Foreign News
Boeing announces additional quality inspections for 737 MAX planes
Boeing has said it will add further quality inspections for the 737 MAX planes after a mid-air blowout of a cabin panel in an Alaska Airlines Max 9 earlier this month, the head of its commercial planes division said.
In a letter to the global planemaker’s employees on Monday, Stan Deal, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said the company will also deploy a team to supplier Spirit AeroSystems – which makes and installs the plug door involved in the incident – to check and approve Spirit’s work on the plugs before fuselages are sent to Boeing’s production facilities in Washington state in the US.
Boeing’s quality inspections announcement comes after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Friday that all 737 MAX 9 planes should remain grounded until Boeing provides further data following the near-catastrophic Alaska Airlines incident.
“For the safety of American travellers the FAA will keep the Boeing 737-9 MAX grounded until extensive inspection and maintenance is conducted and data from inspections is reviewed,” the FAA said in a statement.
Only after 40 planes are inspected will the agency review the results and determine whether safety is adequate to allow the MAX 9s to resume flying, the FAA said.
Alaska Airlines also said it was grounding its fleet of 737-9 aircraft for the same reasons.
Deal highlighted that the actions laid out in his letter are separate from the FAA’s ongoing investigation, but said that he planned to increase oversight of MAX production.
He said that in addition to the door plug inspections, Boeing teams will also conduct checks at 50 other points in Spirit AeroSystems’ production process.
Both Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems will also open their 737 production facilities to airline customers for carriers to provide their own inspections. Boeing will hold sessions for employees on quality management, and bring in an outside party to conduct an independent assessment of its production process, Deal said. “Everything we do must conform to the requirements in our QMS (quality management system), Anything less is unacceptable. It is through this standard that we must operate to provide our customers and their passengers complete confidence in Boeing airplanes.”
Boeing 737 MAX jets have been grounded worldwide in the past. In October 2018 they were grounded for almost two years after a crash in Indonesia killed 189 people, and another in Ethiopia five months later, which killed 157 people.
The aircraft was cleared to fly again after Boeing revamped its automated flight-control system that had activated erroneously in both crashes.
(Aljazeera)
Along Beirut’s downtown waterfront, Alaa is looking for somewhere to rest his head.
The Syrian refugee, originally from the occupied Golan Heights, is now homeless. He explained that he had already spent the day wandering around the Lebanese capital trying to find shelter.
He used to live in Dahiyeh – the southern suburbs of Beirut that have been pummelled by Israeli attacks, which have now killed MORE THAN 1,000 across Lebanon.
Now, he’s just looking for somewhere he can be safe. And in that context, Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival that began on Friday, is far from his mind.
When asked if he had any plans for Eid, he replied in the negative. Instead, his focus was on getting a tent.
“I got rejected from staying in a school, then I went to sleep on the corniche,” Alaa said. “Then people from the municipality told me to come here to downtown Beirut’s waterfront.”
Alaa wasn’t able to find a tent and is sleeping in the open air for now. But others in the area have, transforming a downtown more famous for its expensive restaurants and bars into a tent city for those displaced by the fighting. Across Lebanon, more than a million people have been displaced.
Lebanese are uncertain when this war will end, particularly as they have barely recovered from the conflict with Israel that ran between October 2023 and November 2024.
It makes celebrations difficult – a common theme across the countries affected by the current conflict.
In Iran, now in its third week of US-Israeli attacks – with no sign of an immediate end and an economic crisis that preceded the conflict, people are struggling to afford any of the items typically bought during the holiday season.
And it is potentially dangerous for people to shop at places like Tehran’s grand bazaar, which has been damaged by the bombing.
The religious element of Eid adds an extra sensitivity for antigovernment Iranians, some of whom now see any sign of religiosity as support for the Islamic Republic. The fact that Nowruz – the Persian New Year – falls on Friday this year means that some in the antigovernment camp will be focused on that celebration instead, and eschewing any events to mark Eid.
[Aljazeera]
King Charles has hosted a spectacular state banquet for the president and first lady of Nigeria, praising the strengths of Nigeria’s partnership with the UK.
After greeting the 160 guests in the Yoruba language, the King spoke of the “living bridge” of the Nigerian community in the UK, in a speech in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle.
Famous figures at the banquet included England rugby union captain, Maro Itoje, Olympic athlete Christine Ohuruogu and poet Sir Ben Okri, alongside senior royals including Queen Camilla and the Prince and Princess of Wales.
There were special adaptations for Muslims, with the banquet taking place in the fasting month of Ramadan.
A prayer room was set aside in Windsor Castle and the usual lunch hosted by the King on such state visits did not take place.
It’s become a tradition to invent a cocktail for state visits – and in this case the “crimson bloom” was made from non-alcoholic ingredients, combining the Nigerian drink Zobo with English rose soda and hibiscus and ginger syrup.
There were also alcoholic drinks available for guests in St George’s Hall, including fine red and white wines, port and whisky.
The King’s speech reflected on the importance of religious tolerance, in which “people of different faiths can, do, and must live alongside one another in peace”.
He also told President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and First Lady Oluremi Tinubu of the importance of partners such as Nigeria and the UK standing together in difficult times “when rain clouds gather”.
As well as diplomatic ties, King Charles spoke of “Afrobeats filling our concert halls and Nollywood captivating our screens”.
There was also a reflection by the King on the “painful marks” of a shared history, in a reference to colonialism.
“I do not seek to offer words that dissolve the past, for no words can,” said the King, but he hoped for a more optimistic future “worthy of those who bore the pains of the past”.
The banquet, on an elaborately decorated table filled with spring flowers, saw a meat-free menu.
It included:
- Soft boiled quail egg tartlet with watercress and kale and a basil sabayon
- Fillet of turbot, lobster mousse wrapped in spinach, beurre blanc sauce, sprouting broccoli with hollandaise sauce, fricassee of peas and broad beans, Jersey Royal potatoes
- Iced blackcurrant souffle with red fruit coulis
The two-day state visit began on Wednesday morning with a ceremonial welcome at Windsor.
In warm spring sunshine, the president and first lady – wearing traditional robes – were given the ceremonial grandeur of a royal welcome.
There was a carriage procession, bringing the Nigerian visitors into the quadrangle inside Windsor Castle, where a military band, with careful symmetry, paraded on the chequerboard lawn.
There was a gun salute, national anthems were played, guards were inspected and the Household Cavalry kicked up dust as they paraded inside the castle, in front of a viewing stand for the King and Queen and their visitors.
Official gifts were exchanged. The president and Mrs Tinubu were given hand-crafted pottery, a silver photo frame containing a picture of the King and Queen and a silver and enamel bowl.
In return, the King and Queen were given a traditional Yoruba statuette and a jewellery box featuring the faces of important Nigerian women.
President Tinubu is a Muslim and his wife is a Christian and the couple attended an interfaith event at Windsor Castle, designed to build bridges between religions.
It’s at a time of tensions within Nigeria, with a series of suspected suicide bombings this week in the north-eastern state of Borno, in which at least 23 people were killed and 108 injured in attacks blamed on hard-line Islamist militants from the Boko Haram group.
This is Nigeria’s first state visit to the UK for 37 years and such visits are a way of building relationships with international partners.
The Nigeria visit will see a strengthening of business links, including financial services. And there are personal and family connections, with more than 270,000 Nigerian-born people living in the UK.
“This state visit is about turning a historic relationship into a modern economic partnership – transforming trust into opportunity,” said Nigeria’s government spokesman Mohammed Idris.
“Nigeria’s economic reforms are unlocking the potential of Africa’s largest consumer market. The United Kingdom is a natural partner in what comes next.”
Iran’s intelligence minister Esmail Khatib has been killed, the country’s president has confirmed.
Masoud Pezeshkian said the “cowardly assassination” had left Iran “in deep mourning”, after Israel said on Wednesday it had killed Khatib in an air strike.
It comes a day after Israel announced it had killed Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, and head of the paramilitary Basij force, Gholamreza Soleimani, in strikes.
Since the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war on 28 February, multiple senior Iranian officials and commanders have been killed in efforts by Israel and the US to weaken the regime’s leadership.
In a post on X, Pezeshkian extended his condolences to the Iranian people over the officials’ deaths, adding he was “certain their path will continue more steadfastly than before”.
Speaking to the BBC, a woman from Tehran said the “killing of Khatib might help the people since he was among the leadership”.
“It might be that when people come out after a call to protest, the likelihood of them being killed is lower now,” she said. “Even though they all have replacements, these were the main figures.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz announced that Khatib had been “eliminated” in an Israeli strike on Tehran.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have authorised the IDF to eliminate any senior Iranian official for whom the intelligence and operational circle has been closed, without the need for additional approval,” he said.
[BBC]
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