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(CNN)President Donald Trump spent the weekend venting venom at a bewildering list of targets — even as much of the rest of the world was still trying to come to terms with a true outrage — the carnage wrought against Muslims in New Zealand.

    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/18/politics/donald-trump-new-zealand-white-supremacy/index.html

    Noticias Telemundo’s “Inmigración, Trump y los Hispanos” (Immigration, Trump and the Hispanic Community) Town Hall broadcast on Sunday, February 12 at 7PM/6 C, ranked # 1 in Spanish-language TV in primetime across all key demographics, averaging 1.57 million total viewers, 708,000 adults 18 to 49 and 325,000 adults 18 to 34, according to Nielsen. The news special moderated by Noticias Telemundo News Anchor José Díaz-Balart also positioned Telemundo as the #1 Spanish-language network during the entire primetime on Sunday, across all key demos.

    “Noticias Telemundo is empowering millions of Latinos with reliable and TRANSPARENT information at a time of change,” said José Díaz-Balart. “Viewers trust us because they know our only commitment is to present the facts the way they are, with professionalism and a total commitment to our community.”

    “Immigration, Trump and the Hispanic Community” also reached 1.6 million viewers on Facebook, generating 23,000 global actions on the social network.

    The Town Hall answered viewers’ questions about the impact of President Trump’s immigration policy on the Hispanic community. The news special featured a panel of experts, including immigration lawyer and Telemundo contributor Alma Rosa Nieto; Telemundo conservative political analyst Ana Navarro; the Deputy Vice President of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Clarissa Martínez, and CHIRLA’s Executive Director, Angélica Salas. In addition, “El Poder en Ti”, Telemundo’s robust community initiative, launched an Internet site for Hispanics looking for information, tools and resources on immigration in parallel to the Town Hall.

    “Inmigración, Trump y los Hispanos” is part of a series of Noticias Telemundo specials, including “Trump en la Casa Blanca,” produced the day after the elections, and “Trump y los Latinos,” which aired on Inauguration Day. All of these programs share an emphasis on allowing audiences to express their views and empower them by giving them access to trustworthy, rigorous and relevant information presented under Noticias Telemundo’s banner “Telling It Like It Is” (“Las Cosas Como Son” in Spanish).

    Noticias Telemundo is the information unit of Telemundo Network and a leader provider in news serving the US Hispanics across all broadcast and digital platforms. Its award-winning television news broadcasts include the daily newscast “Noticias Telemundo,” the Sunday current affairs show “Enfoque con José Díaz-Balart” and the daily news and entertainment magazine “Al Rojo Vivo con María Celeste.” The rapidly-growing “Noticias Telemundo Digital Team” provides continuous content to US Hispanics wherever they are, whenever they want it. Noticias Telemundo also produces award winning news specials, documentaries and news event such as political debates, forums and town halls.

    Source: Nielsen L+SD IMP, 2/12/17. TEL #1 SLTV (vs UNI, UMA, AZA, ETV). Shareablee, 2/6/17-2/12/17.

    Image courtesy of Telemundo.

    Source Article from http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwtv/article/Noticias-Telemundos-IMMIGRATION-TRUMP-AND-THE-HISPANIC-COMMUNITY-Ranks-1-IN-Spanish-Language-TV-Sunday-212-20170214

    Judy Nguyen is frustrated that anyone with enough money or the right connections can run as a candidate in an election. She’s disappointed she hasn’t seen immediate, tangible change under President Biden. And she feels for Americans who are trying to survive in an era when gas prices are skyrocketing and baby formula is scarce.

    But she realizes she’s also part of the problem.

    “I’m one of those people who talk like, oh, I want change, but then I don’t always vote,” Nguyen said as stood in the shade with her baby in a Brea shopping plaza. “I know I’m in a way at fault, but sometimes it’s just so hard to know who to believe” and who to vote for, she said.

    The 40-year-old Democrat from Fullerton voted for Donald Trump, then for President Biden, and for Gov. Gavin Newsom. She isn’t happy with any of them.

    “I’m just really sad,” she said, and she’s still deciding whether to cast a ballot in California’s primary election on Tuesday.

    Across the shopping center, a handful of poll workers waited for voters to arrive. Over the course of an hour, one person showed up; it was another poll worker arriving to start her shift. It was much the same at a half dozen vote centers in L.A. and Orange counties the last few days. Turnout is dismal so far for California’s primary election Tuesday, with about 14% of registered voters having cast a ballot as of Monday afternoon, according to election data received by the consulting firm Political Data Intelligence.

    California’s 2022 primary election is Tuesday. Here’s how to cast a ballot.

    The returns are a major drop off from the same period in last year’s gubernatorial recall election, as well as the last midterm election in 2018, according to data tracked by political analysts.

    Election experts say the lackluster participation by Californians stems from a dearth of excitement over this year’s contests, which largely lack competitive races at the top of the ticket. It’s a stark contrast with other parts of the nation where voter turnout is exceeding expectations.

    “It’s a boring election,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president of PDI. “It’s clear from what we’re seeing that we’re going to have a low turnout election despite the fact the state has made it easier than ever to vote.”

    In addition to sending every registered voter a mail ballot, a permanent move spurred by the pandemic, Mitchell noted that the state eliminated the need for postage stamps, allows neighbors and others to collect ballots, and that election officials will reach out to voters who fail to sign their ballots.

    The Democratic consultant predicts primary turnout is likely to be under 30%. “Nothing puts this in better contrast than looking at Georgia right now: They’re doing everything they can, it seems, to make it harder to vote, yet they are having record turnout because voters there feel the future of the country is at stake.”

    Georgia’s May 24 primary came after a GOP-backed law imposed new voting requirements and restrictions.

    Some predicted that a leaked Supreme Court draft decision eliminating federal protection for abortion access as well as a spate of high-profile mass shootings could motivate voters. But in California, this does not appear to be the case.

    California’s 14% turnout so far contrasts with nearly 38% of voters who had voted as of the Monday before last year’s gubernatorial recall, and 22% of voters at the same point before the 2018 midterm election — the last congressional election in a year that did not feature a presidential race at the top of the ticket.

    In 2018, when ballots were not yet mailed to all California voters, the midterm offered enraged Democrats their first opportunity to rebuke then-President Trump. More than 37% of voters turned out — the highest for a midterm primary in two decades. About 58% of voters cast ballots in the recall, a race that presented a sharp contrast between Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and the leading GOP challenger, radio host Larry Elder.

    California’s 2022 primary election ballot includes races for governor, attorney general, the Legislature and Congress, as well as local contests.

    “Election fatigue is definitely part of it, since the recall was so blustery. It was in everyone’s face,” said GOP strategist Beth Miller. “Because the recall election was last year, voters feel like they’ve already voted or had an election.”

    Voters may be biding their time and turn in their ballots or vote on election day, she added. (Mail ballots postmarked by Tuesday will be counted as long as they are received by June 14.)

    “We don’t know,” said Miller, who has been working in California politics for decades. “I’ve never seen it this slow in terms of ballots remaining out. Clearly voters are either completely disinterested or just now focused as election day nears.”

    Some voters who haven’t cast ballots this year said they had simply lost trust in elected officials.

    “They’re all the same. They say what they need to say to get you to vote,” said Kimela Ezechukwu, a Democrat who lives in the northern Los Angeles County district represented by GOP Rep. Mike Garcia that will be among the most contested congressional districts in the nation this year.

    The 54-year-old psychologist said she was more passionate about politics when she was younger. Now, she believes the system has turned into something akin to “Game of Thrones.” Once politicians “get inside that political machine, that just somehow sucks their soul out.”

    Ezechukwu makes it a point to vote in presidential elections, but hasn’t decided whether to vote in the midterm primary, she said as she sat with her son at a park in Lancaster. “I’ve found peace not watching TV or following politics. I’m trying to live a healthy life; be at peace. Shouldn’t that be the goal?”

    Political experts said voter apathy, which typically increases during non-presidential elections, may be compounded by anxiety — over issues ranging from mass shootings to high gas prices.

    “There seems to be an endless, ongoing barrage of really bad things that everyone in this country and state is having to deal with,” said Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist and publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book, which handicaps races. “Voters are very much at loose ends.”

    Far lower turnout for younger voters

    Election turnout is traditionally highest during presidential contests and drops during the midterms, especially among young and minority voters. In this primary, 17% of white registered voters had cast ballots as of midday Monday, according to data received by PDI, compared with 8% of Latinos, 15% of Asian Americans and 14% of Black voters. While 30% of voters 65 and older had returned their ballots, roughly 6% of those between 18 and 34 had, according to the PDI data.

    “Either you’re super involved being a young person … or honestly, it’s stressful and it’s kind of overwhelming to get into all of this,” said Ana Andrade, 19, as she ate a breakfast sandwich at Grand Central Market with fellow student Melina Deinum-Buck, 20.

    Andrade, a USC student from Dana Point, and Manhattan Beach resident Deinum-Buck, who attends George Washington University, said gun control, abortion rights, climate change and drug decriminalization are issues of deep personal importance, but they also said they had not heard much about the primary election because they’d been studying abroad. Neither had voted, but both said they planned to.

    “I need to do more research,” Deinum-Buck said.

    Andrade added, “I’m not that educated on it yet.”

    Uncompetitive top races dampen turnout

    Newsom and Sen. Alex Padilla face little-known and underfunded competitors, and the most interesting statewide contests appear to be for insurance commissioner and controller, contests that do not generally elicit passion from voters.

    “The thing that guarantees you’re voting is the top of the ticket,” said Raphael J. Sonenshein, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. “And there’s like zero here. The governor’s race is a complete afterthought.”

    Republicans are widely expected to retake control of Congress in November — President Biden’s approval ratings are low, and economic concerns such as inflation are at the top of voters’ minds. That’s on top of the historic trend of the party in the White House traditionally losing seats in Congress in the first midterm election in its tenure.

    The top two vote getters — regardless of party — in the June primary will move on to the November election.

    California is unlikely to determine control of the House, but it is expected to influence the margin of the GOP’s power because of the number of competitive races in the state. The voter turnout in most of the scrutinized races largely mirrors the paltry turnout across the state, with a few exceptions.

    In the newly drawn open 3rd Congressional District, which includes South Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Lakes and has a hotly contested race for its open seat, 17% of voters have cast ballots. Another district with notable participation is Democratic Rep. Mike Levin’s, which straddles Orange and San Diego counties and is being contested by multiple GOP candidates; 20% of voters had weighed in there as of Sunday.

    Some in Levin’s district, even those who had not yet cast their ballots, said they were gravely concerned about the direction of the nation.

    “It’s a really confusing time,” said Robert Claypool, a Greek Orthodox priest, after he finished his daily walk on the beach path in San Clemente.

    The 69-year-old lamented how it now takes about $100 to fill up his small car and wished Newsom would temporarily waive the state’s gas tax. Groceries are now more expensive when he shops for his wife and five children. And the registered Republican worries about formula shortages for newborns.

    “I’m willing to stand by extreme oil or gasoline prices, but what about kids? That’s just terrible,” Claypool said, adding that he and his family plan to gather Tuesday and decide who to vote for.

    “Everybody should vote,” he said. “If you stop voting, that apathy hurts everybody.”

    The battle for L.A. mayor

    The most high-profile race in the state is the mayoral contest in Los Angeles.

    Nearly $33 million has been spent on advertising in the race — more than three-quarters of which came from one billionaire candidate — making it one of this year’s most expensive contests in the nation, according to AdImpact, which tracks political spending.

    But despite the onslaught of television ads, mailers and texts, some 287,200 Angelenos had voted as of Monday — about 14% of the city’s registered voters, according to PDI.

    Billionaire developer Rick Caruso and Rep. Karen Bass are the top contenders in the race, with City Councilman Kevin de León trailing.

    Sonenshein said a problem among L.A. voters may be a lack of understanding that if a mayoral candidate receives more than 50% of the vote on Tuesday — unlike in most state or federal elections — he or she wins and there is no run-off.

    “I think we’re on the cusp of a huge election in November, both in California and nationwide,” he said. “The problem in Los Angeles is that people don’t always realize you might not get a choice in November.”

    Polls show there are three leading contenders in the race to succeed Eric Garcetti as mayor of Los Angeles. Here’s a guide to the top contenders.

    This is the first open mayor’s race since city leaders decided to consolidate municipal elections with state contests in hopes of increasing voter turnout. The last contest without an incumbent — in 2013 – drew nearly 21% of voters in the primary and a little more than 23% in the run-off.

    Cashmier Cloud, a 34-year-old employee of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, was among the voters who had already cast her ballot for Rep. Karen Bass for mayor. She recently ran into the congresswoman at a grocery store but said, “I was always going to vote for her.”

    Cloud was taking a break from a poll-working shift last week at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Jefferson Park neighborhood. There was plenty of time — the polling place had nearly a dozen volunteers and hardly any voters.

    Cloud, 34, has concerns about the record of Bass’ main rival, billionaire developer Rick Caruso.

    “He’s had the finances to assist L.A. years ago,” she said, noting the shopping centers Caruso owns. “You’re at the Grove with all this money and influence but you haven’t done anything in the past, so what’s different now?”

    Zack Tomas, 77, had a different view as he sat at an outdoor table at the Grove.

    “He’s a good man. Is he a good politician? I don’t know. I hope he is, and I wish him the best,” said the limousine driver, a registered Democrat. Tomas was unsure if he would vote.

    Recall in San Francisco motivates voters

    Turnout is higher in San Francisco, where 21% of the city’s registered voters had cast ballots as of Sunday. A divisive attempted recall of the city’s progressive Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin is helping drive turnout. The city has experienced high-profile smash-and-grab robberies at flagship department stores in tourist areas as well as daunting homelessness and open-air drug use.

    Edward Samonte, 63, is among those frustrated by Boudin’s performance since the Democrat was sworn in in 2020. “I’m sure he does some good for the city,” the Muni worker said near a Garfield Square bus stop, “but I’m hearing more negativity than good, so I voted for the recall.”

    Cindy Mendoza, 50, said she planned to vote against the recall. “We need to give elected officials the chance to do their job. The work that they do doesn’t happen overnight or rest on one case,” she said from a Potrero Hill garden where she volunteers.

    Mendoza added that she feels overwhelmed by the number of recent elections. San Francisco had a contentious school board recall earlier this year, on top of last fall’s gubernatorial recall.

    “It’s too much,” she said.

    Times staff writer Anabel Sosa contributed to this report from San Francisco.

    Rural usually means Republican. But this county is a Democratic speck in California’s sea of red.

    Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-06-06/early-voter-turnout-low-california-june-primary


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    A former Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in Nevada has suddenly made Joe Biden’s all-but-certain presidential campaign uncertain. Lucy Flores says Biden touched and kissed her in a way that unsettled her during a campaign event nearly five years ago when he was Barack Obama’s vice president. Biden is disputing Flores’ story. Ed O’Keefe reports.

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    Delivered by Norah O’Donnell, Gayle King, John Dickerson, and Bianna Golodryga, “CBS This Morning” offers a thoughtful, substantive and insightful source of news and information to a daily audience of 3 million viewers. The Emmy Award-winning broadcast presents a mix of daily news, coverage of developing stories of national and global significance, and interviews with leading figures in politics, business and entertainment. Check local listings for “CBS This Morning” broadcast times.

    Source Article from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQPoXATq-xk

    On Thursday, Boeing for the first time officially took responsibility for the two crashes of 737 Max jets that got the planes grounded by regulators.

    Claiming responsibility was part of an attempt to get the planes approved to fly again. Boeing was trying to say that it now understands why the planes crashes — flawed software — and has a plan in place to replace it with new software that will eliminate the problem and persuade regulators to get the planes off the ground. But then Friday morning, the company announced that it had found a second, unrelated software flaw that it also needs to fix and will somewhat delay the process of getting the planes cleared to fly again.

    All of which, of course, raises the question of why such flawed systems were allowed to fly in the first place.

    And that story begins nine years ago when Boeing was faced with a major threat to its bottom line, spurring the airline to rush a series of kludges through the certification process — with an underresourced Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) seemingly all too eager to help an American company threatened by a foreign competitor, rather than to ask tough questions about the project.

    The specifics of what happened in the regulatory system are still emerging (and despite executives’ assurances, we don’t even really know what happened on the flights yet). But the big picture is coming into view: A major employer faced a major financial threat, and short-term politics and greed won out over the integrity of the regulatory system. It’s a scandal.

    The 737 versus 320 rivalry, explained

    There are lots of different passenger airplanes on the market, but just two very similar narrow-body planes dominate domestic (or intra-European) travel. One is the European company Airbus’s 320 family, with models called A318, A319, A320, or A321 depending on how long the plane is. These four variants, by design, have identical flight decks, so pilots can be trained to fly them interchangeably.

    The 320 family competes with a group of planes that Boeing calls the 737 — there’s a 737-600, a 737-700, a 737-800, and a 737-900 — with higher numbers indicating larger planes. Some of them are also extended-range models that have an ER appended to the name, and, as you would probably guess, they have longer ranges.

    Importantly, even though there are many different flavors of 737, they are all in some sense the same plane, just as all the 320 family planes are the same plane. Southwest Airlines, for example, simplifies its overall operations by exclusively flying different 737 variants.

    Both the 737 and the 320 come in lots of different flavors, so airlines have plenty of options in terms of what kind of aircraft should fly exactly which route. But because there are only two players in this market, and because their offerings are so fundamentally similar, the competition for this slice of the plane market is both intense and weirdly limited. If one company were to gain a clear technical advantage over the other, it would be a minor catastrophe for the losing company.

    And that’s what Boeing thought it was facing.

    The A320neo was trouble for Boeing

    Jet fuel is a major cost for airlines. With labor costs largely driven by collective bargaining agreements and regulations that require minimum ratios of flight attendants per passenger, fuel is the cost center airlines have the most capacity to do something about. Consequently, improving fuel efficiency has emerged as one of the major bases of competition between airline manufacturers.

    If you roll back to 2010, it began to look like Boeing had a real problem in this regard.

    Airbus was coming out with an updated version of the A320 family that it called the A320neo, with “neo” meaning “new engine option.” The new engines were going to be more fuel-efficient, with a larger diameter than previous A320 engines, that could nonetheless be mounted on what was basically the same airframe. This was a nontrivial engineering undertaking both in designing the new engines and in figuring out how to make them work with the old airframe, but even though it cost a bunch of money, it basically worked. And it raised the question of whether Boeing would respond.

    Initial word was that it wouldn’t. As CBS Moneywatch’s Brett Snyder wrote in December 2010, the basic problem was that you couldn’t slap the new generation of more efficient, larger-diameter engines onto the 737:

    One of the issues for Boeing is that it takes more work to put new engines on the 737 than on the A320. The 737 is lower to the ground than the A320, and the new engines have a larger diameter. So while both manufacturers would have to do work, the Boeing guys would have more work to do to jack the airplane up. That will cost more while reducing commonality with the current fleet. As we know from last week, reduced commonality means higher costs for the airlines as well.

    Under the circumstances, Boeing’s best option was to just take the hit for a few years and accept that it was going to have to start selling 737s at a discount price while it designed a whole new airplane. That would, of course, be time-consuming and expensive, and during the interim, it would probably lose a bunch of narrow-body sales to Airbus.

    The original version of the 737 first flew in 1967, and a decades-old decision about how much height to leave between the wing and the runway left them boxed out of 21st-century engine technology — and there was simply nothing to be done about it.

    Unless there was.

    Boeing decided to put on the too-big engines anyway

    As late as February 2011, Boeing chair and CEO James McNerney was sticking to the plan to design a totally new aircraft.

    “We’re not done evaluating this whole situation yet,” he said on an analyst call, “but our current bias is to move to a newer airplane, an all-new airplane, at the end of the decade, beginning of the next decade. It’s our judgment that our customers will wait for us.”

    But in August 2011, Boeing announced that it had lined up orders for 496 re-engined Boeing 737 aircraft from five airlines.

    It’s not entirely clear what happened, but, reading between the lines, it seems that in talking to its customers Boeing reached the conclusion that airlines would not wait for them. Some critical mass of carriers (American Airlines seems to have been particularly influential) was credible enough in its threat to switch to Airbus equipment that Boeing decided it needed to offer 737 buyers a Boeing solution sooner rather than later.

    Committing to putting a new engine that didn’t fit on the plane was the corporate version of the Fyre Festival’s “let’s just do it and be legends, man” moment, and it unsurprisingly wound up leading to a slew of engineering and regulatory problems.

    New engines on an old plane

    As the industry trade publication Leeham News and Analysis explained earlier in March, Boeing engineers had been working on the concept that became the 737 Max even back when the company’s plan was still not to build it.

    In a March 2011 interview with Aircraft Technology, Mike Bair, then the head of 737 product development, said that reengineering was possible.

    “There’s been fairly extensive engineering work on it,” he said. “We figured out a way to get a big enough engine under the wing.”

    The problem is that an airplane is a big, complicated network of interconnected parts. To get the engine under the 737 wing, engineers had to mount the engine nacelle higher and more forward on the plane. But moving the engine nacelle (and a related change to the nose of the plane) changed the aerodynamics of the plane, such that the plane did not handle properly at a high angle of attack. That, in turn, led to the creation of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). It fixed the angle-of-attack problem in most situations, but it created new problems in other situations when it made it difficult for pilots to directly control the plane without being overridden by the MCAS.

    On Wednesday, Boeing rolled out a software patch that it says corrects the problem, and it hopes to persuade the FAA to agree.

    But note that the underlying problem isn’t really software; it’s with the effort to use software to get around a whole host of other problems.

    Recall, after all, that the whole point of the 737 Max project was to be able to say that the new plane was the same as the old plane. From an engineering perspective, the preferred solution was to actually build a new plane. But for business reasons, Boeing didn’t want a “new plane” that would require a lengthy certification process and extensive (and expensive) new pilot training for its customers. The demand was for a plane that was simultaneously new and not new.

    But because the new engines wouldn’t fit under the old wings, the new plane wound up having different aerodynamic properties than the old plane. And because the aerodynamics were different, the flight control systems were also different. But treating the whole thing as a fundamentally different plane would have undermined the whole point. So the FAA and Boeing agreed to sort of fudge it.

    The new planes are pretty different

    As far as we can tell, the 737 Max is a perfectly airworthy plane in the sense that error-free piloting allows it to be operated safely.

    But pilots of planes that didn’t crash kept noticing the same basic pattern of behavior that is suspected to have been behind the two crashes, according to a Dallas Morning News review of voluntary aircraft incident reports to a NASA database:

    The disclosures found by the News reference problems with an autopilot system, and they all occurred during the ascent after takeoff. Many mentioned the plane suddenly nosing down. While records show these flights occurred in October and November, the airlines the pilots were flying for is redacted from the database.

    These pilots all safely disabled the MCAS and kept their planes in the air. But one of the pilots reported to the database that it was “unconscionable that a manufacturer, the FAA, and the airlines would have pilots flying an airplane without adequately training, or even providing available resources and sufficient documentation to understand the highly complex systems that differentiate this aircraft from prior models.”

    The training piece is important because a key selling feature of the 737 Max was the idea that since it wasn’t really a new plane, pilots didn’t really need to be retrained for the new equipment. As the New York Times reported, “For many new airplane models, pilots train for hours on giant, multimillion-dollar machines, on-the-ground versions of cockpits that mimic the flying experience and teach them new features” while the experienced 737 Max pilots were allowed light refresher courses that you could do on an iPad.

    That let Boeing get the planes into customers’ hands quickly and cheaply, but evidently at the cost of increasing the possibility of pilots not really knowing how to handle the planes, with dire consequences for everyone involved.

    The FAA put a lot of faith in Boeing

    In a blockbuster March 17 report for the Seattle Times, the newspaper’s aerospace reporter Dominic Gates details the extent to which the FAA delegated crucial evaluations of the 737’s safety to Boeing itself. The delegation, Gates explains, is in part a story of a years-long process during which the FAA, “citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes.”

    But there are indications of failures that were specific to the 737 Max timeline. In particular, Gates reports that “as certification proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the process” and that “when time was too short for FAA technical staff to complete a review, sometimes managers either signed off on the documents themselves or delegated their review back to Boeing.”

    Most of all, decisions about what could and could not be delegated were being made by managers concerned about the timeline, rather than by the agency’s technical experts.

    It’s not entirely clear at this point why the FAA was so determined to get the 737 cleared quickly (there will be more investigations), but if you recall the political circumstances of this period in Barack Obama’s presidency, you can quickly get a general sense of the issue.

    Boeing is not just a big company with a significant lobbying presence in Washington; it’s a major manufacturing company with a strong global export presence and a source of many good-paying union jobs. In short, it was exactly the kind of company the powers that be were eager to promote — with the Obama White House, for example, proudly going to bat for the Export-Import Bank as a key way to sustain America’s aerospace industry.

    A story about overweening regulators delaying an iconic American company’s product launch and costing good jobs compared to the European competition would have looked very bad. And the fact that the whole purpose of the plane was to be more fuel-efficient only made getting it off the ground a bigger priority. But the incentives really were reasonably aligned, and Boeing has only caused problems for itself by cutting corners.

    Boeing is now in a bad situation

    One emblem of the whole situation is that as the 737 Max engineering team piled kludge on top of kludge, they came up with a cockpit warning light that would alert the pilots if the plane’s two angle-of-attack sensors disagreed.

    But then, as Jon Ostrower reported for the Air Current, Boeing’s team decided to make the warning light an optional add-on, like how car companies will upcharge you for a moon roof.

    The light cost $80,000 extra per plane and neither Lion Air nor Ethiopian chose to buy it, perhaps figuring that Boeing would not sell a plane (nor would the FAA allow it to) that was not basically safe to fly. In the wake of the crashes, Boeing has decided to revisit this decision and make the light standard on all aircraft.

    Now, to be clear, Boeing has lost about $40 billion in stock market valuation since the crash, so it’s not like cheating out on the warning light turned out to have been a brilliant business decision or anything.

    This, fundamentally, is one reason the FAA has become comfortable working so closely with Boeing on safety regulations: The nature of the airline industry is such that there’s no real money to be made selling airplanes that have a poor safety track record. One could even imagine sketching out a utopian libertarian argument to the effect that there’s no real need for a government role in certifying new airplanes at all, precisely because there’s no reason to think it’s profitable to make unsafe ones.

    The real world, of course, is quite a bit different from that, and different individuals and institutions face particular pressures that can lead them to take actions that don’t collectively make sense. Looking back, Boeing probably wishes it had just stuck with the “build a new plane” plan and toughed out a few years of rough sales, rather than ending up in the current situation. Right now the company is, in effect, trying to patch things up piecemeal — a software update here, a new warning light there, etc. — in hopes of persuading global regulatory agencies to let its planes fly again.

    But even once that’s done, Boeing faces the task of convincing airlines to actually buy its planes. An informative David Ljunggren article for Reuters reminds us that a somewhat comparable situation arose in 1965 when three then-new Boeing 727 jetliners crashed.

    There wasn’t really anything unsound about the 727 planes, but many pilots didn’t fully understand how to operate the new flaps — arguably a parallel to the MCAS situation with the 737 Max — which spurred some additional training and changes to the operation manual. Passengers avoided the planes for months, but eventually came back as there were no more crashes, and the 727 went on to fly safely for decades. Boeing hopes to have a similar happy ending to this saga, but so far it seems to be a long way from that point. And the immediate future likely involves more tough questions.

    A political scandal on slow burn

    The 737 Max was briefly a topic of political controversy in the United States as foreign regulators grounded the planes, but President Donald Trump — after speaking personally to Boeing’s CEO — declined to follow. Many members of Congress (from both parties) called on him to reconsider, which he rather quickly did, pushing the whole topic off Washington’s front burner.

    But Trump is generally friendly to Boeing (he even has a former Boeing executive, Patrick Shanahan, serving as acting defense secretary, despite an ongoing ethics inquiry into charges that Shanahan unfairly favors his former employer), and Republicans are generally averse to harsh regulatory crackdowns. The most important decisions in the mix appear to have been made back during the Obama administration, so it’s also difficult for Democrats to go after this issue. Meanwhile, Washington has been embroiled in wrangling over special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and a new health care battlefield opened up as well.

    That said, on March 27, FAA officials faced the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Aviation and Space at a hearing called by subcommittee Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX). Regulators committed at the hearing to revamp the way they certify new planes, in light of the flaws that were revealed in the previous certification process.

    The questions at stake, however, are now much bigger than one subcommittee. Billions of dollars are on the line for Boeing, the airlines that fly 737s, and the workers who build the planes. And since a central element of this story is the credibility of the FAA’s process — in the eyes of the American people and of foreign regulatory agencies — it almost certainly won’t get sorted out without more involvement from the actual decision-makers in the US government.

    Source Article from https://www.vox.com/2019/4/5/18296646/boeing-737-max-mcas-software-update

    Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersButtigieg says Iowa ‘shocked the nation’ in caucus night speech Campaigns fume about being left in the dark after Iowa results delayed Sanders predicts he’ll do ‘very, very well’ as Iowa continues to wait for results MORE (I-Vt.) and former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenCampaigns fume about being left in the dark after Iowa results delayed Sanders predicts he’ll do ‘very, very well’ as Iowa continues to wait for results Iowa caucus results not expected until morning MORE are neck and neck in New Hampshire ahead of the state’s primary next week, according to a new University of Massachusetts Lowell poll.

    Twenty-three percent of likely Democratic New Hampshire primary voters said they supported Sanders, while 22 percent said they were behind Biden. The two are within the survey’s margin of error.

    Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann WarrenButtigieg says Iowa ‘shocked the nation’ in caucus night speech Campaigns fume about being left in the dark after Iowa results delayed Sanders predicts he’ll do ‘very, very well’ as Iowa continues to wait for results MORE (D-Mass.), meanwhile, trailed by only 4 points, coming in at 19 percent support.

    Former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete ButtigiegPeter (Pete) Paul ButtigiegButtigieg says Iowa ‘shocked the nation’ in caucus night speech Entrance polls: Iowa caucusgoers prioritize electability, health care Trump wins Iowa GOP caucuses MORE and Sen. Amy KlobucharAmy Jean KlobucharSanders predicts he’ll do ‘very, very well’ as Iowa continues to wait for results Klobuchar amid delay in Iowa results: ‘We are punching above our weight’ Frustration, questions as delays hamper Iowa caucuses MORE (D-Minn.) rounded out the top five contenders at 12 and 6 percent support, respectively.

    New Hampshire, whose primary is not fully closed, can be difficult to poll because of the uncertainty about how many undeclared voters will turn out for the Democratic primary.

    The state has 413,000 undeclared voters, 288,000 registered Republicans and 275,000 registered Democrats.

    The survey comes eight days ahead of the nation’s first Democratic primary in New Hampshire and hours before the Iowa caucuses on Monday.

    A number of recent national polls show Biden and Sanders emerging as Democratic primary voters’ top picks.

    An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll released Friday showed Sanders at 27 percent support nationally, while Biden was close behind at 26 percent support.

    The University of Massachusetts Lowell survey was conducted from Jan. 28 to Jan. 31 among 400 likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 6.4 percentage points.

    Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/481254-biden-sanders-neck-and-neck-in-new-hampshire-poll

    Parecería ser que la reunión no fue demasiado buena para Ferrari. Malone quería saber de la propia fuente, cuáles eran los términos exactos del ventajoso contrato que la categoría tiene actualmente con el equipo más antiguo del certamen mundial.

    Luego de que Marchionne le explicó a Malone, cómo y porqué a Ferrari se le pagaba mucho más que a otros equipos, Malone le explicó que esa no era una política que él iba a mantener cuando se renovaran los contratos para el año 2020.

    ¿Dos gladiadores enfrentados?

    Por otra parte, Monza ha aceptado un nuevo contrato de tres años con la Fórmula Uno, para ser la sede del Gran Premio de Italia. No ha sido firmado, hasta que se complete el traspaso de CVC a LIberty Media, pero sí arreglado de palabra. Las primas se han elevado de siete a veintidós millones de dólares anuales, que los organizadores esperan cubrir, con la instalación de mayor cantidad de sitios para espectadores, en las partes del circuito donde no hay gradas.

    Source Article from http://www.ovaciondigital.com.uy/automovilismo/parrado-opinion-automovilismo-21.html

    Derechos de autor de la imagen
    Getty Images

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    La última de las profecías sobre el apocalipsis se hizo pública hace algunos años y sigue circulando en la red.

    Ya existe una nueva fecha que anuncia, otra vez, el fin del mundo.

    La última amenaza de apocalipsis afirma que un cuerpo desconocido llamado Nibiru o Planeta X chocará con la Tierra el 23 de septiembre de 2017.

    La nueva profecía, que se hizo pública hace algunos años y circula especialmente en la red durante las últimas semanas, asegura combinar astronomía, investigación científica y pasajes de la Biblia para respaldar su predicción.

    Incluso el último eclipse total, que a menudo es fuente de miedos y supersticiones populares, es utilizado como argumento para sustentar esta creencia y es definido como “el presagio del apocalipsis”.

    Inicialmente, la teoría que defiende la existencia de Nibiru aseguraba que la catástrofe ocurriría en mayo de 2003. Cuando nada sucedió, sus seguidores hicieron una nueva interpretación para programarla en diciembre de 2012, realizando la conexión con el fin de uno de los ciclos del calendario maya.

    Derechos de autor de la imagen
    Reuters

    Image caption

    Eclipses como el del pasado 21 de agosto eran interpretado por culturas antiguas como un evento dramático o un mal presagio que anunciaba sucesos negativos.

    Pero ¿tiene esta profecía alguna evidencia científica? La NASA lo tiene claro.

    “Un engaño de internet”

    La agencia estadounidense encargada de la investigación aeronáutica y espacial afirmó ya en repetidas ocasiones que el planeta Nibiru no existe ni hay fundamentos para creerlo. “Es un engaño de internet”, aseguró.

    Ya en un artículo publicado en 2012 con motivo del supuesto apocalipsis previsto aquel año, la agencia fue tajante. “Si Nibiru o Planeta X fuera real y se dirigiera hacia la Tierra, los astrónomos lo estarían siguiendo durante al menos la última década, y ahora sería visible a simple vista. Obviamente, no existe”.

    David Morrison es uno de los científicos de la NASA que más crítico se muestra públicamente con esta leyenda. En 2011 llegó a asegurar que recibía hasta cinco e-mails diarios de personas preguntando por el supuesto planeta.

    Derechos de autor de la imagen
    YouTube

    Image caption

    El científico de la NASA, David Morrison, realizó numerosos artículos y vídeos para descartar la existencia de Nibiru.

    Morrison definió como “absurdas” algunas teorías que aseguran que Nibiru podría no haber sido aún localizado por estar escondido detrás del sol, o por solo poder ser visible desde el Polo Sur.

    En una entrevista con el diario The Washington Post el pasado mes de enero, Morrison lamentó que aún existan unos 2 millones de páginas web informando sobre la supuesta colisión de Nibiru con la Tierra.

    Source Article from http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-41077996

    Image copyright
    Reuters

    Image caption

    El terremoto rompió varias calles y carreteras en la Isla Sur.

    Un segundo potente terremoto de magnitud 6,3 golpeó en la madrugada de este lunes a la Isla Sur de Nueva Zelanda, tal como había sucedido 24 horas antes en la misma zona.

    El primero había sido de magnitud 7,8 y ocurrió a la medianoche local de este domingo (11:02 GMT), dejando dos personas muertas, informó el primer ministro, John Key.

    Los movimientos sísmicos causaron una brecha en un dique en la Isla Sur liberando una “gran pared de agua”, por lo que las autoridades urgieron a quienes residen en torno a Clarence River, al norte de la localidad de Kaikoura, que se trasladen inmediatamente a tierras más altas.

    Desde que ocurrió el primer sismo se han producido centenares de réplicas fuertes que han provocado cortes en el suministro eléctrico y en el servicio de agua potable.

    Alerta de tsunami

    El primer sismo desató una alerta de tsunami, lo que provocó que las personas en la costa este abandonaran sus hogares hacia el interior o a tierras más altas.

    Image copyright
    Getty Images

    Image caption

    La alerta de tsunami movilizó a la población que vive en la costa este de Nueva Zelanda.

    En un momento dado el ministro de Defensa Civil sugirió que en la costa oriental podían llegar a impactar olas de hasta 5 metros de alto,

    “Puede que la primera oleada no sea la más fuerte. La actividad de tsunamis continuará por horas”, advirtieron las autoridades neozelandesas.

    No obstante, en la ciudad de Kaikoura, ubicada en la zona de alerta de tsunami, hasta ahora las olas alcanzaron una altura máxima de 2,5 metros, según el sitio Weatherwatch.co.nz.

    Luego, la alerta de tsunami fue cancelada y rebajada a advertencia costera.

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    Getty Images

    Image caption

    Las autoridades evacuaron a miles de personas en la mitad de la noche.

    El primer movimiento telúrico tuvo el epicentro a 91 kilómetros al nordeste de Christchurch, que ya fue golpeada por un fuerte terremoto en 2011 y que dejó 185 muertos.

    Christchurch se ubica aproximadamente a 300 kilómetros al sur de la capital, Wellington, en la costa este de la Isla Sur.

    Image copyright
    USGS

    “Ha sido terrorífico”

    Estábamos durmiendo pero la casa empezó a temblar y nos despertamos. El temblor seguía y seguía. Parecía que la casa se iba a caer”, le dijo un habitante de Christchurch a la agencia de noticias AFP.

    Otro neozelandés, Hayley Colgan, lo describió en Twitter como “el más terremoto más terrorífico que he sentido en Nueva Zelanda en 23 años”.

    Image copyright
    Getty Images

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    Fresh Choice Nelson City

    Por su parte, el diario local The Herald informó que el temblor se sintió hasta en la capital, Wellington, donde saltaron las sirenas y los ciudadanos salieron a las calles.

    Y según los primeros reportes, en Cheviot, un pueblo cercano al epicentro, algunas casas sufrieron daños.

    Chrus Hill, un bombero de Cheviot, dijo en la emisora local RadioNZ que fueron puerta por puerta para evacuar a los residentes y que “todo el mundo parecía estar bien”.

    Hay un montón de escombros en las casas, pero por ahora no parece que haya pasado nada muy malo”.

    Image copyright
    Twitter

    Image copyright
    Twitter

    En septiembre pasado otro sismo de magnitud 7.1 volvió a azotar el país. Tuvo el epicentro a 169 kilómetros al nordeste de Gisborne, en la Isla del Norte.

    Le siguió una alerta de tsunami pero, aunque no dejó víctimas, sí causó daños materiales.

    Nueva Zelanda está situada sobre el que se conoce como el Cinturón de Fuego del Pacífico, también conocido como Cinturón Circumpacífico o Anillo de Fuego.

    Source Article from http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-37966293






    Yorbis Villa.- Este domingo el presidente Nicolás Maduro, informó sobre el aumento del salario mínimo y de pensiones en un 50%,  pasando de Bs. 27.091 a Bs. 40 638.13,  quedando el salario mínimo integral en Bs 104.358.15. 

    “Para arrancar el año he decidido hacer un aumento de salario y de pensiones. Sería, si tomamos en cuenta el aumento que di en enero del año pasado, el quinto aumento en un año (…)  He decido aumentar el salario mínimo y como siempre las escalas de trabajadores públicos, maestros, policías, médicos y de la Fanb en un 50% y que se haga el ajuste correspondiente”.

    Puntualizó que el año pasado dio cuatro aumentos necesarios para buscar una armonía de empleo e ingreso para la familia venezolana y así defenderse de mafias de bachaqueros mientras se consolidan la Misión Abastecimiento Soberano y los Clap.

    “En los próximos días se va anunciar la nueva unidad tributaria, como todos los años (…) El cesta ticket ha sido un gran instrumento de defensa, pero también tenemos que defender el salario real y vamos a llevar la política de defensa de ingreso para defender el salario de los trabajadores y llevarlo equilibrado con el cesta ticket”, subrayó.

     

     

     

     

     



    Source Article from http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/noticias/economia/aumentan-salario-minimo-pensiones-50/

    El exdiputado y excandidato presidencial Jorge Crespo Toral falleció a los 94 años, el pasado 6 de agosto.

    Doctor en jurisprudencia, Crespo Toral fue un político que desempeñó diversas funciones públicas y defendió organizaciones sindicales.

    En la década de los sesenta estuvo vinculado al movimiento político Acción Revolucionaria Nacionalista Ecuatoriana (ARNE). Fue elegido diputado a la Constituyente de 1966 y postulado como candidato presidencial por esa tienda política en 1968.

    Contrajo matrimonio con Laura Romo Rivera, quien laboró por más de sesenta años en la Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana Benjamín Carrión, desde su fundación. Con ella tuvo a su hijo, Santiago. (I)

    Source Article from http://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/2017/08/21/nota/6340891/fallecio-excandidato-presidencial-1968

    WASHINGTON — For more than 90 years, a huge concrete cross has dominated part of Bladensburg, Maryland, a Washington suburb. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will be asked to decide whether it should stay, raising a question that has vexed the justices for decades: What is the proper place for religion in American public life?

    To its defenders, which include the state and the American Legion, the 40-foot-tall Peace Cross is a secular monument, a memorial to area war dead. To its detractors, it’s an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion invoking Christianity’s most potent symbol.

    Completed in 1925, it was built to commemorate 49 servicemen who died in World War I. Their names are on a bronze plaque at the base. Private funds paid for the cross, but a state commission took it over in 1961 as well as the land it sits on, which is now in a busy traffic interchange.

    In 2012, the American Humanist Association filed a lawsuit, claiming that its presence on public land violates the Constitution, amounting to a government establishment of religion. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia agreed, saying it could not ignore that “for thousands of years the Latin cross has represented Christianity.”

    Private funds paid for the memorial, but a state commission took it over in 1961 as well as the land it sits on, which is now in a busy traffic interchange.Lawrence Hurley / Reuters file

    Applying a test the Supreme Court has employed in the past to evaluate religious displays, the appeals court said a reasonable observer would conclude that the government “either places Christianity above other faiths, views being American and Christian as one in the same, or both.”

    Monica Miller, the Humanist association’s senior counsel, says the cross was always intended to be a religious symbol, and its original planners wanted it to look like the cross of Calvary, described in the Bible as the place where Christ was crucified.

    “The Latin cross is not embraced by non-Christians or used by them as a symbol of death or sacrifice,” she says. When the government prominently displays the cross as a war memorial, “it does more than just align the state with Christianity. It also callously discriminates against patriotic soldiers who are not Christian.”

    The state parks commission defends the cross as a memorial designed to mirror the cross-shaped markers on the graves of American servicemen overseas. In the aftermath of World War I, the group says, crosses became the cultural symbol of the fallen, as depicted in one of the most famous poems of the war: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row.”

    Local governments may display symbols associated with a particular religion to honor historical events or acknowledge the role of religious faith in society, said Neal Katyal, a Washington lawyer representing the parks commission, and they don’t threaten the values of religious neutrality. But requiring them to be torn down would promote a hostility to religion that the Constitution prohibits.

    The American Legion also urges the court to abandon a test it has used for decades to determine whether government displays or expressions involving religious symbols would be seen by a reasonable person as a government endorsement of a particular religious faith.

    “The test should be coercion,” Michael Carvin, a D.C. lawyer representing the patriotic group, said. “Has there been some tangible threat to liberty because of what the government is doing, such as outright proselytizing? That should be the question.”

    A government’s use of religion in a passive display does not compel people to support or participate in any religion, he says, and a memorial honoring war dead “is precisely where one would expect to encounter religious imagery in a government display.”

    The Trump administration agrees. Its friend of court brief says the Constitution’s ban on an establishment of religion does not prohibit the acknowledgement of religion in public life. “Passive displays generally fall on the permissible side of that line, because they typically do not compel religious belief.”

    Past Supreme Court decisions on this question are widely considered to be a muddle of contradictions. The court has upheld opening legislative sessions with a prayer and has ruled against challenges to “In God We Trust” on currency or the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. But it also invalidated displays of The Ten Commandments in local courthouses.

    A decision is expected by late June.

    Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-decide-if-giant-cross-religious-symbol-or-secular-n975826

    Los Angeles (CNN)Shawn Pleasants has the kind of resume that would attract the attention of any job recruiter: high school valedictorian, economics major from Yale University, Wall Street banking jobs, small business entrepreneur. But a few wrong turns in life 10 years ago left him homeless, and today he’s living underneath a tarp in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles.

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playerId, token, mode, id, duration, blockId, adType, instance, isAdPause) {if (mobilePinnedView) {CNN.VideoPlayer.handleMobilePinnedPlayerStates(containerId, isAdPause);}},onTrackingFullscreen: function (containerId, PlayerId, dataObj) {CNN.VideoPlayer.handleFullscreenChange(containerId, dataObj);if (mobilePinnedView &&typeof dataObj === ‘object’ &&FAVE.Utils.os === ‘iOS’ && !dataObj.fullscreen) {jQuery(document).scrollTop(mobilePinnedView.getScrollPosition());playerInstance.hideUI();}},onContentPlay: function (containerId, cvpId, event) {var playerInstance,prevVideoId;if (CNN.companion && typeof CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout === ‘function’) {CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout(‘restoreEpicAds’);}clearTimeout(moveToNextTimeout);CNN.VideoPlayer.hideSpinner(containerId);if (Modernizr && !Modernizr.phone && !Modernizr.mobile && !Modernizr.tablet) {if (typeof videoPinner !== ‘undefined’ && videoPinner !== null) {videoPinner.setIsPlaying(true);videoPinner.animateDown();}}},onContentReplayRequest: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {if (Modernizr && !Modernizr.phone && !Modernizr.mobile && !Modernizr.tablet) {if (typeof videoPinner !== ‘undefined’ && videoPinner !== null) {videoPinner.setIsPlaying(true);var $endSlate = jQuery(document.getElementById(containerId)).parent().find(‘.js-video__end-slate’).eq(0);if ($endSlate.length > 0) {$endSlate.removeClass(‘video__end-slate–active’).addClass(‘video__end-slate–inactive’);}}}},onContentBegin: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {if (mobilePinnedView) {mobilePinnedView.enable();}/* Dismissing the pinnedPlayer if another video players plays a video. */CNN.VideoPlayer.dismissMobilePinnedPlayer(containerId);CNN.VideoPlayer.mutePlayer(containerId);if (CNN.companion && typeof CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout === ‘function’) {CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout(‘removeEpicAds’);}CNN.VideoPlayer.hideSpinner(containerId);clearTimeout(moveToNextTimeout);CNN.VideoSourceUtils.clearSource(containerId);jQuery(document).triggerVideoContentStarted();},onContentComplete: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {if (CNN.companion && typeof CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout === ‘function’) {CNN.companion.updateCompanionLayout(‘restoreFreewheel’);}navigateToNextVideo(contentId, containerId);},onContentEnd: function (containerId, cvpId, contentId) {if (Modernizr && !Modernizr.phone && !Modernizr.mobile && !Modernizr.tablet) {if (typeof videoPinner !== ‘undefined’ && videoPinner !== null) {videoPinner.setIsPlaying(false);}}},onCVPVisibilityChange: function (containerId, cvpId, visible) {CNN.VideoPlayer.handleAdOnCVPVisibilityChange(containerId, visible);}};if (typeof configObj.context !== ‘string’ || configObj.context.length 0) {configObj.adsection = window.ssid;}CNN.autoPlayVideoExist = (CNN.autoPlayVideoExist === 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      Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/17/us/los-angeles-yale-graduate-homeless/index.html

      Containers of Moderna vaccines donated by the U.S. arrived in Bogota, Colombia, on July 25.

      Leonardo Munoz/AFP via Getty Images


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      Leonardo Munoz/AFP via Getty Images

      Containers of Moderna vaccines donated by the U.S. arrived in Bogota, Colombia, on July 25.

      Leonardo Munoz/AFP via Getty Images

      The U.S. is on track to deliver 110 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to more than 50 countries from Afghanistan to Zambia, two officials told NPR — a milestone that President Biden is expected to formally announce at the White House Tuesday.

      But these initial U.S. donated doses are just a first step for the projected 11 billion vaccines needed to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population and bring the pandemic under control, according to the World Health Organization.

      And providing doses to other countries is a quasi-Herculean task. “Sharing vaccine doses isn’t quite as easy as just putting them on a plane and calling somebody at the other end and telling them when they’ll arrive,” says Gayle Smith, the global COVID response coordinator at the State Department.

      There have been some delays. Biden first announced that the U.S. would distribute 80 million doses to countries in need by the end of June, only to later say the goal had simply been to “allocate” them by the end of June.

      Legal and regulatory hurdles loom for such sophisticated medical goods, Smith explains — both for the U.S. to export them and for countries to receive them. And it’s an urgent matter: Doses must be distributed before their expiration date, with cold chains set up to keep them from spoiling. Solutions have to be devised country by country, sometimes with elaborate legal agreements.

      On this global stage, the Biden administration can’t call all the shots. “In some countries it’s actually required … to take new laws to their parliaments so they can accept these vaccines, so it’s a complicated logistical exercise, but I think we’ve shown it’s entirely doable,” Smith said in an interview with NPR.

      These first 100 million deliveries reflect Biden’s effort to establish the U.S. as “the world’s arsenal of vaccines” and are essentially a warm-up for the hundreds of millions of shots that the U.S. has pledged to deliver later this year and next year.

      The number of doses delivered so far puts the U.S. ahead of every other country making donations, but the pace of the shipments is much slower than it should be, says Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center.

      “When the world needs 10 billion doses to get to where we need to go, it puts that in context,” he said. “We’re a hundred times off where we need to be.”

      And certain parts of the world are severely lacking in vaccines. The breakdown of distribution at this point illustrates how far many countries are from any meaningful level of protection. Worldwide, fewer than 1% of vaccines have gone to people in low-income countries, while more than 80% have been given to people in high- and upper middle-income countries.

      More shots, more money

      As the highly contagious delta variant surges, global health experts are calling for a bigger investment in the pandemic response.

      “Right now it doesn’t seem like the effort is matching the level of crisis that some parts of the world are seeing,” says Jenny Ottenhoff, senior policy director for global health at the ONE Campaign.

      The speed with which those doses arrive could determine the trajectory of the pandemic — and how many more people will die.

      The numbers are daunting. At least 800,000 COVID fatalities are projected in the next two months, according to new estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

      In an open letter released on Tuesday, a group of prominent global health experts write that the Biden administration and its G-7 allies have “taken important but modest steps to close the global vaccine gap,” which still “fall far short of the true scale and urgency required.”

      The letter urges the White House to quickly ramp up U.S. donations by at least 1 billion doses by mid-2022, strengthen global coordination of vaccine supply chains and pour resources into ensuring that “doses are translated into vaccinations.”

      A man walks past donated Johnson & Johnson vaccines after their arrival at the Phnom Penh International Airport in Cambodia on July 30 — the first batch of 1 million shots.

      Heng Sinith/AP


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      A man walks past donated Johnson & Johnson vaccines after their arrival at the Phnom Penh International Airport in Cambodia on July 30 — the first batch of 1 million shots.

      Heng Sinith/AP

      Logistics challenges loom

      As the Biden administration prepares to move hundreds of millions of more doses, the challenges in delivering these first 100 million doses should serve as a wake-up call, says Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development who studies health care supply chains.

      “Just having surplus doses and a plan on how to allocate them is not sufficient. It requires a lot of other things to fall in place,” says Yadav. “Similar types of logistical challenges will remain in place for that massive quantity. And so the bigger question is, are we now planning based on what we’ve learned?”

      In July, the White House released a “framework” for the global pandemic response, but the Biden administration still seems to lack the kind of “superstructure” needed to manage the complex demands of the global vaccination campaign, says Stephen Morrison at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who also signed the letter.

      “It’s been somewhat ad hoc,” he says. “We need to be staffed up at a higher level with a command type approach similar to what we’ve taken domestically, and we don’t have that yet.”

      The U.S. has the opportunity to take on a “more engaged” role with the global vaccination rollout, says Yadav. But that would require a much larger investment in the federal agencies currently orchestrating the vaccine sharing programs, he said.

      A health worker vaccines a woman in Thimpu, Bhutan on July 26.

      Upasana Dahal/AFP via Getty Images


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      A health worker vaccines a woman in Thimpu, Bhutan on July 26.

      Upasana Dahal/AFP via Getty Images

      White House plans to “accelerate, accelerate, accelerate”

      Biden is expected to talk about coming plans to boost shipments. The U.S. announced earlier this year that it secured 500 million Pfizer doses to distribute to poorer countries. That distribution is beginning in earnest this month. Smith says the aim is to “accelerate, accelerate, accelerate” to get more vaccines to more people faster.

      “I don’t want to understate in any way how proud all of us are that we not only hit the 80 million but we are at 110,” says Smith. “But I think none of us thinks that we can check the box now. There’s still a massive amount to do. This last quarter of 2021 is critical. So we’ve got to keep going, and we’ve got to do more in any possible way we can do it.”

      As long as the virus is moving faster than the drive to vaccinate the world, it is winning, she says.

      And that puts more pressure on the Biden administration. “Without U.S. leadership, I don’t see another plausible pathway where we’re going to turn the corner on this pandemic any time in the next six, 12 or 18 months,” says Udayakumar.

      Source Article from https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/03/1023822839/biden-is-sending-110-million-vaccines-to-nations-in-need-thats-just-a-first-step

      Foreign leaders heaped nearly $140,000 worth of gifts on President Trump and his family in 2017, according to a new report by the State Department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol.

      In other words, Trump got the same treatment as every other U.S. president dating back to at least Herbert Hoover. Weirdly enough, the Associated Press’ write-up of the State Department report makes no mention of that part. It turns out that the world did not begin in January 2017, and that there is a history of world leaders showering U.S. presidents and their families with flattering and expensive tributes.

      The AP report begin first by focusing on the gifts from China and the Saudi and Gulf Arab states: A calligraphy box valued at $14,400 and a porcelain dinnerware set worth $16,250, a $6,400 ruby and emerald necklace, a gold-plated model of a fighter jet valued at around $4,850, a $3,700 bronze statue, $1,610 worth of gold-plated Kuwaiti coins, and “royal” perfume valued at around $1,260.

      The report also includes this curious passage [emphasis added]:

      Other lines in this putatively objective AP report seem designed to cast shade, such as, “Some gifts seemed designed to appeal to the president’s ego.” The supposedly flattering gifts include a portrait of Trump from Vietnam’s prime minister and a photo album of Trump and Trump Tower in New York City from Poland’s president.

      Because it’s an AP story, it was soon aggregated and cross-posted at other news websites, including NBC News’. The reaction on social media was about you’d expect from a story framed the way the AP did with this one: “While Americans struggle to make ends meet, getting screwed by the #TrumpTaxScam, Foreign leaders, including from Saudi Arabia and China, lavish Trump with $140,000 in gifts,” complained Miami Herald columnist Lesley Abravanel.

      This sort of reaction seems almost reasonable — so long as you know nothing about the history and context of gifts to U.S. presidents from foreign heads of state. And if all you read were the AP report, you really wouldn’t know anything about it.

      You wouldn’t know, for example, that the Obamas received nearly $1.3 million in gifts from the Saudis in 2014, including a set of wristwatches valued at more than $43,000 and a diamond and emerald jewelry set for first lady Michelle Obama valued at around $560,000. You wouldn’t know about the thousands and thousands of dollars in gifts the Clintons received, some of which they reportedly absconded with when they left the White House. You wouldn’t know that Ronald Reagan was gifted an actual baby elephant in 1984 by Sri Lanka’s president. You wouldn’t know that John F. Kennedy was given, among many other things, a chair made of hand-carved 400-year-old mahogany taken from a Santo Domingo castle by the Dominican Republic’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, while Jackie Kennedy was given a horse by the governor of Pakistan.

      As for the AP, why not add at least one line noting the history for foreign leaders showering presidents with gifts? USA Today had no problem doing it.

      Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/ap-story-on-pricey-gifts-to-trump-white-house-never-once-mentions-precedent-for-such-gifts

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      Reuters

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      La policía acordonó la zona.

      La policía de Francia mató este jueves a un hombre armado con un cuchillo que intentó irrumpir en una comisaría en el barrio Goutte d’Or, en el norte de París.

      Fuentes policiales informaron que amenazó con el arma a los agentes, que luego le dispararon.

      Un testigo le dijo a la agencia de noticias AFP que escuchó dos o tres tiros. Las autoridades acordonaron la zona.

      Funcionarios confirmaron que el hombre gritó Allahu Akbar (“Dios es grande”) y que llevaba un chaleco explosivo falso.

      Aniversario

      Este hecho ocurrió el mismo día en que se cumple un año del ataque a la revista satírica Charlie Hebdo, que dejó 12 muertos.

      Y Francia aún no sale de la conmoción tras la serie de ataques del 13 de noviembre en París, que dejaron 130 muertos y cientos de heridos.

      Horas antes de lo ocurrido en Goutte d’Or, el presidente francés, Francois Hollande, se dirigió a las fuerzas de seguridad de su país y les advirtió: “La amenaza terrorista sigue presente”.

      Image copyright
      APTN

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      Hollande dijo este jueves que Francia debe seguir en alerta tras los ataques en París y contra Charlie Hebdo en 2015.

      Source Article from http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2016/01/160107_internacional_paris_atacante_muerto

      Tras varios días de especulación sobre una posible salida de la presentadora Vicky Dávila de Noticias RCN, este miércoles la cadena confirmó la noticia.

      Por medio de un comunicado, RCN confirma que Dávila presentó el noticiero hasta el pasado martes.

      Así mismo, tanto el noticiero como el canal agradecen “profundamente estos 17 años de entrega periodística, disciplina y ‎esfuerzo que Vicky Dávila ha representado y entiende los motivos que la llevaron a tomar su decisión”.

      Por su parte, la directora de la emisora La FM compartió en Twitter “me voy feliz porque me llevo el cariño de millones de colombianos”.

      Durante su última emisión en televisión, Dávila agradeció “a los millones de colombianos que permitieron que durante estos casi 18 años pudiera llegar a sus hogares, gracias por el cariño. Quizás nos volvamos a encontrar en la televisión en Colombia, ojalá sea pronto”.

      Source Article from http://www.elespectador.com/entretenimiento/medios/vicky-davila-deja-el-set-de-rcn-articulo-581703

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      AFP

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      Cristina Fernández y Mauricio Macri tienen un largo historial de desencuentros.

      Lo que está ocurriendo en Argentina a pocos días de la asunción del nuevo presidente, Mauricio Macri, podría haber salido del guión de un drama político televisivo… o hasta de una canción del dúo Pimpinela.

      Los dos presidentes, la que es la mandataria de Argentina hasta el jueves, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, y el electo Mauricio Macri, están peleados por cómo debe ser el traspaso de mando que marque el cambio tras 12 años de gobiernos kirchneristas.

      Una disputa en la que no faltan reproches y, según Cristina Fernández, incluso gritos.

      “¿Qué es lo que está pasando con algo tan simple como una trasmisión de mando?”, se preguntó la presidenta en un largo mensaje dejado este domingo en las redes sociales.

      “Porque debo reconocer que el maltrato de esa llamada telefónica que me hiciera el presidente electo me resultaba inexplicable y casi increíble”, dice al referirse a una conversación en la que ambos trataron el tema de la transición.

      Idas y vueltas con el traspaso

      Mauricio Macri quiere dirigirse a la Nación desde el Congreso, primero, donde un nuevo mandatario debe jurar su cargo ante los legisladores.

      Image copyright
      Getty

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      Macri quiere recibir el bastón y la banda en la Casa Rosada, la actual presidenta quiere que sea en el Congreso.

      Y después dirigirse a la Casa Rosada, sede del ejecutivo, para que Cristina Fernández le entregue el bastón de mando y la banda presidencial.

      El equipo de Cambiemos, la coalición de partidos antikirchneristas que venció en las elecciones del pasado 22 de noviembre, argumenta que así es el protocolo para el cambio de mando y que así lo hicieron otros presidentes desde 1983.

      Desde el macrismo se sostiene que el porteño será “presidente desde la cero hora del jueves 10”, y que por tanto le corresponde a él organizar la ceremonia.

      Pero el todavía oficialismo apunta que Cristina Fernández será quien gobierne hasta que Macri jure ante el Congreso, y presentó un documento del escribano de la Nación donde señala la hora de comienzo de gestión de Macri.

      Además quiere que el líder de Cambiemos reciba los atributos presidenciales en la sede del poder legislativo, igual que lo hicieron Néstor Kirchner y Cristina Fernández en sus tres periodos de gobierno (también asumió en el Congreso el expresidente Eduardo Duhalde, que había sido elegido por el legislativo en 2002 tras la grave crisis política y económica de ese tiempo).

      “El 10/12 no es su fiesta de cumpleaños sino el día que asume como Presidente de todos los argentinos”, dijo la presidenta sobre la postura de Macri.

      “La autoridad, no su imagen, no se logra en una ceremonia de trasmisión de mando y mucho menos gritándole a una mujer por teléfono… Una mujer que además de estar sola quiere entregar el mando a quien ha tenido el honor de ser elegido presidente de todos los argentinos”, agregó.

      Macri había acusado a Fernández de entorpecer la transición y de salir “por la puerta chica” como presidenta de Argentina, además de asegurar que la única reunión que tuvo con ella desde que fue elegido presidente “no valió la pena”.

      Al momento en que se publicó esta nota, todavía no se sabe dónde será finalmente la ceremonia del traspaso de poder. Y si Cristina Fernández le entregará finalmente el bastón y la banda a Mauricio Macri. Ni si estará o no presente en el evento.

      Aunque gran parte de Argentina espera ver la imagen de ambos presidentes el día 10, el mandatario electo dejó claro que quiere que esta fotografía se tome en el Salón Blanco de la Casa Rosada.

      Y dijo que “si la presidente no quiere entregar los atributos, lo hará la Corte Suprema”.

      Un orfebre en problemas

      En mitad de esta contienda presidencial está un hombre que nunca pudo imaginar verse metido en semejante lío.

      Image copyright
      Getty Images

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      Hasta el artista encargado de elaborar el bastón de mandos se vio envuelto en la polémica.

      Se trata del orfebre Juan Carlos Pallarols, que desde el regreso a la democracia con Raúl Alfonsín en 1983 lleva confeccionando los bastones de mando que se entregan a los presidentes en el traspaso de poder.

      Elaboró los dos de Cristina Fernández y ahora el de Mauricio Macri, pero aún no sabe a quién se lo va a entregar.

      “Me parece un juego de adolescentes, me pone triste porque esto no es serio”, le dice Pallarols a BBC Mundo.

      “El bastón nadie me lo ha pagado ni me lo ha encargado, lo hago por tradición cada cuatro años. ¿Qué hago? ¿Lo llevo a un lado, lo llevo a otro? No puedo dejarlo en la mesa de entrada de cualquier lugar, no estoy entregando una pizza. Estoy esperando una respuesta”, asegura.

      “Me da igual entregárselo a Macri, a la Corte Suprema o a Cristina Kirchner, no soy yo quien decide. Pero si ninguno de los dos se pone de acuerdo lo llevaré a la Virgen de Luján”.

      Pallarols asegura además que desde la Casa Rosada amenazaron a una empleada suya para que entregue el bastón al equipo de la presidenta, algo negado desde la actual Presidencia.

      Si la situación no fuera ya lo suficientemente complicada, aparecieron otros dos orfebres que dicen haber confeccionado otros bastones de mando –uno de ellos el propio hijo de Juan Carlos Pallarols, lo que generó una discusión en el seno de la familia-.

      Hasta en dibujos animados

      Image copyright
      AFP

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      Macri dijo que su única reunión con la presidenta “no valió la pena”

      El nivel de discusión en ámbitos políticos y mediáticos ha sido tal, que hasta un personaje de dibujos animados se ha visto envuelto en la polémica.

      Se trata del niño Zamba, del canal infantil público Pakapaka, a menudo alabado por el oficialismo, que lo contrapone a personajes de animación estadounidenses como Micky Mouse o el Pato Donald.

      En uno de sus programas, en el que Zamba recorre la Casa Rosada junto a sus compañeros de escuela, se escucha a la maestra decir: “Y éste es el Salón Blanco, que es el lugar donde se le otorga la banda y el bastón a los presidentes”.

      Y así, el personaje pasó de ser ícono kirchnerista a fuente de todo tipo de bromas desde los simpatizantes de Macri.

      Otra prueba de que ésta es probablemente la transición de poder más surrealista que se recuerda en la historia democrática del país.

      Source Article from http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/12/151207_argentina_macri_cristina_mando_traspaso_baston_irm