Black boxes of crashed Ethiopian Airlines recovered

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A man carries a piece of debris on his head at the crash site of a Nairobi-bound Ethiopian Airlines flight. (AFP)
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Rescue team collect bodies in bags at the crash site of Ethiopia Airlines near Bishoftu. (AFP)
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People walk at the scene of the Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu. (Reuters)
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Family members of the victims involved in a plane crash react at Addis Ababa international airport. (AP)
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A woman reacts as she waits for the updated flight information of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. (Reuters)
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A flight information board Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi displays the details of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302. (Reuters)
Updated 12 March 2019
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Black boxes of crashed Ethiopian Airlines recovered

  • The Boeing 737-8 MAX plane was flying to Nairobi when it crashed shortly after take off
  • At least 33 nationalities among the dead including one Saudi and six Egyptians

ADDIS ABABA/SINGAPORE/BEIJING: The cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder from the Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed on Sunday have both been recovered from the crash site, the airline said in a statement.

Ethiopian Airlines earlier grounded its Boeing 737 MAX 8 fleet until further notice, the airline said on its Twitter account on Monday, a day after a crash killed all 157 people on board one of its planes of the same type.

At least 35 nationalities were among the dead.

“Although we don’t yet know the cause of the crash, we had to decide to ground the particular fleet as extra safety precaution,” the airline said.

Ethiopian Airlines has a fleet of four 737 MAX 8 jets, not counting the one that crashed on Sunday, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24.

China on Monday ordered its airlines to suspend operations of their 737 MAX 8 jets by 6 p.m. (1000 GMT) following the crash in Ethiopia, the second of a Boeing 737 MAX jet since one operated by Indonesia’s Lion Air crashed in October.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China said the order was “taken in line with the management principle of zero tolerance for security risks.”

It was not clear what caused the Ethiopian Airlines plane to go down in clear weather. But the accident was strikingly similar to last year’s crash of a Lion Air jet that plunged into the Java Sea, killing 189 people. Both crashes involved the Boeing 737 Max 8, and both happened minutes after the jets became airborne.

The Ethiopian pilot sent out a distress call and was given clearance to return to the airport, the airline’s CEO told reporters.

Worried families gathered at the flight’s destination, the airport in Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya.

Agnes Muilu said he came to pick up his brother. “I just pray that he is safe or he was not on it,” he said.

Relatives were frustrated by the lack of information about loved ones.

“Why are they taking us round and round. It is all over the news that the plane crashed,” said Edwin Ong’undi, who was waiting for his sister. “All we are asking for is information to know about their fate.”

The accident is likely to renew questions about the 737 Max, the newest version of Boeing’s popular single-aisle airliner.

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

The Lion Air cockpit data recorder showed that the jet’s airspeed indicator had malfunctioned on its last four flights, though the airline initially said problems with the aircraft had been fixed before it left the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.

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

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

As sunset approached at the crash site, searchers could be seen walking through the wreckage of the plane, which shattered into small pieces. A bulldozer was nearby.

Photos from the scene showed multicolored pieces of the jet strewn across freshly churned earth. Red Cross teams and others were searching a large area for human remains. In one photo, teams could be seen loading black plastic bags into trucks.

Watch the flight route of ET 302

The airline published a photo showing its CEO standing in the wreckage.

The Ethiopian plane was new, having been delivered to the airline in November.

State-owned Ethiopian Airlines is widely considered the best-managed airline in Africa and calls itself Africa’s largest carrier. It has ambitions of becoming the gateway to the continent and is known as an early buyer of new aircraft.

“Ethiopian Airlines is one of the safest airlines in the world. At this stage we cannot rule out anything,” CEO Tewolde Gebremariam said.

The airline said 149 passengers and eight crew members were thought to be on the plane.

Ethiopian Airlines issued a list showing 35 nationalities among the dead, including 32 Kenyans and 18 Canadians. The list reflected a broad range of backgrounds, with passengers from China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Israel, India and Somalia. Several countries lost more than five citizens.

Some of those aboard were thought to be traveling to a major United Nations environmental meeting scheduled to start Monday in Nairobi.

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

The jetliner showed unstable vertical speed after takeoff, air traffic monitor Flightradar 24 said in a Twitter post.

The Addis Ababa-Nairobi route links East Africa’s two largest economic powers and is popular with tourists making their way to safaris and other destinations. Sunburned travelers and tour groups crowd the Addis Ababa airport’s waiting areas, along with businessmen from China and elsewhere.

The jet’s last maintenance was on Feb. 4, and it had flown just 1,200 hours. The pilot was a senior aviator, joining the airline in 2010, the CEO said.

The Boeing 737 Max 8 was one of 30 being delivered to the airline, Boeing said in a statement in July when the first was delivered.

Boeing said a technical team was ready to provide assistance at the request of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

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

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

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

Ethiopian Airlines’ expansion has included the recent opening of a route to Moscow and the inauguration in January of a new passenger terminal in Addis Ababa to triple capacity.

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


UK court awards Manchester bomb victims £45,000 over hoax claims

Updated 7 sec ago
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UK court awards Manchester bomb victims £45,000 over hoax claims

Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve sued Richard Hall over claims made in videos and a book that they were “crisis actors“
Judge Karen Steyn called Hall’s behavior “a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom”

LONDON: Two survivors of the 2017 bomb attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, on Friday won £45,000 ($58,000) in damages from a former TV producer who claimed the attack was a hoax.
Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve sued Richard Hall over claims made in videos and a book that they were “crisis actors” employed by the state as part of an elaborate deception.
Hibbert sustained a spinal cord injury in the attack, and his daughter suffered severe brain damage.
Hall argued that he was acting in the public interest by filming Hibbert’s daughter outside her home, but the High Court in London agreed with Hibbert’s claim for harassment.
Judge Karen Steyn called Hall’s behavior “a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom” and on Friday ordered him to pay Hibbert and his daughter each £22,500 in damages.
Hall must also pay 90 percent of their legal costs, currently estimated at £260,000.
“The claimants are both vulnerable. The allegations are serious and distressing,” said the judge.
Jonathan Price, lawyer for the claimants, said that Hall “insisted that the terrorist attack in which the claimants were catastrophically injured did not happen and that the claimants were participants or ‘crisis actors’ in a state-orchestrated hoax, who had repeatedly, publicly and egregiously lied to the public for monetary gain.”
Hibbert welcomed the ruling, adding: “I want this case to open up the door for change, and for it to protect others from what we have been put through.
“It proves and has highlighted... that there is protection within the law, and it sends out a message to conspiracy theorists that you cannot ignore all acceptable evidence and harass innocent people.”
Islamic extremist Salman Abedi, aided by his brother, Hashem Abedi, killed 22 people and injured 1,017 during the suicide bombing at the end of the concert by the US singer.

US charges Iranian man in plot to kill Donald Trump

Updated 08 November 2024
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US charges Iranian man in plot to kill Donald Trump

  • Shakeri told the FBI he didn’t plan to propose a plan to murder Trump
  • The plot reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials

WASHINGTON: The Justice Department on Friday disclosed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trump, charging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official before this week’s election with assassinating the Republican president-elect.
Investigators learned of the plot to kill Trump while interviewing Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national identified by officials as an Iranian government asset who was deported from the US after being imprisoned on robbery charges.
He told investigators that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him this past September to put together a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan.

Two other men who the authorities say were recruited to participate in other assassinations, including a prominent Iranian American journalist, were also arrested Friday. Shakeri remains in Iran.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.
The plot, with the charges unsealed just days after Trump’s defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials, including Trump, on US soil. Last summer, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in a murder-for-hire plot.


Russia says summoned Canadian diplomat to reject Western sabotage accusations

Updated 08 November 2024
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Russia says summoned Canadian diplomat to reject Western sabotage accusations

  • Moscow said the Canadian diplomat “was told that these speculations” were being spread in a “coordinated manner, in the context of the hybrid war” being waged against Russia
  • Russia blasted the allegations as “false,” “unacceptable” and part of a “provocation” being led by the US

MOSCOW: Moscow summoned a Canadian diplomat on Friday to rebut Western allegations that Russia’s secret services had orchestrated a campaign to mail explosive packages to addresses in NATO countries, including Canada.
After a series of fires at DHL depots in Britain and Germany this summer, Russia was accused of being behind a brazen plot to ship explosive parcels via commercial airliners.
Ottawa expressed its concern earlier this week to Russian officials after Poland and Lithuania announced several arrests as a result of a probe into attempts to send parcels packaged with explosives on cargo flights to the United States and Canada.
“The deputy head of the Canadian diplomatic mission in Moscow was summoned and handed an official note in connection with the false accusations of alleged planned ‘Russian sabotage’ against NATO countries,” Russia’s foreign ministry said.
Moscow said the Canadian diplomat “was told that these speculations” were being spread in a “coordinated manner, in the context of the hybrid war” being waged against Russia by the West.
Russia blasted the allegations as “false,” “unacceptable” and part of a “provocation” being led by the United States.
Canada’s public safety ministry said Ottawa is “aware of and deeply concerned with Russia’s intensifying campaign, from cyber incidents and disinformation operations to sabotage activities.”
It confirmed the Canadian government had “expressed this concern directly to Russian officials and unequivocally stated that any threat to the safety and security of Canadians is unacceptable.”
The ministry added there was “no imminent threat” to the public but said Canada “will continue to monitor the situation very closely.”
Canada’s Transport Minister Anita Anand told reporters on Wednesday that she required “more information” on the alleged plot but said she would taking “additional steps” to ensure the safety of passengers and packages, without providing details.
The reported plot, involving civilian airlines, comes amid growing concern in the West at what it sees as Russia’s increasingly reckless espionage and sabotage operations inside NATO countries.
“Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral, frankly,” Richard Moore, head of Britain’s MI6 secret intelligence service said in September in rare public remarks.


Governor Koike discusses areas of cooperation with Egyptian Prime Minister Madbouly

Updated 08 November 2024
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Governor Koike discusses areas of cooperation with Egyptian Prime Minister Madbouly

  • Dr. Mostafa Madbouly congratulated Koike on her re-election as Governor of Tokyo
  • The Prime Minister also lauded Japan’s contribution to implementing the Japanese Tokkatsu educational system

TOKYO: Governor of Tokyo, Koike Yuriko, who is visiting Cairo, met Egyptian Prime Minister Dr. Mostafa Madbouly on Friday at the government headquarters in the New Administrative Capital and discussed several cooperation initiatives, Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) officials told Arab News Japan.
The officials said Dr. Amr Talaat, Egypt’s Minister of Communications, and Information Technology; Ambassador Ahmed Shahin, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for Asian Affairs; Mr. Katsunobu Takada, Chargé d’Affaires at the Japanese Embassy in Cairo, and Governor Koike’s accompanying delegation attended the meeting.
At the beginning of the meeting, the Prime Minister warmly welcomed Governor Koike and her delegation. He underscored the strategic and historical relations between Egypt and Japan, a testament to the enduring bond that continues to flourish in various fields.
Dr. Mostafa Madbouly congratulated Koike on her re-election as Governor of Tokyo in July for the third consecutive term and expressed his hopes for continued close coordination on various areas of bilateral cooperation.
The Prime Minister also expressed his fervent hope that Japan’s Prime Minister, alongside Governor Koike, will grace the official opening ceremony of the Grand Egyptian Museum once the project is finalized. He also extended his gratitude for Japan’s substantial contributions to major development projects in Egypt, including the museum.
Dr. Madbouly highlighted the Grand Egyptian Museum project as one of the foremost examples of cooperation between Cairo and Tokyo, along with the Egyptian Japanese educational partnership, exemplified by the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology and Japanese Egyptian schools.
The Prime Minister also lauded Japan’s contribution to implementing the Japanese Tokkatsu educational system, affirming that Egypt is planning to expand this system. He attributed this decision to President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s directive, acknowledging the system’s remarkable success and high quality.
Dr. Madbouly also highlighted the ongoing cooperation between the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and TMG through the “SUSHI Tech Tokyo” initiative, a platform for promoting technological innovation, and the “Tokyo Innovation Base” platform, a hub for fostering entrepreneurial activities and technological advancements.
In turn, Governor Koike praised the bilateral cooperation between Egypt and Japan, expressing her happiness to visit Egypt, where she has unforgettable memories, having studied at Cairo University.
Koike also commended the well-organized 12th World Urban Forum, a global platform for discussing urban issues and solutions, which attracted a wide global audience.
In the meeting, Tokyo Governor Koike invited the Prime Minister, the Minister of Communications, and other Egyptian entities to participate in the upcoming “SUSHI Tech Tokyo” forum, scheduled for the first half of 2025. She noted that Japan has worked over the years to establish itself as a hub for startups and a welcoming environment for entrepreneurs.
Dr. Amr Talaat discussed several collaborative programs with Koike in information and communication technology, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and entrepreneurship. They explored the potential for experience exchange in business incubators for small projects across various sectors, including financial services, health care, and education.
Talaat highlighted that one of the main areas of cooperation with Tokyo’s government is in the startup and entrepreneurship sectors.
Governor Koike is in Egypt on the first leg of a tour of the region that includes Abu Dhabi of the UAE.


Germany brushes off Musk calling Scholz a ‘fool’

Updated 08 November 2024
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Germany brushes off Musk calling Scholz a ‘fool’

  • Government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann took a playful dig at the US tycoon, saying that “on X, you have Narrenfreiheit,” which translates to the freedom to act like a fool
  • A tight-lipped Scholz simply called it “not very friendly“

BERLIN: German officials on Friday brushed off tech billionaire Elon Musk labelling Olaf Scholz a “fool” on his social media platform X after the dramatic collapse of the chancellor’s coalition government.
In a comment Thursday above a post about the implosion of Scholz’s long-troubled coalition, the world’s richest man tweeted in German: “Olaf ist ein Narr” — “Olaf is a fool.”
Asked about Musk’s comment, government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann took a playful dig at the US tycoon, saying that “on X, you have Narrenfreiheit,” which translates to the freedom to act like a fool.
The word refers to revellers during Germany’s traditional carnival season, which starts next week, having the freedom to act without inhibitions.
Historically, the term echoes the notion of the “jester’s privilege” — the right of a court jester to mock those in power without being punished by the king.
Asked later about the comment, a tight-lipped Scholz simply called it “not very friendly,” adding that Internet companies are “not organs of state so I did not even pay it any attention.”
Musk strongly supported US election winner Donald Trump, and is now positioned to take up a role in his administration as a deputy tasked with restructuring government operations.
It is not the first time the Tesla boss has had run-ins with German officials online.
Last year he said Berlin-funded migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean could be seen as an “invasion” of Italy, sparking a terse response from the German foreign ministry.
He has also expressed sympathy for some of the positions of Germany’s far-right AfD party, which has notched up a string of recent electoral successes and is riding high in the opinion polls.