United Airlines Changes Removal Policy In Face Of Global Backlash

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(Reuters) – United Airlines and its chief executive faced mounting pressure on Tuesday from a worldwide backlash over its treatment of a passenger who was dragged from his seat on a plane on Sunday to make room for four employees on the overbooked flight.

Chief Executive Officer Oscar Munoz said the company would not use law enforcement officers to remove overbooked passengers from aircraft. Munoz told ABC News that the problem resulted from a “system failure” that prevented employees from using “common sense” in the situation. He said he had no plans to resign over the incident that has drawn condemnation around the world. Munoz profusely apologized to the passenger, his family, passengers, the airline’s customers. “This can never, will never happen again,” he said.

Lawyers for the passenger, Dr. David Dao, issued a statement late on Tuesday confirming his identity and saying that he and his family were “focused only on Dr. Dao’s medical care and treatment” in a Chicago hospital.

The U.S. Department of Transportation launched an inquiry into the incident, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie called for new rules to curb the airline practice of overbooking flights.

Munoz issued a statement on Tuesday apologizing to Dao without naming him. “I’m sorry. We will fix this,” Munoz said. “I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way.”

On Monday, Munoz issued a memo to employees defending the company but not apologizing to the passenger.

Munoz, a former railroad executive who took over the helm at United in 2015, had already been under pressure from activist investors to improve the airline’s performance, including its customer relations.

Video showing Dao being yanked from his seat by airport security Sunday evening and dragged from United Airlines Flight 3411 at Chicago O’Hare International Airport went viral and sparked global outrage.

An online petition calling for Munoz to step down had nearly 22,000 signatures by early Tuesday evening.

On Chinese social media, the incident attracted the attention of more than 480 million users on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.

United has about 20 percent of total U.S.-China airline traffic and has a partnership with Air China, the country’s third-largest airline, according to analysts. It flies to more Chinese cities than any other U.S. carrier. Last year, United added nonstop flights from San Francisco to Hangzhou, its fifth destination in mainland China.

Dao, before being dragged off the parked plane, said repeatedly that he was being discriminated against because he was Chinese, according to Tyler Bridges, a fellow passenger on the flight from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky.

“He said, ‘I’m a doctor; I need to see patients,’” said Bridges, a civil engineer from Louisville who recorded much of the incident on his phone.

Shares of United Continental closed down 1.1 percent at $70.71, after falling as much as 4.4 percent earlier. The company shed as much as about $1 billion in market value before ending the day with a loss of about $250 million. More than 16 million United shares changed hands, the most for any session in a year.

The stock is down about 3 percent for the year.

United is also suffering from broader worries among investors about U.S. airline performance.

In the United States, social media outrage continued, with the incident trending on Twitter for the second consecutive day. Many users promoted hashtags #NewUnitedAirlinesMotto and #BoycottUnitedAirlines.

This is the second time in less than a month that United has been caught in a social media storm. In late March, a United gate agent’s decision to refuse to board two teenage girls wearing leggings provoked a viral backlash.

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Researchers Working To Get AI To Cooperate On Surveillance

Image credit – Rod Kurcoba/Cornell University

We’re sure you’ve seen in the movies where upon locking in onto the face of a subject, they can be tracked through an entire city as various cameras placed around the city can somehow be on the lookout for that person and keep them in view. In real life it’s a little bit different, but that’s something researchers want to change.

Researchers at Cornell are working on a system that wants to get robots, autonomous devices, and AI to work together when it comes to identifying and tracking people or objects. For example if one camera picks up someone acting suspiciously, it can send that image to a central server that would then tell other cameras to be on the lookout for that particular person.

This would allow the system to track a person’s movements automatically, which would no doubt be a lot faster and more efficient compared to a regular person doing it. At the moment it seems that this system is still very much in the works and as it stands, the researchers have yet to build something that they can test, which means that it’s still a long way off from being a reality.

According to Kilian Weinberger, associate professor of computer science who is one of the researchers working on the system, “Once you have robots that cooperate you can do all sorts of things.”

Researchers Working To Get AI To Cooperate On Surveillance , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

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Daily Mail Settles With Melania Trump Over Modeling Story

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Daily Mail agreed on Wednesday to pay Melania Trump an undisclosed sum and issue an apology after the news group published an article about her previous professional work as a model.

She had filed a $150 million (120 million pound) lawsuit against the Daily Mail’s owner in New York claiming the article had cost her millions of dollars in potential business.

On Wednesday, the Daily Mail apologized for the article and said it would issue a retraction.

“We have agreed to pay her damages and costs,” it said.

A person familiar with the situation said the settlement was worth less than $3 million, including legal costs and damages.

Read the join statement from both parties below:

“In September 2016, Melania Trump sued the Daily Mail newspaper in the United Kingdom and Mail Online in the United States. The legal actions concerned allegations published in late August 2016 questioning the nature of work undertaken by Mrs. Trump in the 1990s when she worked as a professional model, and republished allegations that she provided services beyond simply modeling. The article included statements that Mrs. Trump denied the allegations and Paulo Zampolli, who ran the modelling agency, also denied the allegations, and the article also stated that there was no evidence to support the allegations. The article also claimed that Mr. and Mrs. Trump may have met three years before they actually met, and “staged” their actual meeting as a “ruse.”

Daily Mail and Mail Online have retracted the above statements complained of by Mrs. Trump. Daily Mail and Mail Online have agreed to print the Retraction and Apology, set forth below, in the Daily Mail newspaper, at DailyMail.com and at DailyMail.co.uk. Daily Mail and Mail Online also have agreed to pay damages and costs to Melania Trump.”

Melania Trump – An Apology

The Daily Mail newspaper and the Mail Online/DailyMail.com website published an article on 20th August 2016 about Melania Trump which questioned the nature of her work as a professional model, and republished allegations that she provided services beyond simply modelling. The article included statements that Mrs. Trump denied the allegations and Paulo Zampolli, who ran the modelling agency, also denied the allegations, and the article also stated that there was no evidence to support the allegations. The article also claimed that Mr and Mrs Trump may have met three years before they actually met, and “staged” their actual meeting as a “ruse.”

We accept that these allegations about Mrs Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them. We apologise to Mrs Trump for any distress that our publication caused her. To settle Mrs Trump’s two lawsuits against us, we have agreed to pay her damages and costs.

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Rival Soccer Fans React To Blasts Postponing Game In Truly Heartwarming Way

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Rivalry between soccer fans was touchingly put to one side after explosions forced the postponement of a match in Germany on Tuesday.

Officials rescheduled the Champions League quarter-final tie between Germany’s Borussia Dortmund and France’s A.S. Monaco F.C. for Wednesday after three blasts hit near the home team’s bus as it drove players to the Signal Iduna Park stadium.

But the 24-hour adjournment left thousands of the visiting French team’s supporters stranded without a place to stay. That was until compassionate home team fans began tweeting offers of accommodation via the #bedforawayfans hashtag:

Within hours of the hashtag gaining traction, supporters who’d benefited from the spontaneous initiative began posting pictures of where they were staying.

Note how many of the photographs feature people wearing shirts from both teams:

Thanks n’golo kanté haha #bedforawayfans #championsleague2017 #bvbasm

A post shared by Nabil Clinton (@nabil4612) on Apr 11, 2017 at 3:22pm PDT

Police said Wednesday the motive behind the blasts remained unclear.

Borussia Dortmund defender Marc Bartra was the sole player to be hospitalized following the incident, after he was struck by falling shards of glass.

Bartra was injured, on his hand and his arm, but nothing that would be life-threatening,” said the club’s chief executive, Hans-Joachim Watzke. “The team is in complete shock.”

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Wednesday's Morning Email: How U.S.-Russia Relations Got To This Point

TOP STORIES

(And want to get The Morning Email each weekday? Sign up here.)

THE ‘GEOPOLITICAL WHIPLASH’ OVER TRUMP’S POSITION ON RUSSIA A look at how rapidly Russian relations have changed over the past week. And U.S. officials are accusing Russia of trying to cover up the Syrian sarin gas attack, while Russia’s foreign minister warned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson not to strike the Syrian regime again. [NYT]

THE FBI HAD A FISA WARRANT FOR TRUMP ADVISER CARTER PAGE “The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.” [WaPo]

YES, SEAN SPICER DID CLAIM HITLER NEVER USED CHEMICAL WEAPONS As a reminder, the Nazis gassed millions in concentration camps. Here’s a second-by-second breakdown of how this press conference unfolded, as well as an excellent live reaction shot from White House correspondent April Ryan. The press secretary has since apologized. [HuffPost]

BILL O’REILLY ANNOUNCED VACATION PLANS Amid news he may not have a job when he returns. [HuffPost]

WHY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT THAT CLOSE KANSAS SPECIAL ELECTION And what it means for the midterms. [HuffPost]

A LOOK AT THE LIVES LOST TO GROWING GLOBAL FAMINE Aid workers warn that Trump’s proposed funding cuts will cost lives. And take a look at the four countries on the brink of starvation. [HuffPost]

OUTRAGE GROWS OVER ALLEGED GAY ‘CONCENTRATION CAMPS’ IN CHECHNYA “In our Chechen society, any person who respects our traditions and culture will hunt down this kind of person without any help from authorities, and do everything to make sure that this kind of person does not exist in our society.” [HuffPost]

IF THIS TRUMP QUOTE DOESN’T SOUND LIKE HIM THROWING STEVE BANNON UNDER THE BUS We don’t know what does. [HuffPost]

WHAT’S BREWING

THE U.S. IS NO LONGER IN THE TOP 5 EXECUTIONERS IN THE WORLD For the first time since 2006, despite the upcoming executions of seven men in 10 days in Arkansas. [HuffPost]

‘THE DANGER OF BEING TOO GOOD AT YOUR JOB’ Welcome to “talent-hoarding.” [WSJ | Paywall]

EVERY IKEA SHOULD HAVE THIS ‘RELATIONSHIP SAVING STATION’ Just genius. [BuzzFeed]

MEET ‘THE DAILY SHOW’ CORRESPONDENT HEADLINING THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS DINNER Comedian Hasan Minhaj is known for his role as the the so-called “Muslim correspondent” on “The Daily Show.” [HuffPost]

EVEN LUDACRIS IS LAUGHING AT HOW LUDICROUS HIS CGI ABS ARE Sorry, had to with that pun. And yes, apparently CGI abs are a thing. [HuffPost]

WAIT, ‘LOST’ WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A VOLCANO? What? [HuffPost]

MICHELLE OBAMA’S PADDLEBOARDING VACATION PICTURES ARE BEYOND IMPRESSIVE Considering our attempts to master that skill ended up with us looking like a beached whale last month. [HuffPost

BEFORE YOU GO

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