Author: admin@primenews

Bolts in need of “additional tightening” have been found during inspections of Boeing 737 Max 9s, United Airlines has said. United Airlines said “installation issues” relating to door plugs would be “remedied” before the aircraft type would return to service. Inspections began after a section of the fuselage fell from an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 on Friday. Alaska Airlines says it has since found “some loose hardware” on some Max 9s. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which regulates air travel in the US, has grounded 171 planes of the same type. United said: “Since we began preliminary inspections on…

German legend Franz Beckenbauer, widely regarded as one of football’s greatest players, has died aged 78. He won the World Cup as captain of West Germany in 1974 and lifted the trophy again as manager in 1990. Beckenbauer, who was primarily a defender, played 582 times for Bayern Munich and won the German top flight as both a player and a manager. Nicknamed ‘Der Kaiser’, as a player he also won the European Championship in 1972, as well as the Ballon d’Or twice. A statement from his family to German news agency DPA read: “It is with deep sadness that…

Technology giant Samsung Electronics says it is likely to see its profits for the last three months of 2023 fall by more than a third. The decline is much worse than analysts expected and comes as global demand for consumer electronics remains weak. South Korea-based Samsung is the world’s largest maker of memory chips, smartphones and televisions. The company is scheduled to release a detailed financial earnings report on 31 January. Samsung estimated that its operating profit fell to 2.8 trillion won ($2.13bn; £1.76bn) in the October-December quarter, 35% lower compared to the same period in 2022. It is much less…

A US Navy officer who admitted to providing sensitive military information to China has been jailed for more than two years. Wenheng Zhao, 26, pleaded guilty in October to passing on information to Chinese intelligence for bribes. Mr Zhao was a petty officer working at a California naval base. He passed on information about military exercises, operational orders and critical infrastructure from 2021 to 2023, US officials said. Specifically, he provided information about the US Navy’s large-scale drills in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as electrical diagrams and blueprints for a radar system located at the US base on the…

The BBC has unearthed new evidence the late Nigerian megachurch leader TB Joshua hid dead bodies and intimidated families, to cover up his role in the collapse of a building which killed at least 116 people at his church in 2014. The collapse is one of the worst disasters to ever strike a place of worship in Africa. The BBC’s investigation is the first time insiders from TB Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan) in Lagos have presented evidence of what caused the incident nearly 10 years ago, and of how the pastor allegedly orchestrated a cover-up. It follows…

Scores of patients quietly fill a modest tin shed which serves as a waiting area at a cancer hospital in Silchar, in north-eastern India. Over the last few months, Cachar Cancer Centre in the state of Assam has seen an unusually high number of patients from nearby towns and villages. The reason: a quiet revolution that is making cancer drugs more affordable. The hospital is part of the National Cancer Grid, a group of treatment centres that have clubbed together to bulk buy drugs and bring down costs by more than 85%. It is a modest start but, literally, a…

Another tranche of court documents related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been released. The filings of more than 250 pages show one accuser claimed to have seen sex tapes filmed by the disgraced financier. However, Sarah Ransome later said she wanted to retracted the allegations. It’s the fourth release of records related to victim Virginia Giuffre’s case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend. The lawsuit, filed in 2015, was settled in 2017. Maxwell has since been jailed for 20 years for helping Epstein abuse young girls. She is appealing against her conviction. According to hundreds of pages of documents…

The rock music was booming, the dancers on stage were gyrating, and the crowd was going wild waving thousands of Taiwan flags. The political rally held on Saturday for the Kuomintang’s (KMT) candidate for the 13 January presidential election was in full swing. “Give me a president!” shouted the host. “Hou You-ih!” the crowd roared. As Mr Hou looked on, his running mate Jaw Shaw-kong took the microphone and launched a broadside against the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). “What road are they taking? The road to war!” he said, wagging his finger. “The road that leads Taiwan into danger,…

Boeing used to have a reputation for unmatched safety and quality in its commercial jets. No longer. The terrifying accident aboard a 10-week old 737 Max 9 flight Friday night is only the latest in what has been a long line of safety and quality control questions about Boeing aircraft. Stunningly, no one was killed or seriously injured when a piece of the plane ripped out of the side of the fuselage only a few minutes into the flight from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California, sending some of the contents of the plane hurling into the void. “It’s fortunate that nobody died and there…

An US spacecraft has launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to try to perform a controlled landing on the Moon. It’s aiming to become the first American mission in 51 years to complete a soft touch-down, and the first ever by a private company. Astrobotic’s robotic lander, called Peregrine, has been contracted by Nasa to carry five scientific instruments. These will study the Moon’s surface environment ahead of human missions later this decade. Peregrine is part of a stampede of spacecraft that will attempt to put themselves on the lunar surface in 2024 – possibly as many as eight different projects,…