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In a series of tweets yesterday Donald Trump boasted that his nuclear button was “much bigger” than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s, while also attempting to take personal credit for the improved safety of aeroplanes over the past year, after a review found there were no fatalities on commercial jets anywhere in the world in 2017.
The US President’s tweet about the size and power of his nuclear button “is the latest contribution to the bickering, increasingly personalised feud between the nuclear-armed leaders,” the BBC says. Earlier this week, the North Korean leader had said that a button for his own nuclear arsenal was “always on my table.”
Meanwhile, Trump also tried to claim credit after Dutch-based aviation consultancy To70’s annual Civil Aviation Safety Review reported only two fatal accidents last year, both involving small turbo-prop aircraft, with a total of 13 lives lost.
North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018
The two crashes that occurred on New Year’s Eve, including a seaplane in Sydney which claimed the lives of six Britons, were not included because both aircraft weighed below the threshold for the report.
Adrian Young, the safety review’s lead researcher, said the chance of a plane being involved in a fatal accident is now one in 16 million, but warned The Independent the positive figures were more a matter of “good fortune” than a change in global aircraft safety policy.
However, this did not stop the US President from suggesting the drop in airline deaths was, at least in part, down to him:
Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news – it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018
In March, the US Department of Homeland Security announced a temporary ban on laptops and other electronic devices bigger than a mobile phone on flights from 10 Middle Eastern and North African airports to the US, something pilots and aviation experts said could have “catastrophic consequences”.
Young says that, far from increasing safety on planes, the storing of potentially explosive electronic devices in checked-in hold luggage increases the danger, as they are difficult to extinguish if they catch fire.
