31052019 - Dont withdraw licensed guns, Reps tell Buhari

44 Vanguard, FRIDAY, MAY 31, 2019
China accuses US of ‘economic terrorism’
as trade war escalates
CHINA accused the
Trump administration
of committing “economic
terrorism” on Thursday,
escalating its war of
words with the United
States amid rising trade
tensions between the two
countries.
The Ministry of Foreign
Affairs said the White
House had “brought huge
damage to the economy of
other countries and the US
itself,” spokesperson Lu
Kang told reporters in
Beijing on Thursday.
Lu described US trade
policy as “typical economic
terrorism, economic hegemonism,
and economic
unilateralism.”
The statement followed
similarly ominous rhetoric
from Chinese state media,
which issued a stern message
to Washington on
Wednesday: “Don’t say we
didn’t warn you.”
The People’s Daily, the
newspaper of the ruling
Communist Party, used the
loaded phrase in a commentary
on Wednesday,
in which it said that China
would “never accept” the
US’ suppression of Chinese
development.
The warning came as
Boeing admits it fell short on safety alert for 737
BOEING has admitted
it “fell short” when it
failed to implement a safety
alert system on the 737 Max.
The aircraft was grounded
globally in March after
two crashes within months.
Boeing boss Dennis
Muilenburg said a mistake
had been made in the software
for a cockpit warning
light called an “angle-of-attack
(AOA) disagree alert”.
He said: “We clearly fell
short and the implementation
of this angle-of-attack
disagree alert was a mistake,
right, we did not implement
it properly.”
In an interview with Norah
O’Donnell of CBS News
he said Boeing was now fixing
the problem.
The alert could have notified
pilots and maintenance
crews that there was a problem
early in the flight.
One flight safety expert
said if there had been an
AOA disagree alert on
board the Ethiopian airlines
flight it “would have been
the very first clue” for the
pilots that something was
wrong.
Chris Brady, a pilot and
author of The Boeing 737
Technical Guide said: “I’m
fairly confident that the Ethiopian
Airlines flight probably
would not have crashed
if they had had the AOA disagree
alert” on the aircraft.
Ethiopian Airlines flight
ET 302 crashed after an erroneous
reading from one of
the AOA sensors triggered
a flight control system
Pope Francis signs a Harley Davidson motorbike of the Christian motorcycle
group ‘Jesus Biker’ as his cape is blown by a gust of wind during the
weekly general audience at the Vatican. REUTERS/Yara Nardi
(MCAS) which repeatedly
pushed the nose of the aircraft
down.
All 157 people on board
were killed.
Mr Brady believes that if
there had been an alert
warning light showing that
the AOA sensors were giving
different readings, then
the pilots might have followed
an emergency procedure
at an earlier point in
the doomed flight.
The procedure, detailead
by Boeing in a bulletin
to airlines and pilots
in November subsequent
to the Lion Air crash off Indonesia,
involves flipping
two switches, and turns off
an automatic control system
for the plane’s stabilisers.
Boeing said in a statement
a month ago that the
“alert has not been considered
a safety feature on airplanes
and is not necessary
for the safe operation of the
airplane”.
Mr Muilenburg also admitted
in the CBS interview
that the company knew that
the alert system was not active
on all 737 Max jets in
2017 and yet did not tell the
Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) for 13
months.
He said: “Our communication
on that was not what
it should have been.”
Trump says impeachment is dirty,
filthy
U
.S. President
Donald Trump on
Thursday scornfully rejected
‘disgusting’ talk
among Democrats about
launching an impeachment
inquiry against
him in the aftermath of
the Russia probe, saying
he did nothing to merit
such an outcome.
Talking to reporters on
the White House South
Lawn ahead of a trip to
Colorado, Trump grew
animated in reacting to
a statement from U.S.
Special Counsel Robert
Mueller on Wednesday.
Mueller said his report
on Russian collusion in
the 2016 presidential
campaign did not clear
Trump of obstruction of
justice and indicated it
was up to Congress to
decide whether he
should be impeached.
China’s top economic planning
agency suggested it
would be willing curb exports
of rare earth minerals,
which are crucial for
high-tech manufacturing.
On May 15, the Trump
administration signed an
order that potentially
banned major Chinese
companies, such as technology
giant Huawei,
from buying vital components
such as computer
chips from the US.
Many of those chips are
made using rare earths, of
which China is a major
exporter
“At present, the United
States completely overestimates
its ability to control
the global supply chain
and is due to slap itself in
the face when it sobers up
from its happy, ignorant
self-indulgence,” said the
commentary published under
the pseudonym
Wuyuehe. “Don’t say we
didn’t warn you.”
Mueller’s statement
fuelled an increase in
calls from Democratic
lawmakers for impeachment
proceedings, and
U.S. House of Representatives
Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, reacting to
Mueller’s statement,
said “nothing is off the
table.”
Asked if he expected
to be impeached, Trump
said: “I don’t see how
It’s a dirty, filthy, disgusting
word. It’s a giant
presidential harassment.”
He cited the U.S. Constitution’s
language
that a president can be
charged with “high
crimes and misdemeanours.”
“There was no crime.
There was no misdemeanour,”
he said.
While House Democrats
have yet to decide
whether to pursue impeachment,
they are
pressing forward with a
number of investigations
spinning off from the
Russia probe.
The Trump administration
is fighting those
congressional efforts,
including an attempt by
the Democratic chairman
of the House tax-writing
panel to obtain the president’s
tax returns.
The top Democrat on
the Senate Finance Committee,
Ron Wyden, said
on Thursday the U.S.
Treasury had been “unresponsive”
to questions
about Treasury Secretary
Steve Mnuchin’s decision
not to comply with
the House demand for
Trump’s returns, and he
threatened to attempt to
block any Treasury nominees
if the department
was not forthcoming.
Baby with weight of apple
defies odds to survive
A
baby born weighing just 245g (8.6oz), be
lieved to be the tiniest on record to survive
premature birth, has been discharged from hospital
in the US.
Baby Saybie weighed the same as a large apple
when she was born at 23 weeks and three days in
December 2018.
Fighting for life, she was transferred to the intensive
care unit at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital in
San Diego, California.
Doctors told Saybie’s parents she had just hours
to live.
But five months on, she was discharged weighing
a healthy 5.6 pounds (2.5kg), confounding all
expectations.
A nurse who cared for Saybie as she battled for
survival said her recovery and release earlier this
month was a “miracle”.
The Tiniest Babies Registry said Saybie is thought
to be the world’s smallest surviving premature
baby.
The previous record was held by a baby girl from
Germany, born weighing 252g (8.9oz) in 2015, according
to the registry, operated by the University
of Iowa.
A baby, born weighing just 268g (9.45oz) in Japan
earlier this year, is thought to be the smallest
boy to have survived premature birth.
South Africa gets
gender-balanced cabinet
SOUTH African President Cyril Ramaphosa has
announced a new cabinet in which, for the first
time in the country’s history, half of all ministers
are women.
In another unexpected move, one of the women is
from the opposition.
He appointed veteran opposition politician Patricia
de Lille, who had stood for the Good Party, as
minister of infrastructure development.
The African National Congress party won a general
election on 8 May.
The move to have half of all cabinet posts occupied
by women was a “surprise”. But it shows that
the head of state is “astute”, she said.
South Africans have welcomed the move to have
equal gender representation. Tanya Cohen from
Business Unity South Africa (Busa) said it sent “good
signals to have qualified ministers like Dr Naledi
Pandor as International Relations minister”.
On Thursday President Ramaphosa made a point
of hosting the “take a girl child to work” day, where
he told students he wanted to be a lawyer from a
very young age. Many hope that the presence of
women will help in poverty alleviation especially
among rural women.
The most unexpected move was the appointment
of the former Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille.
She set up the Good party after she was forced to
resign from the opposition Democratic Alliance following
an acrimonious power struggle.
New York: Teacher makes black
students act as slaves
A
New York teacher singled out African-Ameri
can students and cast them as slaves in a mock
“auction” as part of a social studies lesson in March.
An investigation by the New York Attorney General’s
office found that the reenactment had a “profoundly
negative effect on all of the students present
, especially the African-American students.”
“Every young person regardless of race, deserves
the chance to attend school free of harassment, bias,
and discrimination,” Attorney General Letitia James
said in a statement.
“Lessons designed to separate children on the
basis of race have no place in New York classrooms,
or in classrooms throughout this country.”
The incident happened in two fifth-grade social
studies classes at The Chapel School, a private
school in Westchester County about 15 miles north
of midtown Manhattan.
The attorney general’s investigation also revealed
that even before this incident, parents had complained
to school administrators about the school’s
lack of racial sensitivity and had concerns that the
school did not do enough to address the complaints.
Those complaints included unequal discipline of
students on the basis of race, a lack of racial sensitivity
in the curriculum and a lack of diversity among
teachers.