I’ve been using the Google Pixel 3 XL since its launch two weeks ago,
and I wholeheartedly agree with our review’s conclusion that the Pixel 3
offers the best Android experience right now. But there’s one aspect of that
Android experience that I can’t abide, and no, it’s not the gargantuan notch.
It’s the appallingly bad new multitasking system, which is mandatory on this
year’s Pixel generation, foregoing the option of the old familiar Android
button trio as we had with the Pixel 2 on the same Android 9 Pie OS.
On its surface, Google’s new approach to switching between apps looks a
whole lot like the one Apple introduced with the iPhone X. It relies on swipes
and shares two of the same fundamental gestures: one swipe up from the bottom
of the screen brings up the multitasking overview, while lateral swipes across
the bottom navigation bar flip between apps. Like my colleague Dan Seifert, who
argues everyone should copy the iPhone X’s gestures,
I think Apple’s implementation of this approach is gorgeous (in its animations)
and quickly becomes second nature once you figure out the basics. Google’s, on
the other hand, is filled with internal contradictions and painful annoyances.
A man on Ryanair yelled racist insults at a black woman. She was the one who had to change seats
David Lawrence had just settled into Seat 22F on a Ryanair flight Thursday when he heard a commotion brewing on the other side of the plane.
A few rows behind him, a gray-haired man with dark-rimmed glasses was yelling at a black woman seated along the aisle.
“I heard this man shouting at this woman, saying, ‘You’re in my way. Get out! I don’t want you here next to me!’ ” Lawrence told The Washington Post in a phone interview Sunday. “I couldn’t believe what I heard."
Lawrence grabbed his phone and started to record the encounter, which took place before a scheduled flight from Barcelona to London Stansted Airport. By then, the woman’s daughter had come up and confronted the man.
"She said, ‘Who are you talking to? Don’t shout at her. That’s my mother; she’s disabled,’ " Lawrence recalled, noting that the woman’s mother had boarded the plane in a wheelchair. “He then was saying, ‘I don’t care.’ "In the video, the man can be heard yelling back at the woman’s daughter as other passengers continue shuffling down the aisle. A male flight attendant with his back to Lawrence’s camera apparently attempts to calm the situation, to little effect.
“I tell you, I hope somebody sits there,” the man tells the woman in the aisle seat, gesturing toward the empty middle seat between them. “'Cause I don’t want to sit next to your— ..."
The rest of the sentence is unclear, though he appears to call her “sickly,” “fat” and “ugly. ”
The flight attendant then asks the woman whether she would like to sit elsewhere.
In the video, the man can be heard yelling back at the woman’s daughter as other passengers continue shuffling down the aisle. A male flight attendant with his back to Lawrence’s camera apparently attempts to calm the situation, to little effect.
“I tell you, I hope somebody sits there,” the man tells the woman in the aisle seat, gesturing toward the empty middle seat between them. “'Cause I don’t want to sit next to your— ..."
The rest of the sentence is unclear, though he appears to call her “sickly,” “fat” and “ugly. ”
The flight attendant then asks the woman whether she would like to sit elsewhere.
“Put her to another seat!” the male passenger shouts, before turning to the woman. “I tell you this. If you don’t go to another seat, I’ll put you to another seat!”
“Put her to another seat!” the male passenger shouts, before turning to the woman. “I tell you this. If you don’t go to another seat, I’ll put you to another seat!”
“I thought the flight attendant was going to call someone and escort the man off the flight,” Lawrence told The Post. “They moved the woman instead of moving him. That was shocking to me.”
Frustrated, he decided to upload his video to Facebook the following day.
“It was just so disturbing,” Lawrence said. “Because there was no response from the other passengers on the flight at the time, I thought, ‘Okay, well, somebody needs to know what happened here.’ That’s why I kept the video running and captured as much as I could."
Over the weekend, the video garnered nearly 3 million views and has been shared tens of thousands of times. Lawrence later uploaded the video to YouTube, where it has more than 100,000 views.
Scores of commenters expressed outrage over how the matter was handled and demanded to know why Ryanair’s flight crew didn’t remove the male passenger before the plane took off.
Ryanair said in an emailed statement that they had reported the incident to Essex Police. "As this is now a police matter, we cannot comment further,” it said.
“We operate strict guidelines for disruptive passengers, and we will not tolerate unruly behavior like this,” Ryanair told BBC News. “We will be taking this matter further, and disruptive or abusive behavior like this will result in passengers being banned from travel.”
Essex Police confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it was investigating the matter and encouraged people with information to contact them.
“Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported,” the police department told the news site. “We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation. ”
The woman’s unnamed daughter told HuffPost UK that her mother, identified only as “Mrs. Gayle,” is a 77-year-old retiree who immigrated to Britain from Jamaica in the 1960s. They were returning from a vacation to mark the anniversary of the death of Gayle’s husband, she added
“She’s been feeling really down and depressed, so I thought the trip would raise her spirits,” Gayle’s daughter, 53, told the news site. “The underlying reason behind the man’s abusive behavior comes down to the fact that my mum is a black woman and he didn’t want her sitting next to him. He says it in the video. ”
Gayle’s daughter said the encounter left her outraged and her mother “upset and very stressed, on top of the grief that she’s already experiencing. ”
Lawrence, 56, told The Post that he spoke with the woman and her daughter after the flight and said they were both disappointed and disgusted. His parents also were part of the “Windrush generation,” immigrants who moved from the Caribbean to Britain from 1948 to 1971, so he said he could understand why the woman agreed to switch seats rather than escalate the situation.
The racism they suffered on a daily basis is historic. Our parents have learned over the years — because they have never received any kind of justice — they’ve just learned to live with it,” Lawrence said. “They kind of have this attitude, like, ‘Well, what can we do?’ sort of thing. The lady was like, this has happened so many times. I just want to go home. ”
Lawrence has since posted multiple times about the incident on social media, urging people to put pressure on Ryanair for turning “a blind eye to racial discrimination.”
The airline’s acknowledgment of his video was hardly a sufficient apology, he said.
“It’s not good enough,” Lawrence said. “It certainly falls so short of what we expect an airline to provide for, in terms of protecting their customers. It’s shameful. It’s shameful. ”
Credit: Washington Post
The Nigerian Labour Congress to Embark on Indefinite Strike over Minimum Wage
The crisis over workers’ agitation for new national minimum wage has taken a new dimension with the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) threatening to commence a nationwide strike from November 6, if the federal government fails to meet their demands.
Both the federal and state governments have said they are willing to negotiate a new minimum wage but that the amount must be within what they can reasonably afford.
But the NLC has accused the federal government of insincerity and mischief, saying that what was agreed on at the negotiations was N30,000.The federal government went further to labour to accept a proposal of N20,000 as a consensus figure.
As a warning shot, NLC said its members would hold nationwide rallies on Tuesday to show the workers’ outrage over the delay in approving a new minimum wage.
In a statement jointly signed by the President of the NLC, Mr. Ayuba Wabba, the President of the TUC, Mr. Bobboi Bala Kaigama, and President of the United Labour Congress (ULC), Mr. Joe Ajaero, the unions said the one day mourning would be used to sensitise Nigerians on the plight of workers.
The statement said that the rallies would take place in all the states of the federation, including Abuja on Tuesday, October 30.
Labour also said it would hold a Joint Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting of all the Labour Centres in Nigeria on Friday to receive reports and make final preparations for the ultimate engagement with the federal government on the matter.
It said this would be the first time in recent times that such meeting would take place, adding, “This goes a long way to show the seriousness with which Nigerian workers and its leadership hold this matter.”
The labour unions warned that if nothing was responsibly done by the federal government to meet their demands by November 6, they would embark on a nation-wide strike to compel the government to show more sensitivity to the plight of Nigerians.
They said, “We urge all Nigerians and workers not to be discouraged as it has become obvious that this government does not care neither for the workers nor for the citizenry.
“It would always prefer the use of force to silence and subdue our cries of anguish rather than show feelings of brotherhood especially when our strength of logic and argument has overwhelmed their feeble attempts and propaganda. Let us today remember those who deny us and let us collectively demonstrate our position at next year’s polls.”
While explaining the events that led to the last nation-wide strike, which forced the federal government to return to the negotiation table, the unions regretted that renegotiation of a new national minimum wage had been subjected to delays since the expiration of the last one in 2016.
The unions expressed anger that the delays and foot-dragging were pointers that the government was not showing good faith on the new national minimum wage for Nigerian workers.
They accused the federal government of insincerity and of deliberately trying to create confusion and make the negotiations inconclusive as usual.
Labour said it was not true that it proposed N30,000 as the new national minimum wage, adding that was also not true that the committee did not agree on a figure during its last sitting.
They said, “We accepted N30,000 as a compromise to demonstrate the willingness of Nigerian workers to make sacrifices towards nation building. Anything to the contrary no matter the quantum and character of the din or how well couched it may appear cannot be true.
“We believe that it has become necessary for the Organised Private Sector (OPS) as represented in the Tripartite Committee to speak up on this matter. Keeping silent in the face of this apparent mischief does our nation no good.
“It can only help mischief, dishonesty and impunity to grow. At this time the OPS does not have any other choice but to rise to the occasion by telling Nigerians what transpired in the meeting,” it said.
Credit: Thisday
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