It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, November 28, 2021
Prince to turn on charm in Barbados after BLM 'lit spark' to cast off Queen
Jack Hardy Sat, November 27, 2021 The Queen inspects a guard of honour in Barbados in 1977 - Anwar Hussein/Getty
When Barbados cuts ties with the British crown after nearly 400 years, it will be a largely symbolic moment, but one that will nonetheless be greeted by discontent in a political climate shaped by Black Lives Matter.
The Caribbean country becomes a republic on Monday, when the Queen will be replaced as head of state by a president, in a move that threatens to destabilise the Commonwealth realms over which she still reigns.
It will also formally end a connection that has existed between the two countries since English ships first arrived on uninhabited Barbadian shores in 1625, followed by settlement two years later.
But a long shadow has been cast by the brutal, centuries-long slave economy that was established on the island by the British and political observers believe it has helped create the conditions of popular support for republicanism in modern Barbados.
This discontent was further fanned when the BLM cause swept the globe last year and forced many societies to reckon with the crimes of their past.
In Barbados, a statue of Lord Nelson - which predates the monument in Trafalgar Square - was removed from Bridgetown’s National Heroes Square after his past support for the slave trade was thrust back into the public spotlight.
It had a “galvanising effect in terms of nationalism” in the months before the republic was declared, according to Peter Wickham, a Barbadian political analyst.
“It’s maybe led us to this point where we’ve said, ‘let’s take a further step in terms of nationalism’ - perhaps Black Lives Matter has lit a spark,” he said.
Now, with the Prince of Wales due to arrive in Bridgetown on Monday to witness the dawn of a new republic, racial justice campaigners have trained their sights on the royal family. Planned protests against Prince Charles
BLM’s Barbados branch is among several political groups who plan to stage a protest on the day Prince Charles arrives in the country - to condemn his involvement in the republic celebrations.
They view as particularly controversial the decision by Mia Mottley, the country’s prime minister, to award him the Order of the Freedom of Barbados, the country’s highest honour.
“It’s rubbing salt in the wounds,” said Lalu Hanuman, a lawyer who has helped organise the protests.
He claimed a tangible link still exists between the Royal family and slavery, as Kensington Palace was bought by King William III, one of the main shareholders in the Royal African Company, which shipped hundreds of thousands of slaves across the Atlantic.
“The Royal family has a lot of slave blood on its hands,” he said.
The concerns that are foremost in the minds of British officials, however, is how the country will stay relevant in the Caribbean as its historic, constitutional bonds grow increasingly frayed.
Scott Furssedonn-Wood, the British high commissioner for Barbados, pictured below, is all too aware of the importance of a royal charm offensive at this critical juncture. Scott Furssedonn-Wood with a portrait of The Queen - Heathcliff O'Malley for The Telegraph
The diplomat, himself a former deputy private secretary to Prince Charles, told The Telegraph: “This moment has posed a challenge to us, in that it requires us to lean into this and say, ‘well, actually, we’ve got to make sure this relationship is one that is relevant’.
“We breathe new life into it, we reinvigorate it, we don’t take anything for granted, we don’t rest on past assumptions.”
The presence of Prince Charles - who is a guest of Ms Mottley - demonstrates “at the highest possible level” the commitment Britain still has to Barbados, he added, with the two nations united by shared interests on issues such as climate change.
“I spent four years travelling around the world with the Prince of Wales and I’ve seen what an extraordinary impact these visits can have,” he said.
Despite such optimism, it remains striking just how few traces of the Queen - as serving head of state and the nation’s final monarch - remain in the cultural fabric of Barbados, which became independent in 1966.
There will be no statues that need tearing down, nor portraits in need of removal from the walls of public offices when the island officially begins a new era at midnight on November 30. Her Majesty has not featured on a banknote here since 1973.
Indeed, one of the few places where a portrait of the Queen still remains on the island is in the residence of the high commissioner, where her picture towers over the hallway.
Such a marked absence from modern Barbadian consciousness has meant many who live on the island admit to not fully understanding what a new republic actually means.
Yet those closest to the political process are in little doubt that this represents a key moment in Barbadian national life.
They include John King, a Birmingham-born calypso singer turned minister in the Barbados government with responsibility for culture and national development. ‘Independence completes the circle’
Speaking in his office on the outskirts of Bridgetown, he said the achievement of full constitutional independence was “completing the circle”.
He said: “Freedom to lead yourself is important. If it wasn’t, then England would still be part of Rome.”
He is among many Barbadians who have bristled at the suggestion - made by Tom Tugendhat, the Tory MP, among others - that the country’s republican mood was conditioned by China, after the superpower began heavily investing in the island.
“This, in my mind, is one of the biggest reasons why there is animosity oftentimes between Britain and the former colonies,” he said.
“It is exactly the mindset of a colonial master - that, as a sovereign nation, you still have no concept of doing things on your own, obviously someone else is pushing you in a particular direction. It is just a monumental insult.” The transition to a republic appeared, on the face of it, to be uncontentious when it was formally pushed through last year by the Barbados Labour Party, which had won every seat in the lower house of its parliament in the 2018 election.
What this display of political consensus masked was resentment brewing at a deeper societal level - among the many still loyal to the Queen on the island, or who resent that Barbados is cutting itself adrift from a powerful ally.
One local driver reflected, simply: “Barbados is too small not to have anyone to rely on.”
Before long, a new campaign group opposing the republic - Barbadians for Constitutional Monarchy - sprung up and has since attracted hundreds of supporters.
Alexander Clarkson, a spokesman for the group, told The Telegraph: “We felt Barbados benefited hugely from being, in effect, a ‘crowned republic’ with all the benefits of full executive, legislative and judicial independence but with the monarchy acting as a constitutional backstop - beholden to neither political cronyism or short-term interests.
“It avoided concentrating even more power with the elites. Elizabeth II was monarch by the grace of God. [Sandra Mason, the new head of state] is now president by the grace of Mia Mottley.”
The fallout from events in this corner of the West Indies will be watched closely by the remaining Commonwealth realms, where the Queen’s role of head of state is increasingly insecure, particularly in the Caribbean. Opinion polling in Jamaica indicates that a majority would now support a republic, with the ruling Jamaica Labour Party saying that it could take a decision on the move soon.
Richard Drayton, Rhodes professor of imperial history at King’s College London, said: “I’m absolutely confident that this will have implications for Jamaica.
“I think that this will, in some ways, accelerate the momentum towards a change to a republican Jamaica and probably also other islands.”
Saturday, November 27, 2021
U.S. stonewalls probe into security firm that allegedly spied on Assange for CIA, says Spanish judge
MADRID — The Justice Department has failed to respond to multiple requests from Spanish authorities for help in an investigation into a local security firm suspected of being used by the CIA to conduct aggressive — and potentially illegal — surveillance of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“I am not so pleased about it,” said Santiago Pedraz, the investigating judge in charge of the case, in an exclusive interview with Yahoo News, when asked about the failure of officials in Washington so far to cooperate with his probe. “They have absolutely not answered anything.”
Since June of last year, Spanish judges have sent three requests for information to the Justice Department primarily seeking information about the ownership of IP addresses believed to be in the United States that had access to files documenting Assange’s activities while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, according to copies of the requests reviewed by Yahoo News.
Despite a mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) between the U.S. and Spain pledging to assist each other in criminal investigations, none of the Spanish requests have yet elicited any substantive responses from the United States, the judge said. Instead, Justice Department lawyers have asked Spanish authorities for more information about the basis for the inquiry before taking any action.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in 2016. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP)
Chief among those puzzle pieces is whether U.S. intelligence officials — as Assange’s lawyers have alleged — arranged for the Spanish security firm UC Global to violate Spanish privacy and bribery laws by installing cameras and hidden microphones inside the Ecuadorian Embassy, including in a women’s bathroom where Assange would sometimes take meetings. This in turn allowed the company to secretly record or otherwise eavesdrop on conversations that Assange had with his lawyers, doctors, advisers, journalists and others, including in one case a U.S. congressman, according to internal documents from the Spanish case.
“We want to find out what was done with this material,” Pedraz said. He pointed to the CIA’s potential role as a principal “theory” that “we are trying to investigate.” He did not rule out, however, that there could be other explanations for the alleged data transfer.
A DOJ spokeswoman wrote in an email that “as a matter of policy,” the department doesn’t comment on its correspondence with foreign governments over MLAT requests. Legal experts say that the MLAT process can often be frustratingly slow — especially when it requires, as in this case, federal prosecutors to seek court orders for the information the foreign government is seeking. Still, T. Markus Funk, a former federal prosecutor who wrote a guidebook about the MLAT process for the U.S. court system, said the fact that the Justice Department hasn’t responded to the Spanish requests over a 17-month period seems “unusually slow.” He added: “This seems to be outside of what would be normal.”
The investigation by Spanish police, which has been extensively reported in the Spanish press, has taken on new significance in recent weeks in the aftermath of a Yahoo News report documenting how the CIA, under its then-director Mike Pompeo, launched in 2017 a covert operation to cripple WikiLeaks that included ultimately aborted plans to abduct Assange in a so-called “snatch operation.” CIA officials, incensed by WikiLeaks’ publication of sensitive agency hacking documents, even discussed — but never implemented — a plot to assassinate Assange, according to former U.S. intelligence officials knowledgeable about the CIA’s operation.
A screengrab from a Jan. 5 article in El País.
While White House lawyers put the brakes on the most extreme measures Pompeo had pushed, the CIA did undertake other aggressive actions, including arranging to obtain audio and visual recordings of Assange inside the embassy as well as spying on some of his associates, according to the Yahoo News report. Pompeo, in his only public comments on the article, acknowledged that “pieces of it are true,” and called on the Justice Department to criminally prosecute the sources who spoke to Yahoo News for disclosing classified information. (The CIA has consistently declined to comment on any aspect of its targeting of Assange and WikiLeaks and did so again in response to an inquiry for this article.)
The CIA’s targeting of the WikiLeaks founder — and allegedly arranging to eavesdrop on his meetings and conversations inside the Ecuadorian Embassy — may not be surprising, given that Pompeo in his first speech as CIA director had publicly declared WikiLeaks to be a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”
But the agency’s actions have emerged as a potential roadblock to the Justice Department’s efforts to extradite Assange to the United States to face criminal charges that he published classified documents — including the identities of sensitive sources for the U.S. government overseas — in violation of the World War I-era Espionage Act.
Assange’s lawyers have seized on the Yahoo News report, raising it repeatedly before a British appeals court in October as fresh grounds to deny the Justice Department’s request. “This is a case of credible evidence of U.S. government plans developed at some length to do serious harm to Mr. Assange,” Mark Summers, one of Assange’s lawyers, said during a hearing on the extradition case.
A court artist sketch of Julian Assange, center back, his attorneys and lawyers for U.S. authorities at the Old Bailey in London for a hearing in Assange’s extradition case. (Elizabeth Cook/PA Wire via ZUMA Press)
Although much about events at the Ecuadorian Embassy remains murky, the key to unraveling that evidence may now rest with the outcome of the Spanish investigation. The probe began in April 2019 when Assange, after having taken refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy for seven years, was evicted by that country’s new leadership. He was immediately arrested by the British and then charged by federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Va., in an 18-count indictment for what Justice Department officials described as “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”
At that point, three employees of UC Global came forward to Spanish police to tell a strange but intriguing story: They had been directed by the company’s owner, David Morales, a former Spanish special forces officer, to secretly record Assange’s conversations by installing hidden microphones concealed in fire extinguishers in the embassy. They also asserted they had covertly downloaded data from the cellphones of his visitors, and swiped copies of Assange’s written notes. At one point, they claimed, they were instructed to steal the diaper of a baby believed to be Assange’s son in order to perform a DNA test on the baby’s feces to establish his paternity. (Informed that such a test was not practicable, the plan was dropped.)
One of the witnesses asserted in a written statement to police that Morales also discussed with employees a plan to unlock the embassy doors to facilitate a “kidnapping” of Assange or “even the possibility of poisoning Mr. Assange,” according to a copy of the statement reviewed by Yahoo News. All of these proposals “Morales claimed to be evaluating with his contacts in the United States,” the statement said.
After interviewing the witnesses and reviewing computer data they provided, Spanish police in September 2019 arrested Morales and searched his home and offices, seizing computers, servers, mobile phones and other material. He was later released on bail and is awaiting the completion of the criminal investigation to learn whether he will be formally charged.
One of the former employees said in an interview with Yahoo News here that the purpose of the surveillance was made clear when Morales gathered his small workforce together after a trip to the United States, where he attended a Las Vegas gun show. UC Global had been contracted to provide security at the embassy by SENAIN, the Ecuadorian intelligence service. But, Morales told the group, “all the information was not for the Ecuadorian Embassy, it was for the United States,” said the former employee, who spoke on the condition that he not be publicly identified. (The three employees have been given status as “protected witnesses” in the case, shielding their identities from public view.)
UC Global owner David Morales arrives at Spain’s High Court in Madrid in 2020. (Emilio Naranjo/EFE via ZUMA Press)
Morales, according to the employee, also told the group that “we have moved to the dark side,” and “he mentioned the CIA.” (In a declaration filed with the court, the witness said Morales had told the employees that in exchange for their surveillance of Assange, “U.S. intelligence” would arrange for the company to get lucrative “contracts all over the world.”) The disclosure troubled the employee and his colleagues. “I realized this was like a bomb that was about to explode,” he said.
Among the meetings the UC Global employees were directed to eavesdrop on was a visit Assange had in August 2017 with Dana Rohrabacher, then a Republican congressman from southern California, according to the employee. Rohrabacher, an avid Trump supporter who repeatedly expressed sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggested to Assange that he might be able to get him a presidential pardon if he publicly identified an internal Democratic Party insider as his source for party emails WikiLeaks published during the 2016 election — rather than Russian operatives as the U.S. intelligence community had concluded.
UC Global employees secretly copied WhatsApp messages from Rohrabacher’s cellphone, which he was required to leave at the door, listened in on the meeting through a crack in the door (the microphones were not yet functional) and wrote up a detailed report that they understood was to be shared with the CIA, the former employee said. Rohrabacher did not respond to requests for comment.
In an email exchange with Yahoo News, Morales adamantly denied the allegations by the whistleblowers, saying the claims that he discussed the kidnapping or poisoning of Assange were “lies” and that he never told his employees the surveillance of the WikiLeaks founder was on behalf of U.S. intelligence. “I never said that,” he said, adding that the allegations by three of his employees were “sensationalist” conspiracy theories “like a spy film script.”
The surveillance that UC Global conducted at the Ecuadorian Embassy was done under the firm’s contract with the Ecuadorian intelligence service and was done because the Ecuadorians had become concerned about some of Assange’s activities, Morales insisted. “The Ecuadorian government has the complete right to take the actions that [it] considers [it needs] to prevent the protection of their interests, especially with a person that was interfering continuously against their foreign affairs issues,” he wrote. He later added: “What the SENAIN or the Ecuadorian government did with the information ... if they share or not with other entities ... that is not my responsibility.”
But Fidel Narváez, who served as first secretary of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2017 and 2018, disputed portions of that account, saying he and his Ecuadorian colleagues were completely unaware that conversations within the embassy were being secretly recorded. “It was obvious they were trying to collect information” on Assange and his visitors, he said. Morales was pointing the finger at Ecuador because “it’s the only way out” for the company — “to say it was Ecuador instructing them to do the spying,” he added.
Fidel Narváez, a former senior diplomat at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2019. (Victoria Jones/PA Wire via ZUMA Press)
The former employees had no communication with anybody at the CIA and have no direct evidence to back up the statements they attributed to Morales. Instead, they added yet another layer of intrigue: Another of Morales’s clients at the time was one of the world’s biggest casino companies, Las Vegas Sands, then owned by Sheldon Adelson, the late billionaire who had been for years one of the Republican Party’s largest donors.
As the employees told it, Morales took direction from one of the Las Vegas Sands’ senior security officials, Zohar Lahav, an Israeli American who previously worked as a security officer at the Israeli Consulate in Miami. And the purpose, they allege, was to funnel surveillance videos — and other information that UC Global had scooped up about Assange — to the CIA through Las Vegas Sands. (Among the requests the Spanish authorities have made to the Justice Department is an opportunity to question the security official.)
A Sands spokesman declined comment. But a source familiar with the company’s dealings with UC Global confirmed that Las Vegas Sands had a contract with the Spanish firm to provide personal security for Adelson when he was traveling on his yacht in the Mediterranean. (Such security was covered as part of Adelson’s compensation package, the source said.) But the source dismissed the idea that the company’s dealings with UC Global had anything to do with the CIA, saying that such connections — which have been alleged before — were “out of a James Bond film.”
Then-President Donald Trump with Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson ahead of his address to the Israeli American Council National Summit in Hollywood, Fla., in 2019. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
The source also declined to comment on whether Lahav is still working for Las Vegas Sands. Messages sent to Lahav’s cellphone by Yahoo News were unanswered.
On June 19, 2020, José de la Mata Amaya, the original judge in charge of the case, sent the first Spanish request for assistance to the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, asserting that investigations by Spanish police showed “there is a serious probability of the existence of offenses that could constitute an offence against privacy and against client/attorney confidentiality,” he wrote, citing provisions of the Spanish criminal code, according to a copy of the request reviewed by Yahoo News.
In particular, the judge asked for Justice Department prosecutors to provide information about the ownership and geolocation data on five IP addresses that, he wrote, accessed the server of UC Global for three days in January 2018. He asked the DOJ to respond “as soon as possible.”
“We had a chance to review and understand the seriousness of the allegations in this very interesting espionage and bribery investigation,” a Justice Department lawyer, Sandra Barbulescu, wrote back on July 16, 2020. She then pointed out that in order to provide the information the Spanish requested, the Justice Department would need to file applications with the U.S. courts that would require Spanish authorities to answer a series of questions, including: the basis for the Spanish contention that the IP addresses were granted access to the UC Global recordings; the grounds for their suspicions about Morales, to whom it is believed he was transferring data; whether he was an agent of a foreign power; and perhaps most importantly, “What was the purpose of the spying?”
Over the course of the next year and a half, Spanish authorities provided two responses to the Justice Department’s questions, laying out some of the evidence obtained from the whistleblowers as well as sending another request for a videoconference interrogation of the Las Vegas Sands security official. When those went unanswered, the Spanish sent a “reminder” on July 6, stating that the earlier queries hadn’t produced any substantive replies.
The Spanish authorities still haven’t heard back, said Pedraz, the judge overseeing the case, in the recent interview. (The Spanish have also sent requests to the British government — which has jailed Assange while he awaits a ruling on the U.S. extradition request — seeking a video statement from the WikiLeaks founder. The statement was taken by the Spanish police, but British officials have so far blocked requests to take statements from Assange’s lawyers, whose meetings with their client were allegedly recorded.)
Julian Assange as he leaves Southwark Crown Court in London in 2019. (Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
But cyber experts say that even if the Justice Department finally does respond, it’s not clear how much Spanish authorities will learn that could solve the underlying mystery at the heart of the case. It is not uncommon for cyber actors — whether they be intelligence services or hackers — to mask their IP addresses, and “false positives” could often result.
And at least one of the IP addresses requested by the Spanish belongs to the Shadowserver Foundation, a nonprofit that uses former intelligence and law enforcement personnel to identify bots, malware and the vulnerabilities of computer networks. “We’re an organization that scans the entire internet every day,” said one of the foundation’s law enforcement liaisons, who asked not to be identified by name. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we would show up on the logs of every computer in the planet.”
Yahoo News correspondent Zachary Dorfman contributed reporting to this story.
Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP, via El País
737 Max: Boeing refutes new safety concerns
Theo Leggett - Business correspondent, BBC News Fri, November 26, 2021, A 737 Max lands after a test flight at Boeing Field in June 2020
It has been called "the most scrutinised transport aircraft in history", but some critics believe Boeing's 737 Max is still not safe.
It was cleared to fly passengers again by US regulators last year, having been grounded following two catastrophic accidents.
Since then, however, a number of potentially serious problems have been reported during 737 Max flights.
Boeing insists the aircraft is both safe and reliable.
On 14 October, a 737 Max took off from Boeing Field airport in Seattle, bound for Brussels. It was a delivery flight, taking the brand-new plane to start work for its owners, the travel group Tui.
But minutes into the 5,000-mile journey, the pilots reported an urgent "flight control problem" and had to turn back. The aircraft landed safely shortly afterwards.
The issue, linked to the autopilot, was rectified relatively quickly. The plane set off for Brussels again the following day, and has been flying regularly since then.
However, this was not an isolated incident. Emergencies
Whenever a US carrier or repair station discovers any serious failure, malfunction or defect aboard an aircraft, it has to inform the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), via a so-called "service difficulty report".
There have been more than 180 such reports since the 737 Max returned to service.
Most faults were found on planes that were on the ground. But on 22 occasions, they occurred in-flight, and on four of those the pilots declared emergencies.
US pilots also declared emergencies on two further occasions due to engine failures. These events do not currently appear in the FAA's database, but have been reported on the Aviation Herald website, which lists accidents and incidents in commercial aviation.
The problems occurred in a US fleet that is still relatively small, with fewer than 160 aircraft delivered as of mid-October - some of which were grounded for several weeks early in the year after the discovery of electrical issues.
Service difficulty reports are also made public by the Canadian regulator, Transport Canada. Its database shows that the Canadian fleet of 56 737 Max aircraft has generated 19 reports, five of them relating to in-flight incidents.
The 737 Max remains under intense scrutiny. The plane was grounded for 20 months from March 2019, after being involved in two major accidents, in which 346 people died. The site near Addis Ababa where Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crashed in March 2019
Its flight control software was modified, to remove a serious flaw implicated in both crashes. Other physical changes were made to the aircraft.
It is important to stress that none of the issues reported to the FAA and Transport Canada are directly related either to the causes of these crashes, or to the changes made afterwards.
But they do include problems with some critical systems, including the motors used to adjust the horizontal stabiliser - the wing on the tailplane of the aircraft.
There have also been faults with engines, flight control systems, hydraulics and wiring.
The horizontal stabiliser, in particular, is vital for keeping the aircraft in controlled flight.
It can be adjusted manually, using a wheel by the pilot's knee. But under certain conditions, for example if the aircraft is going too fast, that may not be possible due to the aerodynamic loads involved.
Joe Jacobsen is a former senior safety engineer at the FAA, which has been deeply critical of the way in which the agency originally certified the 737 Max.
He says the reports do give cause for concern, particularly regarding the stabiliser motors, wiring and flight control systems. Such issues, he says, are most likely to be blamed on manufacturing.
"If they are not manufacturing-related", he says "then we have a problem with the system safety analysis, as I don't believe we would have predicted this number of failures is such a short time span with such a small fleet of aircraft."
Boeing 737 Max aircraft
Gilles Primeau, a Canadian expert in flight control systems, is also alarmed. He has previously testified to Canadian lawmakers that in his opinion the stabiliser trim system on all 737 variants, not just the Max, is "obsolete", and does not have enough in-built redundancy in case of failures.
He says "a fundamental concept for safety-critical systems is that if the effects and severity of a failure cause a hazard, then the frequency of occurrence should be made infrequent enough by design... loss of horizontal stabiliser position can be catastrophic".
Ed Pierson is a former senior manager at Boeing's 737 plant, near Seattle, who has previously voiced serious concerns about manufacturing standards at the plant. He says the number of failure and defect reports is "very troubling".
"I'm concerned this is just the tip of the iceberg", he says, adding: "It makes one wonder what the airline's own maintenance reports say about the condition of these airplanes, if the mandatory reporting looks like this."
'Not unreasonable'
However, not all experts are so alarmed. Dai Whittingham, chief executive of the UK Flight Safety Committee, has also seen the data.
"I don't think it's an unreasonable rate of occurrences," he explains. "With a fleet that size, it's not an unexpected level of problems, for the length of time.
"They are complex systems, so these things happen"
Boeing did not respond to specific questions about the failures featured in the service difficulty reports.
In a statement, it said: "Since the 737 Max returned to service, airlines have flown nearly 240,000 flights around the world, and are conducting more than 1,300 flights every day.
"The in-service reliability is greater than 99%, and is consistent with other commercial airplane models".
People close to the 737 Max programme do, however, acknowledge that there have been specific issues with stabiliser trim motors, and that changes have been made to rectify them.
The BBC also understands that regular weekly meetings take place between the aerospace giant and representatives of the engine manufacturer CFM International, in part to address the root causes of failures and in-flight shutdowns.
The FAA, meanwhile, said: "When we returned the 737 Max to service, we noted that routine incidents would occur with the aircraft, just as they do with every other make and model of aircraft.
"The FAA addresses these issues through the same Continued Operational Safety process that we provide for the entire US commercial fleet. We have seen no reported incidents attributable to the redesigned automated flight control system on the Max."
Ship's master said he spent 50 hours sleepless before crash
JANET McCONNAUGHEY Sat, November 27, 2021
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An oil tanker hit an offshore oil platform at night off Louisiana because its Turkish operating company didn’t give the ship’s master time to recover from days of sleepless travel, federal investigators have found.
The master, or person in charge of sailing the Atina, had traveled from Istanbul and told investigators “he was tired from having no sleep for over 50 hours,” according to a National Transportation Safety Board report made public Tuesday.
The crash early Oct. 17, 2020, did an estimated $72.9 million in damage — $72.3 million to the platform SP-57B and the rest to the tanker Atina, the board said.
However, nobody was hurt when the empty 898-foot-long (274-meter) ship ran into the platform at 4:46 a.m., and there wasn’t any pollution, the board said.
The “accident master” took over immediately from the departing master even though the operating company's own safety manual calls for a 24-hour overlap, the report said. Such an overlap would have let him rest, it said.
The report described the accident's probable cause as the “operating company not ensuring sufficient time for the master’s turnover, which resulted in the master’s acute fatigue and poor situation awareness during an attempted nighttime anchoring evolution.”
The man had been told in Istanbul that he had to take over as soon as possible. The reason, according to the report, was that the master on board planned to leave after having “issues” with an inspector for the ship's owners and operators. The ship finished discharging its cargo of crude oil at the NuStar Terminal in St. James and then left for its planned anchorage off Southwest Pass, the report said.
The new master arrived on board and — instead of anchoring where the previous master had planned — he chose a closer spot. He told investigators that he “didn’t want to spend a lot of time finding a place to anchor in the middle of the night on a vessel he wasn’t familiar with” and he was exhausted. That spot was about 0.7 mile (1.1 kilometer) from the platform, the report said.
The NTSB identified the Atina's owner as Hanzhou 1 Ltd and its operator as Besiktas Likid Tasimacilik Denizcilik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi.
Besiktas did not respond to an email sent Wednesday. An attorney representing both companies in a lawsuit filed by the platform's owners, Cox Operating LLC of Houston, did not immediately respond to an email sent Friday.
Cox filed that suit the day after the crash, in federal court in New Orleans. It estimated damages to its platform at $225 million, including economic losses during repairs.
The NTSB does not assign fault or blame, and U.S. law forbids using NTSB reports as evidence in civil lawsuits.
YOUR AVOCADO ON TOAST 500 vigilantes gather in Mexico town, pledge to aid police
ARMANDO SOLÍS Sat, November 27, 2021, 1:56 PM·3 min read
NUEVO URECHO, Mexico (AP) — Extortion of avocado growers in western Mexico has gotten so bad that 500 vigilantes from a so-called “self-defense” group known as United Towns, or Pueblos Unidos, gathered Saturday and pledged to aid police.
The vigilantes gathered for a rally in the town of Nuevo Urecho, in the western state of Michoacan, armed with AR-15s and other rifles, as well as a motley collection of shotguns.
They said that drug cartels like the Viagras and the Jalisco cartel have been charging avocado growers ‘war taxes’ of about $1,000 per acre ($2,500 per hectare).
Tired of the extortion demands and kidnappings, growers and farmers formed the group in 2020, and it now claims to have almost 3,000 members.
“Several of us have been victims of this situation, of kidnappings, extortions,” said one masked vigilante leader who asked his name not be used for fear of reprisals from the gangs.
For the moment, the vigilantes appeared willing to respond to a pledge by Gov. Alfredo Ramirez Bedolla to disarm the state's various ‘self defense’ groups.
“We reached agreements with the mayor to increase the number of police” patrolling the area, the vigilante leader said. “For the moment, we are putting away our guns, but we will be on alert to come out and support the police at any moment.”
Pueblos Unidos has staged armed rallies in several towns in Michoacan over the last year, but have always said they would rather have officially constituted security forces do the work of expelling criminal gangs.
Mexican law forbids most civilians from owning almost all firearms, except for extremely low caliber hunting rifles or shotguns.
But Michoacan has a history of armed civilian “self defense” vigilante militia movements from 2013 and 2014. Back then vigilantes managed to chase the dominant Knights Templar cartel out, but rival cartels like the Viagras and the Jalisco cartel have moved in. Kidnappings, killings and shootings have prompted thousands to flee their homes.
The Mexican army has sent troops to the state, but only to act as a buffer between the warring cartels, trying to ensure that neither invades the other gang’s territory.
But soldiers do little or nothing about illicit gang activities occurring just a few hundred yards from their checkpoints.
That has led Michoacan residents to once again take up arms, in the face of rampant extortion by the Viagras, Jalisco and other gangs.
This time around, the self-defense movement is mostly operating in the avocado-growing regions that were not the epicenter of the 2013 vigilante uprising.
As avocados have become a more widespread and lucrative crop, drug cartels and gangs have taken to extorting protection payments from growers.
While previous ‘self-defense’ groups have been infiltrated or taken over by drug gangs, Pueblos Unidos leaders said they were not associated with any of the warring gangs and are willing to put away their guns.
“We have never taken over any town,” said one masked vigilante leader. “We are not part of a cartel or anything like that.”
A member of the so-called self-defense group known as United Towns or Pueblos Unidos, rides with his weapon sticking out a window during a rally in Nuevo Urecho, in the Mexican western state of Michoacan, Saturday Nov. 27, 2021. Extortion of avocado growers in western Mexico has gotten so bad that 500 vigilantes from the "self-defense" group gathered Saturday and pledged to aid police. (AP Photo/Armando Solis)More
Watch: Incredible video of stampeding elk running wild on a Colorado golf course
The phenomenon continued when a video surfaced this week of an elk herd stampeding onto a golf course in Estes Park, Colorado. Believe it or not, elk are common during the mating season throughout the picturesque town, which sits just a few miles from the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.
Herds often frequent Lake Estes 9-hole course, a small, but idyllic layout on a mountain lake just a few hundred yards from the city’s visitors center.
But what happened in the video below would be enough to shake any golfer.
Fortunately, no injuries were reported, but suffice to say those who are trying to block out any peripheral noise while putting on this green might want to think twice about that strategy.
Elk sip from Lake Estes in the center of Estes Park, Colorado, in early November. A herd of the animals was caught on video running through a golf course. (Photo by Tim Schmitt/Golfweek)
Omar calls on House leadership to take 'appropriate action' against Boebert after Islamophobic comments
Savannah Behrmann, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is calling on House leadership to "take appropriate action" against Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., after the GOP congresswoman made Islamophobic comments towards her during a campaign event.
The comments were posted to Twitter on Thursday by PatriotTakes – who says their mission is to "research, monitor and expose the extremism and radicalization of the far right" – in a video that showed Boebert recounting a supposed run-in with Omar at the U.S. Capitol grounds.
Boebert told a tale of joining an elevator with Omar – the first Somali American elected to Congress – which supposedly made a United States Capitol Police officer rush toward them with "fret all over his face." She said she responded to the officer that Omar didn't "have a backpack. We should be fine."
The crowd at the event laughed, applauded and jeered at the comment that implied the Minnesota lawmaker was a terrorist.
Boebert told the crowd she turned toward Omar in the elevator and said, "'Oh look, the Jihad Squad decided to show up for work today.'"
Omar responded to the video, denying the story and saying the "whole story is made up." She continued: "Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout."
"Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t funny & shouldn’t be normalized. Congress can’t be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslims tropes get no condemnation."
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., speaks during a news conference in St. Paul, Minn.
Lawmakers swiftly called on Boebert to apologize for the comments, with many calling them Islamophobic.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., wrote the comments were "Shameful, deeply offensive & dangerous. Yet another blatant display of Islamophobia targeting (Omar)."
"These comments are personally hurtful, legitimately endanger her & the broader Muslim community. Rhetoric like this must be denounced & anyone spewing it held to account," she continued.
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., called Capitol Hill "a toxic work environment for Muslim members and staff when bigots routinely spew racist, Islamophobic vitriol unchecked and with no consequence."
"I have reached out to her office to speak with her directly. There are plenty of policy differences to focus on without this unnecessary distraction."
However, the apology was not enough for Omar.
"Saying I am a suicide bomber is no laughing matter," she tweeted. She called on both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to "take appropriate action."
"(N)ormalizing this bigotry not only endangers my life but the lives of all Muslims. Anti-Muslim bigotry has no place in Congress," she concluded.
It wouldn't be the first time the House has taken action against GOP lawmakers this year for derogatory actions or comments.
The House recently censured Boebert's colleague, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., for posting an anime video that was edited to show him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and attacking President Joe Biden. He was also stripped of his committee assignments.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., was also stripped of her committee assignments after she espoused multiple dangerous conspiracy theories.
McCarthy did not publicly condemn Gosar for the video and instead privately discussed the issue with the Arizona Republican, who later removed the video.
Additionally, McCarthy recently said if Republicans take control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections and he was voted the chamber's speaker, he would reinstate Gosar and Greene.
“They’ll have committees. They may have other committee assignments,” said McCarthy. He then went a step farther, saying, "They may have better committee assignments.”
Pelosi and other members of House Democratic Leadership called on Boebert "to fully retract these comments and refrain from making similar ones going forward" in a Friday statement.
They also said McCarthy and "the entire House Republican Leadership’s repeated failure to condemn inflammatory and bigoted rhetoric from members of their conference is outrageous. We call on the Republican Leadership to address this priority with the Congresswoman and to finally take real action to confront racism.”
"Racism and bigotry of any form, including Islamophobia, must always be called out, confronted and condemned in any place it is found. This is particularly true in the halls of Congress, which are the very heart of our democracy," they said. Boebert’s "repeated, ongoing and targeted Islamophobic comments and actions against another Member of Congress, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, are both deeply offensive and concerning."
Boebert has used the offensive "Jihad squad" phrase several times before, including on the House floor when defending Gosar in a debate during the vote on his censorship.
Omar is part of a group of lawmakers dubbed "the Squad", largely composed of lawmakers of color.
Boebert is known for incendiary rhetoric, as well as being a fierce ally of former President Donald Trump, her comments leading up to – and surrounding – the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S Capitol and other controversial actions, like displaying a gun "shrine" as a Zoom background during a virtual hearing.
Cambodia releases endangered royal turtles in revival bid
Fri, November 26, 2021
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian conservationists released 51 critically endangered royal turtles back into the wild on Friday, in a drive to bolster a species thought to be extinct two decades ago.
Also known as the southern river terrapin, the large river turtles are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of threatened species, and the European Union is helping to fund the revival programme in Cambodia https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cambodia-turtles-idUKKBN22W1S3
The turtles, collected between 2006 and 2015 immediately after hatching and reared in a conservation centre, were released into the Sre Ambel river in Cambodia's coastal province of Preah Sihanouk.
"With the increasing number of adults in the wild through this release, we do hope that this species will breed in the wild and that annual nests will increase in the next few years," Wildlife Conservation Society's Ken Sereyrotha said.
The turtles, 31 females and 20 males between 6 and 15 years old, are implanted with a microchip and have an acoustic transmitter attached to their shells.
The royal turtle was believed extinct in Cambodia until 2000 due to sand dredging, illegal fishing, and loss of habitat. It was designated the country's national reptile in 2005.
Fifty-one royal turtles were released into the wild, in northern Preah Sihanouk province’s Kampong Seila district on November 26, by the Wildlife Conservation Society Cambodia Programme (WCS) and relevant government officials.
The event was accompanied by a ceremony, attended by Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries officials, local authorities, WCS representatives, Buddhist monks and locals.
WCS country director Ken Serey Rotha commented that conservationists had believed that royal turtles were extinct in the Kingdom, a presumption he said was rebuffed by a study back in 2000.
Also known as the southern river terrapin and by its scientific name Batagur affinis, the royal turtle is listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species as “critically endangered”, and was designated as Cambodia’s national reptile by a 2005 royal decree, according to the NGO.
Serey Rotha noted that November 26’s event marks the sixth of its kind under the associated conservation project, bringing the total number of freed royal turtles from 96 to 147.
He also credited the ministry’s Fisheries Administration (FiA) for working with the WCS on rare-species conservation.
Speaking at the ceremony, Kampong Seila district deputy governor Prak Sovann urged commune- and village-level authorities and the general public to join hands in the conservation of royal turtles.
“If we can protect these habitats, they’d provide enchanting eco-tourism spots,” he said. “Sightseers would visit the royal turtles in their own spaces, as well as the beautiful forests here in Kampong Seila.”
Sovann said he was committed to protecting the species and ensuring viable populations “at all costs”, and called on the public to report trapped turtles to the authorities, who will then prepare them for release back into the wild.
FiA director-general Pum Sotha said royal turtles are now only found in Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia, of which the Kingdom has the largest population.
“We must all come forward to protect them, and not merely be content with having the most, but failing to look after them,” he said.
Sotha also requested local authorities, the WCS and EU to look into building statues and other monuments across the Kingdom that are dedicated to the royal turtle and bear inscriptions that indicate the rarity and importance of the species.
Cash coming to Tahoe animal center where burned cub escaped This July 31, 2021, file photo provided by Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care shows a bear cub that was taken in for treatment after it suffered burns in a California wildfire, to Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. A private donor's pledge to match $500,000 in contributions for a $1 million expansion at a Lake Tahoe wildlife rescue center is bringing smiles back to staff and volunteers who've been on an emotional rollercoaster since the bear cub recovering from severe wildfire burns made a much-publicized escape back into the wild.
(Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care via AP, File) SCOTT SONNER Fri, November 26, 2021
RENO, Nev. (AP) — Private donors' new pledge to match $500,000 in contributions for a $1 million-expansion at a Lake Tahoe wildlife rescue center is bringing smiles back to staff and volunteers, who have been on an emotional rollercoaster since a bear cub being treated for severe wildfire burns made a much-publicized escape this summer.
The Lake Tahoe Wildlife Center has been making repairs directed by California regulators since Tamarack — named after the wildfire that blazed across more than 100 square miles (259 square kilometers) in the Sierra and severely burned the cub's paws — tunneled under an electric fence and fled back to the wild. It was the first escape in the 45-year-history of the center in South Lake Tahoe, California.
Two days later, volunteers spotted and photographed a cub clinging to a tree 40 feet (12 meters) up in a nearby forest. They became convinced it was the 6-month-old escapee, decided to leave him alone and now believe he’s doing just fine.
The contribution the Bentley Foundation and MH Buckeye announced this week may just be the happy ending they’ve been looking for.
“We’ve turned the corner,” center spokesman Greg Erfani told The Associated Press. As of Wednesday, they were only $180,000 short of the $1.05 million needed to begin construction in the spring and finish by the end of 2022.
“It’s going to build the first animal hospital in the Lake Tahoe area,” he said.
The center has continued to rescue smaller animals and recently released seven rehabilitated coyote pups. But it's been prohibited from accepting big game including bears since the California Department of Fish and Wildlife declared in October that it had to make improvements to its enclosures and fencing.
“Upon completion, CDFW will perform a site inspection and evaluate (the center's) request to renew its agreement to temporarily possess and rehabilitate injured and orphaned black bear cubs," department spokesman Peter Tira said in an email to AP on Wednesday.
Erfani said supply-chain challenges have delayed immediate repairs but the center should be fully up and running by next month, bears and all.
The expansion includes the hospital with two large recovery rooms, surgery and X-ray areas, individual care buildings for different species and a small dormitory for staff providing round-the-clock care — all at the place young Tamarack briefly called home.
The tale of his rescue-turned-escape began July 26 when a homeowner in Markleeville, California, spotted the cub crawling on his knees because his paws were so badly burned.
Photos of the bandaged black bear at the rescue center flooded social media and drew mention in international news coverage of the devastating fire that forced thousands of evacuations.
“Tamarack was sort of the first 'feel good’ story that came out of the fire. It was all destruction and heartbreak, and then there’s this little guy that had survived,” Erfani said this week. “Then, of course, that little stinker was not going to be caged. He just wanted out.”
The center announced his escape Aug. 3, warning anyone who spotted him to stay away and report sightings to wildlife officials.
Another flurry of publicity followed, less flattering than before.
“We got lambasted on social media. People were being nasty,” Erfani recalled. “It was very emotional for us because we had connections with him. A lot of people were really upset.”
Meanwhile, the center was doing everything it could to corral the cub, even sending up heat-seeking drones sometimes used to find lost hikers, Erfani said. “We spent a lot of time and money trying to find him. Our fear was that he wouldn’t be able to survive, so we didn’t give up.”
It paid off with the sighting of the cub clinging to the tree.
“We could tell he had all the same markings. But he appeared safe, and once released into the wild, we don’t bring them back,” he said.
“He wasn't happy being contained, pacing a lot. So, when we got him to a point where he could climb, that’s all he really needed. Once he got that defense ... his instincts kick in.”
Tamarack wasn’t like older bears who — because of issues including drought-driven food shortages — abandon the woods to rummage through garbage and sometimes break into Lake Tahoe homes.
“They become ‘urban’ bears," Erfani said. "Until the fire, (Tamarack) was from the backcountry, out in the wild. He never saw a house, never saw a car.”
“We like to believe he’s out there now in the wild, living the bear’s life.”
