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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered airlines to temporarily ground some Boeing 737 Max 9 planes for safety inspections after an Alaska Airlines plane lost a cabin panel during a flight on Friday with about 180 people on board. The plane, which had only been in service since November, according to the New York Times, was able to safely land back at Portland International Airport in Oregon, where it had taken off from. There were no major injuries, though the Alaska division of the Association of Flight Attendants said workers described “explosive” decompression in the cabin and reported one flight attendant sustained minor injuries.

“The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 Max 9 planes before they can return to flight,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said. “Safety will continue to drive our decision-making as we assist the NTSB’s investigation into Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.” 

Immediately following the incident, Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci put out a statement saying the company would be grounding its fleet of 65 Boeing 737-9 aircraft for what it expects to be a few days as it conducts safety checks. “Each aircraft will be returned to service only after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections,” Minicucci. The FAA order extends the grounding to “approximately 171 airplanes worldwide” that are either operated by US airlines or in US territory.

Minicucci also said that the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating what happened with Flight 1282 and “we will fully support their investigation.” The plane had been on its way to Ontario, California. Reuters, citing FlightRadar24, reported that the blowout occurred at around 16,000 feet. In social media posts shared with Reuters and the NYT, passengers can be seen sitting right next to the gaping hole and the fully exposed sky.

Boeing’s 737 Max was previously grounded for almost two years after fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019. All 189 people on board the plane were killed in the 2018 crash in Indonesia, and another 157 died in the 2019 crash in Ethiopia. In 2021, Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion in a settlement with the Department of Justice to avoid criminal charges over the crashes.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/faa-grounds-roughly-171-boeing-737-max-9-planes-after-a-cabin-panel-blew-out-during-flight-210331403.html?src=rss 

Whether or not you’ve actively been using Threads, you may have noticed — thanks to its integration into the Instagram feed — an off-putting shift in the kinds of posts the platform has been recommending over the last few weeks. At best, you might be seeing tons of content that is of no interest to you whatsoever, or copypasta-style engagement bait. At worst? A whole lot of hate speech. In a short video shared on Friday responding to an Ask Me Anything question, Instagram head Adam Mosseri apologized for the “low-quality recommendations” proliferating on Threads and said the team is working on a fix.

“We want people to have a positive experience on Threads, and we’ve actually had some issues over the last few weeks with low-quality recommendations,” Mosseri said, “things that don’t quite violate our Community Guidelines — which is where we take content down entirely — but kind of go right up to that line. We’re working on improving it. A lot of it should be fixed at this point.” He goes on to say that while “there’s a lot more work to do,” users can “expect it to get much better over the next few weeks. Again, apologies.”

While Threads already felt cluttered with posts meant to milk engagement as new users try to generate followings on the budding social site, things have taken a palpably darker turn recently. Suddenly, ragebait seems to be front and center. Users have complained that they’re being suggested an alarming amount of hateful content, particularly posts that are outright transphobic. It’s crept into my own feeds, enough so that it feels like I’ve muted more accounts in the last two or so weeks than I previously had in six months on Threads.

Engadget asked Meta for clarification on whether the improvements Mosseri mentioned will specifically address transphobia and other forms of hate speech. In response, a spokesperson reiterated Mosseri’s comments and said, “In addition to removing content that violates our community guidelines, we’re aware that some users are seeing this type of repetitive, low-quality content they may not be interested in, and we’re taking steps to address it.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/instagram-head-adam-mosseri-says-sorry-for-all-those-trashy-threads-recommendations-193001655.html?src=rss