump’s chief of staff Mick Mulvaney during an interview with Fox News Sunday.
To Mulvaney’s statement, “The president is not a white supremacist…I’m not sure how many times we have to say that,” Colbert rejoined by saying “having to say it once is a problem.”
Later, revisiting another assertion that Mulvaney made about Trump where he claimed, “I don’t think anybody could say that the president is anti-Muslim,” Colbert didn’t even try to be glib about his thoughts on the matter, offering up this jab: “The president is anti-Muslim.”
Watch Colbert’s take on Donald Trump’s response to the New Zealand shootings below.
It can get pretty hot in Australia. Just ask this adorable koala who found refuge in an air conditioned car on Monday.
Tim Whitrow, a winemaker, was surprised to be greeted by the furry friend as he checked on his fruit in the New Alluca Wine Vineyard in the South of Australia. Whitrow explained in a Facebook post that he had left the air conditioning on and left the doors open to allow his dog to roam free as he checked on the vineyard.
Whitrow, who wrote that he was already having a pretty wild week, had some trouble making the cooled-down koala exit the vehicle. “It took a fair bit of convincing to get the feisty little fella out,” he wrote in the post, which has more than 4,000 shares and nearly 6,000 likes as of Tuesday morning.
Eventually, Whitrow shared that he was able to “release hitch hiker ‘Caramello'” in the nature of Blewitt Springs, a suburb of Adelaide — but not before feeding him from a bottle and melting the hearts of the thousands of Facebook video viewers worldwide.
Australia’s summer season spans from December to February, so it’s now technically autumn. But in the south of Australia, temperatures in autumn can get as high as 79 degrees fahrenheit, according to the country’s website. This summer was also Australia’s hottest on record, according to the World Economic Forum.
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THE Australian Prime Minister today indicated he was considering breaking ties with Turkey following President Erdogan's threats against Australians after the Christchurch massacre.
NEW Zealand's Foreign Minister will travel to Turkey "confront" comments made by Turkish President Erdogan following the Christchurch massacre which killed at least 50 people.
BRAZIL could be granted special NATO privileges according to Donald Trump, who hosted the country's controversial president Jair Bolsonaro in the White House.
Utrecht [Netherlands]: The police are "seriously" considering a terror motive behind the tram shooting here which claimed the lives of three people and wounded five others earlier this week. "A terrorist motive is being seriously considered. A letter found in the flight car and the nature of the events give cause for this. Other motives are not excluded and are also being investigated," the police said without revealing the contents of the letter, according to The New York Times.
Police arrested Turkish-born Gokmen Tanis on suspicion of the shooting, which took place in a tram at the 24 October Square on March 18. The police earlier quashed speculations – which claimed that the shooting was sparked by a domestic incident – by stating that there is no indication of a direct relationship between the gunman and the victims. Three of the wounded still remain in a critical condition, as two other men were arrested in connection with Monday's shooting. The incident has jarred the nation as it came just a few days after 50 people lost their lives when a shooter opened fire inside two mosques at Christchurch on March 15.
