Society's Child

FAA reviewing Boeing's safety analyses as part of investigation into deadly Lion Air crash

RT
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 16:25 UTC

© Reuters / Willy Kurniawan
Wreckage recovered from Lion Air flight JT610 lies at Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta on October 29, 2018.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is reviewing Boeing's previous safety analyses and the information it distributed to the agency as part of an investigation into the Lion Air crash that killed all 189 people on board.

In a statement late Tuesday, cited by The Wall Street Journal, the FAA said it is reviewing details surrounding the safety data and conclusions distributed to the agency as part of certifying the 737 MAX 8 - the plane involved in the Lion Air crash - and MAX 9 models.

The review is part of the wider investigation into the Lion Air crash, which occurred on October 29, just minutes after the Boeing aircraft took off from Jakarta's airport.

The WSJ article came after the newspaper also reported that Boeing had failed to warn the airline industry about a potentially dangerous feature in its new flight-control system which is suspected of playing a role in the Lion Air crash. Two pilots unions have also lashed out at Boeing for failing to inform them about the potential risks of the feature.

Comment: All 189 passengers feared dead in plane crash off Jakarta, Indonesia - UPDATE

See also:

Food tastes are too subjective to be copyrighted, says EU court

RT
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 17:31 UTC

Not every experience can be copyrighted, at least for now, an EU court has ruled, dismissing a Dutch cheesemaker's suit against a rival it accused of infringing on its signature taste.

Dutch cheesemaker Levola Hengelo sued rival Smilde for copyright infringement, alleging the company's leek-and-garlic cheese spread was a rip-off of Levola's own Heksenkaas ("witches' cheese"). Dutch courts, stumped, passed the case on to the EU's Court of Justice.

Stating that "the taste of a food product cannot be identified with precision and objectivity," the European court dismissed the suit, pointing out copyright can only be applied to a "work" - an "original intellectual creation" - and an "expression" of that creation.

"Unlike, for example, a literary, pictorial, cinematographic or musical work, which is a precise and objective expression, the taste of a food product will be identified essentially on the basis of taste sensations and experiences, which are subjective and variable," the court wrote in its ruling.

FBI reports 17% spike in hate crimes with blacks and Jews the most targeted

RT
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 17:03 UTC

The US has seen a 17 percent spike in hate crimes in 2017, with the majority of reported incidents targeting African-Americans and Jews, according to the FBI's annual Hate Crimes Statistics report.

The report, released on Tuesday by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, breaks down hate crime information from last year, broken down by location, offenders, bias types, and victims.

A total of 7,175 hate crimes were reported to UCR last year, up from 6,121 in 2016. Of those, the vast majority were "single-bias incidents," meaning the perpetrators were motivated by only one factor. Sixty-nine of the cases involved multiple biases.

The majority (59.6 percent) of crimes in the "single-bias incident" category were motivated by a person's race, ethnicity, or ancestry. African-Americans were by far the most targeted, with a reported 2,013 attacks against them, compared to 741 "anti-white" attacks.

Religion took second place as a motivating factor, accounting for 20.6 percent of single-bias hate crimes. Of those, the Jewish population was the most targeted, with 1,017 people falling victim in 938 incidents.

Australian woman finds needle in pear just after strawberry scare arrest

RT
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 14:28 UTC

It was just on Sunday when a woman was arrested and charged with contaminating strawberries in Australia's Queensland. But it looks like the fruit saga is far from over as a needle was again spotted... this time in a pear.

Clare Bonser, a make up artist with ABC News Breakfast, said she was driving on Tuesday as she casually "chomped on" her pear.

For some lucky twist of fate, she happened to look down at the fruit before taking the next bite. That was when she spotted the menace and managed to just narrowly avoid being injured by the spiky item.

"At first I just put it on the seat next to me and tried to process what I saw, then realised, 'Oh crumbs'," Bonser said.

Comment: 50-year-old woman arrested over Australia's strawberry needle scare [Update]

Evacuation fatigue: California authorities fear people will ignore warnings as wildfires become routine

Dani Anguiano
The Guardian
Tue, 13 Nov 2018 21:30 UTC

evacuating Feather River hospital during Camp Fire Paradise CA

© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Hospital workers and first responders evacuate patients from the Feather River hospital as the Camp Fire moved through the Paradise area last week.

Authorities fear that residents will increasingly ignore repeated calls to flee as devastating wildfires become routine

In 13 months, Meg Brown has evacuated her 3,500-acre family ranch just outside of Oroville three times, as the California wildfires have closed in.

After losing animals and historic buildings on Table Mountain Ranch to the 2017 Cherokee fire, she has a plan to respond to such disasters, and how to decide when to stay or go. In recent days, Brown has worked nonstop to secure her animals and livelihood. She and her mother sleep in shifts to ensure the flames of the Camp fire - the deadliest blaze in California state history -don't surprise them in the middle of the night.

Brown and her mother left at one point after they could see the glow of the fire creeping toward the property but returned after firefighters were able to push the fire back.

That doesn't mean the risk has gone away. High winds have threatened to move the blaze back toward the ranch and the area remains under an evacuation warning. But the Browns have lived through fires before, and they want to do what they can to protect the ranch that has been in the family since the 1930s.

"Last night everybody's like, 'go, go, go'. We went, we looked, we came back because we are exhausted," Brown said. "It is evacuation fatigue."

Comment: See also:

NATO drills fallout: Norwegian frigate almost entirely underwater after oil tanker collision

RT
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 13:36 UTC

The Norwegian Navy frigate that tried and failed to return home after parading its might in NATO war games is almost completely submerged under water after colliding with an oil tanker.

Eight people were injured when the KNM Helge Ingstad and the tanker Sola TS collided last week off Norway's western coast, putting a not-so-great finish on the much touted Trident Juncture 2018 drills - the largest exercise hosted by Norway since the 1980s and the largest that NATO has held in decades.

Since then, the frigate has been slowly sinking. Photos from the scene on Monday show a tiny fraction of the warship above water, with the rest of it completely submerged.

Comment: Norwegian frigate collides with oil tanker off country's coast

ACTA 2.0: The EU's Article 13 threatens the end of freedom on the Internet

Gefira
Tue, 13 Nov 2018 11:22 UTC

Freedom of expression is a thorn in the side of EU technocrats. The new intellectual property law adopted by the European Parliament in September threatens our fundamental rights.¹

Internet means freedom. Still. We can (still) freely retrieve content with our search engines. We can (still) freely and without further ado access the sources in a text. This will soon change. Article 13 of the controversial law says that website operators and Internet providers will be held accountable for the content of their customers and readers.

The new law thus obliges them to use the so-called upload filters. The filter obligation leaves it to the software to decide what users are allowed to upload and what not. In plain language it says the provider will control and censor our activities on the net: every uploaded photo, video, every text will be checked. The question arises: what criteria will apply to this censorship and how and by whom will this filter software be programmed?

Comment: This is what happens when you have bureaucrats who don't understand the internet trying to regulate it. That they feel the right to step in and fundamentally change how a such a massive and essential utility functions is the height of hubris. Let's hope that cooler heads prevail on this one.

As Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube said wrote in an op-ed for the Financial Times (viewable here, rather than behind a paywall on the Financial Times site):

The consequences of article 13 go beyond financial losses. EU residents are at risk of being cut off from videos that, in just the last month, they viewed more than 90bn times. Those videos come from around the world, including more than 35m EU channels, and they include language classes and science tutorials as well as music videos. We welcome the chance to work with policymakers and the industry to develop a solution within article 13 that protects rights holders while also allowing the creative economy to thrive. This could include more comprehensive licensing agreements, collaboration with rights holders to identify who owns what, and smart rights management technology, similar to Content ID.

Free speech on campus: War on Christianity or equal-opportunity ideological battleground?

RT
Tue, 13 Nov 2018 00:00 UTC

Conservative counterprotesters at UC-Berkeley

A pair of recent incidents on US campuses has again highlighted the issue of free speech. Is there really a "war on Christianity" happening on American campuses?

In September, Polly Olsen sued Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, claiming staff had violated her free speech rights when they stopped her from handing out religiously-themed Valentines to her fellow students. An observer had complained of "suspicious activity" and Olsen was escorted to the campus security office and told her cards - which contained Christian messages like "Jesus Loves You" - might be considered "offensive," and that she was "soliciting" by distributing them outside the campus' designated "free speech zone."

Comment: See also:

Mentally unstable, cleaver-wielding migrant walks free in Berlin after 107 arrests

RT
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 11:34 UTC

A migrant from Ghana, notorious for his shoplifting sprees and violent outbursts, was arrested 107 times in Berlin, but none of them stuck. He even walked free after threatening to hack a woman with a meat cleaver.

For years, a 59-year-old man known as Bismark B. made a living out of stealing from supermarkets in central Berlin. He would show up "three to four times a week" to steal food, a store employee told local media. Witnesses also said that he often grabbed the most expensive items and kept a journal of the things he stole.

Bismark B. racked up 107 arrests, but was released each time because he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

US troops erect razor fences in San Diego to thwart migrant caravan

RT
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 11:34 UTC

US troops razor wire fence barricade Mexico migrant caravan

US military and border protection agents have extended razor wire and erected barricades at the point of entry near San Diego, California, as the first groups of migrants arrived at the US-Mexico border.

Hundreds of migrants who had split off from the main 'caravan' arrived in Tijuana early Tuesday on nine buses. Numbering just over 350 people, they joined an initial, small group of around 85 people, mostly members of the LGBT community, who'd experienced discrimination within the main crowd and were helped to make it to the Mexican border town even earlier on Sunday.

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.. .. Let's go pfhizer!! [Link]

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Jibrish

Society's Child

FAA reviewing Boeing's safety analyses as part of investigation into deadly Lion Air crash

Food tastes are too subjective to be copyrighted, says EU court

FBI reports 17% spike in hate crimes with blacks and Jews the most targeted

Australian woman finds needle in pear just after strawberry scare arrest

Evacuation fatigue: California authorities fear people will ignore warnings as wildfires become routine

NATO drills fallout: Norwegian frigate almost entirely underwater after oil tanker collision

ACTA 2.0: The EU's Article 13 threatens the end of freedom on the Internet

Free speech on campus: War on Christianity or equal-opportunity ideological battleground?

Mentally unstable, cleaver-wielding migrant walks free in Berlin after 107 arrests

US troops erect razor fences in San Diego to thwart migrant caravan

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