Anti-racism protests continue across the world

Islamabad, Jun 24: A plane crash which killed 97 people in Pakistan last month was because of human error by the pilot and air traffic control, according to an initial report into the disaster released Wednesday.

The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane came down among houses on May 22 after both engines failed as it approached Karachi airport, killing all but two people on board.

"The pilot as well as the controller didn't follow the standard rules," the country's aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said, announcing the findings in parliament.

He said the pilots had been discussing the coronavirus pandemic as they attempted to land the Airbus A320.

"The pilot and co-pilot were not focused and throughout the conversation was about coronavirus," Khan said.

The Pakistani investigation team, which included officials from the French government and the aviation industry, analysed data and voice recorders.

The minister said the plane was "100 percent fit for flying, there was no technical fault".

The county's deadliest aviation accident in eight years came days after domestic commercial flights resumed following a two-month coronavirus lockdown.

Many passengers were on their way to spend the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr with loved ones.

May 28: Boeing is cutting more than 12,000 jobs through layoffs and buyouts as the coronavirus pandemic seizes the travel industry, and more cuts are coming.

One of the nation's biggest manufacturers will lay off 6,770 U.S. employees this week, and another 5,520 workers are taking buyout offers to leave voluntarily in the coming wee

Air travel within the U.S. tumbled 96% by mid-April, to fewer than 100,000 people on some days. It has recovered slightly. The Transportation Security Administration said it screened 264,843 people at airports on Tuesday, a drop of 89% compared with the same Tuesday a year ago.

Boeing had said it would cut 10% of a work force that numbered about 160,000. A Boeing spokesperson said Wednesday's actions represent the largest number of job cuts, but several thousand additional jobs will be eliminated in the next few months.

The layoffs are expected to be concentrated in the Seattle area, home to Boeing's commercial-airplanes business. The defense and space division is stable and will help blunt the impact of the decline in air travel and demand for passenger jets, the company said.

Boeing said additional job cuts will be made in international locations, but it did not specify numbers.

"The COVID-19 pandemic's devastating impact on the airline industry means a deep cut in the number of commercial jets and services our customers will need over the next few years, which in turn means fewer jobs on our lines and in our offices," CEO David Calhoun said Wednesday in a memo to employees.

Calhoun said the company faces the challenges of keeping employees safe and working with suppliers and airlines "to assure the traveling public that it can fly safe from infection."

Calhoun warned that Boeing will have to adjust business plans constantly because the pandemic makes it hard to predict the impact on the company's business.

Boeing's crisis began with two crashes of its 737 Max, which led regulators around the world to ground the jetliner last year. The company's problems have deepened with the coronavirus, which has cut global air traffic by up to 90% and caused airlines to postpone or cancel orders and deliveries for new planes.

Jun 9: The World Health Organization says it still believes the spread of the coronavirus from people without symptoms is “rare,” despite warnings from numerous experts worldwide that such transmission is more frequent and likely explains why the pandemic has been so hard to contain.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO''s technical lead on COVID-19 said at a press briefing on Monday that many countries are reporting cases of spread from people who are asymptomatic, or those with no clinical symptoms.

But when questioned in more detail about these cases, Van Kerkhove said many of them turn out to have mild disease, or unusual symptoms.

Although health officials in countries including Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere have warned that COVID-19 is spreading from people without symptoms, WHO has maintained that this type of spread is not a driver of the pandemic and is probably accounts for about 6 per cent of spread, at most.

Numerous studies have suggested that the virus is spreading from people without symptoms, but many of those are either anecdotal reports or based on modeling.

Van Kerkhove said that based on data from countries, when people with no symptoms of COVID-19 are tracked over a long period to see if they spread the disease, there are very few cases of spread.

“We are constantly looking at this data and we''re trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question,” she said. “It still appears to be rare that asymptomatic individuals actually transmit onward.”