Depending how you slice it — time or money — there are either 61 or 960 immediate reasons not to travel by Amtrak trains from New York City to Los Angeles.
No GMOs, no pesticides, no extra chemicals. If you like the effects of CBD and the environment, NuLeaf Naturals premium CBD is the oil for you. Use coupon code DIGG for 25% off.
You've seen a zillion of these online tutorials in coding. Could you just sort of, well, teach yourself? The short answer is: Sure you can. The longer answer is… the rest of this essay.
One of the first quantum simulators has produced a puzzling phenomenon: a row of atoms that repeatedly pops back into place. Physicists have been racing to explain what might be going on.
Ignore the science — and how the massive tidal forces would rip Earth apart and kill you — for a second and just appreciate the majesty of Saturn soaring through the sky.
Arduino is the open-source electronics platform that powers everything from wearables to robots to gaming systems — and this Arduino Uno Ultimate Starter Kit & Course Bundle is the perfect way to get started on your own projects. Your only limitation is your imagination — and it's just $51.99 from the Digg Store.
"I think a lot of people resist getting diagnosed because of the stigma...[but] the tools that we've been given have made his life so much better and our marriage and our life more manageable."
In this fraught season of division, of incivility and outrage, much has been written about what is wrong with rural America, as if there is only sickness to be found there, as if the simplicity of diagnosis, rather than the complexity of conversation, is what is necessary.
According to the 2019 World Happiness Report, Finland is the happiest country in the world, followed by Denmark and Norway. The US dropped from 18th place to 19th this year.
In 1765, an English explorer gave two islands a rather unfortunate name that has sheltered them from the world and preserved one of Earth's last paradises.
The NCAA men's basketball tournament is upon us. And if you want to watch it but you don't want to shell out and effectively pad both Big Cable's and Big College Sports' bottom lines, here's what you should do.
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Strange things are afoot at The Hollywood Bowl: these two teenage wastoids turned time- and mortal-plane hopping heroes are all grown up, and reuniting for more excellence.
All military-style semi-automatic weapons, assault rifles and high-capacity magazines will be banned in New Zealand following the mass shootings at two Christchurch mosques that killed 50 people.
It's a truth universally acknowledged that if you're pictured holding a screen or writing surface up to the camera, the internet will Photoshop unrelated and/or vulgar images onto that blank slate.
"Being accused of having it handed to me unfairly by people who may have ACTUALLY had it handed to them unfairly, that really bothers me in retrospect."
Rick Singer's colleague and competitor Allen Koh assures the Wall Street Journal that, unlike Singer, his work is fully legal — which still doesn't make us feel that much better.
A quarter-century ago and thousands of miles away, a dramatic weeklong cosmic collision unfolded and helped the internet gain a foothold in people's lives.
A few of my Ukrainian relatives are flying into Montreal on a layover for a few days. Blogging will be sporadic until the weekend.
Update 15:45 EST: Just learned that it is not only my cousin and her son and daughter who are coming. But also my other cousin and his daughter. Groan. Talk about miscommunication. The next few days are going to be hectic. On the bright side. My cousin's kids are in their twenties. They are just going to go to the clubs in Montreal. And my two cousins are tired and just want to vegetate for a few days and spoil my mom.
When the Defense Department flunked its first-ever fiscal review, one of our government's greatest mysteries was exposed: Where does the DoD's $700 billion annual budget go?
A retired Air Force auditor — we'll call him Andy — tells a story about a thing that happened at Ogden Air Force Base, Utah. Sometime in early 2001, something went wrong with a base inventory order. Andy thinks it was a simple data-entry error. "Someone ordered five of something," he says, "and it came out as an order for 999,000." He laughs. "It was probably just something the machine defaulted to. Type in an order for a part the wrong way, and it comes out all frickin' nines in every field." Nobody actually delivered a monster load of parts. But the faulty transaction — the paper trail for a phantom inventory adjustment never made — started moving through the Air Force's maze of internal accounting systems anyway. A junior-level logistics officer caught it before it went out of house. Andy remembers the incident because, as a souvenir, he kept the June 28th, 2001, email that circulated about it in the Air Force accounting world, in which the dollar value of the error was discussed.
The newest Littoral Combat Ship, the USS St. Louis, is launched in Wisconsin in December. The LCS class has been bogged down by defects. (Courtesy U.S. Navy)
Former shipbuilding executive: "There's an old adage: 'A ship so nice, we built it twice'"
For the U.S. Navy, buying warships that are defective, unfinished or both has become the norm.
The habit is expensive, dangerous and leaves overworked sailors to deal with faulty ships in need of repair from day one — yet it has escaped sufficient scrutiny in Washington.
Contrary to the Navy's own policy, and despite spending nearly $16 billion on average in each of the last 30 years on new warships, most U.S. combat vessels are delivered from private shipbuilders with flaws significant enough to impair the vessels' ability to perform missions or to keep crews safe, according to recent audits conducted for Congress.
WNU Editor: With no accountability (and no serious penalties), this problem is only going to continue. The same can be said about the Air Force (F-35), and the US Army (Comanche helicopter).
* Theresa May will beg EU for a three-month delay - but Juncker says she may have to pass her deal to get one * Cabinet is split with Brexiteers hoping for No Deal and Remainers accusing her of 'caving-in' to Eurosceptics * Prime Minister travels to Brussels tomorrow to seek short extension to Article 50 beyond March 29 * Mrs May hopes she can return to the Commons next week with a substantial change to withdrawal agreement * PM has told ministers she will be asking for a clause which could allow for withdrawal by June 30 * Juncker signals that May must win vote on her deal before a delay to Brexit is granted at emergency summit * Labour push for emergency debate as Bercow prepares to intervene again days after blocking third vote * Brexiteers say Britain must leave before June's EU elections and party certain to be hit in May local elections
Theresa May today confirmed she has asked the EU if Britain can stay until June 30 - and hinted strongly that if the UK has not left the bloc after that three-month extension she will quit No 10.
The Prime Minister also confirmed she will bring back her ailing deal for a third time 'as soon as possible' - hours after Jean-Claude Juncker suggested that they would not grant an Article 50 extension unless she gets it through Parliament before March 29.
Mrs May told the Commons today that Britain is 'fed up' of waiting to leave the EU and said it would be 'quite wrong' if the public is asked to vote in the June European election three years after they voted to leave the bloc.
Hinting any further delay would lead to her resignation she twice told the Commons: 'I am not prepared as Prime Minister to delay Brexit any further than June 30'.
WNU Editor: This 3 month delay makes sense. After-all she has vowed to leave the PM's job after June 30 if a deal is not reached .... Brexit: Theresa May vows not to delay departure beyond June (BBC). My prediction .... her deal will not past, and there is a very good chance that she will leave Brexit to her successor. As to who will be her successor? That is going to shape up to be a very interesting contest. But should she break her promise and decide stay beyond her promised departure date, it will fracture the Conservative Party. Also .... if someone like Boris Johnson is elected it will also result in a fracture of the Conservative Party. What a mess.
More News On British PM May Requesting A Three-Month Extension On Brexit
In the early 1950s, Israel was not a powerhouse in the Middle East as it is now. Newly established in 1948 and surrounded by hostile Arab states that would wage war on Israel on numerous occasions until the mid-1970s, Ben-Gurion was concerned that his people would eventually fail to keep up in a conventional arms race with their Arab enemies. Israel, he argued, needed an insurance policy in order to survive in a neighborhood filled with adversaries.
The Iranian nuclear nonproliferation agreement has been the top foreign policy issue throughout Washington for the past two months. Approving or disapproving the deal was the first order of business for the U.S. Congress until the very last day of congressional action under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (September 17). Hours of debate have been conducted on the floors of the House and Senate, both chambers have held roll call votes, and Senate Democrats bonded together to filibuster a motion of disapproval — a resolution that would have prevented President Obama from providing the Iranians sanctions relief.
The failed "denuclearization" summit held in Hanoi between the United States and North Korea took place just as a border flare up played out between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India. So it's easy to warn in vivid — and realistic — ways about the danger of nuclear war.
It's easier still to call for an end to the madness of nuclear weapons. This point of view has its merits. It shows that one's heart is in the right place. But let's not overlook how recent efforts to abolish the bomb have hit a complete dead end, as North Korea, Pakistan and India demonstrate.
WNU Editor: I am old enough to remember when nuclear disarmament demonstrations would easily attract hundreds of thousands of protesters, and it would be covered by the news non-stop. Today .... not even a whimper. The times and culture have certainly changed. When I was growing up nuclear war was easily one of my top 5 concerns and worries. Today's generation .... losing your wallet or not having fast wifi is the worry .... American Millenials Are A Special Breed (March 19, 2019).
BRUSSELS (AP) — Prime Minister Theresa May was trying to persuade European Union leaders on Thursday to delay Brexit by up to three months, with her plans to leave the bloc in chaos just eight days before Britain’s scheduled departure.
May will meet the 27 national other EU leaders in Brussels, a day after she wrote requesting an extension to the Brexit deadline until June 30.
The bloc is weary of Britain’s political soap opera over Brexit. EU Council chief Donald Tusk, who is overseeing the summit, said a short delay should be possible, but only if Britain’s Parliament approves May’s divorce deal with the EU before the scheduled March 29 departure date.
That is a tall order. The deal has twice been rejected twice by hefty margins in Britain’s Parliament, amid opposition from pro-Brexit and pro-EU lawmakers.
May said lawmakers now face a “final choice” between her deal, a no-deal departure that could hammer the economy, and cancelling Brexit.
But the prime minister angered many legislators with a televised speech late Wednesday blaming Parliament for the Brexit impasse.
May told voters weary of a Brexit saga that has dragged on for almost three years: “You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side.”
She didn’t accept a role in causing the impasse, but blamed Parliament and warned that if lawmakers didn’t back her deal it would cause “irreparable damage to public trust.”
Pro-EU Conservative lawmaker Sam Gyimah called May’s comments “toxic.”
“Resorting to the ‘blame game’ as the PM is doing is a low blow,” he said.
Main U.K. opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is also meeting senior EU officials in Brussels, trying to persuade them that Parliament can find an alternative to May’s rejected plan.
“I believe it should be possible to agree a deal with the EU that secures a close economic relationship before the European Parliament elections,” Corbyn said.
Just days after several K-pop pop stars made headlines for filming women without their knowledge, police announced that videos of approximately 1,600 hotel guests were secretly live-streamed to an unnamed subscription website in South Korea.
Two men have been arrested and two more are being investigated in connection to hidden cameras found in 42 hotel rooms in 30 budget hotels across 10 South Korean cities, according to CNN. The cameras were concealed in television boxes, hairdryer mounts and wall sockets in various properties, which have not been named.
“There was a similar case in the past where illegal cameras were (secretly installed) and were consistently and secretly watched, but this is the first time the police caught where videos were broadcast live on the internet,” police said, according to CNN.
The news is the latest development in the “spy-cam” epidemic which has caused outrage in the country. More than 30,000 cases of “surreptitious filming” have been reported to the police since 2013, according to the New York Times. Secret cameras, mostly targeting women, have been found in public restrooms, on public transport, and in gyms among other places.
Even celebrities have been caught up in the scandal. Just last week, the Korean singer-songwriter Jung Joon-young reportedly admitted to filming himself having sex with multiple women and sharing the footage with other K-pop stars via text message.
Last July, tens of thousands of protestors marched in Seoul to urge the authorities do more to protect women from being filmed without their knowledge. Some women carried signs that read “my life is not your porn.”
In response, the government has hired thousands of workers to conduct daily checks in public bathrooms for hidden cameras.
The family of a British schoolgirl who married an ISIS fighter in Syria is formally appealing the government’s decision to revoke her U.K. citizenship, the Guardian reports.
Tasnime Akunjee, a solicitor for the family of Shamima Begum, said the revocation violates the European convention on human rights.
“We are arguing the decision is wrong because it renders Shamima Begum stateless, it puts her life at risk, exposes her to inhumane and degrading treatment, and breaches her right to family life,” Akunjee told the Guardian.
British Home Secretary Sajid Javid wrote in a letter to Begum’s family that he believed that because Begum’s parents are Bangladeshi, she would be eligible to apply for citizenship in Bangladesh. But the country’s ministry of foreign affairs has said that there was “no question” of her being allowed into Bangladesh.
Begum fled her London home in February 2015 and escaped to Syria with two other girls from her school after being radicalized online. She was 15 at the time.
She subsequently married a Dutch terrorist fighter and had three children, all of whom have died through illness and malnutrition. Begum told a journalist at a refugee camp in in February that she wanted to return to the U.K. so she could care for her third baby, but that child died in early March at about a month old.
The family’s appeal states that the decision to strip Begum of her citizenship is unfair because hundreds of U.K. citizens who went to I.S. territory have been allowed back into Britain.
“The government has accepted that 400 people have picked up a gun and actively fought for Isis and then been allowed back to Britain,” Akunjee said. “So how can it be proportionate for a 19-year-old girl who had a child not to be allowed to return, when the others have been allowed to return?”
In an interview with Sky News last month, Begum said she “never did anything dangerous” and that she was “just a housewife for the entire four years.” She added, however, that she did not regret joining ISIS.
With the terror group facing defeat at its last remaining stronghold, governments are grappling with whether to permit the return of citizens who went to ISIS-controlled areas and are now hoping to come back.
President Donald Trump tweeted last month that an Alabama woman, Hoda Muthana, will not be allowed to return to the U.S. with her toddler son.
(CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand) — New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an immediate ban Thursday on sales of “military-style” semi-automatic firearms and high-capacity magazines in the wake of a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch that killed 50 worshippers.
Ardern said the sales ban was effective immediately to prevent stockpiling and would be followed by a complete ban on the weapons after new laws were rushed through.
She said people could hand over their guns under an amnesty while officials develop a formal buyback scheme, which could cost up to 200 million New Zealand dollars ($140 million).
The man charged in the mosque attacks had purchased his weapons legally using a standard firearms license and enhanced their capacity by using 30-round magazines “done easily through a simple online purchase,” Ardern said.
“Every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned,” she said.
The ban includes any semi-automatic guns or shotguns that are capable of being used with a detachable magazine that holds more than five rounds. It also extends to accessories used to convert guns into what the government called “military-style” weapons.
It does not include semi-automatic .22 caliber or smaller guns that hold up to 10 rounds or semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns with non-detachable magazines that hold up to five rounds. The guns not banned are commonly used by farmers and hunters.
The government said the police and military would be exempt as would businesses carrying out professional pest control. Access for international shooting competitions would also be considered.
Ardern’s announcement comes as authorities announced that all 50 bodies from the attacks were formally identified and families were burying their loved ones.
At least nine funerals took place Thursday, including for a teenager, a youth soccer coach and a Muslim convert who loved connecting with other women at the mosque.
After Ardern’s announcement, one of New Zealand’s largest gun retailers, Hunting & Fishing New Zealand, reiterated its support of “any government measure to permanently ban such weapons.”
“While we have sold them in the past to a small number of customers, last week’s events have forced a reconsideration that has led us to believe such weapons of war have no place in our business — or our country,” chief executive Darren Jacobs said in a statement.
Regardless of the ban, the company would no longer stock any assault-style firearms of any category and would also stop selling firearms online, he said.
Although the exact weapons used in the mosque attacks have not been made public, images of them posted by the gunman show at least one of them to be a semi-automatic rifle similar to an AR-15 that is widely available in New Zealand. Semi-automatic refers to a firearm’s ability to self-load, not only firing a bullet with each trigger pull, but also reloading and making the firearm capable of firing again.
The military versions most resembling the AR-15 rifle are the M16 and M4 carbines, which can fire in semi-automatic mode, three-round burst mode or fully automatic mode.
Many different types of firearms, from pistols to rifles and shotguns, can be semi-automatic. Semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 can often be modified with aftermarket parts, or accessories, to fire in fully automatic mode and instructions can often be found on the internet.
Polly Collins, 64, of Christchurch, was thrilled to hear of Ardern’s announcement as she visited a flower memorial for the victims.
“The prime minister is amazing,” she said. “It’s not like in America, where they have all these things and then they go ‘Oh yeah, we’ll deal with the gun laws,’ and nothing’s done.”
At the cemetery, solemn farewells continued for Cashmere High School student Sayyad Ahmad Milne, 14, who was known as an outgoing boy and the school’s futsal goalkeeper. Tariq Rashid Omar, 24, graduated from the same school, played soccer in the summer and was a beloved coach of several youth teams and was also buried Thursday.
In a post on Facebook, Christchurch United Football Club Academy Director Colin Williamson described Omar as “a beautiful human being with a tremendous heart and love for coaching.”
Linda Armstrong, 64, a third-generation New Zealander who converted to Islam in her 50s, was also buried, as were Hussein Mohamed Khalil Moustafa, 70, Matiullah Safi, 55, and Haji Mohammed Daoud Nabi.
Police Commissioner Mike Bush said all 50 victims had been identified as of Thursday and their families were being notified. Investigators also were trying to conclude their work at the two mosques.
“We are working to restore them in a way that is absolutely respectful,” he said.
An Australian white supremacist, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, was arrested by police who ran him off the road while he was believed to be on his way to a third target. He had livestreamed the attack on Facebook and said in his manifesto he planned to attack three mosques.
Also on Thursday, police said they’d inadvertently charged Tarrant with the murder of a person who is still alive.
Police said in a statement they had apologized to the person incorrectly named on the document and would change the charge sheet. They said the charge remains valid, so there was no chance the suspect would be released as a result of the error.
Police did not offer further details of what went wrong or make anybody available for an interview.
The name of the person on the charging sheet has been suppressed by court order. Officials said more charges against Tarrant would follow.
Tarrant, 28, is next scheduled to appear in court on April 5, and Bush said investigations into him were continuing. Police have said they are certain Tarrant was the only gunman but are still investigating whether he had support.
Meanwhile, preparations were underway for a massive Friday prayer service to be led by the imam of one of the mosques where worshippers were killed.
Imam Gamal Fouda said he is expecting 3,000 to 4,000 people at the prayer service, including many who have come from abroad.
Workers at the Al Noor mosque have been trying feverishly to repair the destruction, Fouda said.
“They will bury the carpet,” he said. “Because it is full of blood, and it’s contaminated.”
Fouda said that he expects the mosque to be ready to open again by next week and that some skilled workers had offered their services for free.
As the investigation continues into the attack, Ardern has also said an inquiry would look into intelligence and security services’ failures to detect the risk from the attacker or his plans.
Ardern said Thursday the government was working on a large-scale buy-back plan to encourage owners of now-banned weapons to surrender them. She did not say what would happen to those who violate the law.
She also said she and the Cabinet would work through legal exemptions to the ban, such as for farmers needing to cull their herds but said any exemptions would be “tightly regulated.”
“For other dealers, sales should essentially now cease. My expectation is that these weapons will now be returned to your suppliers and never enter into the New Zealand market again,” she said.
MADRID (AP) — A far-right party is making political waves in Spain by advocating looser gun control laws and recruiting retired military officers as candidates in a parliamentary election next month.Vox party leader Santiago Abascal said Spaniards should be allowed to keep firearms at home and to use them in “real life-threatening situations” without fear of legal consequences. Spain currently allows civilians to possess guns only for sporting purposes.
“Our laws treat criminals like victims and honest citizens like criminals,” Abascal told armas.es, a website specializing in weapons, in an interview Wednesday.
Abascal, 42, has bragged about carrying a handgun himself. The politician was born and raised in the northern Basque region, where his family was for years a target of separatist militant group ETA. He has a special gun license given on a case by case basis for professional or personal safety.
Public opinion polls are predicting Vox will win a significant number of seats in the House of Deputies, the lower chamber in Spain’s parliament. The party said this week it had enlisted at least five former army generals to run in the April 28 election.
Two of the candidates signed a petition last year opposing moves by Spain’s Socialist government to remove the body of Gen. Francisco Franco from a mausoleum where the 20th century dictator is honored.
Those who fear the rise of the far right in Spain say Vox is trying to attract votes with fear-mongering and by reviving the ghosts of Franco’s 1939-1975 dictatorship. The party’s campaign message is high on Spanish nationalism and what are regarded as traditional values, while its positions include opposing unauthorized migration and the demands of feminists.
But Vox faces an uphill battle to stir the arms debate in a country with lower homicide and burglary rates than most of its European neighbors. Some Vox members have linked violence against women and other crimes to the arrival in Spain of large numbers of migrants, though they haven’t offered statistical evidence to back the claims.
Laws in Spain are strict in requiring military staff to be politically neutral, but they face no limitations once they retire. The anti-austerity Podemos party had a former head of the armed forces, Julio Rodríguez, run for parliament in 2015, but he wasn’t elected.
One Vox candidate, Alberto Asarta, is a decorated general with a long career in international missions, including a two-year stint leading the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.
Last year, Asarta and another general who is now running under the Vox banner joined nearly 200 military reservists in signing a public petition defending Franco’s legacy.
Their manifesto justified the dictator’s 1936 uprising, which triggered a bloody three-year Civil War. It also criticized Spain’s center-left government for ordering Franco’s remains to be exhumed and relocated from the glorifying Valley of the Fallen mausoleum to a more discrete location.
The government has ordered the exhumation to be carried out on June 10. The Spanish Supreme Court is considering appeals filed by Franco’s relatives and the abbot charged with guarding his tomb.
The decision by Europe and Canada to break with U.S. air-safety regulators over the safety of the Boeing 737 Max is likely to delay the resumption of flights after two of the jets crashed.
The Europeans and Canadians vow to conduct their own reviews of Boeing’s changes to a key flight-control system, not to simply take the Federal Aviation Administration’s word that the alterations are safe. Those reviews scramble an ambitious schedule set by Boeing and could undercut the FAA’s reputation around the world.
Boeing hopes by Monday to finish an update to software that can automatically point the nose of the plane sharply downward in some circumstances to avoid an aerodynamic stall, according to two people briefed on FAA presentations to congressional committees.
The FAA expects to certify Boeing’s modifications and plans for pilot training in April or May, one of the people said. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the briefings.
But there are clear doubts about meeting that timetable. Air Canada plans to remove the Boeing 737 Max from its schedule at least through July 1 and suspend some routes that it flew with the plane before it was grounded around the world last week.
American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines, which are slightly less dependent on the Max than Air Canada, are juggling their fleets to fill in for grounded planes, but have still canceled some flights.
By international agreement, planes must be certified in the country where they are built. Regulators around the world have almost always accepted that country’s decision.
As a result, European airlines have flown Boeing jets with little independent review by the European Aviation Safety Agency, and U.S. airlines operate Airbus jets without a separate, lengthy certification process by the FAA.
That practice is being frayed, however, in the face of growing questions about the FAA’s certification of the Max. Critics question whether the agency relied too much on Boeing to vouch for critical safety matters and whether it understood the significance of a new automated flight-control system on the Max.
The FAA let the Boeing Max keep flying after preliminary findings from the Oct. 29 crash of a Lion Air Max 8 in Indonesia pointed to flight-control problems linked to the failure of a sensor. Boeing went to work on upgrading the software to, among other things, rely on more than one sensor and limit the system’s power to point the plane’s nose down without direction from the pilots.
The FAA’s assurance was good enough for the rest of the world until an Ethiopian Airlines Max 8 crashed. Satellite data suggests both planes had similar, erratic flight paths before crashing minutes after takeoff.
Patrick Ky, the executive director of the European regulator, said his agency will look “very deeply, very closely” at the changes Boeing and the FAA suggest to fix the plane.
“I can guarantee to you that on our side we will not allow the aircraft to fly if we have not found acceptable answers to all our questions, whatever the FAA does,” he said.
The message was the same from Canada’s Transport minister, Marc Garneau.
“When that software change is ready, which is a number of weeks, we will in Canada — even if it is certified by the FAA — we will do our own certification,” he said.
Other countries could also conduct their own analysis of how much pilot training should be required on the Max. Ky noted that one Lion Air crew correctly disabled the plane’s malfunctioning flight-control system, but not the crew on the next flight, which crashed. He said pilots under stress might have forgotten details of a bulletin Boeing issued in November, reminding pilots about that procedure.
The FAA’s handling of issues around the Max jet have damaged its standing among other aviation regulators, said James Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
The FAA will have to be more transparent about its investigation, and it should require that pilots train for the Max on flight simulators, Hall said, because “that is how pilots train today, not on iPads.”
John Hansman, an aeronautics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chairman of an FAA research and engineering advisory committee, said separate approvals by Canada and the Europeans will reassure the public because those countries are seen as having no vested interest in the plane.
“It’s unfortunate because it will probably cause a delay, but it may be the right thing in the long haul,” Hansman said. He expects that the FAA will wait until other regulators finish their reviews before letting the Max fly again.
FAA spokesman Greg Martin would not comment on whether the agency’s reputation has been hurt by its approval of the Max, the crashes or the agency’s initial hesitation to ground the planes after the second crash.
The FAA is getting a new chief. The White House said Tuesday that President Donald Trump will nominate former Delta Air Lines executive and pilot Stephen Dickson to head the agency. Daniel Elwell has been acting administrator since January 2018.
Boeing too is shifting personnel. This week, the company named the chief engineer of its commercial airplanes division to lead the company’s role in the investigations into the Oct. 29 crash of the Lion Air jet and the March 10 Ethiopian Airlines crash. The executive, John Hamilton, has experience in airplane design and regulatory standards.
From 2013 until early 2016, Hamilton oversaw the use of Boeing employees to perform some safety-certification work on behalf of the FAA. That program has come under criticism from critics including members of Congress.
The Justice Department is investigating the FAA’s oversight of Boeing, and a federal grand jury issued a subpoena to someone involved in the plane’s development. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao formally directed her agency’s inspector general to audit the FAA’s handling of that process. Congressional committees are looking into the matter as well.
A Senate subcommittee announced Wednesday that it will hold a public hearing on the Max crashes and airline safety on March 27, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican.
The company declined to comment. The Max, the latest and most fuel-efficient version of the half-century-old 737, is Boeing’s most popular plane, with more than 4,600 unfilled orders.
___
Associated Press writers Carlo Piovano in London and Robert Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.
(MILAN) — A bus driver in northern Italy abducted 51 children and their chaperones Wednesday, threatening them over a 40-minute ordeal before setting the vehicle on fire when he was stopped by a Carabinieri blockade.
Officers broke glass windows in the back of the bus and got all the passengers to safety without serious injury before the flames destroyed the vehicle, authorities said.
As he was apprehended, the driver said he was protesting migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, Commander Luca De Marchis told Sky TG24.
De Marchis told Sky TG24 that the driver, an Italian citizen of Senegalese origin in his 40s, threatened the passengers, telling them that “no one would survive today” as he commandeered the bus carrying two middle-school classes to a nearby gym in Cremona province, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Milan.
ANSA quoted one of the students as saying the driver took all their phones and ordered the chaperones to bind the students’ hands with cable ties, threatening to spill gas and set the bus ablaze. ANSA said the chaperones only loosely bound several students’ hands, not everyone’s.
One of the middle school students described his terror in an interview with La Repubblica TV, his face obscured due to his age. His name was not given.
“We were all very afraid because the driver had emptied the gas canister onto the floor (of the bus.) He tied us up and took all the telephones so we could not call the police,” the student said.
“One of the telephones, belonging to a classmate, fell to the ground, so I pulled off the handcuffs, hurting myself a bit, and went and picked it up. We called the Carabinieri and the police.”
Authorities said that an adult called an emergency operator, while one of the students called a parent, and they alerted authorities, who set up roadblocks. The bus was intercepted on the outskirts of Milan by three Carabinieri vehicles, which were able to force it into the guardrail, De Marchis said.
“While two officers kept the driver busy — he took a lighter and threatened to set fire to the vehicle with a gasoline canister on board — the others forced open the back door, breaking two windows,” De Marchis said. While the evacuation was still underway, the driver started the blaze.
De Marchis credited the officers’ “swiftness and courage,” for getting out all the children and their teachers “with no tragic consequences.”
Some of the passengers were treated at a hospital, mostly for cuts and scratches related to the evacuation, he said.
The driver was apprehended and was being treated for burns. ANSA identified him as Ousseynou Sy, and said he was being investigated on suspicion of kidnapping, intention to commit a massacre, arson and resisting law enforcement. The prosecutor’s office later said they would add terrorism as an aggravating circumstance, since the event caused panic.
De Marchis said he had previous convictions, but did not specify their nature.
ANSA reported that Sy, who became an Italian citizen in 2004, had been convicted in 2007 and 2011 of drunken driving and sexual molestation of a minor. Sky TG24 said that the driver had worked for the bus company for 15 years without any employment-related issues.
“Investigators must clarify how the transport company permitted such a delinquent … to drive a bus, especially one carrying children,” said Riccardo De Corato, a Milan provincial official for security.
Video showed firefighters dousing the bus that had been completely gutted by flames, leaving only the charred metal frame.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has garnered international praise for her empathetic but defiant response in the wake of the terror attacks on two mosques in the city of Christchurch that shocked and devastated the country.
Since the shootings killed 50 and injured dozens, Ardern has expressed the grief of the tiny island state that has prided itself on being an open and tolerant society. She has shown compassion and empathy for the survivors and the families of those killed while being vocal in her determination to deny the gunman what he had most desired – notoriety.
Ardern said she would do everything in her power to deny the gunman a platform to elevate his white supremacist views. “You will never hear me speak his name,” she said in parliament
New Zealand’s first female prime minister and at 38 the world’s youngest female head of state, Ardern has led calls for a united global front to fight rising white extremism.
TIME addressed a question to Ardern during a press conference Wednesday, and spoke to her in a private interview afterward. (This interview has been edited for clarity)
TIME: Where does the responsibility to fight rising white extremism lie?
Ardern: Domestically with each of us. I have to acknowledge though there are some things that we do need to confront collectively, as leaders internationally. We cannot, for instance, just simply allow some of the challenges that we face with social media to be dealt with on a case by case basis. There is an argument here to be made for us to take a united front on what is a global issue. This is not just an issue for New Zealand. Social media platforms have been used to spread violence, material that incites violence. All of us need to present a united front. When it comes to racism, extremism, violence, we domestically have duties upon us as well.
You have talked about the need to reform social media. Do you think that should be done by government intervention or should companies themselves self regulate?
I would have hoped from all of the evidence that we have seen to date that the moral rationale for self regulation already exists and it hasn’t happened. So if what has been seen in the past week isn’t enough to score self regulation, I’m not sure what will.
You said in the press conference that your focus is very much on the people of New Zealand and quite rightly so. However, this tragedy is very much a transnational one. A man from abroad, radicalized online by people in Norway and so forth. And in the U.S. we have a president who refuses to condemn white supremacy, refuses to say it’s a problem, and even borrows the language of white supremacists, talking about an “invasion” over the border. Have you got a message for President Trump?
My messages are never directly targeted at individuals.
But are you concerned by his stance?
I disagree with it, and I’m happy to say that. But my job is to respond to what has happened within our borders. [It’s also to] acknowledge if the threat—including the idea of violence being perpetuated using social media platforms — requires a global response to be part of the global answer. So I absolutely accept some of these issues cannot be resolved domestically, and are no longer just domestic issues.
There will be obviously be heightened security around mosques and places worship after this attack. New Zealand has a reputation and history of being a tolerant, open society. Do you fear that this tragedy will change New Zealand forever?
It is certainly now a part of our history. It is our darkest of days. There is no question. Going forward, what I hope it changes the most is producing a heightened response to extremism, racism, hatred. The risk of who we are is actually the reason we were targeted in the first place. And that won’t change.
Inside the U.K. houses of parliament, the grown-ups were at work. Outside, thousands of others — many of whom were not old enough to vote — were doing their best to make sure business was anything but usual. With their chants echoing down the streets, they were among an estimated 1.6 million students in over 120 countries who left school on March 15 in protest of adult inaction on climate change. “It shocks me how great a length we have to go to be heard,” said 16-year-old Miranda Ashby, who’d traveled more than two hours to London with roughly 50 of her classmates. “We are protesting now because if not now, when?”
The school climate strikes started with teen activist Greta Thunberg standing vigil outside Sweden’s parliament one Friday last August. “When I first started this strike, I didn’t really expect anything,” Thunberg told TIME on March 14, shortly after Norwegian lawmakers nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Thunberg’s idea has grown into a global movement; the March 15 action was its biggest yet. Extensive coverage of the strikes by media outlets and individuals on social media have helped elevate the cause in the minds of people across the world. Meanwhile, the lack of a centralized organizational hub makes it easy for teenagers to arrange actions in their own towns and cities; rallies took place in more than 2,200 towns and cities worldwide on March 15. “We’re tired of waiting for politicians to care,” says Nosrat Fareha, an organizer for the Sydney strikes, where 30,000 young people turned out — more than three times Fareha’s expected estimate.
In Uganda, where drought and desertification are already devastating, the walk-out took place despite officials blocking strikers from an intended rally location in Kampala. “I realized that my country has to change too,” 14-year-old organizer Leah Namugerwa says. And in the U.S., 17-year-old Feliquan Charlemagne, National Creative Director of the U.S. movement, believes the energy of March for Our Lives, the 2018 student-led initiative for gun control, must be harnessed for this cause too. Born in the Caribbean island of St Thomas, Charlemagne and his family have personally suffered the powerful effects of climate change, after Hurricane Irma devastated the island in September 2017. “This is not something we can play around with,” he says. “This is literally our future.”
Daniel Bockwoldt—Getty ImagesGreta Thunberg, climate activist, stands on a stage during a rally at the town hall market in Hamburg, Germany, on Mar. 1, 2019.
It’s also their present. The warning of the landmark October 2018 report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that the planet was only 12 years away from catastrophe unless “far-reaching and unprecedented changes” are taken, weighs heavily on the minds of young organizers, who are quick to point out that they are the ones who have to live in that world. The deadline means there’s a lot of work to be done, and they don’t have time to wait to grow up first.
Their most pressing hope is for immediate policy measures to meet the terms of the Paris Agreement, limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5° celsius this century, as well as specific local action. In Australia, campaigners want to halt the proposed construction of a controversial coal mine. For activists across the U.S., preservation of public lands and political implementation of the Green New Deal are top priorities. And in the U.K., organizers want a fair portrayal of the climate crisis in school curricula and government information. And they’ve had some success already: youth organizers have met with members of the European Parliament and their strikes have been welcomed by leaders including Angela Merkel and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres. “It really has changed the discourse,” says Sini Harkki, program manager at Greenpeace Nordic.
But at least for now, that’s all they can change; the youth that draws them to the cause is also an obstacle. Most of the movement’s participants are not just battling the obvious challenges of political inertia, powerful fossil fuel lobbies and disbelieving critics—they are also too young to play a bigger role in business or politics. And so they are determined to continue the Friday strikes. The U.K. Student Climate Network is demanding a meeting with political leaders, U.S. activists are planning a mass strike for May 3 and a pan-European organizer meeting is also in the pipeline. And Thunberg, no longer on her own, is committed to striking every Friday until Sweden reduces its carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. “I know I have something to say,” Thunberg says, referring to her frank speeches in front of international leaders. “I have a message I want to get out and I want people to listen.” Students worldwide have heard her loud and clear. It’s up to the world’s politicians to act.
Correction, March 20:
The original version of this story misstated what a U.N. report found about the length of time Earth has before a climate change catastrophe. It was 12 years from 2018 (when the report was published), not 12 years from 2019.
(BERLIN) — European Council President Donald Tusk has given a tentative greenlight to Britain’s request to delay Brexit but says EU approval comes with a condition.
Tusk said Wednesday “that a short extension will be possible, but it will be conditional on a positive vote” in the U.K. parliament on the Brexit agreement after British Prime Minister Theresa May reached with the EU.
Tusk says May’s petition for a withdrawal date of June 30 instead of March 29 poses legal and political issues since elections for the EU Parliament are being held May 23-26.
He stressed that the existing Brexit deal won’t be reopened, though says he doesn’t see a problem with May’s March 11 agreement with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that provided some extra guarantees.
Tusk is set to chair a summit of EU nation leaders on Thursday.
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ANGELA Merkel has expressed her frustration over the Brexit delay with the German Chancellor warning Theresa May the EU will only agree an extension if her deal is passed through Parliament.
ISIS is on the verge of being obliterated in its last sliver of territory although the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces has denied reports the tiny enclave has already been captured.
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