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The Latest on Ethiopian Airlines crash (all times local):

5 p.m.

A Greek man who narrowly missed the Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed near Addis Ababa on Sunday says he argued with ground staff to try and board after reaching the gate minutes too late.

“I saw the last passengers going through but the gate had already closed. I complained, in the usual way when that kind of thing happens. But they were very kind and placed me on another flight,” Antonis Mavropoulos told Greece’s private Skai Television, speaking from Nairobi.

Mavropoulos, who runs a recycling company and lives in Athens, was traveling to Kenya to attend an environmental conference.

“I’m slowly coming to terms with what happened and how close it came. On the other hand, I’m also very upset — I’m shattered — for those who were lost,” he said in the interview Monday. “To be honest, I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Mavropoulos put his survival down to luck.

“I didn’t check my suitcase because I knew the gap between connecting flights was tight. If I had checked the bag in, they would have waited for me,” he said. “This is a very difficult moment — one that can change your life.”

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4:45 p.m.

Ethiopia’s state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate cites the United States ambassador as saying a six-member team of U.S. aviation experts are on their way to the site of Sunday’s crash.

Ambassador Michael Raynor visited the crash site on Monday. He told the broadcaster that the experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were expected to arrive at the site on Tuesday.

He says that “Boeing and Interpol will also assist the Ethiopian government in the investigation. Interpol will assist in identifying the victims.”

The flight data recorder and voice cockpit recorder have been found.

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4:35 p.m.

Ugandan authorities say a senior police officer is among the dead in the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash on Sunday.

Ugandan police say they are mourning Christine Alalo, who served as police commissioner under the banner of the African Union mission in Somalia.

The statement calls her “a highly respected member of the force who loved her job.”

Alalo was returning from a trip to Italy. She is the lone Ugandan who died in the crash. All 157 on board were killed.

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4:20 p.m.

A German pastor and an aid worker from Germany are among the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday.

The World Council of Churches says Rev. Norman Tendis was traveling to a U.N. environment summit in Nairobi. The 51-year-old worked in Villach, Austria.

The German development aid organization GIZ confirms that a staffer was on the plane. Spokeswoman Tanja Stumpff tells The Associated Press that the woman was on a business trip.

Germany’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed that at least five German citizens died in the crash.

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4:05 p.m.

Catholic Relief Services announces “with heavy hearts” that four of its Ethiopian colleagues died in Sunday’s plane crash outside Addis Ababa.

The aid group in a statement says Sara Chalachew, Getnet Alemayehu, Sintayehu Aymeku, and Mulusew Alemu had been traveling to Nairobi for training.

The four had worked with the organization for as long as a decade. They worked in procurement, logistics and finance.

All 157 people on board were killed. They came from 35 countries.

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3:30 p.m.

There are scenes of agony as members of an association of Ethiopian airline pilots cry uncontrollably for colleagues killed in Sunday’s crash near Addis Ababa.

Framed photographs of seven crew members sit in chairs at the front of a crowded room.

One pilot says he had planned to watch a soccer game between Manchester and Arsenal with the flight’s main pilot, Yared Getachew.

It was Getachew who issued a distress call shortly after takeoff and was told to return. But all contact was lost.

Another pilot says he flew with Yared several times and said they even lived together before becoming senior pilots.

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3:15 p.m.

Pope Francis has sent his condolences to the families of the victims of the plane crash in Ethiopia.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said in a statement Monday that the pope was sad to learn about the crash and “offers prayers for the deceased from various countries and commends their souls to the mercy of Almighty God.”

The statement said, “Pope Francis sends heartfelt condolences to their families, and upon all who mourn this tragic loss he invokes the divine blessings of consolation and strength.”

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3 p.m.

Shares of Boeing are tumbling before the opening of U.S. markets following the crash in Ethiopia of a Boeing 737 Max 8, the second deadly crash since October.

All 157 people on board were killed on Sunday. A Lion Air model of the same plane crashed in Indonesia last year, killing 189 people.

Shares of Boeing Co. plunged more than 9 percent in premarket trading Monday. If that trend holds, it could be one of the company’s worst trading days in about a decade.

Indonesia and China have grounded all Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft. Ethiopian Airlines and Cayman Airways are doing the same.

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1:35 p.m.

Ethiopia’s state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate reports that the black box has been found from the crashed Ethiopian Airlines plane.

An airline official, however, tells The Associated Press that the box is partially damaged and that “we will see what we can retrieve from it.”

The official spoke on condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to speak to the media.

The plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa on Sunday en route to Nairobi.

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1:20 p.m.

China says two United Nations workers were among the eight Chinese nationals killed on the Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed shortly after takeoff Sunday.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang says the other Chinese passengers included four who were working for a Chinese company and two who had travelled to Ethiopia for “private matters.”

All 157 people on board the flight to Nairobi died.

Lu said Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders have sent condolence messages to their Ethiopian counterparts. China has extended condolences to victims’ families.

China has ordered its airlines to ground their Boeing 737 Max 8 aircrafts by 6 p.m.

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12:45 p.m.

The United Nations migration agency said that one of its staffers, German citizen Anne-Katrin Feigl, was on the plane en route to a training course in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and the plane’s destination.

Germany’s foreign ministry has officially confirmed that five victims of the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash that killed 157 people were German citizens.

The ministry said in a statement Monday that it was in contact with the families of the victims. It did not reveal any information on the identity of those who died in the crash Sunday.

All in all, 35 countries had someone among the 157 people who were killed. All people on board died minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

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12 p.m.

The U.N. office in Nairobi is joining Ethiopia in mourning the 157 dead in Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines crash shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

A moment of silence and U.N. flags at half-staff marked the deaths that included several workers with U.N. and affiliated organizations.

The U.N. resident coordinator in Nairobi, Siddharth Chatterjee, says that “This has taken us by shock. … But it also goes to reinforce the mortality of human life and therefore reinforces the need for humanity.”

He says U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent “a poignant message of condolences to everybody, not just the U.N. staff but the crew of the flight and all other nationalities which were on the plane.”

People from 35 countries died.

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10 a.m.

A spokesman says Ethiopian Airlines has grounded all its Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft as a safety precaution, following the crash of one of its planes in which 157 people were killed.

Asrat Begashaw said Monday that although it is not yet known what caused the crash on Sunday, the airline decided to ground its remaining four 737 Max 8 planes until further notice as “an extra safety precaution.” Ethiopian Airlines was using five new 737 Max 8 planes and was awaiting delivery of 25 more.

Begashaw said searching and digging to uncover body parts and aircraft debris will continue. He said forensic experts from Israel have arrived in Ethiopia to help with the investigation.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/world/the-latest-greek-man-says-he-narrowly-missed-doomed-flight

The aircraft climbed slowly after its wheels left the ground, then descended about 400 feet, climbed again and then plunged into a rural area. It carved a large crater near the city of Bishoftu, southeast of the capital, according to data supplied by Flightradar24, a Swedish company that tracks flights around the world. The accident killed eight Americans, 18 Canadians, 32 Kenyans and nine Ethiopians.

Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-fi-ethiopian-crash-20190310-story.html

In a story March 11 about the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft after a crash in Ethiopia, The Associated Press reported erroneously that China grounded its models of the same plane for nine hours. China’s aviation authority ordered its airlines to ground their Boeing 737 8 Max jets within nine hours, or by 6 p.m.

A corrected version of the story is below:

The Latest: Boeing model grounded in China after crash

China’s civilian aviation authority has ordered all Chinese airlines to temporarily ground their Boeing 737 Max 8 planes after one of the aircraft crashed in Ethiopia

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — The Latest on Ethiopian Airlines crash (all times local):

6 a.m.

China’s civilian aviation authority has ordered all Chinese airlines to temporarily ground their Boeing 737 Max 8 planes after one of the aircraft crashed in Ethiopia.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China said the order is to take effect by 6 p.m. Monday.

It said the order was taken out of safety concerns because the Ethiopian crash was the second in similar circumstances since an Indonesian crash in October also killed everyone aboard.

It said further notice would be issued after consultation with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing on safety measures taken.

Eight Chinese nationals were among the 157 people aboard the plane when it crashed Sunday shortly after takeoff.

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This story has been corrected to say Indonesia crash occurred in October.

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12:30 a.m.

The Norwegian Refugee Council says it is “deeply distressed” by the Ethiopian Airlines crash and that two colleagues are missing.

A statement says the two staffers had been scheduled to travel on the Sunday morning flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi in neighboring Kenya.

The statement gives no further details.

All 157 people on the plane were killed.

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11:17 p.m.

The United Nations migration agency says the U.N. and its agencies on Monday will fly flags at half-staff after early indications show 19 employees of U.N.-affiliated organizations died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash.

A statement says the organizations include World Bank, International Telecommunications Union, the U.N. Environment Program and others.

The statement also says one of the migration agency’s staffers died. Anne-Katrin Feigl was a German national who was en route to a training course in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and the plane’s destination.

All 157 people on board died minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

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11 p.m.

Nigeria’s foreign affairs ministry says a former ambassador is among the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash.

A statement says Abiodun Oluremi Bashua was a retired career envoy who served in various capacities in Iran, Austria and Ivory Coast.

It says the ambassador, born in 1951, was a “seasoned U.N. expert” with experience in several United Nations peacekeeping missions in Africa.

All 157 people died when the plane crashed minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa.

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10:30 p.m.

The World Food Program is confirming that two of the eight Italian victims aboard the Ethiopian Airlines jet worked for the Rome-based U.N. agency.

A WFP spokeswoman identified the victims as Virginia Chimenti and Maria Pilar Buzzetti.

Another three Italians worked for the Bergamo-based humanitarian agency Africa Tremila: Carlo Spini, his wife Gabriella Viggiani and the treasurer, Matteo Ravasio.

In addition, Paolo Dieci, a prominent aid advocate with the International Committee for the Development of Peoples, known by its acronym CISP, was killed.

Also among the Italian dead was Sebastiano Tusa, a noted underwater archaeologist and the Sicilian regional assessor at the Culture Ministry. RAI state television said he was heading to Malindi, Kenya to participate in a UNESCO conference on safeguarding underwater cultural heritage in east Africa, which opens Monday.

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10:15 p.m.

A U.N. official says the United Nations expects that about a dozen passengers affiliated with the world organization were on the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed outside Addis Ababa killing all 157 people on board, but it could be more.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Sunday that national delegates who might have been heading to U.N. meetings, including the U.N. Environment Program’s assembly, wouldn’t be included in the count.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said some colleagues were among the victims.

Earlier, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he is “deeply saddened” by the crash that including U.N. staff members, according to a statement from U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who gave no details.

–By Edith M. Lederer

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10:10 p.m.

The father of a British woman named Joanna Toole has told the DevonLive website that he has been informed that she was among the people who died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash.

Adrian Toole said his 36-year-old daughter Joanna was traveling for her work for the United Nations.

He told the website she was a fervent environmentalist who had worked on animal welfare issues since she was a child.

He said “Joanna’s work was not a job, it was her vocation.”

Adrian Toole said his daughter used to bring home pigeons and rats in need of care and had traveled to the remote Faroe Islands to try to stop whaling there.

She is one of seven British nationals confirmed to have died in the crash.

According to her Facebook page, she worked for the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

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9:55 p.m.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he is deeply saddened by the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash that killed 157 people, including 18 Canadians.

Trudeau said in a statement he joins the international community in mourning the lives of so many. He says the Canadian government is providing consular assistance and working with local authorities to gather further information.

He said he is reaching out to Kenya’s president and Ethiopia’s prime minister. The flight departed from Addis Ababa and was heading to Nairobi.

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9:40 p.m.

The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into the Ethiopian Airlines crash because there are French citizens among the 157 killed.

The prosecutor’s office announced the decision Sunday, without elaborating. It is a standard procedure when French citizens are killed abroad.

The French government announced that eight French people are among the victims and opened a crisis center for families of victims, but is not releasing the identities. The airline says seven French citizens are among the victims. The reason for the discrepancy isn’t immediately clear in the chaos of the crash aftermath.

Separately, France’s air accident authority, known as the BEA, said it would likely be involved in the Ethiopian-led investigation because French company Safran jointly manufactured the Boeing jet’s engines along with General Electric.

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9:25 p.m.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says “it is with great sadness and shock” that refugee agency colleagues were among the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash.

A statement by Filppo Grandi says his office is working to confirm how many colleagues were on board the plane that crashed shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa to Nairobi.

Both cities are hubs for humanitarian workers.

The statement also says that “colleagues from the United Nations and other partners were also on board.”

None of the 157 people on board survived.

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8:40 p.m.

The United Nations secretary-general says he is “deeply saddened” by the Ethiopian Airlines crash outside Addis Ababa and sends his sympathies to families of the victims, who include U.N. staff members.

The statement by the spokesman for Antonio Guterres gives no details on the victims but says the U.N. is working closely with Ethiopian authorities.

Ethiopian Airlines’ list of 35 nationalities represented by the victims notes that one had a U.N. passport.

The plane was heading to Nairobi, where a U.N. environment summit starts on Monday.

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8:25 p.m.

Ethiopia’s House of People’s Representatives has declared Monday a national day of mourning for all 157 victims of Sunday’s crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office says the cause of the crash will be “communicated promptly to the public as updates come in.”

The prime minister visited the crash site earlier Sunday, as did the airline’s CEO. The plane had been en route to Nairobi.

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7:55 p.m.

Identities of the 157 victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash continue to emerge, along with condolences.

Many of the 35 countries that had victims are hurrying to confirm deaths and inform families.

The Russian Embassy in Ethiopia says the airline has identified the three Russians on board as Yekaterina Polyakova, Alexander Polyakov and Sergei Vyalikov. News reports identify the first two as husband and wife. State news agency RIA-Novosibirsk cites a consular official in Nairobi as saying all three were tourists.

Serbia’s foreign ministry confirms that a citizen was among those killed but gives no details. Local media identify the man as 54-year-old Djordje Vdovic. The Vecernje Novosti daily reports that he worked at the World Food Program.

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7:50 p.m.

An Italian aid group that partners with UNICEF in northern Africa says one of its founders, Paolo Dieci, is among the dead in the Ethiopian Airlines crash.

The International Committee for the Development of Peoples, known by its acronym CISP, in a statement said “the world of international cooperation has lost one of its most brilliant advocates and Italian civil society has lost a precious point of reference.”

UNICEF Italia sent a tweet of condolences over Dieci’s death. It noted that CISP was a UNICEF partner in Kenya, Libya and Algeria.

In all eight Italians were killed Sunday. Three belonged to the Bergamo-based humanitarian group Africa Tremila and one was the Sicily regional assessor to the culture ministry, officials said.

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7:40 p.m.

Germany’s foreign ministry says “we must unfortunately assume that German citizens are also among the victims of the plane crash in Ethiopia.”

Ethiopian Airlines’ list of nationalities for 150 of the 157 people on board included five from Germany. The plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi on Sunday morning.

German officials didn’t say how many Germans were believed to have been on board.

The ministry said German diplomats “are in close contact with Ethiopian Airlines and the Ethiopian authorities to get confirmed information as soon as possible.”

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7:35 p.m.

A prominent Kenyan soccer official is believed to be among the 157 people killed in the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash.

Hussein Swaleh, the former secretary general of the Kenyan soccer federation, was due to return home on the flight after working as the match commissioner in an African Champions League game in Egypt on Friday.

The plane was destined for the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, but crashed minutes after takeoff Sunday in Addis Ababa.

Kenyan soccer federation president Nick Mwendwa said Swaleh was one of the 32 Kenyan nationals on the flight. Mwendwa wrote on Twitter: “Sad day for football.”

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7:25 p.m.

The United States confirms that Americans are among the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash outside Addis Ababa on Sunday morning.

A brief State Department statement says U.S. embassies in Addis Ababa and Nairobi are working with Ethiopia’s government and Ethiopian Airlines “to offer all possible assistance.”

The airline has said eight Americans were killed. All of the 157 people on board died.

The State Department says it will directly contact victims’ family members and that “out of respect for the privacy of the families, we won’t have any additional comments about the victims.”

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7:10 p.m.

Ethiopia’s state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting reports that the number of Ethiopian victims in Sunday’s plane crash is 18 and their families have been notified.

Ethiopian Airlines had said nine Ethiopian passengers were killed. This new total includes the flight crew.

People from 35 countries were on the flight. All 157 people were killed.

It is not yet clear what caused the crash of the new Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane six minutes after it took off en route for Nairobi.

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7:05 p.m.

British officials have confirmed that seven British nationals have died in the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

British ambassador to Ethiopia Alastair McPhail says in a video posted by the Foreign Office that embassy staff is working to get details.

The victims have not been named. The airline says all 157 on board were killed.

McPhail expressed condolences to the victims and urged people worried about loved ones to follow the Foreign Office’s social media channels.

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7 p.m.

Austrian media report that three local doctors were among the passengers on board an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed near Addis Ababa shortly after taking off for Nairobi.

The Austria Press Agency quotes a spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry, Peter Guschelbauer, saying the doctors were between 30 and 40 years old and worked at hospitals in Linz.

Guschelbauer, who couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, told APA that the doctors were traveling to Zanzibar for professional purposes.

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6:55 p.m.

A Slovak lawmaker says his wife, daughter and son were killed in the crash of a passenger plane in Ethiopia.

Anton Hrnko with the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party says he is announcing “in deep grief” that his wife Blanka, son Martin and daughter Michala were among the 157 people killed outside Addis Ababa on Sunday morning.

President Andrej Kiska offered his condolences to Hrnko and the relatives of the fourth Slovak victim.

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6:50 p.m.

The mayor of the northern Italian city of Bergamo says three members of a local humanitarian organization, Africa Tremila, were aboard the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed after takeoff, killing all aboard.

Bergamo Mayor Giorgio Gori said in a Facebook post that the president of the aid group, Carlo Spini, his wife and the treasurer, Matteo Ravasio, had been en route to South Sudan.

The foreign ministry says in all eight Italians were among the dead. They included the Sicilian regional assessor to the Culture Ministry, Sebastiano Tusa, according to the Sicilian regional president.

In a tweet, Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said it was a day of pain for everyone: “We are united with the relatives of the victims and offer them our heartfelt thoughts.”

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6:40 p.m.

Ethiopian Airlines says Ethiopian authorities, manufacturer Boeing and other international stakeholders will collaborate on an investigation into the cause of Sunday morning’s crash after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

A new statement by the airline also says families of the 157 victims have been contacted and that remains will be returned to them once identified.

The cause of the crash is not yet known. The new Boeing 737-8 MAX plane had been en route to Nairobi. Victims came from 35 countries.

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6:30 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other senior German officials are sending Ethiopia their condolences following news of the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane destined for Nairobi.

Merkel’s spokeswoman Martina Fietz said Sunday on Twitter that the chancellor expressed her “deeply felt condolences and sympathy for the relatives of the victims.”

Authorities in Ethiopia said all 157 people on board were killed in the crash. Five Germans were among the victims, said authorities.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier likewise issued statements of condolence.

Maas said Germany’s embassy in Addis Ababa was in close contact with Ethiopian authorities.

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6:20 p.m.

As sunset approaches at the site of an Ethiopian Airlines crash, searchers and a bulldozer pick through the scattered remains of the plane.

No one survived the crash. Authorities say 157 people were on board, with 35 nationalities represented.

Red Cross and other personnel are scouring a vast area for remains and pieces of the plane, which disintegrated with no large segments remaining.

It is not yet clear what caused the crash. The jetliner, a new Boeing 737-8 MAX, showed unstable vertical speed after takeoff, air traffic monitor Flightradar 24 said in a Twitter post.

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5:35 p.m.

Ethiopian Airlines has issued a new list of crash victims that now includes German, Austrian, Russian, Swedish, Spanish, Israeli citizens and others.

The new list shows 35 nationalities among the dead after the plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi on Sunday morning. In all, 157 people were on board.

Five Germans were killed and three each from Russia, Austria and Sweden. Spain, Israel Morocco and Poland each lost two citizens.

Countries losing one citizen were Belgium, Djibouti, Indonesia, Ireland, Mozambique, Norway, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, Serbia, Togo, Uganda, Yemen, Nepal and Nigeria.

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5:15 p.m.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirms that two Israeli citizens were among the 157 people killed in an Ethiopian Airlines crash outside Addis Ababa.

Netanyahu’s office said he spoke with Israeli envoys who briefed him with details. Netanyahu says in a statement that “our hearts go out to their families.”

More than 30 nationalities were among the victims.

Meanwhile, Slovakia’s foreign ministry confirms authorities’ earlier reports that four Slovak nationals were killed.

And a Dutch foreign ministry spokeswoman says embassy staff are working to confirm that five citizens from the Netherlands are among the dead.

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5:10 p.m.

The Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa on Sunday morning likely was carrying people set to attend a major United Nations environmental conference in Nairobi.

Authorities have said more than 30 nationalities were among the dead.

The U.N. Environment Assembly is set to begin on Monday in Kenya’s capital, where the plane was headed.

French President Emmanuel Macron and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres are among those expected. U.N. Environment has said more than 4,700 heads of state, ministers, business leaders and others would attend.

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4:50 p.m.

Ethiopia’s prime minister has visited the site of an Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed all 157 people thought to be on board.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office says he expressed his “profound sadness” and ordered a full investigation and “all required support” to the families of the dead.

More than 30 nationalities were among the victims.

The plane en route to Nairobi crashed six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa. The cause of the crash of the new Boeing 737-8 MAX is not yet known.

Images from the crash site show little left of the plane.

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4:20 p.m.

The new Boeing 737-8 MAX plane that crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa on Sunday morning was one of 30 purchased and being delivered to the rapidly expanding airline.

A Boeing statement in July noted the delivery of the first plane.

The Ethiopian Airlines CEO says the plane that crashed with 157 people thought to be on board had been delivered in mid-November.

It is not yet clear what caused the crash just six minutes after takeoff en route to Nairobi. The CEO says the pilot sent out a distress call and was given clearance to return.

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3:30 p.m.

The Ethiopian Airlines CEO and Kenya’s transport minister say Canadians, Chinese, Americans and others are among the many nationalities among the victims of Sunday morning’s deadly plane crash after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

Authorities earlier said 32 Kenyans and nine Ethiopians were killed. Now they add 18 Canadians; eight each from China, the United States and Italy; seven each from France and Britain; six from Egypt; five from the Netherlands and four each from India and Slovakia.

The airline has said 157 people were thought to be on board.

It is not yet clear what caused the crash of new Boeing 737-8 MAX plane shortly after takeoff from Bole Airport en route to Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

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2:45 p.m.

Ethiopian Airlines has published a photo that appears to show its CEO standing amid the wreckage of the plane that crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

Little of the plane can be seen in the freshly churned earth.

The airline’s social media post says that “Tewolde Gebremariam, who is at the accident scene now, regrets to confirm that there are no survivors. He expresses his profound sympathy and condolences to the families and loved ones of passengers and crew who lost their lives in this tragic accident.”

The airline has said 157 people — 149 passengers and 8 crew — are thought to have been on board the flight that crashed six minutes after takeoff en route to Nairobi.

It is not yet clear what caused the crash.

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1:50 p.m.

A spokesman for Ethiopian Airlines says the among the dead in the crash Sunday are 32 Kenyans and 17 Ethiopians. Asrat Begashaw said that 31 other nationalities were also among those on board the new Boeing 737-8 MAX plane that crashed, killing all the 157 people thought to be on the flight.

1:35 p.m.

Ethiopia’s state broadcaster says all passengers on the Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa are dead.

The airline has said 157 people were thought to be on board the flight to Nairobi on Sunday morning.

Broadcaster EBC says the passengers included 33 nationalities.

The cause of the crash of the new Boeing 737-8 MAX plane is not immediately known.

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1:10 p.m.

Records show that the Ethiopian Airlines passenger plane that crashed shortly after takeoff Sunday morning from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi was a new one.

The Planespotters civil aviation database shows that the plane, a Boeing 737-8 MAX, was delivered to Ethiopian Airlines in mid-November.

The Ethiopian Airlines’ statement says the 737-8 MAX crashed six minutes after takeoff, with 157 people thought to be on board.

The cause of the crash is not immediately known.

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11:45 a.m.

Ethiopian Airlines says it believes 149 passengers and eight crew members were on board a plane that crashed six minutes after taking off from Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on a flight to Nairobi.

A statement from the airline on Sunday morning said the Boeing 737 crashed around Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of the capital, shortly after taking off at 8:38 a.m. local time.

The airline statement said “search and rescue operations are in progress and we have no confirmed information about survivors or any possible casualties.”

The Ethiopian prime minister’s office in a separate, earlier statement offered condolences to families.

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11:33 a.m.

The Ethiopian prime minister’s office says an Ethiopian Airlines plane has crashed on its way to Nairobi, with deaths reported.

The office issued a statement Sunday morning saying the Boeing 737 was on a regularly scheduled flight when it crashed. The statement gave no details.

A spokesman for the airline confirmed the plane crashed while heading from Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. It is not yet clear where the crash occurred. The airline has not issued a statement.

The state-owned Ethiopian Airlines calls itself Africa’s largest carrier and has ambitions of becoming the gateway to the continent.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/travel/correction-ethiopia-plane-crash-the-latest-story

Black body bags were spread across the red sands near Bishoftu, Ethiopia, on Monday as word of the crash traveled to the families of 157 victims in 35 countries.

Investigators have yet to locate the flight data recorder, the so-called black box, which they hope will shed light on what brought down a new plane on a clear, sunny day.

A list of the dead released by Ethiopian Airlines included passengers from China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Israel, India and Somalia. Kenya lost 32 citizens. Canada lost 18.

The flight was intended to fly from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Nairobi, Kenya. Many of the victims worked for the United Nations and were set to attend a conference on the environment in Nairobi on Monday.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/world/boeing-737-max-air-crash-ethiopia.html

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(CNN)Early warning signs are flashing for President Donald Trump on some of his core arguments on immigration, the economy and North Korea that are central to his 2020 re-election message.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/11/politics/donald-trump-2020-immigration-economy-budget-north-korea/index.html

An Ethiopian Airlines jet faltered and crashed Sunday shortly after takeoff from the country’s capital, spreading global grief to families in 35 countries that had a loved one among the 157 people who were killed.

Three Austrian physicians. The co-founder of an international aid organization. A career ambassador. The wife and children of a Slovak legislator. A Nigerian-born Canadian college professor, author and satirist. They were all among the passengers who died Sunday morning when the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 jetliner crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi, Kenya.

The airline has said eight Americans were killed.

Body bags were spread out nearby while Red Cross and other workers looked for remains.

Around the world, families were gripped by grief. At the Addis Ababa airport, a woman called a phone number in vain. “Where are you, my son?” she said, in tears. Others cried as they approached the terminal.

At the Nairobi airport, hopes quickly dimmed for loved ones. “I just pray that he is safe or he was not on it,” said Agnes Muilu, who had come to pick up her brother.

Henom Esayas, whose sister’s husband was killed, told The Associated Press they were startled when a stranger picked up their frantic calls to his phone, told them he had found it in the debris and promptly switched it off.

DEBRIS OFF MADAGASCAR ‘MOST LIKELY’ FROM MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370, REPORT SAYS

Adrian Toole said his 36-year-old daughter Joanna was traveling for her work for the United Nations. (Facebook)

The father of a British woman named Joanna Toole has told the DevonLive website that he was informed she’d died in the crash.

Adrian Toole said his 36-year-old daughter Joanna was traveling for her work for the United Nations.

He told the website she was a fervent environmentalist who had worked on animal welfare issues since she was a child.

He said, “Joanna’s work was not a job, it was her vocation.”

Toole said his daughter used to bring home pigeons and rats in need of care and had traveled to the remote Faroe Islands to try to stop whaling there.

She is one of seven British nationals confirmed to have died in the crash.

According to her Facebook page, she worked for the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

The Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed shortly after takeoff from Ethiopia’s capital on Sunday morning, killing all 157 on board, authorities said, as grieving families rushed to airports in Addis Ababa and the destination, Nairobi. (AP Photo/Yidnek Kirubel)

Another victim, Cedric Asiavugwa, a law student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., was on his way to Nairobi after the death of his fiancee’s mother, the university said in a statement.

Asiavugwa, who was in his third year at the law school, was born and raised in Mombasa, Kenya. Before he came to Georgetown, he worked with groups helping refugees in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, the university said, adding that his family and friends “remembered him as a kind, compassionate and gentle soul, known for his beautifully warm and infectious smile.”

Shocked leaders of the United Nations, the U.N. refugee agency and the World Food Program announced that colleagues had been on the plane. The U.N. migration agency estimated some 19 U.N.-affiliated employees were killed. Both Addis Ababa and Nairobi are major hubs for humanitarian workers, and many people were on their way to a large U.N. environmental conference set to begin Monday in Nairobi.

The Addis Ababa-Nairobi route links East Africa’s two largest economic powers. Travelers and tour groups crowd the Addis Ababa airport’s waiting areas, along with businessmen from China, Gulf nations and elsewhere.

A list of the dead released by Ethiopian Airlines included passengers from China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Israel, India and Somalia. Kenya lost 32 citizens. Canada, 18. Several countries including the United States lost four or more people.

The State Department said it would contact victims’ family members directly and that “out of respect for the privacy of the families, we won’t have any additional comments about the victims.”

A brief State Department statement said U.S. embassies in Addis Ababa and Nairobi were working with Ethiopia’s government and Ethiopian Airlines “to offer all possible assistance.”

Ethiopian officials declared Monday a day of mourning.

The Ethiopian plane was new, delivered to the airline in November. The Boeing 737 Max 8 was one of 30 meant for the airline, Boeing said in July. The jet’s last maintenance was on Feb. 4, and it had flown just 1,200 hours.

The plane crashed six minutes after departure, plowing into the ground at Hejere near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, some 31 miles outside Addis Ababa, at 8:44 a.m.

There was no immediate indication why the plane went down in clear weather while on a flight to Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya.

Members of the Ethiopian community taking part in a special prayer for the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crash, at the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church of Canada Saint Mary Cathedral in Toronto, on Sunday. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via AP)

In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration said it would join the National Transportation Safety Board in assisting Ethiopian authorities with the crash investigation. Boeing planned to send a technical team to Ethiopia.

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The crash shattered more than two years of relative calm in African skies, where travel had long been chaotic. It also was a serious blow to state-owned Ethiopian Airlines, which has expanded to become the continent’s largest and best-managed carrier and turned Addis Ababa into the gateway to Africa.

African air travel has improved in recent years, with the International Air Transport Association in November noting “two years free of any fatalities on any aircraft type.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/world/ethiopian-airlines-plane-crash-spreading-global-grief-to-families-in-35-countries

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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s budget will project that the economy continues to grow at a 3 percent rate or higher over the next five years, despite a more pessimistic consensus from outside forecasters.

The White House will release the president’s budget Monday, along with its assumptions about how the economy will evolve under the administration’s proposed policies. The forecasts will show GDP reaching 3.2 percent this year compared to last year and 3.1 percent in 2020, according to a copy of the projections obtained by CNBC. Growth will then level off at 3 percent through 2024, according to the projections.

Those estimates are markedly higher than independent outside projections.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast growth this year at 2.7 percent, followed by a significant dropoff next year to 1.9 percent as the boost from the new tax law peters out. After that, the CBO predicts growth will hover between 1.6 and 1.8 percent through 2029. The Federal Reserve predicts long-run growth at about 2 percent.

However, the administration will tout that it has met or exceeded its economic forecasts for the president’s first two years in office, according to materials obtained by CNBC. In 2017, the White House budget projected growth would be 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the previous year. It actually hit 2.5 percent.

Last year, the administration forecast 3.1 percent growth by the end of the year. While government data said 2018 growth was 2.9 percent, economists on Wall Street who measure growth on a fourth-quarter-over-fourth-quarter basis say it was 3.1 percent for 2018.

In addition, outside estimates are typically based on current policies.

Trump’s budget – like those of his predecessors – assumes that the proposals outlined in his budget are enacted. An administration official said that includes a one-time spike of $174 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2020. The budget will also include deep cuts to all other federal spending: a 5 percent reduction from this year’s sequester caps. The White House is also expected to seek $8.6 billion to build the border wall, an official said.

The White House budget will also likely call for making all individual and corporate tax cuts permanent, in a bid to boost growth in later years. The individual tax cuts are currently slated to expire after 2025, while some corporate provisions will phase out over a number of years.

The White House forecasts show the pace of growth edging down to 2.9 percent in 2025, then leveling off at 2.8 percent through 2029. That is on par with the administration’s projections last year.

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/10/trumps-budget-will-project-3percent-gdp-growth-over-the-next-few-years-defying-consensus.html

MINNEAPOLIS — Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments about Israel have consumed Washington. But here in Minnesota’s diverse 5th Congressional District, a pillar of progressivism that handed Omar a decisive victory in November’s midterm elections, there has been far less outrage.

In interviews here, including with residents who are Jewish and Muslim, few of Omar’s constituents voiced any anger at the lawmaker, even if they found the remarks troubling. One Jewish leader said she would be open to a good-faith foreign policy debate.

To the director of the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center, a large mosque 10 miles south of this city, the furor is overblown.

“Anti-Semitism is real in this country,” Mohamed Omar, who is not related to the freshman Democrat, said in an interview in a private study, as children nearby hurried to Friday afternoon prayers. But the controversy, he said, is a “distraction.”

Mohamed Omar, Executive Director of the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center, speaks about the controversies surrounding Rep. Ilhan Omar in Bloomington, Minnesota, on March 8, 2019.Caroline Yang for NBC News

In the nation’s capital, Ilhan Omar drew an intense backlash for a tweet that suggested American support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins baby” and a remark that pro-Israel activists pushed for “allegiance to a foreign country.” She was accused by some lawmakers and prominent Jewish groups of anti-Semitism and playing on toxic anti-Jewish stereotypes.

In response, the House of Representatives last week overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning all hate, though the measure did not single her out. Omar, for her part, has apologized for suggesting that the United States’ connection to Israel is driven by money from AIPAC, a prominent pro-Israel lobby group.

Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman of Temple Israel, a Reform Jewish congregation that is the oldest synagogue in this city, said many of members of her community have called her over the last month to say they were troubled by Omar’s comments.

“I don’t know the intention, but I know the impact. The words have been hurtful,” Zimmerman said in the tranquil lobby of the 141-year-old temple, surrounded by 12 floor-to-ceiling windows that symbolize the Torah’s 12 tribes of Israel. She added that the comments are especially problematic amid a recent spike in anti-Semitic incidents nationwide.

Still, Zimmerman said she is open to differing opinions about Israel policies and the Israeli government.

“If she wants to have a conversation about lobbyists and money, let’s have that conversation,” Zimmerman said. “If she wants to have a conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, let’s have that conversation.”

But, the rabbi added, “in my mind, tweets are not the way that you communicate complex, complicated issues when you are a member of Congress.”

The mood at home

Minnesota boasts the largest Somali-American community in the U.S. — about 70,000 people, according to a Census Bureau estimate — and a robust community of Somalis live in Omar’s district, which covers Minneapolis and some of its suburbs. The district is filled with immigrants like Omar, a refugee who fled a Somali civil war with her family and sought asylum in the United States in 1995.

Her district is also reliably blue. Hillary Clinton got 73 percent of the vote here in 2016, and Omar took close to 80 percent in November. She became one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, taking the seat previously held by Keith Ellison, the first Muslim man.

Anab Ibrahim, the owner of a women’s boutique at the Village Market, a bustling Somali shopping mall where women admire brightly colored dresses and men line up for haircuts, said she was “very happy” about Omar’s history-making election and believes the congresswoman is a “good worker” who will stick up for low-income people.

Anab Ibrahim, owner of a women’s boutique and a Somali-American, in her shop at the Village Market.Daniel Arkin / NBC News

Ibrahim, 54, a Somali-American, was disturbed when she learned that a death threat against Omar had been scrawled on a bathroom stall in Rogers, a city northwest of the Twin Cities.

“She said an apology,” Ibrahim said, referring to Omar, “and I think it should be accepted.”

Abdulahi Farah, 38, a Somali-American volunteer at the mosque, said that anti-Semitism is unacceptable, but added: “If someone wants to criticize an entity — whether it’s AIPAC or the Israeli government or the NRA or the Saudi government — what is the problem?”

But not all Muslims in the area were as forgiving. Khalid Awda, 48, an Iraqi-American who served as an interpreter with the U.S. Army from 2006 to 2012, including a yearlong stint attached to the Minnesota National Guard, said he perceived Omar’s comments to be anti-Semitic.

“I feel shame,” said Awda, who said he was not able to vote in November.

“She does not represent Islam. She just represents herself,” Awda said, adding that he feared those who were offended by Omar’s words would also find fault with his wife and daughter simply because they, like the congresswoman, wear hijabs.

Two miles west of the Somali mall, young professionals sipped coffees and ate lunch at The Lynhall, a trendy restaurant where Omar held a meet-and-greet event during the campaign. Luke Shors, 42, an entrepreneur who lives in the district, said her language might have been over the top, but he was sympathetic to her foreign policy platform.

“I do think there’s value in having someone in Congress who can help give a voice to the Palestinian people, who historically have not had much political capital or representation,” Shors said.

At Bordertown Coffee, a nonprofit cafe inside a former University of Minnesota fraternity house and adjacent to the campus Hillel center, Zeke Joubert said he was “not riled up” about the comments.

“I feel like as a citizen, as someone she represents, she is encouraging us to challenge and think about the way … our international politics works,” said Joubert, a 34-year-old graduate student.

He said he believed the House resolution, which condemned all “hateful expressions of intolerance,” was a “waste of time” that did nothing to address what he described as “the materialities of racism,” such as the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Zeke Joubert, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, at Bordertown Coffee on March 8, 2019.Caroline Yang for NBC News

“We want to hold everyone accountable,” said Rae Young, 22, an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota who sat at Bordertown with a copy of “Maus,” a graphic novel about the Holocaust.

“If there’s Jewish folks in your community who think you’re making anti-Semitic comments, then that’s a problem,” Young said. “But if someone is accusing you of making anti-Semitic comments because they don’t like you as a woman of color, then that’s also a problem.”

‘She looks different … worships different’

The Minneapolis area is all too familiar with the consequences of racial and religious hatred. In August 2017, the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center was bombed. The three men charged in the attack were members of an Illinois militia group that called itself the White Rabbits.

No one was killed, but the blast shattered windows and destroyed part of the imam’s office, frightening worshippers and local religious leaders. The center’s leaders repaired the physical damage, but the trauma lingers.

“It’s kind of like being in a dark room, and someone might hit you at any moment, but you don’t know where it’s going to come from,” said Farah, the volunteer at the mosque, which sits just outside Omar’s district in Bloomington and counts many of her constituents as members.

Hassan Jama, an imam who leads prayer services at Dar Al-Farooq and other mosques across the area, spent much of last fall campaigning for Omar, organizing get-out-the-vote efforts.

Hassan Jama, Executive Director of the Islamic Association of North America, at the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Minnesota on March 8, 2019.Caroline Yang for NBC News

Jama, who is also executive director of the Minneapolis-based Islamic Association of North America, said he believes the “political climate” in the United States is Islamophobic, and that his congresswoman is the target of so much scrutiny because “she’s different.”

“She looks different, she speaks different, she dresses different, and she worships different,” he told NBC News. “But, luckily, she is in America, and she has a voice, and she’s serving the people who elected her.”

He dismissed the uproar around Omar — “I don’t believe that’s anti-Semitism. I don’t believe she hates Jews” — and said he knew of many Jewish people in the district who voted for her.

Mohamed Omar, the executive director of Dar Al-Farooq, has wrestled in recent days with Omar’s comments and noted she’s hardly the country’s main source of division.

“We have a president in the United States … who normalizes people who are literally embracing anti-Semitic behavior, people who are chanting ‘Jews will not replace us,’ and he’s saying there’s fine people on ‘both sides,'” Mohamed Omar said, referring to the 2017 marches in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“Eleven Jewish people died in a synagogue,” he added, referring to the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October, “and the country didn’t react like the way they’re reacting to Ilhan.”

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/far-washington-rep-omar-s-constituents-see-israel-controversy-different-n981441

LOS ANGELES (KGO) — A USC student, who is the son of an Oakland City Council member was shot and killed in a failed robbery attempt about a mile from campus early Sunday morning.

USC campus media identified the victim as Victor McElhaney, son of Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney.

McElhaney released the following statement on the death of her son:

Dear Friends,

It is with the utmost sadness that I share with you the tragic news that my son, Victor McElhaney, was slain last night in a senseless act of violence.

Victor was a 21 year-old senior at USC Thornton School of Music, where he was pursuing his lifelong love of music with some of the greats.

Victor was a son of Oakland. He was a musician who drew his inspiration from the beat, soul, and sound of the Town and he belonged in every nook and cranny of Oakland.

I miss my baby. Please keep me, my family, and all of my son’s friends in your thoughts and prayers.

We are beginning a new chapter in this reoccurring circle of violence…And it will take all of us together to make it through this tragedy.

Arrangements for services in Oakland will be made as soon as Victor is brought home.

Gratefully & Prayerfully,

Councilmember Lynette Gibson McElhaney

Representing#LoveLife in the Heart & Soul of the Town

Oakland District 3

A source who knew Victor McElhaney tells ABC7 that he was “amazingly talented, gifted and really cared and wanted to give back to the community.”

McElhaney, an Oakland native, attended Oakland School for the Arts and then California State University East Bay before transferring to USC in 2017, where he was studying music. McElhaney was a drummer and jazz musician.

The shooting happened just after midnight in the area of Adams Boulevard and Maple Avenue, located east of the University of Southern California campus.

A USC student was shot and killed in a failed robbery attempt about a mile from campus early Sunday morning, police said.

Police say several suspects approached the victim in what appears to be a robbery attempt, fired at him and then fled the scene in a vehicle. He was transported to a local hospital in critical condition and later died.

No suspect description was immediately available.
The school was making sure students were aware of counseling services available to them.

USC issued this statement:

We are deeply saddened by the death of Victor McElhaney. He was a gifted musician and a beloved member of the Trojan Family. His loss will affect all of the faculty and students who knew him. We appreciate the diligent and ongoing efforts of the Los Angeles Police Department to quickly identify and arrest those responsible for this senseless crime and extend our greatest sympathies to Victor’s family and friends.

Source Article from https://abc7news.com/oakland-city-council-members-son-killed-in-shooting-near-usc-source-says/5181986/

Pete Buttigieg said gaining the legal ability to marry his husband gave him a personal view of the importance of policy decisions by politicians “who had power over me and millions of others.”

Buttigieg, who came out as gay during his 2015 re-election campaign, said he entered politics “in Mike Pence’s Indiana” at a time that “you could either be out, or you could be in office, but you couldn’t do both.”

He called for a federal equality law to extend non-discrimination protections to LGBT people and said, “We’ve got to end the war on transgender Americans.”

“Let’s be under no illusion: There are attacks on transgender Americans from the Oval Office. Picking on troops, people willing to lay down their lives for this country, not to mention teenagers in high schools,” Buttigieg said.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/sxsw-town-hall-delaney-gabbard-buttigieg/index.html

President Trump and his advisers are launching a behemoth 2020 campaign operation combining his raw populist message from 2016 with a massive data-gathering and get-out-the-vote push aimed at dwarfing any previous presidential reelection effort, according to campaign advisers, White House aides, Republican officials and others briefed on the emerging strategy.

Trump’s advisers also believe the Democratic Party’s recent shift to the left on a host of issues, from the push for Medicare-for-all to a proposed Green New Deal, will help the president and other Republicans focus on a Trumpian message of strong economic growth, nationalist border restrictions and “America First” trade policies. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan will become, in signs and rally chants, “Keep America Great!”

The president’s strategy, however, relies on a risky and relatively narrow path for victory, hinged on demonizing Trump’s eventual opponent and juicing turnout among his most avid supporters in Florida, Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest — the same areas that won him the White House but where his popularity has waned since he was elected. Some advisers are particularly concerned about the president’s persistent unpopularity among female and suburban voters, and fear it will be difficult to replicate the outcome of 2016 without former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as a foil.

Campaign officials have also begun preparing for attacks on any politically damaging findings by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But even as the Mueller probe, congressional investigations and threats of impeachment swirl around him, Trump is starting his reelection bid with the full support of the Republican National Committee, a far more sophisticated data machine than his first election had and a party that has molded itself in his image while looking past his combative and incendiary style.

The reelection effort has already raised more than $100 million, with millions of small-dollar donors and wealthy supporters poised to add to that record haul. Officials said the operation is targeting 23 million key voters in swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. The campaign also plans to enlist more than 1 million volunteers using a vast database of supporters who have attended Trump’s raucous political rallies over the past two years, officials said.

The president will kick off a heavy rotation of such rallies in battleground states in coming weeks, officials said. The campaign, with headquarters in Arlington, Va., has already announced a national press team and, one official said, plans to create a unit for the sole purpose of waging war against the news media.

“We are creating the largest campaign operation in American history, an unstoppable apparatus that will follow and implement President Trump’s strategy to great effect,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said. “On every metric, we are on track to outpace our 2016 numbers by many multiples.”

But Democrats — fresh off a wave midterm election that brought them control of the House — say Trump is a severely weakened incumbent with a tired anti-immigrant message who has alienated the female and suburban voters who will decide the election. They see his 2016 electoral college victory as a fluke and his approval numbers, consistently stuck in the low 40s, as an opportunity. More than a dozen Democratic candidates are already competing for a chance to make him a one-term president.

“Trump is weak,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, a Democratic strategist and senior adviser at MoveOn. “And he’s doubling down on his shrinking base. Independents have left him, women have left him. . . . I don’t think you would see this many people jumping in if they didn’t think Trump could be beat.”

Capping a week in which Trump’s former campaign manager was sentenced to prison on tax fraud and other crimes, the president traveled Friday to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for a weekend retreat with hundreds of Republican donors. Standing in a tent perched atop the resort’s pool on Friday night, the president lashed into Democrats, trumpeted his accomplishments and riffed for more than an hour to more than 300 in attendance — and none of his domestic woes came up, attendees said. The retreat was slated to bring in $7 million for the president’s joint reelection effort with the RNC, one official said.

Trump recently received an extensive slide-show briefing on the campaign effort in the White House residence and has taken intense interest in the details of the battle to come, advisers say. He regularly quizzes advisers about potential foes — such as Sens. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former vice president Joe Biden — and about individual battleground states, such as Pennsylvania and Florida. He also has asked aides about the perceived popularity of his positions, such as his vow to remove troops from Syria, and is an avid consumer of polling data, advisers say.

At the Florida fundraiser, Trump said that Warren had crumbled under his attacks and that he wanted to save his most withering lines about other Democrats for later in the primary, two attendees said.

Trump has sought to build a 2020 messaging campaign around the idea of “promises kept” — replacing his 2016 “Make America Great Again” slogan with “Keep America Great!” and telling his supporters to chant “Finish the wall” instead of “Build the wall,” even though no section of his promised border wall has actually been built.

The campaign and Republican allies have pointed to recent Democratic proposals for expanding Medicare and investing in green energy projects as a chance to frame the 2020 race as a referendum on what they view as socialist policies. Many Republicans believe painting Trump’s opponents as extremists provides the clearest path to his reelection.

“If there’s a head wind pushing, it’s probably pushing the Democrat Party further to the radical left, rather than pushing the president into a one-term [presidency],” said Bryan Lanza, an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign and transition. “Nothing’s really changed for us. It’s still going to be the same binary choice between a Republican set of principles as opposed to a socialist Democratic set of principles. And we’ll gladly take that choice.”

A 10-person war room at the RNC has been working to document Democrats’ positions on the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-all, abortion and U.S.-Israel relations, according to two Republican Party officials. Trackers from the conservative super PAC America Rising are camped out in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, helping to create opposition research material on each of the Democratic contenders, said Sarah Dolan, America Rising’s executive director. 

“We’re going to be hitting these candidates from the left and the right,” she said. “We want to create as much chaos as possible.”

Dan Eberhart, a prominent GOP donor, said that “the more divided and extreme the Democratic field is, the better for Trump. Right now they are trying to outdo each other with populist ideas from the far left. But Trump needs to resist the urge to stick his fingers in the Democratic primary waters by commenting daily.”

Harris has gotten a lot of attention from many Republicans, and Trump’s advisers say he is watching her campaign closely. 

“Is there any [Democrat] I’m scared of? The answer is no,” said Brian O. Walsh, who runs the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action. “Because all of them are going to have to go through what I call the liberal gauntlet.”

Not every Republican is so confident. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican moderate who is considering a primary race against Trump, told CBS News last month that Trump looks “pretty weak in the general election.”

The RNC took the unusual step of voting unanimously to pledge its “undivided support” of Trump during its winter meeting in January, and party officials have been actively pointing to the president’s high poll numbers among Republican voters to scare off primary challengers.

Campaign officials are calling state party leaders across the country to ensure that the 2020 convention is an unimpeded coronation of Trump — and are seeking to install allies in delegate and chair roles. Campaign advisers say they have taken note of incumbent presidents who lost because they did not have the party machine fully behind them.

Hogan and other potential candidates are watching to see if Trump will maintain that support after Mueller wraps up his investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia’s election interference effort. The probe has already led to convictions and guilty pleas from several of the president’s 2016 aides, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort.  

Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report, said Trump will probably need to expand his support beyond his base and win back moderates and independent voters who sided with Democrats during last year’s midterms, said Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report. 

Focusing on divisive issues like immigration and his proposed border wall won’t help with that, she said, noting that Trump’s approval ratings have remained below 50 percent throughout his presidency. During the midterms, Trump frequently did not follow the urging of many Republicans that he focus on the growing economy; instead, he injected polarizing issues such as birthright citizenship into the debate.

“Why is he spending time leaning into an issue that has a 60 percent disapproval rate?” Walter said. “It’s a real lack of discipline.”

Campaign officials said they follow Trump’s lead on messaging.

Several GOP officials pointed to Trump’s boisterous and overflowing campaign rally last month in El Paso as evidence of his political strength heading into 2020. Of several thousand people who registered for the rally, about half were registered Democrats, 70 percent were Hispanic and 25 percent didn’t vote in 2016, Parscale said.

The campaign has made Trump’s rallies a centerpiece of its data effort, aiming to turn rally­goers into volunteers, donors and recruiters for the president’s cause. 

Political operatives from both parties have said the map of battleground states has contracted since 2016, with Ohio seen as more comfortably Republican and Nevada likely to go to the Democrats. Running the table in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — states where Democrats rebounded last year after losing to Trump in 2016 — will be a top priority for the president, Lanza said. 

Trump and his allies are also focusing on Florida, where they see an opportunity to cut into Democrats’ lead with Hispanic voters. Trump spoke to a mostly Hispanic crowd when he visited Miami last month to call for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to resign.

Trump’s campaign began running Spanish-language ads on Facebook last week, primarily targeting Florida voters, that amplified his message about Maduro and socialism.

Dawsey reported from Palm Beach, Fla.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-massive-reelection-campaign-has-2016-themes–and-a-2020-infrastructure/2019/03/10/5f44109c-4124-11e9-a0d3-1210e58a94cf_story.html

WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential hopeful Julian Castro took a jab at fellow 2020 candidate Bernie Sanders for shunning reparation payments for slavery descendants while wanting to write a “big check” for his democratic socialist agenda.

Sanders recently told “The View” he wants to help distressed communities, but wouldn’t back monetary payments to African-American slave descendants, saying “I think there are better ways to do that than just writing out a check.”

Castro, the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary, took issue with Sanders’ dismissal while wanting to spend big elsewhere.

“It’s interesting to me that, when it comes to Medicare-for-all, health care, the response there has been, we need to write a big check,” Castro told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “When it comes to tuition-free or debt-free college, the answer has been: ‘we need to write a big check.’ And so, if the issue is compensating the descendants of slaves, I don’t think that the argument about writing a big check ought to be the argument that you make, if you’re making an argument that a big check needs to be written for a whole bunch of other stuff.”

Castro said if he were president he’d address the “original sin of slavery” by appointing a commission to consider how best to handle reparations.

“If under the Constitution, we compensate people because we take their property,” Castro said, “why wouldn’t you compensate people who actually were property?”

Source Article from https://nypost.com/2019/03/10/julian-castro-jabs-at-bernie-sanders-over-reparations-comments/

An Ethiopian Airlines jet faltered and crashed Sunday shortly after takeoff from the country’s capital, carving a gash in the earth and spreading global grief to 35 countries that had someone among the 157 people who were killed.

There was no immediate indication why the plane went down in clear weather while on a flight to Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya. The crash was strikingly similar to that of a Lion Air jet that plunged into the sea off Indonesia minutes after takeoff last year, killing 189 people. Both accidents involved the Boeing 737 Max 8.

The crash shattered more than two years of relative calm in African skies, where travel had long been chaotic. It also was a serious blow to state-owned Ethiopian Airlines, which has expanded to become the continent’s largest and best-managed carrier and turned Addis Ababa into the gateway to Africa.

“Ethiopian Airlines is one of the safest airlines in the world. At this stage we cannot rule out anything,” CEO Tewolde Gebremariam told reporters. He visited the crash site, standing in the gaping crater flecked with debris.

Black body bags were spread out nearby while Red Cross and other workers looked for remains. As the sun set, the airline’s chief operating officer said the plane’s flight data recorder had not yet been found.

Around the world, families were gripped by grief. At the Addis Ababa airport, a woman called a mobile number in vain. “Where are you, my son?” she said, in tears. Others cried as they approached the terminal.

Henom Esayas, whose sister’s Nigerian husband was killed, told The Associated Press they were startled when a stranger picked up their frantic calls to his mobile phone, told them he had found it in the debris and promptly switched it off.

Shocked leaders of the United Nations, the U.N. refugee agency and the World Food Program announced that colleagues had been on the plane. The U.N. migration agency estimated some 19 U.N.-affiliated employees were killed. Both Addis Ababa and Nairobi are major hubs for humanitarian workers, and many people were on their way to a large U.N. environmental conference set to begin Monday in Nairobi.

The Addis Ababa-Nairobi route links East Africa’s two largest economic powers. Sunburned travelers and tour groups crowd the Addis Ababa airport’s waiting areas, along with businessmen from China, Gulf nations and elsewhere.

A list of the dead released by Ethiopian Airlines included passengers from China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Israel, India and Somalia. Kenya lost 32 citizens. Canada, 18. Several countries including the United States lost four or more people.

Ethiopian officials declared Monday a day of mourning.

At the Nairobi airport, hopes quickly dimmed for loved ones. “I just pray that he is safe or he was not on it,” said Agnes Muilu, who had come to pick up her brother.

The crash is likely to renew questions about the 737 Max , the newest version of Boeing’s popular single-aisle airliner, which was first introduced in 1967 and has become the world’s most common passenger jet.

Indonesian investigators have not determined a cause for the October crash, but days after the accident Boeing sent a notice to airlines that faulty information from a sensor could cause the plane to automatically point the nose down.

The Lion Air cockpit data recorder showed that the jet’s airspeed indicator had malfunctioned on its last four flights, though the airline initially said problems had been fixed.

Safety experts cautioned against drawing too many comparisons between the two crashes until more is known about Sunday’s disaster.

The Ethiopian Airlines CEO “stated there were no defects prior to the flight, so it is hard to see any parallels with the Lion Air crash yet,” said Harro Ranter, founder of the Aviation Safety Network, which compiles information about accidents worldwide.

The Ethiopian plane was new, delivered to the airline in November. The Boeing 737 Max 8 was one of 30 meant for the airline, Boeing said in July. The jet’s last maintenance was on Feb. 4, and it had flown just 1,200 hours.

The plane crashed six minutes after departure , plowing into the ground at Hejere near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) outside Addis Ababa, at 8:44 a.m.

The jet showed unstable vertical speed after takeoff, air traffic monitor Flightradar 24 said. The senior Ethiopian pilot, who joined the airline in 2010, sent out a distress call and was given clearance to return to the airport, the airline’s CEO told reporters.

In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration said it would join the National Transportation Safety Board in assisting Ethiopian authorities with the crash investigation. Boeing planned to send a technical team to Ethiopia.

The last deadly crash of an Ethiopian Airlines passenger flight was in 2010, when a plane went down minutes after takeoff from Beirut, killing all 90 people on board.

African air travel has improved in recent years, with the International Air Transport Association in November noting “two years free of any fatalities on any aircraft type.”

Sunday’s crash comes as the country’s reformist young prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has vowed to open up the airline and other sectors to foreign investment in a major transformation of the state-centered economy.

Speaking at the inauguration in January of a new passenger terminal in Addis Ababa to triple capacity, the prime minister challenged the airline to build a new “Airport City” terminal in Bishoftu — where Sunday’s crash occurred.

___

Yidnek reported from Bishoftu, Ethiopia.

___

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa .

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/world/ethiopian-airlines-crash-kills-157-spreads-global-grief

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday will ask the U.S. Congress for an additional $8.6 billion to help pay for the wall he promised to build on the southern border with Mexico to combat illegal immigration and drug trafficking, officials familiar with his 2020 budget request told Reuters.

The demand is more than six times what Congress allocated for border projects in each of the past two fiscal years, and 6 percent more than Trump has corralled by invoking emergency powers this year.

Democrats, who oppose the wall as unnecessary and immoral, control the U.S. House of Representatives, making it unlikely the Republican president’s request will win congressional passage. Republicans control the Senate.

The proposal comes on the heels of a bruising battle with Congress over wall funding that resulted in a five-week partial federal government shutdown that ended in January, and could touch off a sequel just ahead of a trifecta of ominous fiscal deadlines looming this fall.

Asked on Fox News Sunday about the new funding request and if there would be another budget fight over Trump’s wall, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said, “I suppose there will be … He’s going to stay with his wall and he’s going to stay with the border security theme. I think it’s essential.”

Broadly speaking on the budget, Kudlow told Fox, “The president is proposing roughly a 5 percent across-the-board reduction in domestic spending accounts.”

Regardless of whether Congress passes it, the budget request could help Trump frame his argument on border security as the 2020 presidential race begins to take shape, with the president seeking re-election.

“Build the wall” was one of his signature campaign pledges in his first run for office in 2016. “Finish the wall” is already a feature of his re-election campaign, a rallying cry plastered across banners and signs at his campaign rallies.

“It gives the president the ability to say he has fulfilled his commitment to gain operational control of the southwest border,” an administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of the budget request.

“We have provided the course of action, the strategy and the request to finish the job. It’s a question of, will Congress allow us to finish the job,” a second administration official said.

Funding legislation needs to be passed before Oct. 1 – the start of the 2020 federal fiscal year – or the government could shut down again. If Congress and the White House fail to agree to lift mandatory spending caps set in a 2011 law, steep automatic cuts in many programs would kick in. Around the same time, Trump and lawmakers must agree to lift the debt ceiling, or risk a default, which would have chaotic economic fallout.

 

722 MILES OF WALL

Trump’s wall request is based off a 2017 plan put forward by Customs and Border Protection officials to build or replace 722 miles (1,162 km) of barrier along the border, which in total is estimated to cost about $18 billion.

So far, only 111 miles (179 km) have been built or are underway, officials said. In fiscal 2017, $341 million in funding was allocated for 40 miles (64 km) of wall, and in 2018, another $1.375 billion was directed to 82 miles (132 km).

For fiscal 2019, Trump demanded $5.7 billion in wall funds, but Congress appropriated only $1.375 billion for border fencing projects.

Following the rejection of his wall funding demand, Trump declared the border was a national emergency – a move opposed by Democrats and some Republicans – and redirected $601 million in Treasury Department forfeiture funds, $2.5 billion in Defense Department drug interdiction funds and $3.6 billion from a military construction budget, for total spending of $8.1 billion for the wall.

The administration has not estimated how far the 2019 funds will go, but officials said average costs are about $25 million per mile (1.6 km).

Trump’s $8.6 billion in proposed wall funding for fiscal 2020 would include $5 billion from the Department of Homeland Security budget and $3.6 billion from the Pentagon’s military construction budget. The budget proposal will also include another $3.6 million in military construction funding to make up for any projects delayed by the wall, officials said.

The Department of Homeland Security is one of a few priority areas to get a boost in Trump’s budget plan, which seeks to slash funding to many non-defense programs.

Trump will propose an overall 5 percent increase to the Department of Homeland Security budget over fiscal 2019 appropriations, including $3.3 billion, or 22 percent more, for Customs and Border Protection, and $1.2 billion more for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a 16 percent hike, officials said.

The budget proposal includes a plan to hire more than 2,800 law enforcement and support personnel for the agencies, and 100 immigration judge teams, officials said.

Trump faces both political and court battles to free up the money he wants for the current fiscal year. Many lawmakers accused Trump of overstepping his constitutional powers by declaring an emergency to free up the funds. The House has already voted to revoke the emergency, and the Senate is likely to do the same this week. Trump is expected to veto the resolution.

A coalition of state governments led by California has sued Trump to block the emergency move, though legal experts have said the lawsuits face a difficult road.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Will Dunham and Kevin Drawbaugh)

Source Article from https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/03/10/in-budget-trump-to-ask-congress-for-dollar86-billion-for-border-wall/23688993/

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-CortezAlexandria Ocasio-CortezBill Nye comes out in support of Green New Deal: Ocasio-Cortez ‘gets it’ Ocasio-Cortez on moderates: ‘We view cynicism as an intellectually superior attitude’ Klobuchar says she’ll ‘use humor’ in campaigning against Trump MORE (D-N.Y.) said Saturday that in the United States, “if you don’t have a job, you are left to die.”

Ocasio-Cortez, who made the remark at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, added that “we should not be haunted by” the possibility of automated workers replacing jobs, according to The Verge.

“We should be excited by that. But the reason we’re not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don’t have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem,” added the congressman, whose Green New Deal proposal includes a federal jobs guarantee.

Ocasio-Cortez also said during her interview that automation could allow for more time to focus on art, invention, the sciences and “enjoying the world that we live in.”

“Not all creativity needs to be bonded by wage,” she said. 

Ocasio-Cortez describes herself as a democratic socialist. She has urged the Democratic party to consider progressive policies and proposed the Green New Deal resolution, which suggests aiming for zero carbon emissions in a decade. The resolution also aims “to create millions of good, high-wage jobs in the United States.”

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/house/433412-ocasio-cortez-in-us-if-you-dont-have-a-job-you-are-left-to-die

<!– –>


Life

10:00 AM ET Sat, 9 March 2019

On Sunday March 10 at 2 a.m., most Americans will set our clocks forward one hour. That means losing an hour of sleep but seeming to gain some precious sunshine.

Benjamin Franklin first introduced the idea of daylight saving time in a 1784 essay titled “An Economical Project.” But the modern concept is credited to George Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand, who in 1895 “proposed a two-hour time shift so he’d have more after-work hours of sunshine to go bug hunting in the summer,” the National Geographic reports.

The concept resurfaced during WWI as a way to save energy. The idea was that people would spend more time outside and less time inside with the lights on at night and, therefore, conserve electricity.

“But it was only done during the summer,” Vox reports. “Otherwise, farmers would have to wake up and begin farming in the dark to be on the same schedule as everyone else.”

The law “to save daylight” was passed by Congress in 1918. After the war, however, state governments were left to decide whether they wanted to continue with the time change.

The law resurfaced during WWII but again, after the war, the time change decision was left to each state. Some states kept it and others abandoned it. Daylight saving time didn’t officially become a law until 1966, under the Uniform Time Act. Now, according to the Department of Transportation, daylight saving time reduces crime, conserves energy and even saves lives.

Still, not everyone is a fan. After all, “springing forward” and losing an hour of sleep can hurt workers’ productivity. Studies have shown that even one night of not getting proper sleep can have ripple effects: It can make you feel hungrier than usual, it puts you at greater risks for accidents while driving and at work, it can decrease your focus and it can makes you susceptible to catching a cold.

States can opt out of daylight saving time. Hawaii and most of Arizona already have. Another handful of states have considered or experimented with it. American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands also don’t observe daylight saving time.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, meanwhile, is introducing a bill to shift the entire country onto daylight saving time for good. “Studies have shown many benefits of a year-round Daylight Saving Time, which is why Florida’s legislature overwhelmingly voted to make it permanent last year,” Rubio said.

The idea of the Sunshine Protection Act has its adherents: Given that our current system of having to change clocks is “irritating” and potentially “perilous,” as one writer at Slate puts it, Florida’s version of the law is “the only good piece of legislation to emerge from Tallahassee so far this century.”

Don’t miss:

Here’s why daylight saving time hurts workers’ productivity

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Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/when-and-why-daylight-saving-time-started-in-the-us.html

CLOSE

A hospital in California drew controversy after using a robot to deliver end-of-life news to a patient.
Wochit, USA TODAY

A California hospital delivered end-of-life news to a 78-year-old patient via a robotic machine this week, prompting the man’s family to go public with their frustration. 

Ernest Quintana was admitted to the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center emergency department in Fremont, California, on March 3, granddaughter Annalisia Wilharm told USA TODAY in a written message Saturday. The family knew he was dying of chronic lung disease.

After an initial diagnosis, a follow-up visit was made to Quintana’s intensive care unit room by a machine accompanied by a nurse. 

The “robot,” as Wilharm says the family refers to the machine, displayed a video of a remote doctor who communicated with Quintana.

A video of the exchange provided to USA TODAY by Wilharm shows the machine being used on Monday to tell grandfather and granddaughter that the hospital had run out of effective treatments.

Annalisia Wilharm needed to restate much of what the the machine communicated, as her grandfather struggled to hear and understand. They learned that the doctor believed Quintana would not be able to return home for hospice care. They discussed the appropriate amount of morphine to use to ease Quintana’s suffering.

“If you’re coming to tell us normal news, that’s fine, but if you’re coming to tell us there’s no lung left and we want to put you on a morphine drip until you die, it should be done by a human being and not a machine,” Catherine Quintana — Ernest’s daughter and Wilharm’s mother — said Friday.

Ernest Quintana died on Tuesday, Wilharm told USA TODAY in a written message.

The hospital says that the situation was highly unusual and said officials “regret falling short” of the patient’s expectations, according to Michelle Gaskill-Hames, senior vice president of Kaiser Permanente Greater Southern Alameda County.

“The evening video tele-visit was a follow-up to earlier physician visits,” Gaskill-Hames said in a written response. “It did not replace previous conversations with patient and family members and was not used in the delivery of the initial diagnosis.”

Wilharm told USA TODAY on Saturday that the hospital’s response was insufficient: “The apology they gave wasn’t good enough for me at all,” she wrote.

In an interview with KTVU, the family expressed dismay that the machine was unable to speak to Quintana in a way he could hear. That forced Wilharm to herself deliver the news to her ailing grandfather.

Speaking generally, Steve Pantilat — the chief of the palliative medicine division at University of California — said bad news is always difficult to deliver and not all doctors do so in person with empathy.

Pantilat said that the robot technology has helped many patients and families in his experience. 

Contributing: The Associated Press

 

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/03/09/california-hospital-robot-delivers-end-life-news-family-outraged/3113760002/

White House national security adviser John Bolton said Sunday that “momentum” is on the side of the U.S.-backed National Assembly in Venezuela and that President Nicolas Maduro “fears” that if he orders the arrest of opposition leader Juan Guaido, “it would not be obeyed.”


“I think momentum is on Guaido’s side. Reports in the press that stress that the military hasn’t shifted [from Maduro to Guaido] miss the point entirely,” Bolton said on ABC’s “This Week.”


“They have not sought to arrest Guaido and the National Assembly in the opposition, and I think one reason for that is that Maduro fears if he gave that order, it would not be obeyed,” he explained.

ABC NEWS, MARTHA RADDATZ: And I want to turn now to Venezuela. We’ve seen the mass demonstrations, trying to halt food aid into the country, Nicolas Maduro looks like he is not really going anywhere. ABC’s Tom Llamas talked to Venezuelan President Maduro a few weeks ago, who said he fears President Trump because of those around him, including you. Let’s listen.


TOM LLAMOS, WORLD NEWS TONIGHT ANCHOR: Do you fear President Trump?


NICOLAS MADURO, PRESIDENT OF VENEZUELA: I fear the people that are around him like John Bolton, an extremist and expert of the Cold War. Elliott Abrams, a liar that trafficked arms and drugs in Central America and around the world and brought war to the United States. I think these people surrounding President Trump are bad on the subject of Venezuela.


RADDATZ: I think you got the idea there, pointing the finger, right, at you and others. Do you want Maduro to fear the advice you’re giving to the president?


JOHN BOLTON: Let me just say I’m honored to be named by Nicolas Maduro. I add him to the list of other people who’ve criticized me over the years. I don’t wish him any ill will. I tweeted some weeks ago I hope his future consists of living on a nice beach somewhere far from Venezuela. It’s not just Maduro though. It’s the entire regime. It’s a group of kleptocrats who have plundered Venezuela of its oil wealth, have impoverished the people. You can see that now with the collapse of their nationwide electrical grid …


RADDATZ: But do you think Maduro’s going anywhere. It’s been about six weeks since the U.S. backed Juan Guaido.


BOLTON: I think – look, I think momentum is on Guiado’s side. Reports in the press that stress the military hasn’t shifted miss the point entirely.


RADDATZ: What’s the point?


BOLTON: The point is that they have not sought to arrest Guaido and the and the National Assembly and the opposition. And I think one reason for that is that Maduro fears if he gave that order, it would not be obeyed. The fact is, and the media don’t know it because people don’t talk about this, there are countless conversations going on between members of the National Assembly and members of the military in Venezuela; talking about what might come, how they might move to support the opposition.


They’re not going to broadcast that …


RADDATZ: You’re pretty certain Maduro’s going to be out?


BOLTON: Well, I’m not certain of anything. But I do think momentum is on the side of Guaido. I think the overwhelming support of the population and the overwhelming support of the enlisted personnel in the military and the junior officers, the top officer corps, only a few have broken. You know, there are 2,000 admirals and generals in Venezuela which is more than all of the nations of NATO combined. That tells you who benefits from plundering the economy.


But many of them are talking as well. We’ll see what happens.

Source Article from https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/03/10/bolton_maduro_fears_order_to_arrest_guaido_would_not_be_obeyed.html

A woman was attacked by a jaguar as she allegedly tried to take a selfie outside the big cat’s enclosure at Wildlife World Zoo, Aquarium and Safari Park in Arizona, authorities said.

Rural Metro Fire Department crews said the woman, who was not publicly identified and is in her 30s, was attempting to take a selfie near the fence of the jaguar enclosure when the cat reached out and attacked her arm.

At no time was the animal out of its enclosure, Wildlife World Zoo, Aquarium and Safari Park in Arizona said in a statement, adding that the incident is being investigated.Courtesy Adam Wilkerson

The woman was taken to a hospital for treatment of injuries that are not life threatening, Shawn Gilleland, a spokesman for the department told NBC News on Sunday.

The woman returned to the zoo this morning to apologize, describing her actions as “foolish,” the zoo’s owner told NBC News.

Witnesses told officials at the zoo in Litchfield Park, not far from Phoenix, that the woman crossed over the barrier to get a photo, according to a statement from the zoo.

At no time was the animal out of its enclosure, the statement said, adding that the incident is being investigated.

“We can promise you nothing will happen to our jaguar,” the zoo said on Twitter. “She’s a wild animal and there were proper barriers in place to keep our guests safe.”

The zoo also said it is not a wild animal’s fault when barriers are crossed and that it was “sending prayers” to the woman and her family.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jaguar-attacks-woman-who-allegedly-crossed-arizona-zoo-barrier-selfie-n981541

The 737 Max became the fastest-selling plane in Boeing history, the company said on its website, and is used by airlines around the world.

Here’s what we know so far about the plane involved.

It is the latest generation of the Boeing 737, a kind of aircraft that’s been flying since the 1960s. There are four kinds of Maxes in the fleet, numbered 7, 8, 9 and 10. The 8 series, which was involved in the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, has been flying the longest.

The 737 Max is mostly used for short- and medium-distance flights, but a few airlines fly it between Northern Europe and the East Coast of the United States. It is more fuel efficient and has a longer range than earlier versions of the 737.

The flight on Sunday was traveling from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, to Nairobi, Kenya.

It was too soon to tell on Sunday whether the causes of the Ethiopian Airlines crash were the same as or similar to those of the Lion Air crash in Indonesia last year.

But there are some initial similarities: On Sunday, the flight lost contact about six minutes after takeoff. The pilot had been given clearance to return to the airport in Addis Ababa, according to Ethiopian Airlines, which operated the flight. But the plane went down near Bishoftu, about 35 miles southeast of Addis Ababa.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/africa/boeing-737-max-8-crash.html

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow revealed Sunday that President Trump wants a 5 percent cut “across the board” on all domestic spending as part of his proposed 2020 budget.

“It will be a tough budget,” Kudlow said during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re going to do our own caps this year and I think it’s long overdue.”

Kudlow added: “Some of these recent budget deals have not been favorable towards spending. So, I think it’s exactly the right prescription.”

GOVERNMENT REPORT SAYS US BUDGET DEFICIT SET TO HIT $897B 

Kudlow said that “there’s no reason to obsess” about the budget deficit, even as it approaches $1 trillion, as long as it remains below 5 percent of the overall economy.

He said the budget will contain a proposed 5 percent across-the-board reduction in domestic spending.

Like previous spending blueprints, Trump’s plan for the 2020 budget year will propose cuts to many domestic programs favored by lawmakers in both parties but leave alone politically popular retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Washington probably will devote months to wrestling over erasing the last remnants of a failed 2011 budget deal that would otherwise cut core Pentagon operations by $71 billion and domestic agencies and foreign aid by $55 billion. Top lawmakers are pushing for a reprise of three prior deals to use spending cuts or new revenues and prop up additional spending rather than defray deficits that are again approaching $1 trillion.

Trump’s 2017 tax cut bears much of the blame for expanding the deficit, along with sharp increases in spending for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies and the growing federal retirement costs of the baby boom generation. Promises that the tax cut would stir so much economic growth that it would mostly pay for itself have been proved woefully wrong.

TRUMP ASKS CABINET TO CUT DEPARTMENT BUDGETS BY 5 PERCENT 

Trump’s upcoming budget, however, won’t address any of the main factors behind the growing, intractable deficits that have driven the U.S. debt above $22 trillion. Its most striking proposed cuts — to domestic agency operations — were rejected when Tea Party Republicans controlled the House, and they face equally grim prospects now that Democrats are in the majority.

Trump has given no indication he’s interested in the deficit, and he has rejected any idea of curbing Medicare or Social Security, the massive federal retirement programs whose imbalances are the chief deficit drivers.

Kudlow – a former Wall Street analyst and economic commentator – said that the 2020 proposal will also keep the 3 percent tax cuts implemented in 2018.

“If you want to deal with budget deficits, you’ve got rapid growth which means keep the tax cuts in place,” He said. “We believe the 3 percent tax rates of 2018 will continue in 2019 and beyond 2020 and so forth.”

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One area that won’t see a cut in the proposed budget is for funding for the president’s border wall.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Trump will request at least $8.6 billion in new funding to build additional sections of a wall along the Mexico border. Trump also wants $5 billion in additional funds for the Department of Homeland Security and another $3.6 billion in military construction funds.

All this would come in addition to the $6.5 billion Trump vowed last month to redirect for the construction of the wall.

“I would just say that the whole issue of the wall and border security is a paramount of importance,” Kudlow said on Sunday. “We have a crisis down there. I think the president has made that case effectively. It’s a crisis of economics, it’s a crisis of crime and drugs, it’s a crisis of just of humanity.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/wh-economic-adviser-larry-kudlow-promises-big-cuts-in-domestic-spending-for-2020-budget