Jumat, 05 April 2019

Gone in 6 minutes: an Ethiopian Airlines jet's final journey - The Boston Globe

FILE - In this March 11, 2019, file photo, wreckage is piled at the crash scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight crash near Bishoftu, Ethiopia. Pilots of the Ethiopian Airlines flight encountered problems with their new Boeing jetliner from nearly the moment they roared down the runway and took off. A preliminary report on Thursday, April 4, 2019, by Ethiopian investigators reveals a minute-by-minute narrative of the gripping and confusing scene in the cockpit. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)

From nearly the moment they roared down the runway and took off in their new Boeing jetliner, pilots of an Ethiopian Airlines flight encountered problems with the plane.

Almost immediately, a device called a stick shaker began vibrating the captain’s control column, warning him that the plane might be about to stall and fall from the sky.

For six minutes, the pilots were bombarded by alarms as they fought to fly the plane, at times pulling back in unison on their control columns in a desperate attempt to keep the huge jet aloft.

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Ethiopian authorities issued a preliminary report Thursday on the March 10 crash that killed 157 people. They found that a malfunctioning sensor sent faulty data to the Boeing 737 Max 8’s anti-stall system and triggered a chain of events that ended in a crash so violent it reduced the plane to shards and pieces. The pilots’ struggle, and the tragic ending, mirrored an Oct. 29 crash of a Lion Air Max 8 off the coast of Indonesia, which killed 189 people.

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The anti-stall system, called MCAS, automatically lowers the plane’s nose under some circumstances to prevent an aerodynamic stall. Boeing acknowledged that a sensor in the Ethiopian Airlines jet malfunctioned, triggering MCAS when it was not needed. The company repeated that it is working on a software upgrade to fix the problem in its best-selling plane.

‘‘It’s our responsibility to eliminate this risk,’’ CEO Dennis Muilenburg said in a video. ‘‘We own it, and we know how to do it.’’

Jim Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the preliminary findings add urgency to re-examine the way that the Federal Aviation Administration uses employees of aircraft manufacturers to conduct safety-related tasks, including tests and inspections — a decades-old policy that raises questions about the agency’s independence and is now under review by the U.S. Justice Department, the Transportation Department’s inspector general and congressional committees.

‘‘It is clear now that the process itself failed to produce a safe aircraft,’’ Hall said. ‘‘The focus now is to see if there were steps that were skipped or tests that were not properly done.’’

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The 33-page preliminary report, which is subject to change in the coming months, is based on information from the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders, the so-called black boxes. It includes a minute-by-minute narrative of a gripping and confusing scene in the cockpit.

Just one minute into Flight 302 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi in neighboring Kenya, the captain, Yared Getachew, reported that they were having flight-control problems.

Then the anti-stall system kicked in and pushed the nose of the plane down for nine seconds. Instead of climbing, the plane descended slightly. Audible warnings — ‘‘Don’t Sink’’ — sounded in the cockpit. The pilots fought to turn the nose of the plane up, and briefly they were able to resume climbing.

But the automatic anti-stall system pushed the nose down again, triggering more squawks of ‘‘Don’t Sink’’ from the plane’s ground-proximity warning system.

Following a procedure that Boeing reiterated after the Lion Air crash, the Ethiopian pilots flipped two switches and disconnected the anti-stall system, then tried to regain control. They asked to return to the Addis Ababa airport, but were continuing to struggle getting the plane to gain altitude.

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Then they broke with Boeing procedure and returned power to controls including the anti-stall system, perhaps hoping to use power to adjust a tail surface that controls the pitch up or down of a plane, or maybe out of sheer desperation.

One final time, the automated system kicked in, pushing the plane into a nose dive, according to the report.

A half-minute later, the cockpit voice recording ended, the plane crashed, and all 157 people on board were killed. The plane’s impact left a crater 10 meters deep.

The Max is Boeing’s newest version of its workhorse single-aisle jetliner, the 737, which dates to the 1960s. Fewer than 400 Max jets have been sent to airlines around the world, but Boeing has taken orders for 4,600 more.

Boeing delivered this particular plane, tail number ET-AVJ, to Ethiopian Airlines in November. By the day of Flight 302, it had made nearly 400 flights and been in the air for 1,330 hours — still very new by airline standards.

The pilots were young, too, and between them they had a scant 159 hours of flying time on the Max.

The captain, Getachew, was just 29 but had accumulated more than 8,000 hours of flying since completing work at the airline’s training academy in 2010. He had flown more than 1,400 hours on Boeing 737s but just 103 hours on the Max. That may not be surprising, given that Ethiopian Airlines had just five of the planes, including ET-AVJ.

The co-pilot, Ahmed Nur Mohammod Nur, was only 25 and was granted a license to fly the 737 and the Max on Dec. 12 of last year. He had logged just 361 flight hours — not enough to be hired as a pilot at a U.S. airline. Of those hours, 207 were on 737s, including 56 hours on Max jets.

Thursday’s preliminary report found that both pilots performed all the procedures recommended by Boeing on the March 10 flight but still could not control the jet.

While Boeing continues to work on its software update, Max jets remain grounded worldwide. The CEO said the company is taking ‘‘a comprehensive, disciplined approach’’ to fixing the flight-control software.

But some critics, including Hall, the former NTSB chairman, question why the work has taken so long.

‘‘Don’t you think if Boeing knew what the fix was, we would have the fix by now?’’ he said. ‘‘They said after the Lion Air accident there was going to be a fix, yet there was a second accident with no fix. Now, in response to the worldwide reaction, the plane is grounded and there is still not a fix.’’

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https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2019/04/05/gone-minutes-ethiopian-airlines-jet-final-journey/Qg9CzEjBRuBEaCRl6ZVCzI/story.html

2019-04-05 11:44:00Z
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Two US citizens arrested in first Saudi arrest sweep since Khashoggi killing, source says - CNN

Salah al-Haidar, a dual Saudi-US citizen who is the son of prominent women's rights defender Aziza al-Yousef, was one of those arrested, according to two sources familiar with the events. Yousef was temporarily freed from a prison in Riyadh last month and is on trial along with 10 other women's rights defenders.
One source is a Saudi academic in a US university who has strong relations with the Saudi dissident community. The other source is a Saudi activist with knowledge of the events.
Haidar is a writer and journalist on social issues. His father owns a home in Vienna, Virginia, according to the Saudi academic who asked not to be named out of concerns for his safety.
Salah al-Haidar and his mother Aziza al-Yousef in a car after a Saudi court granted her temporary release in March. Yousef is a prominent women's rights defender who spent nearly a year behind bars. Haidar was arrested on April 4, around two weeks after his mother's release.
Another Saudi-US dual citizen, the writer and physician Bader al-Ibrahim, was also arrested in the crackdown, the sources said.
The UK-based Saudi rights group Alqst reported that seven activists had been arrested on Thursday, and released their names.
All seven detainees are writers and social media bloggers who are connected to Yousef's family and are friends with Haidar, according to the sources. They previously engaged in public discussions about reforms and have publicly endorsed women's rights causes such as the right to drive, the sources said.
Two of the activists detained on Thursday are Saudi married couple Thumar al-Mazouqi and Khadijah al-Harbi, said the sources. Harbi, who has written about and campaigned for women's rights, is in late-stage pregnancy, the sources added. She and Mazouqi have been supportive of detained women's rights defenders currently standing trial.
The sources also confirmed that a Riyadh university lecturer named Anas al-Mazrou was arrested on March 19. Days earlier a video of Mazrou filmed at a book fair, in which he publicly expressed solidarity with political prisoners and named some detained women's rights defenders, had gone viral.
Khashoggi's children could get as much as $70 million in compensation for his killing
The Saudi government did not immediately respond to CNN's requests for comment about the case. CNN has reached out to the US embassy in Riyadh for comment.
Saudi Arabia has conducted a series of crackdowns on dissidents since Prince Mohammed bin Salman was elevated to Crown Prince in June 2017. The arrest sweeps have targeted clerics, academics and human rights defenders.
In May and June 2018, several women's rights activists were detained in a series of arrests that were widely criticized by the international community, including at the United Nations human rights council.
Jeff Bezos investigator: Saudi Arabia obtained private information
The October 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a US resident and critic of the government, at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul sparked international uproar.
The number of arrests of dissidents appeared to decrease significantly in the aftermath of Khashoggi's killing, in what many observers hoped was sign that the kingdom's crackdown was deescalating, Alqst director Yahya Assiri told CNN.
Saudi Arabia cites UN job application as evidence against rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul
Thursday's arrests appeared to mark a renewal of the crackdown, Assiri and the Saudi academic said.
"It's all breaking my heart but in particular is I know Salah al-Haidar's family has already been thru so much after #Saudi feminist (Salah's mother) Aziza al-Yousef's arrest since May 2018," wrote Saudi-American Harvard PhD student Nora Abdulkarim in a tweet. "Days after her temp release, and their celebrating, now Salah is arrested. I cannot fathom."

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/05/middleeast/saudi-crackdown-us-citizens-intl/index.html

2019-04-05 12:21:00Z
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The crashed Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max hit the ground at 575mph and left a crater 32 feet deep, horrifying details in official report reveal - INSIDER

  • The crashed Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max plane hit the ground at 575mph, leaving a crater 32 feet deep and 131 feet long, according to a preliminary government report.
  • The plane reached a speed that exceeded its design limits as the pilots rushed to follow Boeing's emergency procedures to stop the plane from nosediving.
  • The speed of the descent would have pulled passengers from their seats and may have made them feel weightless before they hit the ground, Reuters reported.
  • Boeing acknowledged on Thursday that a broken sensor triggered the plane's anti-stall software system, and said its fix software will ensure that it does not happen again.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The crashed Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max hit the ground at a speed of 575mph and left a crater 32 feet deep, according to a preliminary government report on the air crash. All 157 people on board died.

The plane's airspeed indicator reached 500 knots (roughly 575mph) just before the plane crashed, the 33-page report said. It had been in the air just six minutes.

Its impact in a field near Addis Ababa created a hole around 32 feet deep, 92 feet wide and 131 feet long, according to the report, which is subject to change as the investigation continues.

"This accident was not survivable," investigators bluntly concluded.

An image of the crater crated by the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max plane included in the preliminary report into the disaster.
Air Accident Investigation Bureau

The plane's speed exceeded its design limits, Reuters reported. It was travelling so fast, experts told the news outlet, that it would have created negative G-forces inside the cabin.

Such extreme forces would have pulled passengers out of their seats, Reuters said, and could have induced a feeling of weightlessness before impact.

People stand near debris at the crash site of the Ethiopia Airlines flight in Ethiopia in March 2019.
MICHAEL TEWELDE/AFP/Getty Images

Ethiopian Airlines' pilots followed Boeing's emergency procedures but were unable to control the plane and stop its nose from pointing down, the report said.

Ethiopia's Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges said "the crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft" as she delivered the report on Thursday.

Read more:The Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max pilots followed all the right procedures but crashed anyway, official report finds. Now the spotlight turns to Boeing

The report also said that the plane was considered airworthy before takeoff and that the pilots were fully certified to fly the plane.

The findings put pressure on Boeing, which is facing questions about its software and how its planes are certified.

Rescuers work at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines flight crash.
Associated Press

Boeing acknowledged on Thursday that an erroneous AOA (angle-of-attack) sensor triggered the plane's MCAS anti-stall software system.

A similar error was was outlined in the preliminary report into the fatal Lion Air 737 Max 8 crash, which that killed all 189 people on board in October 2018.

Read more: Boeing and Ethiopian investigators confirm a faulty sensor was triggered on the 737 Max shortly before it crashed

The 737 Max has now been grounded around the world after the Ethiopian Airlines disaster.

The MCAS system is designed to prevent stalls by automatically pointing the nose of the plane downward if the plane senses the aircraft climbing too sharply.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg.
BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images

Boeing is working on a software update to the planes, which will be examined by the Federal Aviation Administration before being rolled out.

Boeing also faces an investigation by the US Department of Justice, with FBI involvement, into its development process.

The US Senate is also examining how the FAA allowed it to self-certify parts of its aircraft as part of a policy mandated by Congress.

Its CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, said on Thursday that Boeing is "sorry for the lives lost in the recent 737 MAX accidents,"

He said the company's top engineers and experts are working "to finalize and implement a software update that will ensure accidents like that of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 never happen again."

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https://www.thisisinsider.com/ethiopian-airlines-boeing-737-max-crash-575mph-32ft-crater-2019-4

2019-04-05 11:06:15Z
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The crashed Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max hit the ground at 575mph and left a crater 32 feet deep, horrifying details in official report reveal - INSIDER

  • The crashed Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max plane hit the ground at 575mph, leaving a crater 32 feet deep and 131 feet long, according to a preliminary government report.
  • The plane reached a speed that exceeded its design limits as the pilots rushed to follow Boeing's emergency procedures to stop the plane from nosediving.
  • The speed of the descent would have pulled passengers from their seats and may have made them feel weightless before they hit the ground, Reuters reported.
  • Boeing acknowledged on Thursday that a broken sensor triggered the plane's anti-stall software system, and said its fix software will ensure that it does not happen again.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The crashed Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max hit the ground at a speed of 575mph and left a crater 32 feet deep, according to a preliminary government report on the air crash. All 157 people on board died.

The plane's airspeed indicator reached 500 knots (roughly 575mph) just before the plane crashed, the 33-page report said. It had been in the air just six minutes.

Its impact in a field near Addis Ababa created a hole around 32 feet deep, 92 feet wide and 131 feet long, according to the report, which is subject to change as the investigation continues.

"This accident was not survivable," investigators bluntly concluded.

An image of the crater crated by the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max plane included in the preliminary report into the disaster.
Air Accident Investigation Bureau

The plane's speed exceeded its design limits, Reuters reported. It was travelling so fast, experts told the news outlet, that it would have created negative G-forces inside the cabin.

Such extreme forces would have pulled passengers out of their seats, Reuters said, and could have induced a feeling of weightlessness before impact.

People stand near debris at the crash site of the Ethiopia Airlines flight in Ethiopia in March 2019.
MICHAEL TEWELDE/AFP/Getty Images

Ethiopian Airlines' pilots followed Boeing's emergency procedures but were unable to control the plane and stop its nose from pointing down, the report said.

Ethiopia's Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges said "the crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft" as she delivered the report on Thursday.

Read more:The Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max pilots followed all the right procedures but crashed anyway, official report finds. Now the spotlight turns to Boeing

The report also said that the plane was considered airworthy before takeoff and that the pilots were fully certified to fly the plane.

The findings put pressure on Boeing, which is facing questions about its software and how its planes are certified.

Rescuers work at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines flight crash.
Associated Press

Boeing acknowledged on Thursday that an erroneous AOA (angle-of-attack) sensor triggered the plane's MCAS anti-stall software system.

A similar error was was outlined in the preliminary report into the fatal Lion Air 737 Max 8 crash, which that killed all 189 people on board in October 2018.

Read more: Boeing and Ethiopian investigators confirm a faulty sensor was triggered on the 737 Max shortly before it crashed

The 737 Max has now been grounded around the world after the Ethiopian Airlines disaster.

The MCAS system is designed to prevent stalls by automatically pointing the nose of the plane downward if the plane senses the aircraft climbing too sharply.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg.
BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images

Boeing is working on a software update to the planes, which will be examined by the Federal Aviation Administration before being rolled out.

Boeing also faces an investigation by the US Department of Justice, with FBI involvement, into its development process.

The US Senate is also examining how the FAA allowed it to self-certify parts of its aircraft as part of a policy mandated by Congress.

Its CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, said on Thursday that Boeing is "sorry for the lives lost in the recent 737 MAX accidents,"

He said the company's top engineers and experts are working "to finalize and implement a software update that will ensure accidents like that of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 never happen again."

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https://www.thisisinsider.com/ethiopian-airlines-boeing-737-max-crash-575mph-32ft-crater-2019-4

2019-04-05 10:53:15Z
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Theresa May Asks E.U. for Brexit Extension Until June 30 - The New York Times

LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May asked the European Union on Friday to delay Britain’s departure from the bloc for a second time — until June 30 — and conceded that the country was preparing to take part in European Parliament elections.

Mrs. May made a formal request in a letter to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, for a postponement of the departure, now scheduled for April 12, but analysts said her proposed date was likely to be rejected by Brussels.

British news reports said that Mr. Tusk was pushing European leaders to offer Mrs. May a one-year extension while leaving the door open to an earlier withdrawal if Britain ratifies a deal for Brexit, as the process is known.

That plan, described in Brussels as a “flextension,” would eliminated the need for European leaders to repeatedly consider British requests for a delay. And in allowing Britain to leave sooner if an agreement is reached, Mr. Tusk appears to be trying to make it clear that Brussels is not trying to trap Britain in the bloc.

Mr. Tusk’s plan would need the backing of the leaders of European Union member states.

In asking for an extension until June 30 — the same date she once asked for but which the European Union previously rejected — Mrs. May was bowing to pressure from within her Conservative Party not to be seen as forcing the country into a longer delay. But she was also laying the ground for a more protracted extension by agreeing that Britain was prepared to participate in European elections in May. That was seen in Brussels as a condition for another Brexit postponement.

Mrs. May has sought over the past week to break months of deadlock by meeting with the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, to try to reach an agreement. But she said in her letter to Mr. Tusk that if those talks did not produce a compromise, she would hold a series of votes in Parliament on alternative paths in the hopes that lawmakers would eventually settle on one.

“This impasse cannot be allowed to continue,” Mrs. May wrote. “In the U.K. it is creating uncertainty and doing damage to faith in politics, while the European Union has a legitimate desire to move on to decisions about its own future.”

The prime minister’s Brexit deal has already been rejected three times by British lawmakers, and there is likely to be a lively debate in Brussels on whether — or more particularly, on what terms — to grant a second extension. Britain was originally scheduled to leave the bloc on March 29, but European leaders granted a short extension to give Parliament more time to approve the withdrawal deal.

Mrs. May and Mr. Corbyn met on Wednesday, and teams from both sides continued the discussions on Thursday. The session ended with neither breakthroughs nor breakdowns.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/world/europe/brexit-extension-may-eu.html

2019-04-05 09:17:40Z
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Theresa May Asks E.U. for Brexit Extension Until June 30 - The New York Times

LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May asked the European Union on Friday to delay Britain’s departure from the bloc for a second time — until June 30 — and conceded that the country was preparing to take part in European Parliament elections.

Mrs. May made a formal request in a letter to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, for a postponement of the departure, now scheduled for April 12, but analysts said her proposed date was likely to be rejected by Brussels.

British news reports said that Mr. Tusk was pushing European leaders to offer Mrs. May a one-year extension while leaving the door open to an earlier withdrawal if Britain ratifies a deal for Brexit, as the process is known.

That plan, described in Brussels as a “flextension,” would eliminated the need for European leaders to repeatedly consider British requests for a delay. And in allowing Britain to leave sooner if an agreement is reached, Mr. Tusk appears to be trying to make it clear that Brussels is not trying to trap Britain in the bloc.

Mr. Tusk’s plan would need the backing of the leaders of European Union member states.

In asking for an extension until June 30 — the same date she once asked for but which the European Union previously rejected — Mrs. May was bowing to pressure from within her Conservative Party not to be seen as forcing the country into a longer delay. But she was also laying the ground for a more protracted extension by agreeing that Britain was prepared to participate in European elections in May. That was seen in Brussels as a condition for another Brexit postponement.

Mrs. May has sought over the past week to break months of deadlock by meeting with the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, to try to reach an agreement. But she said in her letter to Mr. Tusk that if those talks did not produce a compromise, she would hold a series of votes in Parliament on alternative paths in the hopes that lawmakers would eventually settle on one.

“This impasse cannot be allowed to continue,” Mrs. May wrote. “In the U.K. it is creating uncertainty and doing damage to faith in politics, while the European Union has a legitimate desire to move on to decisions about its own future.”

The prime minister’s Brexit deal has already been rejected three times by British lawmakers, and there is likely to be a lively debate in Brussels on whether — or more particularly, on what terms — to grant a second extension. Britain was originally scheduled to leave the bloc on March 29, but European leaders granted a short extension to give Parliament more time to approve the withdrawal deal.

Mrs. May and Mr. Corbyn met on Wednesday, and teams from both sides continued the discussions on Thursday. The session ended with neither breakthroughs nor breakdowns.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/world/europe/brexit-extension-may-eu.html

2019-04-05 08:46:07Z
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Theresa May asks Europe for Brexit extension to June 30 - NBC News

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By Alexander Smith

LONDON — British Prime Minister Theresa May has written to the European Union to request another extension to give her country more time to work out its ongoing Brexit deadlock.

She asked European Council President Donald Tusk on Friday to delay the divorce deadline until June 30, with the option to terminate the postponement if a deal is worked out before then.

"It is frustrating that we have not yet brought this process to a successful and orderly conclusion," May wrote.

E.U. leaders are due to meet Wednesday and all 27 must unanimously agree for May's request to be approved.

Tusk is in favor of the idea of a "flextension" but he wants a longer delay window of one year, Reuters and The Associated Press cited anonymous senior European officials as saying. NBC News could not immediately independently verify the reports.

No matter the length, any deferral would come as another twist in a crisis that has all but consumed the collective British consciousness.

Brits have spent the past two years gearing up for their European exit — either with eager expectation or fear — only to have it postponed once already, and now possibly again next week.

"This impasse cannot be allowed to continue," May wrote. "In the U.K. it is creating uncertainty and doing damage to faith in politics."

Under the current law, the U.K. is currently due to leave the E.U. next Friday — April 12 — which itself is an extension from the original withdrawal date of March 29.

"Having reluctantly sought an extension to the Article 50 period last month, the government must now do so again," May wrote Friday, referring to the Article 50 clause that sets out the U.K.'s European departure.

An extension of any length would mean the U.K. preparing to take part in European elections that are happening in May. In her letter the prime minister said that if possible she wanted to cut short the extension before that date by reaching an agreement with British lawmakers.

March 14, 201901:51

So far this has proved difficult to say the least. May has negotiated a deal with the E.U. but it has been repeatedly rejected by British lawmakers, who have also failed to rally around any other alternative plan.

With her options growing increasingly limited, Conservative prime minister is currently in talks with opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, something that has provoked uproar and suspicion from both parties.

If there is no intervention before next Friday then the country will crash out of the bloc with no deal at all, a Brexit scenario many experts see as risking economy calamity.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/brexit-referendum/theresa-may-asks-europe-another-brexit-extension-n991231

2019-04-05 08:31:00Z
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