Crew members of the Ethiopian Airlines jetliner that crashed shortly after takeoff last month followed procedures prescribed by the aircraft’s manufacturer, according to a report released Thursday.

The preliminary report, released by the Ethiopian government, concluded the crew was unable to regain control of the American-made Boeing 737 Max 8, despite following recommended procedures.

The report is based on information from the recorders of the aircraft. It reinforces uncertainty about the reliability of the system that controls the Boeing jetliner, which has been grounded worldwide for nearly a month.

The plane was grounded after the Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed into a field outside Addis Ababa just minutes after takeoff on March 10, killing all 157 people on board. The Max 8 had been under scrutiny since October, when 189 people were killed when a Lion Air flight crashed off the coast of Indonesia under similar circumstances.

The focus of the investigation is the plane’s flight-control system, which can automatically lower the plane’s nose to avert an aerodynamic stall. Boeing is working on a software fix, which needs approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators.

Boeing, which has declined to comment until it has reviewed the report, is also being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department, the U.S. Transportation Department and U.S. congressional committees. Investigators are scrutinizing the role of the FAA, which approved the plane for service in 2017 and refused to ground it after the first crash in October.

The FAA was subjected to tough questioning about its oversight of Boeing at a congressional hearing last week. The FAA said it expected Boeing to submit the proposed software fix “over the coming weeks.”

 
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An American woman who was kidnapped with her driver at Uganda’s most popular wildlife park by gunmen had failed to take an armed ranger as required by the park’s regulations, a spokesman for the country’s wildlife authority said Thursday.

Kimberley Sue Endecott, 35, and Ugandan driver Jean Paul were on a game drive in Queen Elizabeth National Park when four gunmen ambushed their vehicle Tuesday evening, police said.

An elderly couple also at the scene were not taken and raised the alarm.

Various illegal groups from Somali militant Islamists to Congolese-based rebels sometimes operate in Uganda, but the kidnappers’ identity was not known.

“We have armed ranger guides, if you’re going out on a drive in the park you’re supposed to have one, but these tourists went out on their own without a guard,” Bashir Hangi, spokesman for the state-run Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), told Reuters.

“From their camp in the park, they just got into a vehicle and went out. They should have notified us and informed us that they’re going out for a game drive and then we would have availed them a guard but they didn’t do this,” he said.

California-based Endecott and the couple entered Uganda on March 29 and flew the next day to the park in the country’s southwest, the spokesman added.

There was no immediate comment on the progress of the investigation by Ugandan authorities.
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In the end, Ahmed Salah Hassan could not escape the violence he repeatedly tried to flee.

The Somali native, who’d sought refuge from the Horn of Africa country’s armed conflict in South Africa and then in the United States, was among 12 people killed by a car bomb that exploded outside a restaurant on Mogadishu’s busy Maka Al-Mukarama road last Thursday.

Hassan, 29, with a wife and 6-year-old daughter, had failed in a bid for U.S. asylum. He had spent all of his nearly two years in the United States in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) before being returned to Somalia in January 2017.

“What is hurting the family is that Ahmed endured and suffered during his journey to America, and eventually he got deported to Somalia,” his older stepsister, Fatima Salah Hassan, told VOA’s Somali service in a phone call late Sunday. She said she and other relatives didn’t understand why he was sent back to his homeland, given the country’s insecurity.

“The unfortunate thing is, in Mogadishu, we’ve had 30 years of civil war,” she said.

Deadly risks for civilians

Ongoing conflict in Somalia, with combatants including warring clans, al-Shabab terrorists, Somali government and military forces, plus African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) troops, has claimed hundreds of civilian lives, Human Rights Watch reported last year. It noted that the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia “reported 1,228 civilian casualties between January and September 2017, about half by al-Shabab.”

At a campaign rally last week in Michigan, President Donald Trump accused immigration attorneys of coaching their clients to tell U.S. officials, “I am very afraid for my life.” According to a Mediaite account, the president suggested lawyers were promoting exaggeration of any dangers. “It’s a big, fat con job, folks. A big, fat con job.”

Hassan was among at least 350 Somalis returned from the United States from 2017 into mid-2018, VOA’s Somali service calculated, based on interviews with Somali immigration officials and deportees.

Fatima Salah Hassan said Somalia’s insecurity had prompted her brother, the youngest of eight siblings, to leave for South Africa in 2005. He first went to Port Elizabeth on the continent’s southern tip, then moved to Johannesburg, working for convenience stores.

But South Africa proved unsafe, too, with xenophobic attacks on foreigners surging in early 2015. Fatima Salah Hassan and one of her brother’s friends, Hassan Abdullahi Aalim, said killings there prompted Hassan to set out for the United States that spring.

Seeking U.S. asylum

In May, he arrived at the U.S. southern border, requesting asylum at the crossing in Brownsville, Texas. The following January, an immigration judge in Oakdale, La., denied his request at a court hearing. Before and after the decision, Hassan was held in ICE custody.

In January 2017, “he was removed from the U.S. after receiving appropriate legal process that found he had no lawful basis to remain in the country,” ICE reported in an email to VOA.

Since his return to Mogadishu, Hassan had been unable to find steady work, Fatima Salah Hassan said. On the day of the explosion, he had gone to meet friends and was considering a move back to South Africa, she said.

Aline Barros, Nur Hassan Nur and Carol Guensburg contributed to this report, which originated in VOA’s Somali service.

Aalim, who befriended Hassan in South Africa and now lives in Mogadishu, remembered the bombing victim in a Twitter post. He noted his sadness that “Ahmed escaped Xnephobic in SA to seek better life in #USA.”
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As the flood waters recede in cyclone-hit southern Africa, officials are starting to assess medium- and longer-term requirements, including food security, health needs and improving disaster preparedness. 

“For 2019, food security is going to be a serious, serious issue,” World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley told a U.N. meeting about Cyclone Idai on Tuesday. 

Beasley, who addressed the session via a video link, noted “the crops in these areas, particularly in Mozambique, are just gone. So, the harvest for this season is gone, and the chances for next season are minimal at best.”

“Hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land have been essentially put out of use in the short term,” U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said. “There is now only two or three weeks to prepare for the small harvest and to plant for the small harvest. So, there is an urgent need for seeds and tools and fertilizers to at least rescue the potential for the small harvest later in the year.”

Cyclone Idai slammed into Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe in mid-March bringing powerful winds, major rains and storm surge flooding.  Nearly 900 people have been confirmed dead across the three countries, while many more are missing, and hope is fading for them to be found alive. 

“The waters into which they were lost are waters infested with crocodiles. They are waters infested with hippos, and they may never be found,” Zimbabwe’s U.N. Ambassador Frederick Shava said of the missing. 

Even before Idai wreaked havoc, parts of this region faced food insecurity. Inconsistent rains combined with an economic crisis had 5.3 million people in Zimbabwe in humanitarian need. Now, the U.N. says an additional 270,000 people require assistance. 

Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, was facing a lean season pre-cyclone, and more than 3 million people were at risk for crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity. 

Then Idai came and washed away crops that were just about to be harvested. 

“Food will be needed not only in the short run, but going forward,” said Malawi Ambassador Perks Master Clemency Ligoya.

“Commodity prices for the existing food stuffs have already increased by close to 50 percent,” he noted. 

Then there are the health issues. Cholera cases have already topped 1,000, as flood waters spread contamination.  Malaria is also expected to rise as flood waters provide breeding grounds for mosquitos, which spread the disease.

Officials are also worried about patients with chronic diseases getting access to medicines and treatment in the storm’s aftermath.

“Vaccines, medicines and other supplies, including condoms and delivery kits for pregnant women, have been destroyed,” Ligoya said. “Roads and bridges to some health facilities were damaged. Displaced populations are lacking primary health care services, as they are not able to access health facilities. The continuum for care for people with HIV and TB (tuberculosis) has been disrupted.”

Education has also been disrupted.  Zimbabwe’s envoy said 87 damaged schools were closed in one hard-hit area, and it could be a long time before they can all be rebuilt. 

“So, we may have to do schools in tents in order to continue the education of the kids,” Shava said. 

The U.N. has issued an appeal for $394 million to cover emergency needs for three months for the three countries. Only $46 million has been promised so far. Additional appeals will come later for longer-term requirements. 

The diplomats from the cyclone-hit countries said a more robust early warning system is needed in the region to prevent a future disaster, and that lessons could be learned from countries in Asia that have advanced tsunami warning systems in place.
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The NBA will invest millions of dollars in Basketball Africa League, its first professional league outside of North America, and will be hands-on in its operation, a top executive said Tuesday.

The NBA, in partnership with the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), is launching the Basketball Africa League in January 2020, featuring 12 teams from across the continent.

“This league will be fully operated by the NBA,” Amadou Gallo Fall, the NBA’s vice president for Africa, told Reuters by phone from Johannesburg. “Our expertise and best practices will be on display.”

The NBA generated $8 billion in revenue last season, according to Forbes, and industry players say audience interest in Africa has grown alongside the profile of Africans playing in the world’s top basketball league.

Cameroon’s Joel Embiid, a 25-year-old center for the Philadelphia 76ers, has emerged as a top player in the NBA, signing a five-year contract with the team worth nearly $150 million in 2017.

This season, Embiid and 24-year-old Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, born in Greece to Nigerian parents, are contenders to become the NBA’s most valuable player.

The NBA established an Africa office nine years ago. It held its first NBA Africa game in 2015. Games in 2017 and 2018 were played in front of sold-out crowds in South Africa.

Basketball Africa League will involve six national champions — from Nigeria, Angola, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia and Senegal — who will automatically qualify for the competition. The remaining six will come through international qualifiers later this year.

“It’s an opportunity through our partnership with FIBA to continue to strengthen the basketball ecosystem here,” Fall said.

He did not confirm exactly how much the NBA would be investing in the league but said it was millions of dollars.

African NBA players

As the NBA courts African audiences, African players have been conquering the NBA.

There were 13 African-born players on the rosters of NBA teams at the opening of the 2018/19 season, out of the 108 international players. That rises to about 40 if players with African parents are included, Fall said.

“It tremendously impacts the growth in popularity of the NBA,” he added.

The NBA began in March livestreaming on YouTube two games a week for free for viewers in sub-Saharan Africa, in a bid to build a larger fan base on the continent.

The league opened an elite basketball academy in Senegal in 2017 which, along with its Basketball Without Borders Africa program, has showcased African talent hoping to play for NBA teams or U.S. colleges.

The next step is for an African basketball team to secure an Olympic medal, Fall said.

“That day is coming soon,” he added.
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