ROF SRENRAEL

EHT TNENITNOC

                                    

Germanwings crash co-pilot may have had detached retina

'I never knew what he meant, but now it makes sense,' says former girlfriend of Germanwings co-pilot

The co-pilot suspected of crashing a passenger jet in the Alps may have been suffering from a detached retina but investigators are unsure whether his vision problems had physical or psychological causes, a German newspaper said on Sunday.

Bild am Sonntag also reported how the captain of the Germanwings Airbus had screamed "open the damn door!" to the co-pilot as he tried to get back into the locked cockpit before the jet crashed last Tuesday, killing all 150 on board.

Another German newspaper, Welt am Sonntag, quoted a senior investigator as saying the 27-year-old co-pilot Andreas Lubitz "was treated by several neurologists and psychiatrists" and that a number of medications had been found in his apartment.

Police also discovered personal notes that showed Lubitz suffered from "severe subjective overstress symptoms", he added.

Lufthansa, the parent company of the budget airline, said the carrier was unaware of a psychosomatic or any other illness affecting Lubitz. "We have no information of our own on that," a Lufthansa spokesman said.

A spokesman for state prosecutors in Duesseldorf declined to comment on Sunday on the various media reports, adding there would be no official statement before Monday.

The mass circulation Bild am Sonntag said investigators had found evidence that Lubitz feared losing his eyesight, apparently because of a detached retina.

However, it was unclear whether this was due to an organic failure or psychosomatic illness, when physical problems are thought to be caused or aggravated by psychological factors such as stress.

"FOR GOD'S SAKE"

Investigators have retrieved cockpit voice recordings from one of the A320 jet's "black boxes", which they say show Lubitz locked himself alone in the cockpit, before causing the jet to crash in southern France as it headed to Duesseldorf from Barcelona.

Bild am Sonntag reported that the voice recorder data showed that the locked-out captain said to his colleague inside the cockpit: "For God's sake, open the door."

The pilot can then be heard trying to smash the door down. Even when he yells: "Open the damn door!" Lubitz does not give an answer as passengers' screams can be heard in the background just seconds before the fatal crash, the paper said.

The newspaper also reported that Lubitz's girlfriend, a teacher at a secondary school in a small town near Duesseldorf, had recently told students she was expecting a baby.

On Saturday, Bild published an interview with a woman who said she had a relationship with Lubitz in 2014 and that he told her about planning a spectacular gesture so "everyone will know my name and remember it".

AIRBUS BOSS CRITICISES MEDIA

The chief executive of Airbus, which made the aircraft that Lubitz crashed, criticised uninformed experts sounding off about the disaster on television talk shows and he called for better oversight of the media.

"Some (experts) speculated without any facts, fantasised and lied. That makes a mockery of the victims," Tom Enders was quoted as saying by Bild am Sonntag.

Airbus has not been in the crosshairs of investigators following the crash as evidence early on pointed to a deliberate act by Lubitz, but French investigators warned on Saturday that it was too early to rule out other explanations for the crash.

Berlin aims to review safety rules for airlines in cooperation with the industry. "There are high safety standards in the aviation sector, but they still need regular updating," Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt told Bild am Sonntag.

Several airlines, including Lufthansa, have changed their rules since the crash and now require two crew members in the cockpit at all times, a measure already mandatory in the United States but not in Europe

Girl Refuses To Explode Bomb Belt In Market

Girl Refuses To Explode Bomb Belt In Market

A 13-year-old girl has said she was made to wear a bomb belt and taken to a market in Nigeria by Boko Haram extremists but refused to detonate the device.

Zahara'u Adam said her father gave her to the Islamist group, but she told her captors she did not want to be a suicide bomber.

She allowed them to strap the bomb on her because they threatened to bury her alive.

She was taken to a market in Kano, Nigeria's second largest city in the north, with two other girls, who detonated the bombs.

Four people were killed in the explosion on 10 December.

Zahara'u said she was too scared to detonate the bomb when she saw the aftermath of what her counterparts had done.

Injured by the blasts, the girl found her way to a hospital where police arrested her while she was receiving treatment.

She was presented to journalists by police and instructed to recount how the militants allegedly forced her to take part in the attack - a move police hope will boost public awareness of the group's tactics.

"My father took us to the bush which was surrounded by gunmen, I was asked if I want to go to heaven, when I answered they said I have to go for a suicide mission and if I attempt to run, they will kill me," she recounted at a press conference.

"So from there we were sent to Kano. When we came to Kano market, one of us said we should go separately, but I refused.

"After my friend detonated her own I was wounded."

There was no way to independently verify her story and she had no lawyer present.

Boko Haram has been fighting for five years to establish an Islamist state in Nigeria's northeast.

The group has increasingly used female suicide bombers.

Australian house where eight children killed to be demolished

 Children attend a church service for eight children who were killed in the Cairns suburb of Manoora, December 21, 2014. Eight children have been killed in the northern Australian city of Cairns, police said on Friday, in what several media outlets reported was a mass stabbing.

SYDNEY - The house where an Australian mother allegedly killed eight children, most of them her own, will likely be demolished in keeping with indigenous culture to make way for a memorial, a government official said on Monday.

The fate of the house in the tropical northern city of Cairns was being discussed while a judge denied a request to transfer the murder case against 37-year-old Raina Mersane Ina Thaiday to Queensland state's Mental Health Court.

Thaiday is the mother of the four boys and three of the girls who were slain. The eighth child was her niece.

The Queensland government agreed to the demolition of the home because of the horrific nature of the killings and in keeping with indigenous cultural beliefs, Queensland MP Gavin King said.

"After extensive consultation we will remove the house behind me," King said as he spoke to the media in a park where the dead children used to play.

King said the government would liaise with the community on what form a memorial would take.

Thaiday was charged on Sunday with eight counts of murder over the deaths of the children, aged between two and 14 years.

Magistrate Alan Comans declined a request from Thaiday's lawyer, Steven MacFarlane, to have the case moved to the Mental Health Court. Comans said during a brief hearing at the Cairns Magistrates Court on Monday it was too soon for such a request.

No plea was entered at the hearing on behalf of Thaiday, who remains under police guard in hospital. She is being treated for stab wounds.

MacFarlane said he was not sure how long his client would remain in hospital, where she is also awaiting psychiatric assessment.

Police have asked that media abide by the cultural protocols of the indigenous Torres Strait Islander community, to which the family belongs, and withhold the names and photos of the dead children.

Torres Strait Islanders, a group of indigenous Australians viewed as distinct from the broader Aboriginal community, believe the spirit of a dead person must be sent along its journey or it might stay and disturb remaining family members.

The spirit is helped on this journey by a refusal to speak the deceased's name for a long period.

Hmmmm......R.IP

A TOUCHING LETTER FROM BRITISH TO AMERICA

Dear America: Freedom doesn't mean you can kill your children

Dear America,

We hope you have enjoyed your 237 years of independence from British rule.

We were reluctant to see you leave but you did insist so it seemed to be basic good manners to let you give it a go.

And my, the things you’ve managed to do!

Nuclear war.

The abolition of slavery 90 years after we did it.

Frequent failed attempts to police the world which have left you with so many spare war machines you give machine guns and MRAPs to the local bobby.

Cheese in a can.

And now it’s the 21st century and you seem bent upon the slaughter of children.

This weekend a 12-year-old boy called Tamir Rice was shot twice in the chest by a police officer while playing in a park with an imitation gun.

Imitation guns shouldn't be sold in a nation where you’re likely to get shot for waving them about; they’re surely not even needed when you can buy the real thing in Walmart.

Eyewitness reports the gun was “probably a fake” did not get passed on to the cop, and obviously his parents did not explain to Tamir that armed policemen are a frequent cause of death for black males in your country.

Tragic: Tamir Rice was shot twice

On top of all this, a cop should not look at a 12-year-old boy mucking around in a park and see an armed black male who needs to have two slugs put in his chest.

Despite the fact all these things are illogical, bad, and deathly stupid your nation did them anyway.

You sold a fake gun that looks just like a real one, gave it to a boy who didn’t know not to wave it around, didn’t tell the cop it was fake and let the cop think shooting a child was the right solution to all of it.

And let’s be honest – that’s just this week’s atrocity.

In September two of your citizens were insane enough to take their nine-year-old daughter to play with an Uzi.

This decision was followed, not by straitjackets or parenting classes, but by the instructor having his head blown off.

This year alone you’ve had 40 shooting incidents in schools. They include Jaylen Fryberg killing four people and then himself at Marysville Pilchuck High School last month, and Elliot Rodger slaughtering seven and wounding 13 at Isla Vista in May.

It’s not even a modern phenomenon – you’ve been shooting teachers and children since the 1850s.

But what’s really sickening is it’s allowed in the name of freedom.

Not the freedom of children to be educated without fear, or the freedom of parents to think their children are safe at school.

Retribution: Elliot Rodger slaughtered seven and wounded 13

 

No, the freedom of political cavepeople and religious fundamentalists to shoot whatever they like, when they like, which means those children become collateral damage.

That alone – that mind-boggling bit of bent logic uttered by so many of your citizens, promoted by your politicians and backed by so much cash that all your presidents are afraid to call it a lie – would be enough reason for the rest of the world to justify invasion.

But there’s so much else that’s gone wrong too.

You crow about winning the Cold War, when the economy run by Communists in China has overtaken yours.

You landed man on the moon, and then stopped bothering with it.

You shout about civil rights and Rosa Parkes, about having a black president, when you’re arguably one of the most racist nations in the world.

Black mothers are twice as likely as white ones to have their child die in its first month in the US.

Getty

Iconic moment: Police booking photo of Rosa Parkes

 

Unemployment is at 8% among black graduates and 4.5% among whites.

Black people account for 10% of drug use but 32% of drug arrests

And of all the Oscars handed out for best acting since 1929, white stars got 96% and 4% went to black stars.

A white child with an imitation gun in a park might not have been shot.

You are the richest nation on Earth yet have some of the worst health outcomes of the developed world.

You take pride in having amazing teeth yet 89% of your diet is fat and carbohydrates and you have the same number of obese citizens as the populations of Australia and Canada combined.

You make a lot of money out of children the world over – theme parks, cartoons, movies, franchises, that damned Frozen song – yet find new and interesting ways to slaughter them every day.

Well, you’ve had 237 years. You’ve had freedom, and you’ve used it to justify killing, racism and greed.

If ever a nation needed to feel the civilising effects of colonisation it’s you, America.

I propose that for the next 100 years United Nations peacekeepers take over your country.

Disney

Let it go: Frozen's Elsa

 

They will be tasked with introducing multi-party politics, humility, and the correct spelling of the word “aluminium”.

* Your military will be dismantled and retrained so that they know to shoot the enemy and not their allies

* Your police forces will be dismissed and new recruitment standards brought in so that cops all need to demonstrate an IQ of more than 72 and the ability to ask themselves if children in parks need to be shot dead

* All imitation weapons will by law need to be bright pink

* All real weapons will be confined to those who need them for work or food and require a court-approved licence

* The correct method of brewing tea will be taught in every school

* White people and black people will switch houses for two weeks every year

* Cheese will be explained to you, very firmly

* Weekly messages will play on TV and radio stating that someone else’s religion, or lack of it, is none of your business

* You will not be able to buy pancakes unless you can produce evidence of walking 10,000 steps a day

* Your beer will be corrected

After a century and a few generations there’s every chance you could be trusted to run your own country again, with a little more exercise, and a little less fat, racism, stupidity and slaughter.

No country is perfect and Britain certainly isn’t. But then we don’t claim it quite so often as you do, nor in the face of such overwhelming evidence that it’s not true.

Freedom isn’t free - and the price you pay for it is deciding where freedom ends and common sense begins.

I hope you figure it out before too many more children die.