in how to handle the plane as mandated by Boeing for all pilots.


In remarks to local media, Tewolde also revealed that pilots received additional training from Boeing to fly the 737 Max after an Indonesian domestic Lion Air flight crashed into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff last year.

“After the Lion Air crash, questions were raised, so Boeing sent further instructions that it said pilots should know,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “Those relate to the specific behavior of this specific type of aircraft. As a result, training was given by Boeing, and our pilots have taken it and put it into our manuals.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/canada-grounds-boeing-737-max-8-leaving-us-as-last-major-user-of-plane/2019/03/13/25ac2414-459d-11e9-90f0-0ccfeec87a61_story.html?utm_term=.7446b5cb607d

https://twitter.com/juliettekayyem/status/1105609681391767552

Daniel Ellwell is the Acting head of the FAA. His bio here: https://www.faa.gov/about/key_officials/elwell/ …
“Elwell was Vice President of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) from 2008-2013. In this role, Elwell represented civil aerospace manufacturers and led policy development and advocacy


https://twitter.com/PaulPage/status/1105525652130811904

The top FAA job has been vacant for 14 months, airline enforcement fines have dropped 88% in two years and lengthy tarmac delays have doubled. Meantime, the U.S. is increasingly isolated in not acting on the Boeing 737 Max 8. https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-737-max-the-latest-example-of-a-passive-dot-11552409944 … via @WSJ


https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1105546135555489799


NEW: @Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg spoke by phone with TRUMP this a.m., urging him not to ground 737 Max 8s after Sunday’s crash.
* Muilenburg has tried to cultivate Trump. He visited Mar-a-Lago after AF1 dust-up, & Boeing donated $1M to Trump inaugural.

Pilots repeatedly voiced safety concerns about the Boeing 737 Max 8 to federal authorities, with one captain calling the flight manual "inadequate and almost criminally insufficient" several months before Sunday's Ethiopian Air crash that killed 157 people, an investigation by The Dallas Morning News found.

The complaints are about the safety mechanism cited in preliminary reports for an October plane crash in Indonesia that killed 189. The disclosures found by The News reference problems during Boeing 737 Max 8 flights with an autopilot system, and they all occurred while trying to gain altitude during takeoff -- many mentioned the plane turning nose down suddenly. While records show these flights occurred during October and November, the information about which airlines the pilots were flying for is redacted from the database.


At least 18 carriers — including American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, the two largest U.S. carriers flying the 737 Max 8 — have also declined to ground planes, saying they are confident in the safety and "airworthiness" of their fleets. American and Southwest have 24 and 34 of the aircraft in their fleets, respectively.

The fifth complaint from the captain who called into question the 737 Max 8's flight manual ended: "The fact that this airplane requires such jury-rigging to fly is a red flag. Now we know the systems employed are error-prone — even if the pilots aren't sure what those systems are, what redundancies are in place and failure modes. I am left to wonder: what else don't I know?"

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2019/03/12/boeing-737-max-8-pilots-complained-feds-months-suspected-safety-flaw

The "small improvised explosive devices" were found in A4 postal bags, the Metropolitan Police said.

The Met's Counter Terrorism Command is treating it as a "linked series" and "keeping an open mind regarding motives".

No-one has been hurt, the force added.

The Compass Centre in Heathrow's grounds was evacuated after a package was reported to police at about 09:55 GMT.

The device set alight when staff opened the bag, the Met said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-47457477?ns_campaign=bbc_breaking&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=news_central&ns_mchannel=social

by Ben Protess, William K. Rashbaum and Maggie Haberman
Feb. 22, 2019

Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, met last month with federal prosecutors in Manhattan, offering information about possible irregularities within the president’s family business and about a donor to the inaugural committee, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Cohen, who worked at the Trump Organization for a decade, spoke with the prosecutors about insurance claims the company had filed over the years, said the people, who did not elaborate on the nature of the possible irregularities.

While it was not clear whether the prosecutors found Mr. Cohen’s information credible and whether they intended to pursue it, the meeting suggests that they are interested in broader aspects of the Trump Organization, beyond their investigation into the company’s role in the hush money payments made before the 2016 election to women claiming to have had affairs with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty last summer to arranging those payments.

The prosecutors also questioned Mr. Cohen about a donor to the president’s inaugural committee, Imaad Zuberi, a California venture capitalist and political fund-raiser, according to the people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to discuss the confidential meeting. Around the time that Mr. Zuberi contributed $900,000 to the committee, he also tried to hire Mr. Cohen as a consultant and wrote him a substantial check, one of the people said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/us/politics/michael-cohen-prosecutors-trump-organization.html

A U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant and self-identified white nationalist has been arrested after federal investigators uncovered a cache of weapons and ammunition in his Maryland home that authorities say he stockpiled to launch a massive domestic terror attack targeting politicians and journalists.

Christopher Paul Hasson called for “focused violence” to “establish a white homeland” and dreamed of ways to “kill almost every last person on earth,” according to court records filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland. Though court documents do not detail a specific planned date for an attack, the government said he had been amassing supplies and weapons since at least 2017, developed a spreadsheet of targets that included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and searched the Internet using phrases such as “best place in dc to see congress people” and “are supreme court justices protected.”

. In recent weeks, Hasson developed a spreadsheet of targets that included top Democratic congressional leaders and media personalities. The list includes “JOEY,” what prosecutors say is a reference to former senator Joe Scarborough of MSNBC; “cortez,” an alleged reference to freshman U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York); and “Sen blumen jew” presumably is U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)

“The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” the government said in court documents filed this week, arguing that Hasson should stay in jail awaiting trial.Hasson, of Silver Spring, is expected to appear before a judge for a detention hearing in federal court in Greenbelt at 1 p.m. Thursday.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/self-proclaimed-white-nationalist-planned-mass-terror-attack-government-says-i-am-dreaming-of-a-way-to-kill-almost-every-last-person-on-earth/2019/02/20/61daf6b8-3544-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.bd7546d8e1cc


https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1098355510548385793


Media people on his target list: @JoeNBC, @chrislhayes, @donlemon, @VanJones68, @ChrisCuomo, @AriMelber

Politicians include: @AOC, @ewarren, @IlhanMN, @KamalaHarris, @SenGillibrand, @SenSchumer, @BetoORourke, @CoryBooker, @SpeakerPelosi, @timkaine, @SenBlumenthal

There were widespread expectations when the Democrats took control of the House that an early, if not the first, order of business would be to go after President Trump’s tax returns.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said this month that the House would pursue the returns, something she noted Americans overwhelmingly support. But she added, “We have to be very, very careful as we go forward. It’s not an issue of just sending a letter. You have to do it in a very careful way."

Actually, it is more or less an issue of just sending a letter. Pelosi, and House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), are being unduly skittish.Neal has declined even to offer a timeline of when he would seek the returns. He has suggested that the request will provoke a “long and arduous” court case, analogous to the subpoena battles that Congress in recent years has waged to at best checkered results.

But there is a critical difference in the legal authorities governing a request for tax returns and a general congressional subpoena.The law that permits Neal, as head of Ways and Means, to receive Trump’s returns is simple and clear: 26 U.S.C. §6103(f) specifies that “upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives … the Secretary [of the Treasury] shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request.” The return is furnished in closed executive session.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/20/get-trumps-tax-returns-democrats-just-need-send-letter/?utm_term=.b129986eab71

and I am old, lol.

The Tao of Kurt Cobain: 12 Great Quotes From the Nirvana Frontman


“At this point I have a request for our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us — leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.” –Incesticide liner notes


“I definitely feel closer to the feminine side of the human being than I do the male – or the American idea of what a male is supposed to be. Just watch a beer commercial and you’ll see what I mean.” –Rolling Stone, 1992


“I think rap music is the only vital form of music that has been introduced to music in a long time since punk rock. I would never do rap music. No. There’s just no sense in it. The people who do rap music do it just fine. I’m usually offended by people like Vanilla Ice and stuff like that. The white man ripped off the black man long enough. They should leave rap music to the African-Americans because they do it so well and it is so vital to them.” –Billboard, 1991

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-tao-of-kurt-cobain-12-great-quotes-from-the-nirvana-frontman-112939/

A wide-ranging disinformation campaign aimed at Democratic 2020 candidates is already under way on social media, with signs that foreign state actors are driving at least some of the activity.The main targets appear to be Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), four of the most prominent announced or prospective candidates for president.


A POLITICO review of recent data extracted from Twitter and from other platforms, as well as interviews with data scientists and digital campaign strategists, suggests that the goal of the coordinated barrage appears to be undermining the nascent candidacies through the dissemination of memes, hashtags, misinformation, and distortions of their positions. But the divisive nature of many of the posts also hint at a broader effort to sow discord and chaos within the Democratic presidential primary.


The cyber propaganda — which frequently picks at the rawest, most sensitive issues in public discourse — is being pushed across a variety of platforms and with a more insidious approach than in the 2016 presidential election, when online attacks designed to polarize and mislead voters first surfaced on a massive scale.

Recent posts that have received widespread dissemination include racially inflammatory memes and messaging involving Harris, O’Rourke and Warren. In Warren’s case, a false narrative surfaced alleging that a blackface doll appeared on a kitchen cabinet in the background of the senator’s New Year’s Eve Instagram livestream.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/20/2020-candidates-social-media-attack-1176018

President Trump has grown increasingly disenchanted with Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, who has served as the nation’s top intelligence official for nearly two years, leading some administration officials to worry he will soon be dismissed, according to people familiar with the matter.

The president has never seen Coats as a close or trusted adviser, the people said, but he has become more frustrated with him in recent weeks over public statements that Trump sees as undercutting his policy goals, particularly with respect to reaching a disarmament agreement with North Korea.



Trump is still “enraged” about Coats’s congressional testimony on national security threats last month, believing that the director undercut the president’s authority when he shared intelligence assessments about Iran, North Korea and the Islamic State that are at odds with many of Trump’s public statements, said one adviser who spoke with the president over the weekend.

Trump had seemed to put the episode behind him and claimed shortly after the hearing that Coats and CIA Director Gina Haspel told him they’d been “misquoted” in their comments at the televised hearing.But privately, the president has continued to fume, and this weekend he told the adviser that Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana, is “not loyal” and “he’s not on the team.”


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-grows-frustrated-with-coats-leading-some-to-fear-he-might-be-fired/2019/02/19/66574240-3464-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html?utm_term=.eb6cdaaccd39