15 MARCH 2019

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20
WORLD
Friday, 15 March 2019
Daily Tribune
US grounds Boeing 737 MAX
Newly refined satellite data
warranted further investigation
WASHINGTON — The ban on the Boeing 737 MAX
aircraft became worldwide on Wednesday after US
President Donald Trump joined Canada and other
countries in grounding the aircraft amid mounting
global fears for the jet’s airworthiness.
US authorities said new evidence showed
similarities between Sunday’s deadly crash of an
Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 and a fatal
accident in Indonesia in October.
China leads in AI
WASHINGTON — China is poised to
overtake the United States in artificial
intelligence with a surge in academic
research on the key technology, an
analysis published Wednesday showed.
China is racing ahead of the US
in key areas of technology
The analysis by the Allen Institute for
Artificial Intelligence showed China has
already surpassed the US in published
papers on AI — although many of these
were considered “medium-quality” or
“low-quality.”
But the researchers said China is
likely to top the US in the most-cited 50
percent of papers this year, the most-cited
10 percent of papers next year, and in the
top one percent by 2025.
The findings highlight concerns in
Washington and Silicon Valley that China
is racing ahead of the US in key areas of
technology such as autonomous vehicles,
“Ugly” rape victim ruling
sparks outrage
ROME — Italy’s Justice Ministry has
ordered a preliminary inquiry into an
appeals court ruling that overturned a
rape verdict in part by arguing that the
woman who was attacked was too ugly to
be a credible rape victim.
The ruling has sparked outrage in Italy,
prompting a flash mob Monday outside
the Ancona court, where protesters
shouted “Shame!” and held up signs saying
“indignation.”
The appeals sentence was handed
down in 2017 — by an all-female
panel — but the reasons behind it
only emerged publicly when Italy’s
The Federal Aviation Administration said findings
from the crash site near Addis Ababa and “newly refined
satellite data” warranted “further investigation of the
possibility of a shared cause for the two incidents.”
The FAA issued an emergency order grounding
737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 aircraft until further notice.
Trump told reporters at the White House the
“safety of the American people
and all peoples is our paramount
concern.”
virtual reality and fifth-generation wireless
networks.
Allen Institute researchers Field Cady and
Oren Etzioni said the surge in AI investment
in China began more than a decade ago, well
before the 2017 announcement by Beijing
that it planned to become the world leader
in the sector by 2030.
“By most measures, China is overtaking
the US not just in papers submitted and
published, but also in the production of
high-impact papers,” the researchers said
in a blog post.
They added that new US measures that
tighten immigration could make it harder
for the US to keep up.
Last month, President Donald Trump
signed an American AI Initiative executive
order calling for the administration to
“devote the full resources of the federal
government” to help fuel AI innovation,
although analysts said it fell short of a
comprehensive strategy.
AFP
Xinjiang invests for better
living conditions
URUMQI — Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region said
it invested nearly 4.2 billion yuan ($626 million) last year to improve the
living conditions in rural areas.
The regional department of
finance said the amount was doubled
compared with the amount in 2017,
which has been used to clean
up rural areas, push forward the
“toilet revolution,” recycle trash and
dispose of rubbish and wastewater.
The department said social capital
had been attracted to invest in
projects related to the improvement
of rural living conditions.
The region will also focus on
villages’ living environments this
year. It said rural residents are
expected to play a vital role in the
campaign, by encouraging them to
take part in activities including
clean-up, afforestation and
management to provide themselves
better living conditions. Xinhua
Sun Yat-sen
remembered
BEIJING — A ceremony was
held in Beijing to commemorate
the 94th anniversary of the death
of Sun Yat-sen, a renowned
statesman who led a revolution
that ended imperial rule in China.
The ceremony in Zhongshan
Park, named after Sun, was
presided over by Liu Jiaqiang,
deputy chairman of the
Revolutionary Committee of the
Chinese Kuomintang (RCCK)
Central Committee and was
attended by representatives from
all walks of life in Beijing.
A moment of silence was
observed before attendees showed
their respect to Sun by bowing
three times in front of a statue of
BRIEFS
high court annulled it on 5 March
and ordered a retrial. The Court of
Cassation said Wednesday its own
reasons for ordering the retrial will
be issued next month.
Two Peruvian men were initially
convicted of the 2015 rape of a Peruvian
woman in Ancona, but the Italian appeals
court overturned the verdict and absolved
them, finding that she was not a credible
witness.
AP
Pentagon curbs
transgender troops
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon
announced Wednesday a new policy that
will bar enlistment of new recruits who have
SUZANO — Two masked men armed with
a gun, knives, axes and crossbows descended
on a school in southern Brazil on Wednesday,
killing five students and two adults before
taking their own lives, authorities said.
The men, identified as former students at the
school in a suburb of Sao Paulo, also shot and
killed the owner of a used car business nearby
before launching the attack on the school.
Besides the five students, the dead
included a teacher and a school administrator,
said Joao Camilo Pires de Campos, the state’s
public secretary. Nine others were wounded
in the school attack and hospitalized, he said.
“This is the saddest day of my life,” de
Campos said, speaking to reporters outside
the school in the Sao Paulo suburb of Suzano.
Authorities identified the attackers as
17-year-old Guilherme Taucci Monteiro and
25-year-old Henrique de Castro. Monteiro’s
mother, Tatiana Taucci, offered a possible answer,
telling Band News while hiding her face from the
camera that her son had been bullied at the school.
Minutes before the attack, Monteiro
undergone a gender transition or intend to
do so and require most individuals to serve
in their birth sex.
Under President Donald Trump’s new
rules, set to go into effect on 12 April after
the Supreme Court allowed them to go
forward, only transgender troops serving
in their birth gender will be able to stay in
the military after that date and they will
be barred from taking hormones or getting
transition surgery.
The move was a reversal from a policy
enacted under Trump’s Democratic
predecessor Barack Obama, who allowed
military recruits to serve in their preferred
sex rather than just the one they were
assigned at birth.
AFP
Earlier on Wednesday, Canada had also joined the
long list of countries to ban the plane from flying in
their airspaces and many airlines have voluntarily
taken it out of service.
Ethiopia said it would send the black boxes from
Flight ET 302 to France for analysis which could
provide crucial information about what happened.
“Hopefully they will come up with an answer
but until they do the planes are
grounded,” Trump said of the planes.
FAA acting chief Daniel
CARACAS — More than 500 shops were looted in Venezuela’s western
city of Maracaibo during a vast nationwide blackout that struck last week
and lasted for days, a retailers’ association said Wednesday.
The Consecomercio association called on beleaguered security forces
to reimpose order in Maracaibo and its surrounds.
In a statement, it said it lamented the “impunity with which mobs,
taking advantage of the electricity crisis... destroyed installations” in
Maracaibo’s main shopping center and in “500 other establishments.”
The blackout, which cut power to 21 of Venezuela’s 23 states last
Thursday, was still going in western parts of the country.
Electricity had mostly been restored to the capital Caracas and other
regions, but drinking water supplies remained disrupted, requiring water
to be trucked in. The reason for the unprecedented power cut has not
been determined.
President Nicolas Maduro blamed it on “sabotage” by the United
States and the opposition. But opposition leader and self-proclaimed
interim president Juan Guaido -- who is backed by the US and 50 other
countries -- told supporters corruption and mismanagement by Maduro’s
“dictatorship” was the root cause.
The head of Consecomercio, Felipe Capozzolo, urged authorities to
act, stressing on Twitter that looting could undermine retailers’ stockage
and distribution of food and basic goods that have become
increasingly scarce under Venezuela’s economic crisis.
The blackout made matters worse by cutting power
to refrigerators and freezers, ruining produce inside.
According to economic analysis firm Ecoanalitica, the
blackout cost Venezuela $875 million.
AFP
Elwell said the agency has been “working tirelessly”
to find the cause of the accident but faced delays
because the black box flight data recorders had
been damaged.
The new information shows “the track of that
airplane was close enough to the track of the Lion Air
flight... to warrant the grounding of the airplanes so
we could get more information from the black boxes
and determine if there’s a link between the two, and if
there is, find a fix to that link,” Elwell said on CNBC.
Boeing chief Dennis Muilenburg said he supported
the US decision “out of an abundance of caution” but
continued to have “full confidence” in the safety of
the plane.
AFP
AN American Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 is pulled into its gate after arriving at the Miami
International Airport from LaGuardia Airport on Wednesday. American Airlines is reported to say that it will
ground its fleet of 24 Boeing 737 Max planes after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded the entire
United States Boeing 737 MAX fleet.
AFP
Brazil school rampage kills 8
had posted 26 photos on his Facebook page,
included several with guns and one that showed
him giving the middle finger as he looked into
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Case Law
By VICTOR C. AVECILLA
the camera. In some of the photos, he wore a
black scarf with a white imprint of a skull and
cross bones. No text accompanied the posts. AP
POLICE officers stand guard outside the Raul Brasil State School in Suzano, the greater Sao
Paulo area, Brazil on Wednesday. The state government of Sao Paulo said two teenagers,
armed with guns and wearing hoods, entered the school and began shooting at students.
They then killed themselves, according to the statement.
AP
WORK continues on an outdoor observation deck on the 30 Hudson Yard’s office building in New York. It is scheduled to open to the public at the end of 2019. AP
Sun at 11:30 a.m.
Floral baskets from the
National Committee of the
Chinese People’s Political
Consultative Conference, the
RCCK Central Committee, the
United Front Work Department
of the Communist Party of China
Central Committee, the Beijing
municipal government and the
Beijing municipal committee of
the RCCK were presented to the
statue.
China Daily
A CEREMONY is held in Zhongshan, Guangdong province, to commemorate
the 94th anniversary of the death of Sun Yat-sen, on 12 March 2019. CHINA DAILY
Venezuela blackout triggers looting
Facebook
probed over
data deals
SAN FRANCISCO — US
prosecutors have launched a
criminal investigation into
Facebook’s practice of sharing
users’ data with companies
without letting the social network’s
members know, The New York
Times reported on Wednesday.
A grand jury in New York has
subpoenaed information from
at least two major smartphone
makers about such arrangements
with Facebook, according to the
Times.
Regulators, investigators and
elected officials around the world
have already been digging into the
data sharing practices of Facebook
which has more than two billion
users.
The social network’s handling of
user data has been a flashpoint for
controversy since it admitted last
year that Cambridge Analytica, a
political consultancy, used an app
that may have hijacked the private
details of 87 million users. AFP
VIEW inside a wholesale supermarkert looted during the massive blackout
that has paralyzed Venezuela for six days, in Maracaibo, in the border state of
Zulia on Wednesday. More than 500 shops were plundered in Zulia state. AFP
Republic v. Mola Cruz
G.R. No. 236629, 23 July 2018 / Third Division / Gesmundo, J.
Civil Law; Annulment of Marriage. – To declare a marriage
void, the totality of the evidence must sufficiently prove that
the respondent spouse’s psychological incapacity was grave,
incurable and existing prior to the time of the marriage, such that
the party would be incapable of carrying out the ordinary duties
required in marriage; it must be rooted in the history of the party
antedating the marriage, although the overt manifestations
may emerge only after the marriage; and it must be curable
or, even if it were otherwise, the cure would be beyond the
means of the party involved. There must be proof of a natal or
supervening disabling factor in the person – an adverse integral
element in the personality structure that effectively incapacitates
the person from really accepting and thereby complying with the
obligations essential to the marriage – which must be linked with
the manifestations of the psychological incapacity. (VOLUME 2, NUMBER 53)
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