News
US grounds 171 Boeing MAX planes for safety checks
U.S. regulators on Saturday temporarily grounded 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9 jetliners for safety checks following a cabin panel blowout that forced a new Alaska Airlines jet carrying passengers to make an emergency landing. A piece of fuselage tore off the left side of the jet as it climbed following takeoff from Portland, Oregon, en route to Ontario, California, on Friday, forcing pilots to turn back and land safely with all 171 passengers and six crew on board. Several passengers suffered injuries. The plane had been in service for just eight weeks. Late on Saturday, both Alaska Air and United Airlines said they would halt use of some MAX 9 planes they had resumed using that day after inspections they believed would answer the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s concerns. Alaska said it was in talks “to determine what, if any, further work is required before these aircraft are returned to service.”
The FAA decision is well short of the global grounding of Boeing MAX jets almost five years ago after two crashes that killed nearly 350 people. Still, it is a blow to Boeing as it tries to recover from back-to-back crises over safety and the pandemic under heavy debt. The FAA did not rule out further action as a probe began into the apparent structural failure, which left a rectangular hole in an area of fuselage reserved for an optional extra door but which is deactivated on Alaska’s aircraft. The Boeing 737 MAX 9s fitted with a special door replacement “plug” cannot fly until they are inspected and repaired if necessary, the FAA said. “The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes before they can return to flight,” FAA chief Mike Whitaker said. Social media posts of the Alaska Airlines jet showed oxygen masks deployed and a portion of the aircraft’s side wall missing.
A section of the fuselage reserved for the optional door had vanished, leaving a neat door-shaped gap. The seat next to the panel, which contained an ordinary window, had been unoccupied. Emma Vu, a passenger on the Alaska flight, told CNN she awoke to the plane “just falling, and I knew it was not just normal turbulence because the masks came down and that’s when the panic definitely started to set in.” The extra door is typically installed by low-cost airlines using extra seats that require more paths for evacuation. However, those doors are permanently “plugged,” or deactivated, on jets with fewer seats, including those of Alaska Airlines. The fuselage for Boeing 737s is made by Kansas-based Spirit AeroSystems, which separated from Boeing in 2005. Spirit manufactured and installed the particular plug door that suffered the blowout, a source told Reuters on Saturday. The company did not respond to a request for comment. The FAA did not say what the precise inspection requirements are or detail inspection intervals.
The MAX 9 represents about 220 of the 1,400 MAX jets delivered so far and most of them have the deactivated door, meaning they are potentially covered by the order. Boeing said it supported the FAA decision. Some foreign regulators including China sought details on the incident, a person familiar with the matter said. Bloomberg reported earlier that China, the first country to ground MAX flights in 2019, was considering whether to take action. MAX planes were grounded worldwide for 20 months following the crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia linked to poorly designed cockpit software. Alaska Airlines and United Airlines are the only U.S. carriers using the MAX 9, according to aviation data provider Cirium. Alaska canceled 160 flights on Saturday, or 20% of scheduled trips, while United canceled 115 flights or 4% of departures. Alaska said the travel disruptions from the grounding is expected to last through at least mid-week. Alaska said earlier it had voluntarily grounded its fleet of 65 Boeing MAX 9 jets for checks. United said earlier suspended service on about 45 MAX 9s for inspections but had resumed flights with 33 airplanes.
The airline said late on Saturday it had halted those flights and was working with the FAA “to clarify the inspection process and the requirements for returning all MAX 9 aircraft to service.” A person briefed on the matter said Boeing had to propose inspection requirements and the FAA must approve them before the planes could resume flights. Boeing is awaiting certification of its smaller MAX 7 and larger MAX 10 which are needed to compete with the Airbus A321neo model. Boeing has suffered numerous production issues on the MAX planes in the years since the crashes. Last week, Boeing said it was urging airlines to inspect all 737 MAX airplanes for a possible loose bolt in the rudder control system. Flight 1282 had reached just over 16,000 feet when the blowout happened, according to FlightRadar24. “We’d like to get down,” the pilot told air traffic control, according to a recording posted on liveatc.net.
“We are declaring an emergency. We do need to come down to 10,000,” the pilot added, referring to the initial staging altitude for such emergencies, below which breathing is considered possible for healthy people without extra oxygen. I can’t imagine what these passengers experienced,” said Anthony Brickhouse, an air safety expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “The wind would be rushing through that cabin. It was a probably pretty violent situation, and definitely a scary situation.” The European Union Aviation Safety Agency adopted the FAA MAX 9 directive but noted no EU member state airlines “currently operate an aircraft in the affected configuration.” A British air safety regulator said it would require any 737 MAX 9 operator to comply with the FAA directive to enter its airspace. Panamanian carrier Copa Airlines said it had temporarily grounded 21 737 MAX 9 aircraft and said it “expects to return these aircraft safely and reliably to the flight schedule within the next 24 hours,” and said some delays and cancellations are expected. Reuters
A new technology transfer agreement between the Nigeria–China Strategic Partnership (NCSP) and the Presidential Implementation Committee on Technology Transfer (PICTT) is expected to open more job opportunities, improve local skills, and expand access to advanced technology for ordinary Nigerians.
In a press statement reaching Vanguard on Friday, the MoU aims to strengthen industrial development, support local content, and create clearer pathways for Nigerians to benefit from China’s growing investments in the country.
PICTT Chairman, Dr Dahiru Mohammed, said the partnership will immediately begin coordinated programmes that support local participation in infrastructure and industrial projects.
Special Adviser to the President on Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr John Uwajumogu, said the deal will help attract high value investments that can stimulate job creation and strengthen Nigeria’s economy.
NCSP Head of International Relations, Ms Judy Melifonwu, highlighted that Nigerians stand to gain from expanded STEM scholarships, technical training, access to modern technology, and collaboration across key sectors including steel, agriculture, automobile parks, and cultural industries.
The NCSP Director-General reaffirmed the organisation’s commitment to measurable results, noting that the partnership with PICTT will prioritise initiatives that deliver direct national impact.
The MoU signals a new phase of Nigeria–China cooperation focused on practical delivery, local content, and opportunities that improve everyday livelihoods.
EU regulators launched an antitrust investigation into Meta Platforms on Thursday over its rollout of artificial intelligence features in its WhatsApp messenger that would block rivals, hardening Europe’s already tough stance on Big Tech. The move, reported earlier by Reuters and the Financial Times, is the latest action by European Union regulators against large technology firms such as Amazon and Alphabet’s Google as the bloc seeks to balance support for the sector with efforts to curb its expanding influence.
Europe’s tough stance – a marked contrast to more lenient U.S. regulation – has sparked an industry pushback, particularly by U.S. tech titans, and led to criticism from the administration of U. S. President Donald Trump. The European Commission said that the investigation will look into Meta’s new policy that would limit other AI providers’ access to WhatsApp, a potential boost for its own Meta AI system integrated into the platform earlier this year.
EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said the move was to prevent dominant firms from “abusing their power to crowd out innovative competitors”. She added interim measures could be imposed to block Meta’s new WhatsApp AI policy rollout. “AI markets are booming in Europe and beyond,” she said. This is why we are investigating if Meta’s new policy might be illegal under competition rules, and whether we should act quickly to prevent any possible irreparable harm to competition in the AI space.”
A WhatsApp spokesperson called the claims “baseless”, adding that the emergence of chatbots on its platforms had put a “strain on our systems that they were not designed to support”, a reference to AI systems from other providers. “Still, the AI space is highly competitive and people have access to the services of their choice in any number of ways, including app stores, search engines, email services, partnership integrations, and operating systems.” The EU was the first in the world to establish a comprehensive legal framework for AI, setting out guardrails for AI systems and rules for certain high-risk applications in the AI Act.
Meta AI, a chatbot and virtual assistant, has been built into WhatsApp’s interface across European markets since March. The Commission said a new policy fully applicable from January 15, 2026, may block competing AI providers from reaching customers via the platform. Ribera said the probe came on the back of complaints from small AI developers about the WhatsApp policy. The Interaction Company of California, which has developed AI assistant Poke.com, has taken its grievance to the EU competition enforcer. Spanish AI startup Luzia has also talked to the Commission, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
Marvin von Hagen, co-founder and CEO of The Interaction Company of California, said if Meta was allowed to roll out its new policy, “millions of European consumers will be deprived of the possibility of enjoying new and innovative AI assistants”. Meta also risks a fine of as much as 10% of its global annual turnover if found guilty of breaching EU antitrust rules.
Italy’s antitrust watchdog opened a parallel investigation in July into allegations that Meta leveraged its market power by integrating an AI tool into WhatsApp, expanding the probe in November to examine whether Meta further abused its dominance by blocking rival AI chatbots from the messaging platform. The antitrust probe is a more traditional means of investigation than the EU’s Digital Markets Act, the bloc’s landmark legislation currently used to scrutinize Amazon’s and Microsoft’s cloud services for potential curbs. Reuters
The spouses and children of billionaires inherited more wealth in 2025 than in any previous year since reporting began in 2015, according to UBS’s Billionaire Ambitions Report published on Thursday. In the 12 months to April, 91 people became billionaires through inheritance, collectively receiving $298 billion, up more than a third from 2024, the Swiss bank said. “These heirs are proof of a multi-year wealth transfer that’s intensifying,” UBS executive Benjamin Cavalli said.
The report is based on a survey of some of UBS’s super-rich clients and a database that tracks the wealth of billionaires across 47 markets in all world regions. At least $5.9 trillion will be inherited by billionaire children over the next 15 years, the bank calculates.
Most of this inheritance growth is set to take place in the United States, with India, France, Germany and Switzerland next on the list, UBS estimated. However, billionaires are highly mobile, especially younger ones, which could change that picture, it added. The search for a better quality of life, geopolitical concerns and tax considerations are driving decisions to relocate, according to the report.
In Switzerland, where $206 billion will be inherited over the next 15 years according to the bank, voters on Sunday overwhelmingly rejected 50 per cent tax on inherited fortunes of $62 million or more, after critics said it could trigger an exodus of wealthy people.
Switzerland, the UAE, the U.S. and Singapore are among billionaires’ preferred destinations, UBS’s Cavalli said. “In Switzerland, Sunday’s vote may have helped to increase the country’s appeal again,” he said. Reuters
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