New Zealand, Ethiopian Airlines, German Banks: Your Monday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/briefing/new-zealand-ethiopian-airlines-german-banks.html

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Good morning.

New Zealand mourns after a massacre, Ethiopian flight data reveals similarities in two Boeing crashes, and talks for a major German bank merger begin. Here’s the latest:

New Zealand tried to come to grips with grief and horror after a gunman targeted worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch on Friday, killing at least 50.

Muslims in the country sought firm answers on who had been killed. And the police arrested a suspect, a 28-year-old Australian man who has been charged with murder. He posted a racist manifesto online and streamed live video of the killings on Facebook. Follow the latest updates on the story here.

Moments of courage: Abdul Aziz, who was praying at one of the targeted mosques, flung the first thing he could find — a credit card machine — at the attacker and chased after him. Police officers from another town who were in the area rammed the suspect’s car into a curb and took him into custody.

Gun debate: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has promised stricter gun controls. We compared the rules for buying a gun in 16 countries.

In Australia: A far-right senator who blamed the attacks on immigration was egged by a teenage boy, and responded with punches.

How to help: Here’s our guide to groups offering aid.

Information from the data and voice recorders of an Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed last weekend shows similarities to a crash of the same type of plane, a Boeing 737 Max 8, off Indonesia in October, Ethiopia’s transport ministry said.

A software program aboard the Max 8 planes is a focus of investigators. Installed as a way of preventing stalls, it forces the plane’s nose down. In the Indonesia crash, there are indications that the system acted in error and that the pilots had trouble overriding the software’s actions. There are signs that the same could have happened in Ethiopia, though the cause of neither crash has been determined.

Questions are also being asked over whether the training procedures for pilots on the Boeing jet’s new software were adequate.

Grief: Mourners streamed into a vast churchyard in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, waving pictures of loved ones who died in the crash. Many did not expect to recover remains of relatives who were among the 157 dead.

Germany’s two biggest lenders, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, started what analysts called a last-ditch effort to create an institution that could compete with giant American investment banks.

The idea of merging the two companies has gained support with each bank, and with the German government, after previous rounds of talks failed. Both lenders cautioned that the talks may not lead to a deal.

The resulting bank, with $2 trillion in assets, would be the third-largest lender in Europe.

Risks: Previous banking mergers in Germany have not always turned out well. Commerzbank required a government bailout in 2009 after it acquired Dresdner Bank, which turned out to have billions of euros in toxic assets. The German government still owns about 15 percent of Commerzbank.

Pushback: Unions have expressed opposition to a merger, which would lead to the cutting of thousands of jobs.

The Trump administration’s global campaign against Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, is facing major resistance.

Pressure, threats and scolding from the U.S. have failed to persuade even some of its closest allies to bar Huawei from building fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless networks. U.S. officials argue that China could gain access to the data that will ultimately travel over the networks. But European and Asian officials have complained privately that recent American intelligence briefings on Huawei were scant on evidence of espionage.

Compared with the U.S., European wireless networks are much more dependent on Huawei, so banning its equipment would be far more consequential.

Details: Britain, Germany, India and the United Arab Emirates are signaling that they probably will not back the American effort to ban Huawei from building its 5G networks. Although some countries share America’s concerns, they say the security risks can be managed by keeping a close eye on the company and its software.

Venezuela: President Nicolás Maduro used Cuban doctors, who were in the country on medical missions, to coerce voters. The doctors went door-to-door, warning ill and elderly people that care would be cut off if they did not vote for the governing party.

West Bank: An assailant believed to be Palestinian killed an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank. The attack came amid a heated campaign for an April 9 election.

Philippines: The country formally withdrew from the International Criminal Court as it faced a preliminary inquiry into whether President Rodrigo Duterte has engaged in mass murder and crimes against humanity. On Thursday, Mr. Duterte publicly released a new list of people whom he claims are “narcopoliticians” — including many who are his political opponents.

France: In Week 18 of the country’s “Yellow Vest” demonstrations, violence surged as protesters targeted symbols of wealth. They set fires and smashed a high-end restaurant on the Champs-Élysées. Still, the size of the movement has been shrinking.

Saudi Arabia: The team that killed the columnist Jamal Khashoggi was part of a wider push to crush Saudi dissent that has involved at least a dozen operations since 2017. The crown prince authorized the secret campaign over a year before the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, according to American officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the operations.

Cyclone: More than 150 people were killed in a cyclone that hit Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Hundreds more were missing, and tens of thousands were stranded in mainly poor, rural areas, officials said.

Germany: Berlin’s public transportation system will offer women discounted fare today in honor of Equal Pay Day. It represents the country’s gender pay gap, one of Europe’s largest: Women are paid an average of 21 percent less than men.

China: A popular blogger went conspicuously silent last month. In the battle for control of the Chinese internet, the authorities had designated the blogger, Ma Ling, a threat to social stability. Censors are targeting self-help gurus, novelists, sportswriters and other independent writers.

California: A mass migration of painted lady butterflies has entranced residents and onlookers. The insects fly at speeds up to 25 miles per hour. The cause of the swarm’s size has to do with substantial rainfall in the deserts near the Mexican border, where the butterflies usually lay their eggs.

Tips for a more fulfilling life.

Recipe of the day: “Slow-roasted” citrus salmon takes only 30 minutes and is nearly impossible to overcook. (Our Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter has more recommendations.)

A few simple distractions that don’t involve electronics can ease traveling with children.

The writer, director and actor Lena Dunham says coziness is helping her cope with chronic pain.

NASA is planning the first all-female spacewalk this month.

As it happens, the first spacewalk was on this day, in 1965, by the cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. It was a major Soviet advance in the space race.

The plans had been kept secret, so Soviet broadcasts of the event caught most of the world by surprise, including Lieutenant Colonel Leonov’s family. “What is he doing?” his 4-year-old daughter cried. “Please tell Daddy to get back inside.”

After he retired, Mr. Leonov revealed how many times the mission had neared disaster. In the 2004 book “Two Sides of the Moon,” he detailed how high pressure in his spacesuit had nearly prevented him from re-entering the capsule.

A systems failure forced him and his fellow crew member to manually guide re-entry. They landed in Siberia, without communications, and endured days of frigid temperatures, with one pistol to ward off wolves.

After they were found, the hardy pair skied miles to a rescue helicopter.

Andrea Kannapell, the briefings editor, wrote today’s Back Story.

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