"CLEAR SIMILARITIES"

Black box data recovered from an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed last week show "clear similarities" with a recent crash in Indonesia of the same type of aircraft, Ethiopia's transport minister said on Sunday.

While declining to give details, Dagmawit Moges told journalists the parallels would be the "subject of further study during the investigation," with a preliminary report issued in "30 days".

The announcement came a week after Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 plummeted into a field southeast of Addis Ababa minutes into its flight to Nairobi, killing all 157 people onboard.

The disaster caused the worldwide grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft involved after aviation regulators noticed similarities with the October crash of an Indonesian Lion Air 737 MAX 8 that killed all 189 passengers and crew.

Both planes reportedly experienced erratic steep climbs and descents as well as fluctuating airspeeds before crashing shortly after takeoff.

Questions have honed in on an automated anti-stalling system introduced on the 737 MAX 8, designed to automatically point the nose of the plane downward if it is in danger of stalling.

The pilots of Lion Air Flight 610 struggled to control the aircraft as the automated MCAS system repeatedly pushed the plane's nose down following takeoff, according to the flight data recorder.

In the case of the Ethiopian flight, the black boxes have been handed to France's BEA air safety agency, which is working with American and Ethiopian investigators to determine what went wrong.

While the cause remains to be determined, Boeing's CEO Dennis Muilenburg on Sunday said the manufacturer is "finalizing its development of a previously-announced software update and pilot training revision" to address behaviour of the MCAS "in response to erroneous sensor inputs."

Experts have questioned the US aviation safety certification process after learning that American pilots had lodged serious complaints about MCAS.

On Sunday the regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, said it followed "standard" procedures, which "have consistently produced safe aircraft designs," in certifying the 737 MAX.

Nothing to bury

The disaster in Ethiopia left families in 35 nations bereaved.

On Sunday, Ethiopians gathered at Holy Trinity Cathedral in the capital Addis Ababa to bury 17 of their citizens killed in the crash, including the eight-person flight crew.

Relatives of the deceased sobbed and held portraits of their loved ones as an Ethiopian Orthodox priest said the last rites.

Wearing a t-shirt bearing a photo of Amma Tesfamariam in her flight attendant uniform, Meselech Petros said her 28-year-old sister was not supposed to work last Sunday, but came in to cover for a friend.

"What I can't forget is that she left an eight-month-old child and didn't come back," Meselech said.

"We are broken and hurting very much. It's very difficult," added Amma's brother Selamsew Mathias, 26.

The funeral ceremony began when caskets draped in the Ethiopian flag were brought to the cathedral in a convoy of black hearses accompanied by hundreds of mourners.

It was unclear what the coffins contained.

Witnesses said the plane had nose-dived into the field, with the force of the impact leaving few bodies intact.

On Thursday, as grieving families and friends visited the area where the plane went down, an AFP correspondent saw them being handed plastic water bottles filled with earth from the site.

Ethiopia's government has said it may take up to six months to identify the remains.

"What makes us very sad is we didn't find any of her remains," said Teshome Legesse, whose 24-year-old niece Ayantu Girma was a flight attendant on the plane.

Grief belongs to everyone

Ethiopian Airlines is Africa's largest carrier and in many ways the international face of the nation.

The deaths have shocked Africa's second-most populous country, and the funeral attracted a wide range of mourners.

"We all are children of Adam and Eve, even though our skin colours are different," said Seyoum Kidanu, a retired police officer wearing full dress uniform and a sash in the colours of the Ethiopian flag.

"When one person dies in this world, the grief belongs to everybody."

Comments

CUBA CLAIMS CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER IS FIDEL CASTRO'S SON.

The suicide note left by Fidel Castro’s eldest son has rocked the Cuban nation this week, with the most astonishing revelation being the claim that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was his half-brother and the son of the late Fidel Castro. The handwritten note left by Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, 68, the eldest of Fidel Castro’s children, appears to confirm the longstanding rumor in Cuba that Fidel Castro fathered Justin Trudeau after a public tryst with Margaret Trudeau in 1970. “ Castro Diaz-Balart, who had been attended by a group of doctors for several months due to a state of profound depression, committed suicide this morning ,” Cubadebate website reported. The death of the high-profile government nuclear scientist, also known as “Fidelito”, or Little Fidel, because of how much he looked like his father, stunned the nation, however it is his “ explosive ” suicide note that has set tongues wagging in Havana. Amid a wide-ranging barrage of compl...

MALARIA VACCINE PROVES HIGHLY EFFECTIVE IN BURKINA FASO.

A vaccine against malaria has been shown to be highly effective in trials in Africa, holding out the real possibility of slashing the death toll of a disease that kills 400,000 mostly small children every year. The vaccine, developed by scientists at the Jenner Institute of Oxford University, showed up to 77% efficacy in a trial of 450 children in Burkina Faso over 12 months. The hunt for a malaria vaccine has been going on the best part of a century. One, the Mosquirix vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline, has been through lengthy clinical trials but is only partially effective, preventing 39% of malaria cases and 29% of severe malaria cases among small children in Africa over four years. It is being piloted by the World Health Organization in parts of Kenya, Ghana and Malawi. The Oxford vaccine is the first to meet the WHO goal of 75% efficacy against the mosquito-borne parasite disease. Larger trials are now beginning, involving 4,800 children in four countries. Prof ...

MINERS IN NAMIBIA DISCOVER SHIPWRECK LOADED $13 MILLION WORTH OF GOLD.

Image: Dieter Noli. Diamond miners working off the coast of Africa were beyond surprised when they discovered a 500-year-old shipwreck teeming with gold worth $13 million and other treasures. The ship, aptly named ‘Bom Jesus’ or ‘Good Jesus,’ was like a miracle to the miners. Bom Jesus was first identified and discovered by geologists working for the mining company De Beers in 2008. It was found off the coast of Namibia near Oranjemund. Image: Dieter Noli. According to experts, Bom Jesus is from the Golden era of Portuguese explorers who set sail in all directions in search of new lands to colonize. The ship left Lisbon in 1533 under the supervision of Sir Francisco de Noronha. But on its way to India, it mysteriously vanished. Before the discovery, the miners were draining an artificial salt lake. As the lake dried out, many lost ships were found at the bottom of the lake. Bom Jesus was among them, and it is considered the oldest of all ...

UGANDA ANNOUNCES "KILL THE GAYS" LAW IMPOSING DEATH PENALTY TO HOMOSEXUALS.

Kampala, UGANDA: Uganda has announced plans to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality, but the government said on Thursday it plans to resurrect it within weeks. The government said the legislation would curb a rise in “unnatural sex” in the east African nation. “Homosexuality is not natural to Ugandans, but there has been a massive recruitment by gay people in schools, and especially among the youth, where they are promoting the falsehood that people are born like that,” the country’s ethics and integrity minister, Simon Lokodo, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Our current penal law is limited. It only criminalises the act. We want it made clear that anyone who is even involved in promotion and recruitment has to be criminalised. Those that do grave acts will be given the death sentence.” Mr Lokodo said the bill, which has the support of th...

WHY CHINA'S DOG-MEAT MARKET HAS EXPANDED.

Every year during the summer solstice, a dog-eating festival takes place in Yulin, a city in the southern Chinese province of Guangxi. This year’s event ended with the usual controversy. Photographs of dogs being fried or treated cruelly went viral. The Jinhua Hutou Dog Meat Festival, as it is called, was abruptly canceled last week. Animal-rights activists and American congressmen demanded that China ban the eating of dogs and cats, as Taiwan did in April. Yulin’s local government took modest steps to restrain or hide some of the more contentious activities, such as selling dogs in food markets. Still, the festival was packed. Why has the controversial culinary habit become so popular in China? Contrary to cliché, dog meat has not always been a common item in the Chinese diet. Unlike in the West, eating dogs has never been taboo, but it appears to have been rare in the past. Government accounts single out butchers who sold dog meat, suggesting it ...

BOTSWANA SHUTDOWNS PROPHET BUSHIRI CHURCHES.

Gaborone, BOTSWANA: It never rains, but it pours for flamboyant prophet Shepherd Bushiri’s Enlightened Christian Gathering church in Botswana, as government closes down all of his church branches following the deregistration of the organisation last year. As a result, disciples of Bushiri’s in Botswana have resorted to following their leader through his television channel, while those who have the means are travelling to South Africa on weekends to attend Sunday services. The recent crackdown on the church comes just a few weeks after the government of Botswana lifted a visa travelling ban imposed on Bushiri during former president Ian Khama’s presidency. Unlike other Malawian citizens, Bushiri, who is also known as Major 1, was forced to apply for a visa each time he entered Botswana in 2017. The then nationality, immigration and gender affairs minister Edwin Batshu told MPs that Bushiri was “too demanding”. Batshu indicated that the government slapped Bushiri wi...

EGYPTIAN VILLAGE WHERE MOSQUE WAS BOMBED HAD BEEN WARNED.

CAIRO (AP) : Elders of a village in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula where militants killed 305 people in a mosque had been warned by Islamic State operatives to stop collaborating with security forces and to suspend rituals associated with Islam’s mystical Sufi movement, security officials and residents said. The latest warning came as recently as a week ago, telling villagers in Al-Rawdah not to hold Sufi rituals on Nov. 29-30 to commemorate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, according to residents and the officials who work for security and military intelligence agencies operating in Sinai. Local operatives of the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Sinai consider Sufis to be heretics who should be killed. Ahmed Saqr, an expert on the Sinai insurgency, said militants had publicly identified the mosque, which also serves as a Sufi center, as a target months ago. He wrote on Saturday in a Facebook post that the selection of the Al-Rawdah mosque as a target “raises questions about tho...

THOUSANDS OF FAKE COVID-19 VACCINES HAVE BEEN SEIZED IN SOUTH AFRICA & CHINA.

File photo - Interpol Secretary-General Jurgen Stock Image: africanews. Lyon, FRANCE: Police have seized thousands of counterfeit coronavirus vaccines in South Africa and China and have made more than 80 arrests after a criminal network selling fake jabs was uncovered, Interpol said on Wednesday. In South Africa, police officers found 400 ampoules of fake vaccines, equivalent to around 2,400 doses, at a warehouse just outside Johannesburg. A large quantity of fake 3M masks was also found and police arrested three Chinese nationals and a Zambian national. Police in South Africa seized hundreds of fake COVID-19 vaccines and made several arrests following a global alert issued by INTERPOL. In China, police successfully identified a network selling counterfeit COVID-19 vaccines, raided the manufacturing premises, resulting in the arrest of some 80 suspects, and seized more than 3,000 fake vaccines on the scene. The investigation was supported and coordinated by Interpol’s Illicit Goods ...

A MODEL SOLD HER VIRGINITY FOR $3 MILLION TO THE ARABIAN BILLIONAIRE.

A model claims she has auctioned her virginity for nearly $3million (£2.2million) - and says it is a 'dream come true' for her. Giselle, 19, who is based in the US, says she decided to sell her virginity through the notorious German-based website Cinderella Escorts. The agency claims the highest bidder was a businessman from Abu Dhabi, with a bid of 2.5m Euros ($2.9m/£2.2m), while a Hollywood actor was said to have made the second highest bid of 2.4m Euros ($2.8m/£2.1m). Giselle says she will use the money to pay for her college fees, buy a new house, and go traveling around the world. Watch the Video below: The model said: 'I am happy to have decided to sell my virginity through Cinderella Escorts. 'I would never have dreamt that the bid would rise so high and we would have reached 2.5million Euros. This is a dream come true.' Giselle said she was 'shocked' by the outrage against women selling her virginity, describing it as...

Kioo17 Journal

Search This Blog