A massive explosion at a pesticide plant in eastern China killed 44 people and injured more than 600, state media said on Friday.
The blast – which registered as a small earthquake in Jiangsu province – inflicted the latest casualties in a series of industrial accidents that has angered the public.
The explosion occurred on Thursday at the Chenjiagang Industrial Park in the city of Yancheng, and the resulting fire was finally brought under control at 3am on Friday (19:00 GMT), state television reported.
Children at a kindergarten in the vicinity were also injured in the blast.
Survivors were taken to 16 hospitals with 640 people being treated for injuries. Thirty-two victims were critically injured, it said. More than 3,500 medical workers were mobilised to assist.
Major accidents
President Xi Jinping, who is in Italy on a state visit, ordered all-out efforts to care for the injured and to “earnestly maintain social stability”, state television said.
Authorities must step up action to prevent such incidents from happening and find out the cause of the blast as quickly as possible, Xi added.
“There have recently been a series of major accidents, and all places and relevant departments must fully learn the lessons from these,” the report cited Xi as saying.
The fire at a plant owned by the Tianjiayi Chemical Company spread to neighbouring factories.
Smoke billows from fire behind a damaged building following the explosion [Reuters]
Nearly 1,000 area residents were moved to safety as of Friday as a precaution against leaks and additional explosions, the city government said in a statement posted to its official microblog.
“Here we have people living almost by cheek to jowl with this vast complex where some of the most dangerous chemicals known to man are produced,” said Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing.
The cause of the blast was under investigation, but the company – which produces more than 30 organic chemical compounds, some of which are highly flammable – has been cited and fined for work-safety violations in the past, the newspaper China Daily said.
Gas concentrations
The Jiangsu environmental protection bureau said in a statement late on Thursday the environmental monitoring station in the area had found no abnormal concentrations of toluene, xylene or benzene.
Concentrations of acetone and chloroform outside the perimeter of the explosion zone were also within normal limits, it added.
Jiangsu will launch inspections on chemical producers and warehouses, according to an emergency notice published by official media on Friday.
The notice, published on the news website of Jiangsu province’s Communist Party, said the government would shut down any chemical firms found not complying with regulations on dangerous chemicals.
Public anger over safety standards has grown in China over industrial accidents ranging from mining disasters to factory fires that have marred three decades of swift economic growth.
In 2015, 165 people were killed in a series of explosions at a chemical warehouse in the northern city of Tianjin.
The explosions at Tianjin, one of the world’s busiest ports and not far from the capital, Beijing, were big enough to be seen by satellites and register on earthquake sensors.
Despite repeated pledges by the government to tighten safety, chemical plants, in particular, have been plagued by disasters.
In November, a series of blasts during the delivery of flammable gas at a chemical manufacturer killed 23 people.
Now, if you refer a customer to buy a Tesla, both people will receive 1,000 miles of free Supercharging.
Each referral also receives an entry to win a Founders Series Model Y monthly and Founders Series Roadster, both signed by Musk and Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen.
The program’s return is great if you’re in the market for a Tesla, but it’s obviously a shadow of the former, quirkier rewards program — which was perhaps a bit too generous.
In the old program, one referral got yourself a photo launched into deep space orbit, plus a hat to commemorate the launch.
A second referral got you offered the choice between a Elon-signed black Wall Connector or a mini driveable electric Model S for kids.
After five referrals, you unlocked a secret level, which offered a discount on the new, upcoming Roadster. Because Tesla kept the program running for so long, a handful of lucky (and persistent) people scored themselves a completely free car.
The carmaker has been undergoing a cost-cutting exercise in the past few months, such as cutting down on underperforming stores (reneging on a plan to move to online-only sales), and laying off an estimated 7 percent of its workforce.
Stacey Spikes, the co-founder of the ongoing psychological experiment known as MoviePass, has a new offer he’s sure you can’t refuse: absolutely free movie tickets.
All he needs from you in exchange is whatever shred of self respect you’ve somehow managed to hold onto as you shuffle through this modern hellscape.
Announced via Kickstarter, Spike’s new movie-related scheme comes across as even more harebrained than its MoviePass precursor. PreShow, as the eventually to-be-released app is called, offers you credits redeemable for movie tickets in exchange for watching roughly 20 minutes worth of ads. And we do mean watching.
According to the PreShow FAQ page, some form of facial-tracking software will ensure that your attention doesn’t waver — even for a moment.
“We use proprietary facial recognition technology,” the page explains in response to a question about how the company knows if a user is watching the ads. “That’s why it’s so easy to pause the viewing, and resume it later, at your leisure.”
And don’t even think about trying to walk away. “The motion detector automatically pauses playback if you have to step away,” explains the KickStarter pitch. “You can resume watching anytime at your leisure.”
Now, forcing yourself to watch branded content in exchange for entertainment might be worth it for those pinching pennies. Let’s be real, that is very much the deal that has allowed television to exist for so long. And yet, at least for now, participating in PreShow actually costs money.
That’s right, at present you have to pay between $15 and $60 for invites to the thing.
In other words, you’re paying today to watch ads in the future in order to receive credits that can then later be redeemed for movie tickets. There might, just maybe, be an unnecessary step or two in there somewhere.
Oh yeah, and then there’s the question of what happens to your data. PreShow insists that it takes privacy seriously. “Nobody is recorded,” emphasizes the Kickstarter page, “no personally identifiable data is shared, all data is aggregated and anonymized to brand partners.”
De-anonymizing data has been shown to be relatively easy, however, so make of PreShow’s claims what you will.
The Kickstarter page tells those plunking down $60 that the app has an “estimated delivery” of this July, so you have at least until then to decide whether this madness is for you — or to throw your smartphone into the sea. The choice is up to you.
It was announced as “simple VR.” And that’s exactly what it delivers.
Nintendo chose wisely in using Labo to plot the company’s path into a virtual reality future. There’s already a global market familiar with the idea of “cardboard VR” — and cardboard, of course, is the glue that holds Labo together — and the low-tech approach keeps the price family-friendly.
Now, having actually spent some time playing with the Labo VR Kit, I’m happy to confirm: It’s good stuff.
Let’s talk about what’s in the box first. A basic $40 starter set gets you the VR Kit software, the cardboard pieces you’ll need to build the headset — which includes a hard plastic component for the lenses — and the Toy-Con Blaster, one of several build-it-yourself peripherals that work in tandem with the headset.
The more complete $80 VR Kit packs in four additional peripherals: Toy-Con Camera, Toy-Con Elephant, Toy-Con Bird, and Toy-Con Wind Pedal. Starter set buyers will also be able to pick up those extras up separately, in two $20 expansion packs: one for the Camera and Elephant, the other for the Bird and Wind Pedal.
Each cardboard construct is tied to one or more games and experiences, and they’re all built to accommodate the core headset, which slots in at the end of each one. There’s no headstrap for the headset, so the overall vibe is you hold this large and bizarrely shaped cardboard apparatus right up to your face.
Image: Audrey Bellovin / mashable
The Blaster — which I’ve taken to calling the “face gun” — has a cutesy on-rails shooting gallery game where you take aim on alien invaders as you follow a fixed path through a city. The Blaster’s pump-action forend responds with satisfying resistance when you pull it before each shot, and the whole thing is sturdy enough that frantic pump-and-shoot repetitions won’t tear it apart right away.
The Camera game I sampled sent me beneath the ocean waves for a photo expedition. You turn all around and snap pics of any undersea life or other points of interest you manage to spot. Spinning the cardboard lens assembly allows you to zoom in and out, just like a real camera.
Nintendo chose wisely in using Labo to plot the company’s path into a virtual reality future.
The Wind Pedal works in tandem with the Bird — some kind of racing game that I didn’t get to try. But there’s also a separate Wind Pedal game where you’re a stationary frog that needs to hop and land on top of floating beach balls or head an airborne soccer ball. It’s completely bizarre, but the big burst of air you get with each stomp on the Wind Pedal lends a nice 4D layer to the experience.
The Elephant is a bit more unusual. I tried an app that felt like a much-simplified version of VR art apps like Tilt Brush or Oculus Medium. So where the Blaster and the Camera have you shooting and taking photos, respectively, the Elephant is about animal cosplay. Your in-app cursor is controlled by a Toy-Con slotted into the end of the cardboard elephant’s snout.
It’s a bizarre setup. The elephant’s trunk keeps you anchored to the headset in a way that limits your range of movement. It’s in keeping with Nintendo’s unique flavor of weirdness, but VR art apps are magical because they give you a big, open space to call your canvas.
The headset itself is something you simply hold up to your face when you’re using it, whether or not it’s attached to any of the other peripherals. It doesn’t form a perfect seal around your eyes, so light can seep in and create a glare on one or both lenses if you’re sitting in a bad spot. But as cardboard VR experiences go, Labo VR Kit more than holds its own.
Image: Adam Rosenberg / mashable
Image: ADam Rosenberg / mashable
Even if you’re generally left feeling queasy by VR, this Labo set can work for you. All of the included experiences can be played in 2D, right off the screen. A special cardboard adapter lets you slot the Switch tablet into any of the peripherals, so you’re still playing with the cardboard creations but the actual gameplay unfolds on a standard Switch screen.
Toy-Con Garage also gets an upgrade in the Labo VR Kit, allowing players to create and customize experiences of their own. The user-friendly developer tools are very similar to the Garage mode in earlier Labo kits, but the VR side of things effectively makes this kit one of the cheapest and easiest entry points into developing ideas for the relatively young technology.
To complement the new, VR-friendly Garage, Nintendo included 64 minigames on the Labo VR Kit cartridge, all built using those same development tools. I tried a very simple platforming game, and while it wasn’t anywhere near the level of complexity of the kit’s main experiences, it painted a compelling picture of what’s possible.
Nintendo’s Labo efforts haven’t really been geared specifically toward the Mario-and-Zelda-loving core of the company’s fanbase, and the Labo VR Kit doesn’t look like it’ll break that trend. But as a family-friendly entry point into VR gaming and development, it gives the first impression of an immediately engaging toy and yet another upped ante for Nintendo’s ever-more-impressive Labo line.
After years of imprisonment, Anwar has made a political comeback in his newly formed coalition with Malaysia’s current Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad – who supported Anwar’s first conviction and imprisonment.
Mahathir led them to election victory in May.
The 71-year-old Anwar, who was pardoned of a sodomy conviction that put him behind bars for a third time in 2015, is the designated successor to Mahathir.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Anwar talked about the new era of governance after his return, the importance of free media, and the $250bn debt that Malaysia has incurred.
Al Jazeera: What is it that you are offering to Malaysians?
Anwar Ibrahim: We need to focus on the economy of the country so to ensure that there is fair distribution and also look particularity at the poor and marginalised.
Al Jazeera: You were sacked by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, but you did a deal to work with him. How do you trust him?
Anwar Ibrahim: I have worked extremely well him recently and fought hard against him as well. But at one point we realised that we were struggling because of the decline in our economy and essentially a very corrupt system. We both felt the interest of the nation so we agreed that we should be prepared to work together for a common cause.
Two considerations: number one in our work of course there has some level of trust, and I have no reason to doubt or question his goodwill. We have extremely good rapport, we meet casually every week, at times even twice a week. And secondly the ruling coalition has made it very clear that it’s not Anwar’s or Dr Mahathir’s decision, it’s the decision of the ruling coalition based on the mandate given during the last elections.
The mandate that was given was that Dr Mahathir will assume the premiership, after which Anwar will take over for the rest of the term until the next elections where the people will finally decide.
‘We need to focus on the economy of the country so to ensure that there is fair distribution,’ Anwar says [Sorin Furcoi/Al Jazeera]
Al Jazeera: What is that common cause?
Anwar Ibrahim: We have spelled that out in a common platform, a manifesto, on what we term as a democratic transition: free media, independent judiciary, political leaders with integrity and institutions to combat corruption and abuse of power. These are the guidelines that both Dr Mahathir and myself and the party and the coalition have agreed to do and to be fair to Mahathir, he has undertaken that responsibility in this new term to affect these changes and the reform we have agreed upon, although I must concede it will certainly take some time because the country has been used to the same system of the past 60 years.
Al Jazeera: How would you define free media for Malaysia?
Anwar Ibrahim: By free media I mean not to be condescending that the leaders know best and extend that with corruption and abuse power. So free media to my mind of course means a responsible media, which means certain rules which they have to observe, but this doesn’t have to be decided by the ruling power. Instead it should be through an ethics committee run both by the media and authorities.
So free media certainly means that people will have to speak up their mind where they are able to express their agreement or disagreement with the policies and the government. So to put those in power in strict scrutiny and check whether the judiciary is truly independent, or if the political powers are making decisions based on their interest.
Al Jazeera: Tell us about your recent visit to the United States?
Anwar Ibrahim: I had a session with World Movement for Democracy and Islamic Cultural Center of New York, and of course took the opportunity to express my take on number of issues, including democratic transition in the Muslim world, whether Islam is compatible to democracy, the rise of Islamophobia in the West. And I am pleased because these exchanges are important.
Al Jazeera: In relation to your answer, what do you think about New Zealand’s worst-ever attack that killed 50 people in two mosques?
Anwar Ibrahim: I concur fully with the New Zealand prime minister [Jacinda Ardern], it is important to call a spade, a spade. If it is terrorism it is not only confined to Muslims or the developing countries. It can also perpetrated by the white supremacy and this has been an ongoing trend. The victims are not only the Muslims in the mosque, it’s the Sikhs in gurudwaras and Christians in church. But the West has been rather muted on this new trend although we have seen such a rise in racism in Europe, and of course the Islamophobia and [white] supremacists in the US.
So we must clearly attribute to a particular trend and ideology which is against mainly Muslims and also the migrants. What the New Zealand authority has done must be fully supported.
Al Jazeera: Can you tell us a bit about your stance on Malaysia’s foreign policy, including how you would finance the country’s under-resourced military to address security challenges.
Anwar Ibrahim: Well, this is the same leadership with the same platforms and some of my colleagues are in the government, so I am not departing from what is generally a known policy. The emphasis may differ, the focus may change, otherwise we conform to what has been agreed upon.
On foreign policy, we embark on a very aggressive diplomatic stance and not necessarily considering military strength, while we should do what we can to strengthen and to make the armed forces more efficient and strategic, we cannot embark on a massive militarisation because the country cannot afford it.
Al Jazeera: The agreement you reached with Dr Mahathir was that he would become the prime minister if your coalition won the elections of 2018. What is the clear plan of succession between you and Mahathir?
Anwar Ibrahim: Dr. Mahathir as announced repeatedly that he must not stay beyond two year and for now we should give him the space and latitude to govern and in the right occasion I will inshallah assume office.
Al Jazeera: What will be the new era of politics after you assume premiership?
Anwar Ibrahim: It is a much difficult time now because it’s an immediate transition, I will certainly have to continue that reform agenda that Dr Mahathir has began. I don’t foresee many radical departure from what was agreed upon because he is acting upon what was agreed upon in the manifesto in the ruling coalition.
Al Jazeera: What is the latest on the massive $250bn debt that Malaysia has incurred in the scandal?
Anwar Ibrahim: We will have to mend the economy, attract foreign investment, and ensure we are more efficient but at the same time we cannot afford to ignore the concerns and difficulties encountered by the masses, so it is very precarious position that we are in now, but I think given the problem or predicament of the president I think we are able to shoulder on and navigate and I just hope things will be much better in the next one or two years.
Some cases are in the court, trial will commence next month, on the 1MDB funds we are working with the department justice US, Switzerland and other international authorities to get back some of the losses but I don’t think we can get everything back but we are determined to get major portion back.
Al Jazeera: What do you think about a diverse political structure, racially inclusive?
Anwar Ibrahim: It has been quiet inclusive, we have a Malay deputy prime minister, Chinese finance minister, and Christian chief judge. I mean, finance is the most important portfolio other than the PM and that goes to the Chinese and minister of communication with digital economy goes to a Sikh. So that’s Malaysia – it’s a multi-racial country.
Al Jazeera: How does it feel like to be free?
Anwar Ibrahim: Ecstatic! To taste freedom, only when you have been unfree either in prison or denied basic freedom for you to appreciate the meaning and value of freedom. For me I rejoice this. One cannot imagine the situation where you cannot eat what you want, wear what you want, sleep when you want, you are denied access to your family your loved ones, so freedom means a lot.
The FAA has been acting at the direction of Congress, amid pressure from industry players like Boeing to help them compete with foreign rivals by speeding up approvals of new aircraft. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Two deadly crashes involving the Boeing 737 MAX are increasing questions about a program that delegates regulatory tasks to industry employees.
Aviation unions and other critics offered dire warnings in 2004 when the Federal Aviation Administration proposed expanding the role of aircraft manufacturers like Boeing in deciding whether their planes were safe to fly: It would be “reckless,” they wrote, would “lower the safety of the flying public” and would lead to “ever increasing air disaster.”
Fifteen years later, the FAA’s strategy of delegating much of its regulatory oversight to hundreds of employees at the companies it oversees may be too entrenched to reverse — even with the intense scrutiny on how Boeing’s troubled 737 MAX jet won approval to fly.
Story Continued Below
The FAA has been acting at the direction of Congress, amid pressure from industry players like Boeing to help them compete with foreign rivals by speeding up approvals of new aircraft. The agency maintains that it has used its cooperation with industry to make air travel safer. But government watchdogs have raised red flags about the FAA’s oversight of the program, which puts companies in charge of duties such as doing inspections and vetting engineering designs, with the agency’s supervision.
Concerns about the program are being amplified after 346 people died in two 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia since October, raising questions about how much agencyofficials knew about a software feature suspected of playing a role.
“There’s no question the certification process was fast-tracked, that Boeing wanted this plane in the air as quickly as possible,” said lobbyist Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, the independent federal agency that investigates airline accidents. “And the FAA is not designed for speedy decision-making. That’s not what they do. And I think that is a very legitimate question. Did the … system fail as this plane was rushed to get online?”
House members said Wednesday that they too want to know more about how the FAA went about approving the 737 MAX — including any problems caused by the practice of delegating some of its regulatory powers.
Similar questions arose in 2013 after a rash of smoke and fire incidents led the FAA to ground another new Boeing plane, the 787 Dreamliner. The NTSB later placed partial blame on Boeing for design flaws in its lithium batteries, and on the FAA for not catching those flaws when it certified the plane.
Congress, though, has repeatedly encouraged the FAA to continue in this direction, ordering only minor changes in the delegation program in its last major aviation legislation last October.According to a 2013 Government Accountability Office report, FAA-approved private employees at that time were performing more than 90 percent of tasks involved in certification.
Advocates for the program have included acting FAA Administrator Dan Elwell, who told Congress in 2012 that pressing forward with the program was the best way to streamline the agency’s approvals. At the time, he worked for the trade group Aerospace Industries Association, of which Boeing is a member.
Some experts expressed skepticism about undoing the program at this point, given the sheer number of industry employees acting as the FAA’s eyes and ears while on private companies’ payrolls.
“We’re talking about replacing thousands if not tens of thousands of [industry workers] with FAA personnel,” said John Goglia, an airplane mechanic and former NTSB board member. “Not going to happen.”
FAA officials say the system enhances safety — and in fact, the past decade has been widely accepted asthe safest in the history of U.S. air travel, with only one fatality in a domestic passenger airline accidentsince 2009.
“FAA has never allowed companies to police themselves or self-certify their aircraft,” the agency said in a statement Wednesday. “With strict FAA oversight, delegation extends the rigor of the FAA certification process to other recognized professionals, thereby multiplying the technical expertise focused on assuring an aircraft meets FAA standards.”
“Related to certification of the MAX, FAA experts, including chief scientists, engineers and flight test pilots, conducted in-flight testing of the flight control system,” the agency added — including the software feature that has emerged as a possible factor in the two Boeing crashes.
In a statement this week, Boeing pointed to the “extensive qualification process” for company employees to be designated to act in the FAA’s stead, adding that they must “act independently on behalf of the FAA when performing in this role.”
“These people are essentially the arm of the FAA,” Ray Conner, at the time president and CEO of Boeing’s commercial division, told the House Transportation Committee in a 2015 hearing. “Although they are paid by us, they are within our organization, they are approved individually by the FAA. They carry the FAA authority, in essence. And we take that very, very seriously.”
Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.) pressed Conner on whether Boeing employees are truly independent of the company that pays them. “I still do think there is some power and influence when you are signing the paycheck,” she said.
The FAA says it couldn’t keep up with its regulatory work without shifting part of the load to the private sector, especially given rapid shifts in technology and public expectations for “efficient and agile” oversight.
“Industry is expanding and contracting at a much faster pace than the FAA can currently match or exceed,” the agency said in a 2017 strategy blueprint outlining its plans for even more “collaborative relationships” with industry and less “direct” involvement by regulators “in individual projects.”
The FAA document includes a quote in large type from management guru Peter Drucker urging people to embrace change: “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence — it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
The agency notes that it has been pursuing versions of this approach since at least the 1940s, when it began appointing private “designees” to handle tasks like inspecting aircraft, and later expanded it to cover new duties and entire companies. Congress ordered a major expansion in a 2003 aviation bill, prompting the agency to create a program called “Organization Designation Authorization,” in which companies like Boeing can form self-contained units that act as FAA representatives.
Today, the FAA delegates a host of tasks involving aircraft and the gear on it, ranging from seats to cockpit displays, including the engineering design, manufacturing, operations and maintenance. They also help the agency certify aviation workers, including pilots and mechanics.
Boeing, with more than 130,000 employees, is so huge and complex that as of 2015 the FAA had a 40-person office dedicated to overseeing its part of the ODA program, according to a Transportation Department inspector general report. According to an FAA fact book, as of fiscal 2016, the FAA had 1,571 designees for aircraft certification services.
Agency officials say delegating tasks allows them to stretch the FAA’s resources.
“It does leverage us,” Dorenda Baker, the head of the FAA’s Aircraft Certification Service at the time, told a House hearing two years ago. “We have about 700 engineers, whereas Boeing has approximately 900 … people that are working on our behalf.”
Critics of the post-2003 expansion included the country’s largest air traffic controllers’ union and another union, the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, which counts among its members FAA inspectors who oversee the “designees.”
“Allowing the aviation industry to self-regulate in this manner is nothing more than the blatant outsourcing of inspector functions and handing over inherently governmental oversight activities to non-governmental, for-profit entities,” PASS wrote in its 2004 comments to the agency, calling the creation of the ODA program “premature and reckless.”
PASS stands by those criticisms, spokesperson Elizabeth Doherty told POLITICO, saying the FAA is allowing its private-sector partners to perform “increasingly more difficult and critical work.”
Doherty said FAA inspectors need to be in the field more “to strengthen their knowledge of the equipment and aircraft in order to use that expertise to document any violations or deviations and report them accordingly. They certainly should not just be signing off on paperwork submitted by a designee.”
In recent yearsthe program has grown even further, in part due to urging by an industry eager to compete globally in an age of increasing technological innovation and a Congress unwilling to pony up for additional federal resources.
The pressure on the FAA from Boeing and other manufacturers has been constant, one aviation source with deep knowledge of aircraft certification told POLITICO.
“Boeing really pushed in Congress to put pressure on the FAA — you know how that goes — to put pressure on the FAA to improve and enhance the ODA program,” said the person, who asked to remain anonymous because of ongoing dealings within the industry. The person added that Conner, the Boeing executive, joined in: “In every one of these [advisory committee] meetings we were in, no matter what was on the agenda, his agenda was to get certification moving faster.”
The person noted that the FAA has also feltbroader publicpressure to respond more quickly to shifts in technologies, such as a groundswell of support for allowing greater use of gadgets like e-readers and tablets in all stages of flight. The FAA relented in 2014, allowing them to be used in “airplane mode.”
Watchdogs have periodically expressed concern about how thoroughly the FAA is supervising the private employees acting on its behalf, especially when it has to rely on the companies’ technical expertise.
In its 2013 report, the GAO wrote that “designee oversight is lacking,” particularly with the FAA’s newly expanded authority. It specifically cited concerns that “FAA staff have not been able to keep pace with industry changes and, thus, may struggle to understand the aircraft or equipment they are tasked with certificating.”
A 2011 report by the Department of Transportation’s inspector general said it found weaknesses in the FAA’s oversight of the program, such as inconsistencies in how companies select designees, as well as inadequacies in how it trains FAA engineers to manage it. A subsequent inspector general report in 2015 knocked the agency for not having a way to adequately assess whether it has enough staff overseeing the program.
The author of the 2011 report, former assistant inspector general for aviation audits Jeff Guzzetti, said the FAA was responsive to his office’s recommendations. And though the program “probably still has issues,” he said, “in general, the system works.”
“No one is more motivated to have a safe aircraft than the manufacturer, because if one crashes, it could be the end of that manufacturer, it could cost billions of dollars — just like it’s costing Boeing,” Guzzetti said.
This report contains a graphic, which can only be seen online. If you are reading this in your inbox, click on the link at the bottom of the email to view it.
Raise a glass to RBG with the beer dedicated to her.
Samuel Adams is naming a new Belgian Brut IPA in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It’s part of the company’s annual contribution to the Pink Boots Society, a nonprofit for women in the brewing industry, according to the Boston Globe. The collab was inspired by International Women’s Day, which was earlier this month.
The new brew is named after Ginsburg’s iconic response to the question, “When will there be enough women on the Supreme Court?”
Image: eventbrite/samuel adams
“When there are nine,” the Justice quipped, an answer that inspired countless pins, t-shirts, posters, and now, a beer.
According to Samuel Adams’ event page for the “When There Are Nine” launch, the company wanted to “name it Brut Bader Ginsburg,” but their legal team “dissented.”
The Samuel Adams taproom in Boston is launching “When There Are Nine” on March 29 with a plank contest, a nod to the 86-year-old Justice’s rigorous workout routines. Proceeds from the event will be donated to the Pink Boots Society and the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project.
It’ll be an opportunity to chug in the name of equality.
Daily Trends Hunter 