Trump Laments Complexity of Modern Airlines in Wake of Crash

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13 March 2019, 12:25

President Donald Trump speaks at a Dec. 11 meeting with Democratic leaders in the Oval Office in Washington. Photo: Evan Vucci / Associated Press — President Donald Trump speaks at a Dec. 11 , 2018, meeting with Democratic leaders in the Oval Office in Washington. Photo: Evan Vucci / Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump lamented the complexity of modern airplanes Tuesday in the wake of two deadly crashes in the past five months, appearing to speculate on the cause of the disasters before aviation experts from the United States and elsewhere complete their investigations.

The president commented as much of the world grounded the Boeing 737 Max 8 model involved in both crashes.

Trump tweeted that “airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly.” He did not specifically mention the crashes, but his comments come just two days after an Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed all 157 people aboard and as a cascade of countries worldwide began suspending use of the plane.

“Split second decisions are needed, and the complexity creates danger,” Trump tweeted. “All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!”

The president’s tweet came as lawmakers were examining the future of the aviation industry during a congressional hearing Tuesday morning.

“I have a hard time interpreting anything the president says,” Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., said after reading the tweet aloud. “I don’t know if this is a knock at Boeing, or if it’s a knock at pilots or if it’s a knock at Einstein, or just that he’s a Luddite and it’s a knock at technology in general. But it doesn’t seem to be the right attitude at this moment.”

Patrick Smith, who flies a Boeing 767 aircraft and writes a column called “Ask the Pilot,” said Trump’s tweet reinforces the false notion that computers are flying the plane while pilots are there as a backup.

“People have a vastly exaggerated understanding of what cockpit automation actually does, and how pilots interact with that automation,” Smith said. “… The pilots are still flying the plane. They’re not flying it in the strictly hands-on way they would have in the 1930s, but you’re still commanding, you’re still controlling, the aircraft. You have to tell the automation what to do, how to do it and when to do it.”

Smith said that even with the most sophisticated airplanes, “there’s always a way to just fall back on raw pilot skills if you need to.”

Republican Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, a pilot, said the president “has a point” but “if you train the pilots to operate the systems, then it’s not too complex.”

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said on Fox News that “we have to review and see what actually took place. We know that a lot of the people in the industry have started to voice concerns about the amount of technology and taking the power out of the hands of the pilot. You saw the president talk about that in his tweets earlier today.”

Sanders also confirmed that Trump did speak by telephone Tuesday with Boeing Chairman and CEO Dennis Muilenburg. She would not reveal details of what they discussed but said the administration is “monitoring the situation closely.”

Anti-stall technology is suspected of playing a role in the Lion Air crash in October that killed all 189 aboard. Data released by Indonesian investigators indicates that pilots struggled unsuccessfully to counter the system, which repeatedly pointed the plane’s nose down and may have sent it into a death spiral.

Trump has long had an intense interest in the airline industry, once acquiring a fleet of planes in 1989 from the defunct Eastern Air Lines shuttle business. Time magazine once described the venture as a bust that never turned a profit and eventually defaulted. It was later sold to USAir.

Shortly before Trump came into office, he complained about the cost of new Air Force One planes, tweeting: “Costs are out of control, more than USD$4 billion. Cancel order!”

The White House said last July that the Air Force awarded Boeing a $3.9 billion contract for two presidential planes that will be ready in 2024. Sanders said the final price represented a savings of $1.4 billion from an initial contract proposal. Trump also said the familiar baby blue color on the presidential aircraft would give way to a red, white and blue color scheme.

Story: Kevin Freking

Australian Cardinal Sentenced to Prison for Child Sex Abuse

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Associated Press

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13 March 2019, 12:18

Cardinal George Pell walks onto the stage for the opening mass for World Youth Day in 2008 in Sydney, Australia. Photo: Rick Rycroft / Associated Press

MELBOURNE, Australia — The most senior Catholic convicted of child sex abuse was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison for molesting two choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral in a crime that an Australian judge said showed “staggering arrogance.”

Victoria state County Court Chief Judge Peter Kidd ordered Cardinal George Pell to serve a minimum of 3 years and 8 months before he is eligible for parole. The five convictions against Pell carried a maximum possible sentence of 10 years each.

“In my view, your conduct was permeated by staggering arrogance,” Kidd said in handing down the sentence.

Pope Francis’ former finance minister was convicted by a unanimous jury verdict in December of orally raping a 13-year-old choirboy and indecently dealing with the boy and the boy’s 13-year-old friend in the late 1990s, months after Pell became archbishop of Melbourne. A court order had suppressed media reporting the news until last month.

The 77-year-old denies the allegations and will appeal his convictions in the Victoria Court of Appeal on June 5. It was not immediately clear if he will also appeal the sentence.

For the first time in Pell’s many court appearances since he returned to Australia from the Vatican to face abuse charges, Pell wore an open-necked shirt without a cleric’s collar.

In explaining his sentencing decision, the judge said Pell had led an “otherwise blameless life.” Kidd said he believed given Pell’s age and lack of any other criminal record, the cardinal posed no risk of re-offending.

The judge also took pains to note that he was sentencing Pell for the offenses on which the cardinal had been convicted – and not for the sins of the Catholic Church.

“As I directed the jury who convicted you in this trial, you are not to be made a scapegoat for any failings or perceived failings of the Catholic Church,” Kidd said.

But the judge also said that Pell had abused his position of power and had shown no remorse for his crimes. Kidd described the assaults as egregious, degrading and humiliating to the victims.

Pell showed no emotion during the hourlong hearing and barely moved throughout. He stood silently with his hands behind his back as the judge read his sentence. Pell signed documents that registered him for life as a serious sexual offender before he was led from the dock by four prison officers.

In a statement, one of Pell’s victims called the judge’s sentence “meticulous and considered.”

“It is hard for me to allow myself to feel the gravity of this moment, the moment when the sentence is handed down, the moment when justice is done,” the man said in a statement read outside court by one of his lawyers, Vivian Waller. “It is hard for me, for the time being, to take comfort in this outcome. I appreciate that the court has acknowledged what was inflicted upon me as a child. However, there is no rest for me. Everything is overshadowed by the forthcoming appeal.”

The father of a victim who died of a heroin overdose in 2014 at the age of 31 described the sentence as “a disappointment,” said the father’s lawyer Lisa Flynn.

“Our client is disappointed with the short sentencing and has expressed sadness over what he believes is inadequate for the crime,” Flynn said in a statement.

The father is considering suing Pell and the church over the abuse.

Australian law prohibits the publication of sex crime victims’ identities.

Abuse victims’ groups also expressed disappointment that the punishment was not harsher.

The sentence “makes a mockery of the concept of true accountability and is not a sentence commensurate with the crimes committed and the harm reaped,” Blue Knot Foundation president Cathy Kezelman said in a statement.

SNAP, a U.S. support group for victim of clergy abuse, described the sentences as “comparatively light.”

“We hope that the sentence imposed on Cardinal George Pell will provide some measure of healing to the living survivor of his abuse and comfort and closure for the family of Pell’s non-surviving victim,” SNAP said in a statement.

The judge said Pell’s age was a significant factor in determining his sentence.

Pell suffers from hypertension that is exacerbated by stress and has a dual-chamber pacemaker, the judge said.

Pell’s sentencing comes on the sixth anniversary of Francis’ election as pope. Pell was in the conclave that elected him and remains eligible for any potential future conclave until age 80 or unless he is removed.

Asked by a reporter outside court after the sentencing whether the case against Pell amounted to a witch hunt, his lawyer Robert Richter gave a rueful smile.

“No comment – you be the judge,” Richter replied.

After centuries of impunity, cardinals from Australia to Chile and points in between are facing justice in both the Vatican and government courts for their own sexual misdeeds or for having shielded abusers under their watch.

Last week, France’s senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, was convicted of failing to report a known pedophile priest to police. Barbarin was given a six-month suspended sentence.

Pope Francis last month defrocked the onetime leader of the American church after an internal investigation determined Cardinal Theodore McCarrick sexually molested children and adult men. It was the first time a cardinal had been defrocked over the child abuse scandal.

The surviving victim made a statement against Pell in 2015 – a year after the other victim’s death – to a police task force set up to investigate allegations that arose from a state parliamentary inquiry into handling of child abuse by religious and other nongovernment organizations. The task force also investigates allegations made to a similar national inquiry, called the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Pell gave evidence by video link from Rome to the royal commission, the nations’ highest level of inquiry, in 2016 about his time as a church leader in Melbourne and in his hometown of Ballarat.

The four-year royal commission found in its 2017 report that the Melbourne Archdiocese had ignored or covered up allegations of child abuse by seven priests in a bid to protect the church’s reputation and avoid scandal.

The royal commission was critical of Pell’s predecessor in Melbourne, Archbishop Frank Little, who died in 2008. It made no findings against Pell, saying in a redacted report that it would not publish information that could “prejudice current or future criminal or civil proceedings.”

Australian police interviewed Pell about the survivor’s allegations in a Rome hotel in 2016. Pell described the allegations at the time as “vile and disgusting conduct” that went against everything he believed in.

Pell voluntarily returned to Australia in 2017 to face an array of child abuse charges, most of which have since been dropped. The full details of those allegations were suppressed by court orders.

Pell was once the highest-ranking Catholic in Australia’s second-largest city, where he is now a prisoner held in protective security. Pedophiles such as Pell are typically separated from the main prison populations in Australia.

Pell was 55 years old and had recently established a compensation plan for Melbourne’s victims of clergy abuse when he abused the two boys at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996. The survivor testified that Pell had walked in on the boys swigging altar wine in a back room after a Sunday Mass.

More than a month later, Pell abused the survivor again, squeezing the boy’s genitals as they passed in a cathedral corridor after a Mass.

Story: Rod McGuirk

TV Celebrities and Coaches Charged in College Bribery Scheme

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Associated Press

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13 March 2019, 12:10

This combination photo shows actress Lori Loughlin at the Women's Cancer Research Fund's An Unforgettable Evening event in Beverly Hills, California, on Feb. 27, 2018, left, and actress Felicity Huffman at the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on Sept. 17, 2018. Photo: Associated Press

BOSTON — Fifty people, including Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, were charged Tuesday in a scheme in which wealthy parents allegedly bribed college coaches and other insiders to get their children into some of the nation’s most selective schools.

Federal authorities called it the biggest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department, with the parents accused of paying an estimated USD$25 million in bribes.

At least nine athletic coaches and 33 parents, many of them prominent in law, finance, fashion, the food and beverage industry and other fields, were charged. Dozens, including Huffman, the Emmy-winning star of ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” were arrested by midday.

“These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in announcing the results of a fraud and conspiracy investigation code-named Operation Varsity Blues.

The coaches worked at such schools as Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, Wake Forest, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles. A former Yale soccer coach pleaded guilty and helped build the case against others.

Two more of those charged – Stanford’s sailing coach and the college-admissions consultant at the very center of the scheme – pleaded guilty Tuesday in Boston. Others appeared in court and were released on bail.

Huffman, 56, appeared in a Los Angeles courthouse and was released after posting a $250,000 bond.

Her attorney cited her community ties in asking that the actress be released on her own recognizance, which the judge denied.

Huffman is scheduled to appear in court March 29 in Boston.

No students were charged, with authorities saying that in many cases the teenagers were unaware of what was going on. Several of the colleges involved made no mention of taking any action against the students.

The scandal is certain to inflame longstanding complaints that children of the wealthy and well-connected have the inside track in college admissions – sometimes through big, timely donations from their parents – and that privilege begets privilege.

College consultants were not exactly shocked by the allegations.

“This story is the proof that there will always be a market for parents who have the resources and are desperate to get their kid one more success,” said Mark Sklarow, CEO of the Independent Educational Consultants Association. “This was shopping for name-brand product and being willing to spend whatever it took.”

The central figure in the scheme was identified as admissions consultant William “Rick” Singer, founder of the Edge College & Career Network of Newport Beach, California. He pleaded guilty, as did Stanford’s John Vandemoer.

Singer’s lawyer, Donald Heller, said his client intends to cooperate fully with prosecutors and is “remorseful and contrite and wants to move on with his life.”

Prosecutors said that parents paid Singer big money from 2011 through last month to bribe coaches and administrators to falsely make their children look like star athletes to boost their chances of getting accepted. The consultant also hired ringers to take college entrance exams for students, and paid off insiders at testing centers to correct students’ answers.

Some parents spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and some as much as $6.5 million to guarantee their children’s admission, officials said.

“For every student admitted through fraud, an honest and genuinely talented student was rejected,” Lelling said.

Several defendants, including Huffman, were charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Lelling said the investigation is continuing and authorities believe other parents were involved. The IRS is also investigating, since some parents allegedly disguised the bribes as charitable donations. The colleges themselves are not targets, the prosecutor said.

The investigation began when authorities received a tip about the scheme from someone they were interviewing in a separate case, Lelling said. He did not elaborate.

Authorities said coaches in such sports as soccer, sailing, tennis, water polo and volleyball took payoffs to put students on lists of recruited athletes, regardless of their ability or experience. Once they were accepted, many of these students didn’t play the sports in which they supposedly excelled.

The applicants’ athletic credentials were falsified with the help of staged photographs of them playing sports, or doctored photos in which their faces were pasted onto the bodies of genuine athletes, authorities said.

Prosecutors said parents were also instructed to claim their children had learning disabilities so that they could take the ACT or SAT by themselves and get extra time. That made it easier to pull off the tampering, prosecutors said.

Among the parents charged was Gordon Caplan of Greenwich, Connecticut, co-chairman of the international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, based in New York. He and other parents did not immediately return telephone or email messages for comment.

Caplan was accused of paying $75,000 to get a test supervisor to correct the answers on his daughter’s ACT exam after she took it. In a conversation last June with a cooperating witness, he was told his daughter needed to “be stupid” when a psychologist evaluated her for learning disabilities that would entitle her to more time to take the test, according to court papers.

The witness described the scheme as “the home run of home runs.”

“And it works?” Caplan asked.

“Every time,” the witness responded, prompting laughter from both.

A number of colleges moved quickly to fire or suspend the coaches and distance themselves from the scandal, portraying themselves as victims. Stanford fired the sailing coach, and USC dropped of its water polo coach and an athletic administrator. UCLA suspended its soccer coach, and Wake Forest did the same with its volleyball coach.

Loughlin, who was charged along with her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, appeared in the ABC sitcom “Full House” in the 1980s and ’90s. Huffman was nominated for an Oscar for playing a transgender woman in the 2005 movie “Transamerica.” She also starred in the TV show “Sports Night” and appeared in such films as “Reversal of Fortune,” ”Magnolia” and “The Spanish Prisoner.”

Giannulli, whose Mossimo clothing had long been a Target brand until recently, was released on a $1 million bond. He left without answering reporters’ questions. He and Huffman both surrendered their passports. Prosecutors in the case said they have agreed to let Loughlin travel to Vancouver for work, but her whereabouts were not clear.

Loughlin and her husband allegedly gave $500,000 to have their two daughters labeled as recruits to the USC crew team, even though neither participated in the sport. Their 19-year-old daughter Olivia Jade Giannulli, a social media star with a popular YouTube channel, is now at USC.

Court documents said Huffman paid $15,000 that she disguised as a charitable donation so that her daughter could take part in the entrance-exam cheating scam.

Court papers said a cooperating witness met with Huffman and her husband, actor William H. Macy, at their Los Angeles home and explained to them that he “controlled” a testing center and could have somebody secretly change her daughter’s answers. The person told investigators the couple agreed to the plan.

Macy was not charged; authorities did not say why.

The couple’s daughter, Sofia, is an aspiring actress who attends Los Angeles High School of the Arts.

A spokeswoman for Loughlin had no comment.

In another case, a young woman got into Yale in exchange for $1.2 million from the family, prosecutors said. A false athletic profile created for the student said she had been on China’s junior national development soccer team.

Prosecutors said Yale coach Rudolph Meredith received $400,000, even though he knew the student did not play competitive soccer. He did not return messages seeking comment.

Sklarow, the independent education consultant unconnected to the case, said the scandal “certainly speaks to the fact that the admissions process is broken.”

“It’s so fraught with anxiety, especially at the elite schools,” he said, “that I think it can’t be surprising that millionaires who have probably never said no to their kids are trying to play the system in order to get their child accepted.”

Story: Alana Durkin Richer, Collin Binkley

With Brexit Deal Down, UK Lawmakers Have 2 More Choices

By

Associated Press

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13 March 2019, 11:59

Painter Kaya Mar shows his latest painting of British Prime Minister Theresa May in 2017 in front of the Supreme Court in London: Photo: Frank Augstein / Associated Press

LONDON — Now that British lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit divorce deal for a second time, the country’s planned March 29 departure from the bloc is an open question.

Lawmakers now have two starkly different choices: no deal or delay.

A look at what might happen in the days ahead:

Destination No-Deal

The House of Commons voted 391-242 against May’s EU withdrawal agreement Tuesday, snubbing changes she secured from the bloc the night before to allay concerns about the deal’s Irish border provisions. Lawmakers voted down the deal in January by an even bigger margin.

After the tally, May said Parliament would vote Wednesday on whether to abandon efforts to secure an agreement and to leave the EU as planned in a little more than two weeks without a deal.

A phalanx of pro-Brexit politicians supports that idea. They argue it would free the U.K. from EU rules and red tape, allowing the country to forge an independent global trade policy.

But economists and businesses fear a so-called “no-deal Brexit” would hammer the economy as tariffs and other trade barriers go up between Britain and the EU, its biggest trading partner.

In the short term, there could be gridlock at British ports and shortages of fresh produce. In the long run, the government says a no-deal scenario would leave the economy 6 percent to 9 percent smaller over 15 years than remaining in the EU.

Last month, Parliament passed a non-binding amendment ruling out a “no-deal” Brexit, and it is unlikely they will support it now. May said lawmakers would be free to follow their consciences rather than party lines when they consider the question Wednesday.

Delay, Delay, Delay

If lawmakers give leaving the EU without an agreement a thumbs down, they have one choice left: seeking more time. A third vote scheduled for Thursday is on asking the EU to delay Brexit day by up to three months.

This option is likely to prove popular, since politicians on both sides of the Brexit debate fear time is running out to secure an orderly withdrawal by March 29.

Extending the timeframe for Brexit would require approval from all 27 remaining EU member countries. They have an opportunity to grand such a request at a March 21-22 summit in Brussels. But the rest of the EU is reluctant to postpone Brexit beyond the late May elections for the EU’s legislature, the European Parliament.

The EU said Tuesday that Britain needs to provide “a credible justification” for any delay.

Crisis Deferred

Whatever Parliament decides, it will not end Britain’s Brexit crisis. Both lawmakers and the public remain split between backers of a clean break from the EU and those who favor continuing a close relationship through a post-Brexit trade deal or by reversing the June 2016 decision to leave.

May is unwilling to abandon her hard-won Brexit agreement and might try to put it to Parliament a third time, although the latest margin of defeat makes that tricky.

Some lawmakers want her to have Parliament consider different forms of Brexit to see if there is a majority for any course of action.

Some think the only way forward is a snap election that could rearrange the forces in Parliament and break the political deadlock. May has ruled that out, but could come to see it as her only option.

And anti-Brexit campaigners haven’t abandoned efforts to secure a new referendum on whether to remain in the EU. The government opposes the idea, which at the moment also lacks majority support in Parliament.

However, the political calculus could change if the paralysis drags on. The opposition Labour Party has said it would support a second referendum if other options were exhausted.

It all means more twists are coming in the Brexit drama.

“No one really believes this is the last chance saloon,” said Oliver Patel, a research associate at the European Institute at University College London.

Story: Jill Lawless

Vietnam Urges Malaysia Free 2nd Woman in N. Korean Killing

By

Associated Press

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13 March 2019, 11:52

Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, center, is escorted by police as she leaves after a court hearing in 2018 at the Shah Alam High Court in Shah Alam, Malaysia. Photo: Sadiq Asyraf / Associated Press

HANOI — Vietnam has urged Malaysia to release the second woman accused of killing the estranged half brother of North Korea’s leader.

Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh made the plea in a phone call Tuesday with his counterpart, Saifuddin Abdullah, according to a statement on the ministry website. It said Minh requested the Malaysian court conduct a fair trial and free Doan Thi Huong.

Malaysia on Monday dropped the murder charge against her co-defendant, Indonesian Siti Aisyah, who has returned to her home village.

Huong’s murder trial is to resume Thursday, and prosecutors are expected to reply to a request by Huong’s lawyers for the government to withdraw the murder charge against her as well.

The two women were accused along with four missing North Koreans of killing Kim Jong Nam by VX nerve agent at a Malaysian airport in 2017. Both women say they were thought they were playing a prank for a TV show.

Prosecutors did not give any reason for the remarkable retreat in their case against Aisyah, whose home government had lobbied hard for her release.

Vietnam has pushed less hard on behalf of Huong, and recently hosted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for an official visit and a summit with President Donald Trump.

Indonesia’s government said its continued high-level lobbying had resulted in Aisyah’s release and alleged the young migrant worker had no idea she was being “manipulated by North Korean intelligence.”

Huong’s lawyer, Hisyam Teh Poh Teik, said after Monday’s court session that Huong felt Aisyah’s discharge was unfair to her because the judge last year had found sufficient evidence to continue the murder trial against both of them.

“She is entitled to the same kind of consideration as Aisyah,” he said.

Lawyers for the women have previously said that they were pawns in a political assassination with clear links to the North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, and that the prosecution failed to show the women had any intention to kill. Intent to kill is crucial to a murder charge under Malaysian law.

Malaysian officials have never officially accused North Korea and have made it clear they don’t want the trial politicized.

Kim was the eldest son in the current generation of North Korea’s ruling family. He had been living abroad for years but could have been seen as a threat to Kim Jong Un’s rule.

Woman Accused of Swindling Millions From Royal Charity

By

Teeranai Charuvastra, News Chief

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13 March 2019, 11:46

Pins sold by Ananda Mahidol Foundation for charity

BANGKOK — The Anti-Money Laundering Office said Tuesday said it has seized assets from a woman who allegedly embezzled 56 million baht from a royal charity.

In a statement released last night, the agency said Nichapat Noommuang forged signatures of His Majesty the King’s personal advisers on cheques and withdrew millions of bahts from the Ananda Mahidol Foundation, a charity dedicated to the late King Rama VIII that gives out annual scholarships in the fields of science and medicine.

Nichapat, who worked in the royal treasury, allegedly swindled up to 56 million baht from 2010 to 2018 and distributed the money among family and friends, according to the agency.

She is now charged with forgery, embezzlement and other related offenses, the statement said, though it was not mentioned if she also faces a charge of royal insult, as have been laid in previous cases of fraud involving the monarchy.

The Anti-Money Laundering Office also said it had confiscated 14 properties, land plots, cars and motorcycles from those involved. The combined assets seized were said to be worth about 18 million baht.

Agency director Preecha Jaroensahayanon could not be reached for comment as of publication time.

Nichapat is identified online as being one of several suspects linked in 2018 to a fraudulent skincare operation called Magic Skin. Health officials said four people died after using the supplements.

Jet That Crashed in Ethiopia Grounded Across World

By

Associated Press

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13 March 2019, 10:56

A Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane being built for TUI Group sits at Boeing Co.'s Renton Assembly Plant on March 11 in Renton, Washington. Photo: Ted S. Warren / Associated Press

HEJERE, Ethiopia — Much of the world, including the entire European Union, grounded the Boeing jetliner involved in the Ethiopian Airlines crash or banned it from their airspace, leaving the United States on Tuesday as one of the few remaining operators of the plane involved in two deadly accidents in just five months.

The European Aviation Safety Agency took steps to keep the Boeing 737 Max 8 out of the air, joining Asian and Middle Eastern governments and carriers that also gave in to safety concerns in the aftermath of Sunday’s crash, which killed all 157 people on board.

Referring to the Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people last year, European regulators said that “similar causes may have contributed to both events.”

British regulators indicated possible trouble with a reportedly damaged flight data recorder, saying they based their decision on the fact that they did not have “sufficient information” from the recorder.

Turkish Airlines, Oman Air, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Icelandair and South Korean airline Eastar Jet were among the latest carriers to halt use of the Boeing model. The United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Singapore also suspended all flights into or out of their cities.

A Turkish Airlines official said two Britain-bound planes returned to Istanbul after British airspace was closed to the aircraft. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

U.S.-based Boeing has said it has no reason to pull the popular aircraft from the skies and does not intend to issue new recommendations about the aircraft to customers. Boeing’s CEO Dennis Muilenburg also spoke with President Donald Trump and reiterated that the 737 Max 8 is safe, the company said. Its technical team, meanwhile, joined American, Israeli, Kenyan and other aviation experts in the investigation led by Ethiopian authorities.

The Federal Aviation Administration also backed the jet’s airworthiness and said it was reviewing all available data. It said it expects Boeing will soon complete improvements to an automated anti-stall system suspected of contributing to the deadly crash of another new Boeing 737 Max 8 in October.

“Thus far, our review shows no systemic performance issues and provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft,” acting FAA Administrator Daniel K. Elwell said in a statement. “Nor have other civil aviation authorities provided data to us that would warrant action.”

Some U.S. airlines expressed support for the Boeing model, and American Airlines and Southwest continued flying them. A vice president for American, the world’s biggest carrier, which has 24 Max 8s, said they had “full confidence in the aircraft.”

Safety experts cautioned against drawing too many comparisons too soon with the Lion Air crash in October. But others in the U.S. began pressing for action.

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents more than 26,000 flight attendants at American Airlines, called on CEO Doug Parker to “strongly consider grounding these planes until an investigation can be performed.”

Consumer Reports called on airlines and the FAA to ground the jets until a thorough safety investigation is complete.

Even Trump weighed in, tweeting that additional “complexity creates danger” in modern aircraft and hinders pilots from making “split second decisions” to ensure passengers’ safety.

He did not specifically mention the crashes but said, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot.”

The Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed six minutes after taking off for Nairobi, killing people from 35 countries.

A pilot who saw the crash site minutes after the disaster told the AP that the plane appeared to have “slid directly into the ground.” Capt. Solomon Gizaw was among the first people dispatched to find the plane. The wreckage was discovered by Ethiopia’s air force.

“There was nothing to see,” he said. “It looked like the earth had swallowed the aircraft. … We were surprised!” He said it explained why rescue officials quickly sent bulldozers to begin digging out large pieces of debris.

Ethiopian Airlines, widely seen as Africa’s best-managed airline, grounded its remaining four 737 Max 8s until further notice. The carrier had been using five of the planes and was awaiting delivery of 25 more.

As night fell, the airline offered no new updates on the investigation. An airline spokesman said victims’ remains should be identified in about five days.

Some insights into the disaster and its cause could take months, aviation experts said.

“The conclusions that will come out of its probe will be beneficial to the rest of the world,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said Tuesday at a news conference with visiting French President Emmanuel Macron. “These types of accidents break everyone’s heart. I hope we will learn from this crash.”

On Tuesday a group of officials from China, which also grounded planes, paused in their work at the scene to reflect with an offering of incense, fruit, bread rolls and a plastic container of the Ethiopian flatbread injera.

As the global team searched for answers, a woman stood near the crash site, wailing. Kebebew Legess said she was the mother of a young Ethiopian Airlines crew member among the dead.

“She would have been 25 years old but God would not allow her,” she wept. “My daughter, my little one.”

The British ambassador to Ethiopia, Alastair McPhail, visited the scene where at least nine of his countrymen died. “We owe it to the families to understand what happened,” he said.

Obese Cops Sent to Fat Boot Camp for ‘Belly Destruction’

By

Asaree Thaitrakulpanich, Staff Reporter

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12 March 2019, 18:47

NAKHON RATCHASIMA — Porky policemen will be forced to work off their accumulated stores of bubble tea and durian at a special belly-adjustment camp after the program was declared a success, a police trainer said Tuesday.

Overweight cops nationwide will periodically be sent to the Central Police Training Center in the central city of Pak Chong for two weeks of intense diet and exercise as part of a program to slim down the nation’s gendarmes.

“There are so many problems if you’re a fat cop. You work slow and move slow as you go tumbling about. That’s unacceptable if you’re an officer tasked with arresting criminals, since you have to be deft and go quickly,” said Senior Sgt. Maj. Sornpetch Chantarak, a dietary enforcer in the new program.

About 200 policemen participated in a two-week pilot of the “Belly Destruction” program that ended earlier this month. Sornpetch said some cops weighing 80 kilograms got down to 60, while others weighing in at 200 shed upward of 60 kilos of chub.

Police stations nationwide will nominate two to three of their fattest cops to participate in the program at a time.

Sornpetch said most fat policemen are otherwise consigned to doing paperwork.

“Mostly they’re in charge of filing records. They also don’t exercise, or eat too richly and too much,” he said, laughing.

Excessively fat and salty foods as well as increasingly sedentary lifestyles have been blamed for the rise in obesity among children, adults and monks.

Sornpetch said officers have to exercise every day in the camp and join activities such as biking and working out while eating filling, protein-heavy foods. They even have ID cards that record their weights before and after, he said.

Although the camp started a month ago, word spread online Tuesday, with images posted on the Love Police Facebook page greeted by amused netizens.

“It’s good you’re losing some. I always see cops chugging beer while patrolling. How are you supposed to catch criminals like that?” wrote user Attakorn Elle.

Sornpetch sounded visibly excited that camp photos went viral. He said he’s looking forward to the next batch of corpulent cops.

“They call me Senior Sgt. Maj. Petch,” he said. “And I’ll train them myself!”

New Labels and Tax Take on Thailand’s Junk Food Problem

Please Don’t Feed Junk to Chunky Monks: HealthMin

Thai Raksa Chart Diehards Gamble on ‘Vote None’

By

Teeranai Charuvastra, News Chief

-

12 March 2019, 18:38

Hundreds of Thai Raksa Chart supporters march for "None Vote" in Phrae province on Tuesday. Image: Phrae News.

BANGKOK — Thai Raksa Chart Party and its candidates may be out of the race, but it doesn’t mean its supporters are giving up.

Fans of the now-defunct party in the northern province of Phrae on Tuesday campaigned for an unconventional ballot strategy: Vote “None of the Above” so a new election has to be organized.

Woravat Auapinyakul, who had been Thai Raksa Chart’s candidate for the province, expressed his gratitude to supporters in an online post today.

“Seeing every brother and sister that is standing up and taking on a fight like this, I’m so touched and impressed that I cannot find words,” Woravat wrote. “No matter what happens, whether we will win or lose, this memory will always stay with me.”

Woravat is among more than 200 candidates disqualified from the race when their party was disbanded Thursday for nominating an elder sister of King Rama X to run for prime minister. The Constitutional Court ruled that violated a ban on involving the monarchy in politics.

Under current voting law, if more people vote for “none” than they do for any candidate in a constituency, a new election must be held. Candidates who already ran on the ballot would be disqualified from the by-election, former Election Commissioner Somchai Srisuthiyakorn said in an interview.

“In theory, a Thai Raksa Chart candidate could run on another party’s ticket,” said Somchai, who helped draft current election law.

The mechanism is a novel one. Ballots have routinely allowed voters to select “none” from a list of candidates, but doing so was afforded no significance under previous election regulations.

Thais Overseas Kiss Their Thai Raksa Chart Votes Goodbye

Though the party was rumored to be behind the vote-none campaign, a Thai Raksa Chart leader said today they were not involved in Woravut’s attempt to run again by exploiting the loophole.

“As far as I know, it was Woravat’s campaign director who suggested the tactics to him,” party sec-gen Vim Rungwattanachinda said in an interview. “He doesn’t consult us at all … I don’t even know if that’s really a thing.”

Former Thai Raksa Chart adviser Chaturon Chaisang, who has formed his own political advocacy group after disbandment, urged supporters to vote for a candidate running on similar policies instead of abstaining.

“If you do that, votes will be truly wasted,” he wrote online.

Current Election Commission sec-gen Jarungvith Phumma would not comment beyond saying his office was aware of the campaign.

“We are making inquiries about it,” he said by phone.

Although 13 executives of Thai Raksa Chart were barred from politics for 10 years by the court, all of its candidates could swap parties and run in the election, given they registered with a party 90 days before voting takes place. To comply with that rule, Woravat is now a registered member of party ally Pheu Thai.

So in theory, Woravat could run in a by-election taking place within 90 days from now, Somchai the former election official said.

Media reports say two other major candidates in Woravat’s constituency are neophytes from the Democrat and Phalang Pracharat parties – an advantage that could help tip the balance to Woravat, a veteran politician who has headed four ministries since entering public life in 1990.

But former commissioner Somchai said that, even were everything to go according to Woravat’s plan, it still might be too late for him. Election laws state that voting must be held by May 9, and the results formally confirmed by May 24 – both milestones less than 90 days from now. By-elections typically take place before final outcomes are confirmed.

“It will be very difficult for him in practice,” Somchai said.

‘Thailand’s Banksy’ to Bring Sex, Drugs, Stencils to Patpong

By

Chayanit Itthipongmaetee, Staff Reporter

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12 March 2019, 17:33

BANGKOK — After turning a gallery into a casino with sculptures of Prime Minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha and his ousted archrival Thaksin Shinawatra facing off over a poker table, the artist known as “Thailand’s Banksy” is ready for his third exhibit.

Setting aside politics for the less freighted subjects of prostitution and drugs, the exhibition will open in a new gallery in the famed red-light district of Soi Patpong, street artist Headache Stencil announced Tuesday afternoon.

More than his usual stencil work, the exhibition will feature an installation and more when it opens at 8pm March 29 and runs until May 1 at Candle Light Studio. The newly opened gallery is located on the third floor of the Barbar Fetish Club in Soi Patpong 2. It’s a short walk from BTS Sala Daeng.

Headache Stencil rose to fame early last year when he painted the deputy junta leader’s face on an alarm clock over Sukhumvit Road. He was subsequently hunted by authorities before re-emerging with more work addressing the country’s hot-button issues, which he recently discussed with Khaosod English.

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