Month: March 2020

Relatives of victims in last year’s Ethiopian Airlines crash have arrived in Addis Ababa to commemorate the anniversary of the tragedy and to get answers.  An airline industry final report on what caused the Boeing 737 MAX to crash is expected this week. Families of the 157 victims on board Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 are holding memorials in Addis Ababa Monday before traveling Tuesday to the crash site, about 45 kilometers outside the capital, for a private ceremony.  A monument for the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 Boeing 737 Max plane crash is seen during a memorial ceremony at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa, March 9, 2020.At a small gathering at the French Embassy Monday, relatives of the 10 French citizens killed in the March 10 crash commemorated their lost loved ones.   There were no survivors when the nearly new Boeing 737 MAX crashed, just minutes after takeoff.   Virginie Fricaudet is president of the victim’s association ET302 Solidarity Justice.  She lost her 38-year-old brother Xavier, a teacher at the French School in Nairobi.
“I would say that we have created a community between all families — the French families on one side and the other global families on the other side.  It’s a big and huge moment of being all together because we are linked by the same tragedy and destiny.  It’s a moment that we should live like a big family,” she said.Surviving relatives have asked for Boeing not to be involved in the anniversary memorials and have filed lawsuits against the company to seek compensation.Their visit to Ethiopia comes as air safety investigators are expected to release an interim report on the roles played by Boeing, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and Ethiopian Airlines.  The report found that pilots on the 737 MAX were not provided with adequate training by the aircraft’s manufacturer. It also determined that Boeing’s MCAS, or Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, which aggressively pushed down the nose of the plane, was “vulnerable to undesired activation.”A woman draws a cross with oil on the forehead of another woman during a memorial ceremony at the crash site of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 airplane accident in Tulu Fara, Ethiopia, on March 8, 2020.Relatives and friends of victims are still waiting for answers and remain critical of how the aftermath of the crash was handled.  Yeshiwas Zeggeye was president of Arline Pilot’s Association of Ethiopia at the time of the crash.“What’s quite interesting up to this point is that the company did not have a consultation with pilots and cabin crews at all after the crash.  That is not something that I would have expected.  I would expect the company would engage more with its pilots, especially those who flew on the Boeing 737 MAX at the time,” he said.Zeggeye also criticized Ethiopian Airlines for not acting after the Lion Air crash in Indonesia, also a 737 MAX, that took place months earlier.   Relatives of the Ethiopian Airlines crash victims agree the 737 Max should have been grounded soon after the Lion Air crash.  FILE – A United Airlines Boeing 737 Max airplane takes off in the rain at Renton Municipal Airport in Renton, Wash., Dec. 11, 2019,Aviation engineer and vice president of ET302 Solidarity Justice Matthieu Willm says Boeing needs to explain why the 737 MAX aircraft were allowed to continue flying.A U.S. congressional report last week into the crash accused Boeing of concealing crucial information from the FAA, making faulty assumptions about critical technologies, and production pressures that jeopardized aviation safety.
Boeing did not immediately reply to a request for comment.But in public statements, the company has said it will review the report, continue to cooperate with investigators, and that its thoughts and prayers are with the relatives who lost loved ones.Boeing last year set aside $100 million to assist the families of victims and communities impacted by the crashes, which killed 346 people in total.The funds are not part of any compensation the aircraft maker might have to pay to those who are suing the company for damages.Boeing has said it is strengthening safety measures and estimates it will be able to re-certify the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft for use around the middle of this year. 
    
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Two American soldiers were killed by “enemy forces” in Iraq Monday, a statement by the military said.The service members were killed “while advising and accompanying Iraqi Security Forces during a mission to eliminate an ISIS terrorist stronghold in a mountainous area of north central Iraq,” said a statement by Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF- OIR) —  the headquarters responsible for overseeing U.S. and coalition efforts against Islamic State.The military has not yet released the names of the victims pending notification of next of kin.The United States maintains more than 5,000 troops in Iraq to train and support Iraqi forces in the fight against Islamic State. 
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Western High School opened in Baltimore, Maryland on November 1, 1844 – four years before the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls in New York. It is the oldest all-girls school in the country and is very proud of its traditions. Karina Bafradzhian visited the unique school and talked to students and teachers.
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Some of Virginia’s scores of Confederate monuments could soon be removed under legislation state lawmakers approved Sunday.The Democratic-led House and Senate passed measures that would undo an existing state law that protects the monuments and instead lets local governments decide their fate. The bill’s passage marks the latest turn in Virginia’s long-running debate over how its history should be told in public spaces.The legislation now heads to Gov. Ralph Northam, who has said he supports giving localities — several of which have already declared their intent to remove statues — control over the issue.After white supremacists descended on Charlottesville in 2017, in part to protest the city’s attempt to move a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, many places across the country quickly started taking Confederate monuments down. But Virginia localities that wanted to remove monuments were hamstrung by the existing law.In the two legislative sessions that followed the rally, Republican lawmakers defeated bills like the one that passed Sunday. But Democrats recently took full control of the statehouse for the first time in a generation.One of the bill’s sponsors, Del. Delores McQuinn of Richmond, said she feels great about letting local leaders decide what’s right for their community. But she said she thought many places would opt to keep the monuments.“I think more of them are going to be interested in contextualizing, you know, making sure that there is a sense of truth told and shared with the public,” she said.As for Charlottesville, city spokesman Brian Wheeler said staff would review the new legislation and determine the steps needed to carry out previous City Council votes to remove the Lee statue and another of Stonewall Jackson from its public parks.Virginia, a state that prides itself on its pivotal role in America’s early history, is home to more than 220 public memorials to the Confederacy, according to state officials. Among those are some of the nation’s most prominent — a collection of five monuments along Richmond’s Monument Avenue, a National Historic Landmark.Critics say the monuments are offensive to African Americans because they romanticize the Confederacy and ignore its defense of slavery.“My family has lived with the trauma of slavery for generations. … I hope that you understand that this is a situation that’s so much deeper than a simple vote on simple war memorials,” Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who presides over the Senate, said earlier in the week.Others say removing the monuments is tantamount to erasing history.Republican Amanda Chase said during the same Senate debate that slavery was evil.“But it doesn’t mean that we take all of these monuments down,” she continued. “We remember our past, and we learn from it.”The House and Senate initially passed different legislation, with disagreements about what hurdles a locality must clear before taking down a statue. A conference committee hashed out the differences.The compromise measure says a locality must hold a public hearing before voting to remove or otherwise alter a monument. If it decides to remove one, it must be offered to “any museum, historical society, government or military battlefield,” although the governing body ultimately gets the say on the “final disposition.”The measure, which passed largely but not entirely along party lines, wouldn’t apply cemeteries or the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, which has a prominent statue of Jackson.Northam, who last year was embroiled in a scandal over a racist photo that appeared in his medical school yearbook, announced at the start of the legislative session what he called a historic justice agenda aimed at telling the accurate and complete story of Virginia’s past.In addition to the monuments bill, lawmakers also have advanced bills removing old racist laws that were technically still on the books, substituting the state’s holiday honoring Lee and Jackson for one on Election Day and creating a commission to recommend a replacement for a Lee statue Virginia contributed to the U.S. Capitol. They have also passed legislation that provides protections and funding for historic African American cemeteries.Another bill introduced this year took aim at a controversial statue on Capitol Square, one of Harry F. Byrd Sr., a former Virginia governor and U.S. senator who’s considered the architect of the state’s “massive resistance” policy to public school integration.Republican Del. Wendell Walker introduced the bill that would have removed the bronze figure with the aim of needling Democrats on the larger monuments issue, saying “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” Byrd, a Democrat, led a political machine that dominated Virginia politics for decades.But when met with some agreement from across the aisle on removing the statue, Walker asked that the bill be killed.
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From Miami to Seattle, nursing homes and other facilities for the elderly are stockpiling masks and thermometers, preparing for staff shortages and screening visitors to protect a particularly vulnerable population from the coronavirus.In China, where the outbreak began, the disease has been substantially deadlier for the elderly. In Italy, the epicenter of the virus outbreak in Europe, the more than 100 people who died were either elderly, sick with other complications, or both.Of the 21 deaths across the U.S. as of Sunday, at least 16 had been linked to a Seattle-area nursing home, along with many other infections among residents, staff and family members. The Seattle Times reported that a second nursing home and a retirement community in the area had each reported one case of the virus.That has put other facilities in the U.S. on high alert, especially in states with large populations of older residents, such as Florida and California. About 2.5 million people live in long-term care facilities in the United States.“For people over the age of 80 … the mortality rate could be as high as 15 percent,” said Mark Parkinson, president of the nursing home trade group American Health Care Association.The federal government is now focusing all nursing home inspections on infection control, singling out facilities in cities with confirmed cases and those previously cited for not following protocol.Federal rules already require the homes to have an infection prevention specialist on staff, and many have long had measures in place to deal with seasonal flus and other ailments that pose a higher risk to the elderly.Even so, facilities’ response to the coronavirus has varied across the country.In Florida, where about 160,000 seniors live in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, mandatory visitor screening is not in place “because we’re not at that stage,” said Kristen Knapp, a spokeswoman for the Florida Health Care Association.But elder care centers are posting signs urging visitors to stay away if they have symptoms, and are looking into alternate ways for families to connect, such as through video chats, Knapp said.Concierges in the 14 Florida nursing homes run by the Palm Gardens corporation are now giving all visitors a short questionnaire asking about symptoms, recent travel and contact with others, said company Vice President Luke Neumann.Neumann said the nursing homes also have purchased extra thermometers in case they need to check visitors’ temperatures and stockpiled preventive supplies, including medical masks, protective eyewear and gowns. In the laundry rooms, they are making sure to use enough bleach and heat to kill any lingering virus germs, he said.At the South Shore Rehabilitation and Skilled Care Center south of Boston, patient Leo Marchand keeps a container of disinfecting wipes on a shelf by his bed that he uses several times a day. The 71-year-old Vietnam veteran and retired truck driver has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that makes it difficult for him to breathe. The possibility of contracting the coronavirus scares him.“It’s a concern,” Marchand said. “It really is.”Many facilities across the country have said they were having trouble getting medical masks and gowns because of shortages.More intensive screening of visitors, meanwhile, is not sitting well with some.“Some of the visitors have been quite reluctant to comply, and that has been stressful,” said Janet Snipes, executive director of Holly Heights Nursing Center in Denver.Under federal regulations, nursing homes are considered a patient’s residence, and the facilities want to keep them connected with family, especially when they are near death.“I don’t think you can flat-out prevent visitors,” said Dr. David A. Nace, director of long-term care and flu programs at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Medicine. He oversees 300 facilities in Pennsylvania.For now, facilities in most states are stressing basic precautions, including hand washing and coughing etiquette.Centers throughout the country are also trying to prepare their staffs for the worst.An adult day care center in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood bought long-lasting prepared meals in preparation for possible shortages. The Hebrew Home in Riverdale, New York, is running nursing staff through drills to see how they will handle situations at the 750-bed facility if the virus progresses. Their IT department is setting up infrastructure for staff to work remotely if they become sick.“If one of our sites has an outbreak, we quickly will deplete the staff in that location,” said Randy Bury, CEO of The Good Samaritan Society, one of the largest not-for-profit providers of senior care services in the country, with 19,000 employees in 24 states.Some families are considering pulling their loved ones out of facilities.Kathleen Churchyard said her family has decided to move her 80-year-old mother out of her retirement community near Jacksonville, Florida, and into her sister’s home nearby if the virus is confirmed in the area.Churchyard, who lives in Concord, North Carolina, worries her mother is not taking it seriously, and is particularly worried about her dining hall.“I tried to get her to buy some stuff to prepare. … She said, ‘No. If (the virus) takes me, it takes me,’” Churchyard said.
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