Yahoo News – Elections 2012

Indonesia crash revelations raise pressure on Ethiopia investigation>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 20 2019 - 2:48 PM:)
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Experts suspect an automated system, meant to stop stalling by dipping the nose, may be involved in both cases, with pilots struggling to override it as their jets plunged downwards. The March 10 Ethiopian Airlines crash has shaken the global aviation industry and cast a shadow over the flagship Boeing model intended to be a standard for decades to come, given parallels with the Lion Air calamity off Jakarta in October. Chicago-headquartered Boeing has promised a swift update of automatic flight software, but regulators in Europe and Canada want to be sure themselves, rather than rely on U.S. vetting.

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Jump-seat pilot reportedly saved Boeing Max jet one day before Lion Air crash>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 20 2019 - 2:38 PM:)
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Day before a Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed off of Indonesia last year, killing all 189 people aboard, pilots struggled for control of the same aircraft.

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Exclusive: Lion Air pilots scoured handbook in minutes before crash - sources>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 20 2019 - 2:34 PM:)
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The investigation into the crash last October has taken on new relevance as the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators grounded the model last week after a second deadly accident in Ethiopia. Following the second fatal accident, U.S. authorities are reviewing whether enough was done to ensure the plane was safe to fly, while attention has also focused on the training of the Lion Air crew and whether aeroplane manuals are clear enough. It is the first time the voice recorder contents from the Lion Air flight have been made public.

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Nebraska underwater: 74 cities, 65 counties declare emergencies as flooding envelops state>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 20 2019 - 1:34 PM:)
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Seventy-four cities, 65 counties and four tribal areas in Nebraska declared states of emergency Tuesday as swaths of the Midwest battled flooding rivers.

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Danish MP told her baby not welcome in parliament>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 20 2019 - 1:06 PM:)
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A Danish MP said on Tuesday she was ordered to remove her infant daughter from parliament's chamber, sparking surprise in a country often hailed as a pioneer in women's rights. "You are not welcome with your baby in the parliament's chamber," speaker Pia Kjaersgaard, an outspoken former leader of the far-right Danish People's Party, allegedly told MP Mette Abildgaard. "I didn't ask for permission to bring her since I had previously seen another colleague bring a child into the chamber without any problems," Ms Abildgaard, whose Conservative party is part of the ruling centre-right coalition, wrote on Facebook. Ms Abildgaard, who is in her 30s, said she found herself in an exceptional situation with her five-month-old daughter, and had never brought her into the chamber before. But she said the infant was "in a good mood and had a pacifier in her mouth." Mette Abildgaard responded to the incident on Facebook Ms Kjaersgaard passed the message to an assistant, who then asked Ms Abildgaard to remove the baby from the room. Ms Abildgaard handed the child to an assistant and returned to the chamber to vote. "MPs should be in the chamber, not babies or children," insisted Ms Kjaersgaard when questioned by news agency Ritzau. She said clear rules would be issued on the subject. The Scandinavian country is often held up as a champion of gender equality and women's rights, and as a child and family-centred nation with generous parental leave. Ms Abildgaard noted that she was entitled to a year's maternity leave with full pay, but that she had chosen to return to work. Her Facebook post garnered more than 600 comments within the space of a few hours. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern holds her baby after speaking at the UN General Assembly Credit: REUTERS/Carlo Allegri "A chamber that represents mothers, fathers and babies ought to be open to mothers, fathers and babies," one person wrote. In 2016, an Icelandic lawmaker made headlines after breastfeeding her infant while speaking at the podium in parliament. And in September, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern became a symbol for working mothers when she brought her baby to the UN General Assembly in New York.

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Google slapped with massive $1.7 billion antitrust fine – its third in three years>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 20 2019 - 12:17 PM:)
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Reports a few days ago said that Google would receive a new massive fine in Europe, and the EU on Wednesday delivered its latest ruling against the tech giant. This time around we're looking at a €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) antitrust fine as a result of illegal practices in Google's AdSense business.The EU says that Google abused its dominant position again, this time concerning its AdSense business. The company did it for more than a decade, the European Commission explained, preventing AdSense customers from inking advertising deals with rivals. Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had this to say alongside the judgement:> Today the Commission has fined Google €1.49 billion for illegal misuse of its dominant position in the market for the brokering of online search adverts. Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules. The misconduct lasted over 10 years and denied other companies the possibility to compete on the merits and to innovate - and consumers the benefits of competition.Google was slapped with a €4.3 billion ($4.88 billion) antitrust fine last year related to Android, and a €2.4 billion ($2.73 billion) fine the year before for its search business. In total, Google is looking at fines totalling €8.2 billion ($9.31 billion) from the EU in just the last three years. The company has appealed the previous two rulings, and it's likely to do it again with this new fine.What's interesting is that Google earlier this week announced a massive change for Android in Europe that's meant to appease an earlier ruling by the Commission. Users will soon see prompts that will allow them to select the default Internet browser and search engine on their Android devices. That doesn't mean the previous fine relating to Google's Android platform will go away, of course.The EU's full ruling on the AdSense antitrust case is available at this link.

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'Generation Nazarbayev' jokes, hopes after Kazakh leader resigns>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 20 2019 - 11:04 AM:)
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People under 30 in Kazakhstan have only known one leader -- Nursultan Nazarbayev, who announced his resignation this week after shepherding the country from the Soviet era. "The word 'Nazarbayev' means something like the word 'parent'," said 18-year-old film student Madi Makanov, who lives in the country's largest city Almaty. Kazakhstan has a young population, with around 40 percent of people under 24, according to estimates based on UN figures.

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Georgetown University students say Ocasio-Cortez is the face of the Democratic Party>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 20 2019 - 10:53 AM:)
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Are Democrats having an identity crisis? CampusReform.org contributor Emma Meshell weighs in.

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Pilot who hitched a ride in cockpit saved doomed Lion Air Boeing 737 Max day before it crashed>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 20 2019 - 9:06 AM:)
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As the Lion Air crew fought to control their diving Boeing 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, two people familiar with Indonesia’s investigation told Bloomberg. 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 November 28 report on the crash and hasn’t previously been reported. Airlines with Boeing 737 Max 8s in their fleet 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 memorise. “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. 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. Jakarta plane crash: Flight Lion Air JT610 Boeing’s 737 Max was grounded on March 13 by US regulatorsafter 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 US 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. The company has declined to comment on the criminal probe. After the Lion Air crash, two US 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 US 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. Sign up for your essential, twice-daily briefing from The Telegraph with our free Front Page newsletter.

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Novartis Probe Finds No Trace of Payoffs to Greek Officials>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 20 2019 - 8:28 AM:)
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Greece is investigating reports of payoffs by Novartis in a high-profile case that implicates two of the country’s former prime ministers and a European Union commissioner. Novartis didn’t receive preferential pricing from the Greek state and to date has been unable to identify any “inappropriate payments” to government officials, a local spokesperson said in an email.

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Two Palestinians killed by Israeli army in West Bank clashes: health ministry>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 20 2019 - 6:04 AM:)
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Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in clashes near a flashpoint religious site in the occupied West Bank overnight Wednesday, the Palestinian health ministry said. The health ministry said Raid Hamdan, 21, and Zaid Nouri, 20, died after being shot late Tuesday by Israeli troops near the Joseph's Tomb religious site close to the Palestinian city of Nablus. The Israeli army said in a statement explosives were hurled from a vehicle as Jewish worshippers visited the site late Tuesday.

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USC to deny students connected to cheating scheme class registration, transcripts as their status is frozen>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 19 2019 - 8:46 PM:)
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USC says it won't let students currently at the school who may be connected to the nation's college admissions bribery scandal to register for class.

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Pro-Brexit U.K. Ministers Are Plotting to Prevent a Long Delay>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 19 2019 - 8:19 PM:)
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The meeting is taking place on Tuesday evening in London in an effort to shape what the prime minister asks the European Union to agree to, people familiar with the matter said. May will travel to Brussels on Thursday for a summit of EU leaders, and is expected to write a letter to the bloc first, asking them to extend the Brexit deadline beyond March 29. Pro-Brexit Tories hate the idea of a long delay because it would mean the U.K. has to take part in European Parliament elections in May. That would be seen as a failure to deliver Brexit, potentially unleashing a wave of anti-government euroskepticism which could split the ruling Conservative party and bring down the government, one of the people said.

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Doomed jihadists retreat within shrinking Syria bastion>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 19 2019 - 7:36 PM:)
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Advancing Kurdish-led forces forced diehard fighters from the Islamic State group out of the main encampment where they had been confined in recent days. The move brought a months-old operation to wipe out the last vestige of IS's once-sprawling proto-state closer to its inevitable outcome but the Syrian Democratic Forces stopped short of declaring the battle over. "This is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight against Daesh," SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

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Trump is 'looking into' Facebook 'bias' as aide melts down over suspension>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 19 2019 - 5:48 PM:)
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A Facebook spokesperson told Yahoo News that a system intended to stop bots had temporarily halted Dan Scavino’s ability to post comments, and that the company had apologized and restored his account.

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Fox News hires former DNC chair Donna Brazile who left CNN after tipping off Clinton about 2016 debate questions>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 19 2019 - 4:46 PM:)
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Fox News' newest pundit is one CNN rejected after she colluded with Hillary Clinton's campaign before campaign events in 2016. Fox said on Monday that it has hired Donna Brazile, the former interim Democratic National Committee chair and a long-time CNN commentator before she became embroiled in controversy in 2016. CNN forced Ms Brazile to resign as an on-air contributor in October 2016 after emails revealed that she had tipped off Ms Clinton's aides about questions likely to be asked by CNN moderators during the debates and town hall meetings carried by CNN.

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California university says students tied to admissions scam could face expulsion>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 19 2019 - 4:02 PM:)
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The school said on Monday night it has already "placed holds on the accounts of students who may be associated with the alleged admissions scheme," preventing them from registering for classes or acquiring transcripts. It did not name specific students, but Loughlin and her fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli are among 50 people charged last week with participating in what federal prosecutors called a $25 million bribery and fraud scam. Prosecutors said some students involved in the scandal were not aware their parents had made the alleged arrangements, although in other cases they knowingly took part.

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I got into 39 colleges without cheating: What applying to schools looks like in 2019>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 19 2019 - 3:49 PM:)
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Jordan Nixon got into 39 colleges without any celebrity parents or $500,000 bribes. But that doesn't mean it wasn't "stressful to say the least."

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Mueller suspected Trump lawyer may have been acting as foreign agent>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 19 2019 - 3:40 PM:)
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Special counsel of Russia investigation granted access to Michael Cohen’s emails on basis he may have broken several lawsMichael Cohen documents released – live updates Michael Cohen. Multiple pages, apparently relating to the campaign finance scheme, were entirely blacked out in the version of the documents released on Tuesday. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images Robert Mueller persuaded a judge within weeks of being made special counsel in 2017 that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s legal fixer, may have been secretly working for a foreign government. Legal filings unsealed on Tuesday said investigators working for Mueller were granted access to Cohen’s personal email account on 18 July 2017 on the basis that he may have broken several laws, including those on unregistered foreign agents. Cohen’s suspected efforts were not detailed in the documents. Cohen, one of Trump’s closest advisers for a decade, was known to have been paid in 2017 for consulting work by a state-controlled South Korean aviation company and a bank in Kazakhstan. The filings said Mueller’s investigators were looking in Cohen’s Gmail account for records on any “funds or benefits” he received from foreign governments or companies, as well as any files revealing efforts by Cohen to work on their behalf. The court documents were released by a federal judge in New York, where Cohen pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance and personal financial crimes. They were originally filed by investigators in April last year to obtain additional search warrants. It was not previously known that Cohen was suspected of crimes relating to representing foreigners without registering with US authorities, and no such charges were brought against him. Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison and is due to be jailed in May. The filings released on Tuesday ran to hundreds of pages . More than 19 pages, apparently relating to the campaign finance scheme, were entirely blacked out, indicating that it remains under investigation. Cohen directly implicated Trump in the scheme, which involved hush-money payments to women who alleged during the 2016 campaign that they had affairs with Trump. Some legal analysts have said Trump could be vulnerable to prosecution for the scheme once he leaves office. He denies breaking any laws. The documents released on Tuesday gave a rare insight on the early actions taken by Mueller’s office in the weeks after his appointment as special counsel on 17 May 2017, following the president’s firing of James Comey, the FBI director. Mueller was asked to look into any connections or coordination between Russia and Trump’s team. They showed search warrants obtained for Cohen’s email accounts gave investigators sweeping authority to look into related data including Cohen’s calendars, contacts and photographs. Investigators were also given permission to use Cohen’s fingers or face to unlock his electronic devices if necessary. Following their successful July 2017 application, Mueller’s team secured several more warrants for Cohen. They were granted a search warrant for Cohen’s Apple iCloud account on 8 August 2017, the filings said, and then obtained two more search warrants in November 2017 for two additional email accounts used by Cohen. Mueller’s team passed some of its findings, which did not relate to their central investigation, up to justice department colleagues in New York. After prosecutors there were granted further warrants, FBI agents raided Cohen’s home, hotel room and storage facility and seized millions of documents. Mueller’s investigation, which appears to be drawing to a conclusion, has roiled Trump’s first term in office and led to the criminal convictions of a series of former Trump advisers for financial crimes and lying to investigators. It has also led to the indictment of more than two dozen Russians for interfering in the 2016 US election campaign, but no one from Trump’s campaign has been charged over activity relating to the election campaign. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, has been accused by Mueller of sharing private polling data with a colleague accused of having ties to Russian intelligence services.

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Christchurch harbored white supremacists before massacre>
(Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines - March 19 2019 - 3:12 PM:)
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CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) — The leafy New Zealand city where a self-proclaimed racist fatally shot 50 people at mosques during Friday prayers is known for its picturesque meandering river and English heritage. For decades, Christchurch has also been the center of the country's small but persistent white supremacist movement.

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