The Boeing chief executive officer, Dennis Muilenburg, has lost his other title as chairman of the planemaker, nearly a year after the first of two crashes of its 737 Max that together killed 346 people.

Boeing announced late on Friday that company directors decided to separate the two jobs and elected one of their own, David L Calhoun, to serve as non-executive chairman.

Earlier on Friday a panel of international aviation regulators issued a report critical of Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration over how the Max was approved to fly. The group said Boeing failed to adequately inform the FAA about changes to a flight control system that has been implicated in the accidents.

“The board has full confidence in Dennis as CEO and believes this division of labour will enable maximum focus on running the business with the board playing an active oversight role,” Calhoun said in a Boeing statement.

Muilenburg said in a statement that he supported splitting the CEO and chairman jobs.

The board had in April opposed a shareholder resolution to split the jobs amid criticism over Boeing’s response to the accidents. The measure was rejected by a 2-to-1 margin.

The Max was Boeing’s best-selling plane until being grounded worldwide in March after the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. The company has set aside billions to compensate airlines affected.

The US justice department and Congress are investigating the company, which also faces many lawsuits from families of passengers who died.

Boeing was initially optimistic that the Max could return to flight months ago but work to fix flight software took longer than expected. In June FAA test pilots discovered another problem in the plane’s computers, extending the grounding.

Apple treads a fine line in China. It’s share of the world’s largest smartphone market has dropped to 10% as it has lost ground to local rivals, it has been forced by the U.S. trade war into exploring options for shifting manufacturing away from its primary base, and when an iOS hack was traced to China’s suppression of its Uighur minority, Apple infamously neglected to reference China in its statements, choosing instead to attack Google for inaccuracies in its reporting.

This game of geopolitical Twister was evident again in recent days, after Apple faced heavy criticism for blocking HKMap Live, an iPhone app designed to help Hong Kong’s citizens track the locations of protests and police activity, with the intent, so said its developer, of helping people avoid trouble spots and stay safe. The reason for the rejection was that the app “facilitates, enables, and encourages an activity that is not legal,” Apple explained to the developer, adding that it “allows users to evade law enforcement.”

The app used information from members of the public to identify where trouble has flared up, with emojis for particular types of police action. “We don’t encourage any advice on the map in general,” the developer claims, “our goal is safety for everyone.”

HKMap Live was submitted to the App Store on September 21, rejected on September 26, resubmitted on October 2, rejected again the same day. Now that decision has been reversed and the app has been made available.

“There seems to be some misunderstanding,” HKMap said on its Twitter feed. “HKMap is not an illegal service. During our two months of operation, we have received zero legal complaints.” As for the developer’s decision to mask his real identity, “it’s our freedom—and also due to Hong Kong Police obviously abused their power to baselessly arrest Hong Kongers. Stop criminalizing privacy!”

All of this would be less of a problem for Apple but for its wider China issues, including not dissimilar past rejections of VPN apps needed in China but deemed to be crossing a line, enabling the wrong kind of breaches of the “Great Firewall” that limits electronic communications in and out of the country. Apple CEO Tim Cook explained at the time that “we would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries, we follow the law wherever we do business.”

No easy answers for Apple on China. It is pretty clear here that this was unsurprising bureaucracy around approvals for an app that was self-evidently contentious. And the app does skirt law enforcement, albeit for the right reasons. Ultimately, though, Apple found itself in a no-win situation and made the only decision available. How far up the chain that reversal went, we will never know.

No sooner had the HKMap Live app protests diminished than Apple was under fire again for removing the Republic of China flag emoji, used to represent Taiwan, from the iPhone’s keyboard for users in Hong Kong and Macau. The change happened when iPhones were updated to the latest operating system. Instead of picking the emoji, users now need to type “Taiwan” into their keyboards to see it suggested.

In the meantime, on a macro political level Apple continues to lobby for some restitution over the trade war’s impact on exports and manufacturing and tariffs. As China continues to tread that line, this latest situation in Hong Kong hasn’t helped.

For Apple, things could be worse, it could be Samsung. The Korean manufacturer might lead the world for smartphone shipments but its once strong position in China has all but collapsed. Samsung has now accepted defeat and shut its last manufacturing plant in the country.

This is not a fate Apple intends to endure. The stark reality is that Apple cannot afford to alienate Beijing to such an extent it takes action. The impact to its manufacturing base and its $50 billion in annual China sales would take too heavy a toll.

nigeriapenInfo:
See More Photos Here: http://topmag.pw/2019/10/05/nasa-to-test-its-first-all-electric-x-plane-photos/

NASA has officially announce about the future involves flying taxis, NASA is set to test its first all-electric X-plane to encourage and develop certification standards for an electric aircraft.

NASA’s X-57 Maxwell is now at the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center for testing.

NASA plans to test the aircraft’s electric propulsion system to check its reliability and inform other aircraft manufacturers dealing with all-electric configurations.

The X-57 is also termed as the X-57 Mod II (as in modification II) which does not feature wings. It is also worth noting that the X-plane was delivered by Empirical Systems Aerospace (ESAero) of San Luis Obispo, California on Wednesday, Oct 2nd.

NASA X PlaneThe electric aircraft replaces the traditional combustion engines with electric cruise motors. Now, the delivery of X-plane will allow NASA engineers to perform ground tests, taxi tests, and flight tests to end with.

It will undergo extensive ground testing to ensure that it is worth taking a flight in the first place.

“The X-57 Mod II aircraft delivery to NASA is a significant event, marking the beginning of a new phase in this exciting electric X-plane project,” said X-57 Project Manager Tom Rigney.

As mentioned, this is the Mod II configuration that will undergo ground testing. In addition to this, the Mod III and Mod IV models (or configurations) are also in progress to be tested at NASA Armstrong’s Flight Loads Laboratory.


Obviously, Mod III & IV will include wings to test it for flights and other factors in their testing.

While the test has already commenced, it will be interesting to see what it has to offer for the future.

topmag2019:
So Shocking: The official website of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) was hacked in the late hours of yesterday October 4, by a suspected French hacker identified as Nasty.

Read More Here: http://topmag.pw/2019/10/05/university-of-nigeria-nsukka-website-hacked-photos/

Google has detailed its latest version of Android Go, its lightweight operating system meant for low-powered devices with less than 1.5GB of RAM. With Android 10 (Go Edition), Google says it has improved the operating system’s speed and security.

App switching is now faster and more memory efficient, and apps should launch 10 percent faster than they did on the last version of the OS.

Android 10Android 10 Go also sees the introduction of Adiantum, the new encryption standard meant for low-powered devices that Google first announced earlier this year.

Google previously said that Adiantum is five times faster than Android’s typical AES encryption on low-powered devices, and doesn’t require specialized hardware to run, making strong encryption on cheaper devices much more feasible.

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has advised the public to shun consumption of fruits ripened with calcium carbide.

The agency gave the warning on Monday in Abuja in a statement signed by its management, saying that dangerous effects of carbide-ripened fruits include cancer and other illnesses.

According to the management, consuming such fruits can also cause heart, kidney and liver failure. “NAFDAC hereby warns farmers and the general public against the dangers of using calcium carbide for ripening fruits such as banana, mango, plantain, orange and cashew,”the management said.

On how to identify carbide-ripened fruits, the management said that “naturally ripened fruits usually have brown or black spots while those artificially ripened have traces of powdery substances and peel off quickly’’.

The Agency further warned that “ripening fruits and vegetables with calcium carbide is a criminal offence’’,adding that henceforth, perpetrators would be prosecuted.
It advised the public to “report suspected cases to the nearest NAFDAC office or call 09094262773, 09094262772 and 08133630600’’.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has lamented what it said were feeble attempts made by the federal government to secure the release of Leah Sharibu, the Dapchi school girl who insisted on not renouncing her faith and converting to Islam.



CAN said the development has affirmed fears in some quarters that Christians are endangered in the country.

To this end, the umbrella Christian body declared March 25th as a day of nationwide prayers for the freedom of Leah Sharibu from the captivity of the Boko Haram terrorists.

CAN President, Rev Samson Olasupo Ayokunle in a statement by his Special Assistant on Media and Communication, Pastor Bayo Oladeji, noted that if Leah Sharibu means nothing to the government and the security agency that negotiated the release of other Dapchi school girls, the life of the young girl means a lot to her parents and to so many Nigerians, irrespective of their religious affiliations.




“The CAN President, Rev Dr Samson Olasupo Ayokunle, has directed all churches in the country to pray for the freedom of Liya Sharibu from the captivity of the Boko Haram terrorists on Sunday, 25 March, 2018,” the statement said.

Nollywood actress, Jojo Charry who is based in America posed completely nude to mark her birthday.