Mud, Confusion and Tears Amid Search for Jet Crash Answers

Bloomberg News, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- On the outskirts of Lu village near Wuzhou, relatives are getting desperate. It’s been almost a week since flight MU5735’s sickening vertical drop from the skies above China’s Guangxi region, and still there are so many unanswered questions.

A manifest of the 123 passengers and nine crew aboard the China Eastern Airlines Corp. has yet to be released for privacy reasons, the jet’s flight data recorder hasn’t been found and officials haven’t ruled out the possibility that the Boeing Co. 737-800 NG’s cockpit voice recorder, retrieved Wednesday and sent to Beijing for decoding, was badly damaged upon impact.

One, who declined to give his name, said he’s been waiting for days -- police have set up a checkpoint on a road about 40 kilometers (25 miles) outside of downtown Wuzhou near the crash site, restricting public access. Only cars with the right government license plates can get in.

Officials did organize one visit, but only after family members pleaded relentlessly to pay their respects.

“If they have died, we want to see the body,” the father of Zhang Xu, an 18-year-old university student who was on the flight, told local media. “It’s sad. I’m really sad. My wife told me to bring something back to remember our son by,” he said as tears flowed.

The job for foreign media covering the tragedy isn’t easy either. Covid protocols mean journalists need to take swab tests at least daily and scan numerous health codes as they move about the city. A tour of the site for reporters on Friday visited an area about two kilometers from the crater made by the crash. The message: China is doing everything it can to get to the bottom of the disaster.

Attendees were supplied red gum boots and led into the heavily thicketed area, dense with bamboo and ferns, as a press conference taking place concurrently in Wuzhou revealed 18 finger-print samples had been found.

State-run media outlet Xinhua has been broadcasting a live stream on Weibo of the recovery efforts, intermittently. Hundreds of people dressed in white protective gear can be seen combing the scene, shoveling mud and picking up debris for bagging. On Thursday, after heavy rain earlier in the week, the ground was so wet firefighters had to link arms to keep from slipping over.

Outside of the crash-site entrance, largely closed off with blue hoardings, locals aren’t much more enlightened.

“I haven’t seen this kind of situation in my life. It’s usually very quiet here in this small village,” said a grocery store owner surnamed Liu, whose small shop is right outside along the road. He heard the loud noise from the crash on Monday afternoon and saw rescue teams, security and police start to rush by and up into the mountains within the hour.

All the attention has left other villagers bemused. “What’s going on in there,” asked one on Friday. “Why are there so many people?”

One local photographer summed it up. “When so many foreign journalists piled into our small county amid the rain and storm on Tuesday, villagers didn’t even know the biggest news in the country had happened, right here.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P

British maritime agency detains P&O ferry, says crew not trained

CONTRIBUTORS
Mrinmay Dey Reuters
Shubham Kalia Reuters

PUBLISHED MAR 25, 2022

CREDIT: REUTERS/CARL RECINE
Britain's Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) on Friday said a ferry operated by P&O has been detained in Northern Ireland due to failures on "crew familiarisation, vessel documentation and crew training."


March 25 (Reuters) - Britain's Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) on Friday said a ferry operated by P&O has been detained in Northern Ireland due to failures on "crew familiarisation, vessel documentation and crew training."

The ferry European Causeway, which operates between Cairnryan in Scotland and Larne in Northern Ireland, will remain under detention until the company resolves all the issues, a spokesperson for the agency said.

P&O was already facing scrutiny from the government over sacking 800 seafarers last week without consulting unions.

"Following my instruction to inspect all P&O vessels prior to entering back into service, the @MCA_Media has detained a ship for being unfit to sail." British transport minister Grant Shapps said in a tweet.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that his government would take legal action against P&O over the sackings.

P&O's boss has admitted that it broke the law. "We chose not to consult, and we are and we will compensate everybody in full for that," Chief Executive Officer Peter Hebblethwaite said on Thursday.

P&O did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.

(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey and Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by David Gregorio)

NOT AN IHOP PROMOMOTION
International Waffle Day started as a Swedish misunderstanding

International Waffle Day, celebrated March 25, began in Sweden as a result of a religious holiday's pronunciation sounding like the Swedish word for "waffle day."

Photo by JillWellington/Pixabay.com


March 25 (UPI) -- International Waffle Day is celebrated each year on March 25, and the holiday began in Sweden as a result of a religious holiday's grammatical association with the food.

The holiday's origins are the result of "Varfrudagen," the Swedish word for "Our Lady's Day" (the Feast of the Annunciation, a March 25 Christian celebration of when the Virgin Mary was told she was pregnant), having a similar pronunciation to "Vaffeldagen," which means "Waffle Day."

The pronunciation coincidence led to Swedes nicknaming the celebration "Waffle Day," and waffles became a traditional meal for the day.

The tradition spread to Norway and Denmark, and in recent years has been observed by restaurants and breakfast food fans in countries including the United States, Britain, Australia and India.

Other observances for March 25 include National Lobster Newberg Day, National Pecan Day, No Homework Day and Tolkien Reading Day.

HERESIOLOGY

Pope’s peace prayer for Ukraine recalls Fatima prophecy

By NICOLE WINFIELD

1 of 24

Pope Francis presides over a special prayer in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Friday, March 25, 2022. Francis is presiding over a special prayer for Ukraine that harks back to a century-old apocalyptic prophesy about peace and Russia that was sparked by purported visions of the Virgin Mary to three peasant children in Fatima, Portugal in 1917. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis prayed for peace in Ukraine in a ceremony Friday that harked back to a century-old apocalyptic prophecy about peace and Russia that was sparked by purported visions of the Virgin Mary to three peasant children in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917.

Francis invited bishops, priests and ordinary faithful around the world to join him in the consecration prayer, which opened with Francis entering St. Peter’s Basilica before an estimated 3,500 people and concluded with Francis sitting alone before a statue of the Madonna. There, he solemnly asked forgiveness that humanity had “forgotten the lessons learned from the tragedies of the last century, the sacrifice of the millions who fell in two World Wars.”

“Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons,” he prayed.

The service was Francis’ latest effort to rally prayers for an end to the war while keeping open options for dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church and its influential leader, Patriarch Kirill. Francis has yet to publicly condemn Russia by name for its invasion, though his denunciations of the war in Ukraine have grown increasingly outraged.

The prayer ritual was of deep spiritual importance to many Catholics and a source of fascination to others. It deals with some of the more controversial aspects of the Catholic faith: purported visions of the Madonna, revelations of hell, Soviet communism and the death of a pope, and questions about whether the prophecies contained in the so-called “secrets of Fatima” have already been fulfilled or not.

To hammer home the universal nature of the event, the Vatican translated the text of the prayer into three dozen languages. Retired Pope Benedict XVI participated from his home in the Vatican gardens. A papal envoy celebrated a simultaneous service at the shrine in Fatima.

The Fatima story dates to 1917, when according to tradition, Portuguese siblings Francisco and Jacinta Marto and their cousin Lucia said the Virgin Mary appeared to them six times and confided to them three secrets. The first two described an apocalyptic image of hell, foretold the end of World War I and the start of World War II, and portended the rise and fall of Soviet communism. The children were between 7 and 10 years old at the time.

In 2000, the Vatican disclosed the long-awaited third secret, describing it as foretelling the May 13, 1981, assassination attempt against St. John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square.

According to later writings by Lucia, who became a nun and died in 2005, Russia would be converted and peace would reign if the pope and all the bishops of the world consecrated Russia to the “Immaculate Heart of Mary.” Lucia later claimed that John Paul fulfilled that prophecy during a Mass on March 25, 1984, exactly 38 years ago Friday, even though he never specified Russia in the prayer.

The text of Francis’ prayer corrected that 1984 omission. It reads: “Therefore, Mother of God and our Mother, to your Immaculate Heart we solemnly entrust and consecrate ourselves, the Church and all humanity, especially Russia and Ukraine.” It adds: “Grant that war may end and peace spread throughout the world.”

In his homily Friday, Francis said the act of consecration of Russia and Ukraine to Mary’s immaculate heart was “not a magic formula, but a spiritual act” that was taking place “even as bombs are destroying the homes of many of our defenseless Ukrainian brothers and sisters.”

The Ukrainian ambassador to the Holy See, Andrii Yurash, tweeted from inside the basilica his appreciation of the service, which he said was “another attempt to defend (Ukraine) from devil’s war.”

Russia’s ambassador to Italy, Sergey Razov, earlier in the day defended Russia’s “special military action” in Ukraine and said Moscow’s references to its nuclear arsenal in the past month were not a threat but “only a reflection on potential scenarios if Russian national security was put at risk.”

For some traditionalist Catholics, Francis’ pronunciation of Russia in the prayer, as well as his invitation for all the world’s bishops to join him, fulfills the original Fatima prophecy. Some quibbled over his inclusion of Ukraine, while others said the original call for Russia’s “conversion” — presumably to Catholicism — might well have been a priority for the Catholic Church in 1917 but was not a focus of the Vatican’s evangelization project now.

Soon after Francis announced his plans to hold the consecration prayer, Patriarch Kirill said he was inviting the Russian Orthodox to direct prayers to the Mother of God, too. Kirill has called for peace, but he has also seemingly justified the invasion by invoking Russia and Ukraine as “one people” and describing the conflict as a “metaphysical” battle.

The Rev. Stefano Caprio, a former Catholic missionary in Russia and a professor of Russian history and culture at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, said Kirill is hardly the most hawkish of Russian patriarchs and is presumably under pressure to toe the Kremlin’s official line.

But in comments to reporters this week, Caprio noted that the Catholic and Orthodox prayers being offered up Friday carry some significant ambiguities.

“The problem is that these are two different interpretations: the Madonna who favors peace, and the Madonna who supports the war,” he said.

Stellantis, LG Energy Solution to invest $4.1B in Canada battery plant

By Kim Hye-ran & Kim Tae-gyu, UPI News Korea

LG Energy Solution Executive Vice President Kim Dong-myung announces his company’s joint investment with Stellantis to build an EV battery factory in Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday. Photo courtesy of LG Energy Solution

SEOUL, March 25 (UPI) -- Stellantis and LG Energy Solution announced plans to more than $4.1 billion to build a battery plant in Canada.

The companies plan to build the factory in Ontario, where they will produce lithium-ion battery cells and modules for Stellantis' electric vehicles, which will be shipped to North American markets.

They said Wednesday the new facilities would have an annual production capacity of more than 45GWh and would be operational in the first quarter of 2024, creating 2,500 jobs.

"Our joint venture with LG Energy Solution is yet another stepping stone to achieving our aggressive electrification roadmap in the region aimed at hitting 50% of battery electric vehicle sales in the U.S. and Canada by the end of the decade," Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said in a statement.

LG Energy Solution CEO Kwon Young-soo said the new factory is vital for its strategy of powering more EVs around the world.

"Through this joint venture, LG Energy Solution will be able to position itself as a critical player in building green energy value chains in the region," Kwon said.

Stellantis is the world's fourth-largest automaker, and LG Energy Solution is the No. 2 manufacturer of electric vehicle batteries globally. The two have teamed up in the EV market.

Last year, the two companies announced a plan to construct a battery factory with a capacity of 40GWh in the United States, with a completion date in 2024.

"The EV market is doubling every year in North America. Hence, the demand for EV batteries is expected to outstrip their supply in a few years," Daelim University automotive Professor Kim Pil-soo told UPI News Korea

CBD tablet seems to relieve pain after shoulder surgery, study finds


A new study suggests CBD may help with pain and recovery after shoulder surgery. 

Photo by lovingimages/Pixabay

March 25 (UPI) -- A tablet formulated with cannabidiol, or CBD, reduces pain after shoulder surgery, with no safety concerns, a study presented Friday during the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons meeting found.

The tablet, called Oravexx, developed by New Jersey-based life sciences firm Orcosa, contains 50 milligrams of CBD and safely managed pain after minimally invasive rotator-cuff surgery, the data showed.

In addition, treatment with it did not produce any of the side effects associated with CBD use, such as nausea, anxiety and liver problems, the researchers said, during the meeting in Chicago.

"There is an urgent need for viable alternatives for pain management, and our study presents this form of CBD as a promising tool after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair," study co-author Dr. Michael J. Alaia said in a press release.

"It could be a new, inexpensive approach for delivering pain relief," said Alaia, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at NYU Langone Health in New York City.

CBD is an ingredient in marijuana that does not cause the drug's intoxicating effects, according to Harvard Health. It does not contain tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the ingredient that makes marijuana users "high."

As a result, researchers have explored using the marijuana extract for medical purposes, including for relief of pain and anxiety symptoms, but results to date have been mixed.

For this phase 1/2 clinical trial, the first stage in testing, Alaia and his colleagues recruited 99 adults who underwent minimally invasive rotator cuff surgery at either NYU Langone Health and or the Baptist Health/Jacksonville Orthopaedic Institute in Florida.

The participants, all of whom were between 18 and 75 years old, were prescribed a low dose of the pain-killer Percocet during recovery and instructed to wean off the narcotic as soon as possible, the researchers said.

They were then instructed to take the CBD tablet or a placebo, or sham treatment that offers no clinical benefit for comparison purposes, three times a day for 14 days after their surgery, according to the researchers.

On the first day after surgery, the patients who took the CBD tablet experienced 23% less pain, on average, based on a commonly used assessment, compared with those on the placebo, the data showed.

On both the first and second days after surgery, patients who took the CBD tablet reported up to 25% greater satisfaction with pain control compared to those receiving placebo, the researchers said.

No major side effects were reported, they said.

Despite the promising results, the researchers cautioned against using commercialized CBD products to manage pain without consulting with a physician.

Multiple phase 2 studies, the second step in the development process, are in the planning stages and will evaluate the drug's potential benefits for other acute and chronic pain management issues, the researchers said.

"This is currently still experimental medicine and is not yet available for prescription," Alaia said.

Over decade of annual screening, half of women have false-positive mammogram


About half of women who undergo a mammogram will have a false-positive result sometime over 10 years, according to a new study.

 Photo by Rhoda Baer/Wikimedia Commons

March 25 (UPI) -- As many as half of women who undergo breast-cancer screenings experience a false-positive mammogram result over 10 years of annual evaluations, a study published Friday by JAMA Network Open found.

The study looked at results from digital breast tomosynthesis, or 3D mammography, as well as two-dimensional mammography.

The risk for false-positive results after 10 years of screening was considerably lower for women who have a 3D mammogram every other year, the researchers said.

In addition, repeated breast cancer screening with 3D mammography only reduced the likelihood of having a false-positive result slightly when compared with standard digital two-dimensional mammography, they said.

RELATED Study: AI for accurate mammogram readings not yet ready for prime time

Women with non-dense breasts also were less likely to have a false-positive result on 3D mammography, according to the researchers.

"Findings from our study highlight the importance of patient-provider discussions around personalized health," study co-author Michael Bissell said in a press release.

"It is important to consider a patient's preferences and risk factors when deciding on screening interval and modality," said Bissell, an epidemiologist at the University of California-Davis.

RELATED Study: Risk for cancer greater in older women with high breast tissue density

A false-positive occurs when a mammogram is flagged as abnormal, even when there is no cancer in the breast, according to BreastCancer.org.

Nearly one in five women who undergo screening are called back for reevaluation due to false-positive results, the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York estimates.

Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer-related death among women in the United States, and early detection with mammography lowers the risk for advanced breast cancer and death from this disease, according to the American Cancer Society.

RELATED Skipping mammograms raises odds for breast cancer death in women

However, a false-positive result often leads to more testing for women who receive them but no diagnosis of breast cancer, Bissell and his colleagues said.

When abnormalities are found on a mammogram, women are usually recalled for additional imaging and follow-up tests, the researchers said.

If found to be cancer-free at the end of this diagnostic reevaluation -- and for one year after her recall -- a woman is considered to have received a false-positive result, they said.

Although around 12% of women screened using 2D mammography are recalled for more tests, only 4% of those recalls, or fewer than 1%, result in a cancer diagnosis, according to the researchers.

For this study, Bissell and his colleagues analyzed data collected by the Breast Cancer Screening Consortium, which records mammography trends nationally, for 3 million screenings performed on 903,495 women ages 40 to 79 years.

The screenings were performed between 2005 and 2018 at 126 facilities across the country, the researchers said.

The researchers evaluated the mammography technology used, the time between screenings, patient age and breast density, they said.

The probability of receiving at least one false-positive result over a 10-year period was slightly lower with 3D than 2D digital mammography, according to the researchers.

With 3D mammography, about 50% of women experience at least one false-positive result compared with 56% of those screened with 2D digital mammograms, the data showed.

The decrease in false-positive results s with 3D versus 2D mammography was greatest for women with non-dense breasts and those who had annual screenings, the researchers said.

Women who underwent 3D mammography every other year were about 40% less likely to have a false-positive result, they said.

Regardless of the type of screening, false-positive results were substantially lower for older than younger age groups and women with entirely fatty versus extremely dense breasts, according to the researchers.

"Despite the important benefit of screening mammography in reducing breast cancer mortality, it can lead to extra imaging and biopsy procedures," co-author Diana Miglioretti said in the press release.

This can cause unnecessary "financial ... costs, and patient anxiety," said Miglioretti, professor and division chief of biostatistics at the UC-Davis.

Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas pleads guilty to wire fraud


Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas waits in the office of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to procure tickets to the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on January 29, 2020. 

File Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo


March 25 (UPI) -- A Florida-based political donor linked to Rudy Giuliani pleaded guilty Friday to wire fraud related to an insurance company he co-founded.

Lev Parnas, 50, appeared by video in a Manhattan hearing to enter the change of plea before U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken.

Parnas said that between 2012 and 2019, "I agreed with another person to give false information" to potential investors in his start-up company, Fraud Guarantee. He founded the company with co-defendant David Correia, who previously pleaded guilty to the scheme.

"I'm extremely sorry for my actions, your honor," Parnas said in court, according to WABC-TV in New York City.

Parnas and Correia told investors that Fraud Guarantee would help investigate potential business opportunities for signs of fraud.

Prosecutors said the men paid $500,000 to Giuliani, former New York City mayor and personal lawyer for former President Donald Trump, to work as a consultant for the supposed company.

Giuliani acknowledged he was paid the consulting fee but said he wasn't aware of any impropriety. He hasn't been charged in the scheme, Politico reported.

Parnas faces up to five years in prison when he's sentenced June 29.

In October, a jury found the Ukraine-born Parnas guilty of six counts of campaign finance charges for using money from a Russian backer to fund political donations to win support for a recreational marijuana business.

Florida non-profit cleaning beaches with litter-sifting robot

March 25 (UPI) -- A Florida nonprofit has enlisted the help of a unique robot to clean cigarette butts, bottle caps and other small pieces of litter from the state's beaches.

The nonprofit Keep Florida Beautiful said the beach cleaning robot, BeBot, was donated to the group by Surfing's Evolution and Preservation Foundation.

"It is meant to go over soft dry sand and it sifts the very top layer of sand, removing very small pieces of debris that are often missed in manual cleanups," Savanna Christy, executive director of Keep Florida Beautiful, told WKMG-TV.

Christy said the robot is not yet sensitive enough to clear microplastics, which measure 5 millimeters and smaller, but it can sift out anything larger than a squared centimeter.

"It does pick up plastic fragments, bottle caps, cigarette butts, plastic straws, food wrappers -- you name it, it's picking it up and sifting it out of the sand," Christy said.

Keep Florida Beautiful is the first nonprofit in the nation to use the remote-controlled robot for beach cleaning, the organization said.

Study shows that realistic models could make for more environmental wins


Researchers say scientific models meant to improve the environment and marine fisheries that consider real-world variables -- such as the availability of materials -- the win-win potential of these plans could increase. Photo by dimitrisvetsikas1969/Pixabay


March 24 (UPI) -- Environmental "win-wins" are ideal outcomes -- such as increasing a shrimp catches in ways that also have environmental sustainability by limiting adverse environmental impacts -- are harder to come by than thought, according to new research.

The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder found in a study published Thursday in the journal Nature Sustainability that incorporating real-world complexity -- including communication and compromise -- into outcome models may increase the environmental success of such plans.

"We used math to show real-world complexity makes win-wins harder to achieve," lead study author Margaret Hagwood said in a press release.

"Allowing scientists and stakeholders to compromise and aim for more achievable, realistic goals about environmental impact, food production, biodiversity, economic yield, etc," said Hagwood, a graduate student at CU Boulder.

The CIRES team analyzed 280 previous trade-off models and also created algorithms to show what happened when more variables were added in.

"At its core, it's a study about how to bridge a communication divide," said study co-author Ryan Langendorf.

Langendorf, a CIRES and CU Boulder Environmental Studies postdoctoral researcher, said adjusting goals to be more realistic helps to potentially create more ideal win-win environmental outcomes.

RELATED Little Ice Age subject of study

The CIRES study should help environmental modelers and managers to better communicate, according to Matthew Burgess, CIRES Fellow and assistant professor of Environmental Studies and Economics at CU Boulder.

"If a win-win means a community needs certain resources they can't afford, they will never reach an ideal outcome," Hagwood said.

"By identifying these barriers and minimizing them with proactive policies or technological advancements, you make the win-win more attainable," she said.