Author: admin@primenews

The US aviation regulator says it will allow Boeing’s 737 Max 9 jets to resume flying after inspections are completed. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded 171 of the planes after an unused door broke away mid-flight. United Airlines and Alaska Airlines plan to start returning the jets to service in the coming days. But the FAA says it will not yet allow Boeing to expand production of its best-selling narrow body family of jets, which includes the 737 Max 9. “This won’t be back to business as usual for Boeing,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement. “We will…

A century-old Captain James Cook statue has been cut down and a Queen Victoria monument covered in red paint in an apparent protest in Australia. The late-night vandalism occurred in Melbourne on the eve of Australia Day and is under police investigation. The holiday on 26 January is the anniversary of the 1788 landing of Britain’s First Fleet at Sydney Cove and the start of the colonial era. The vandals wrote “The colony will fall” on the Cook statue’s plinth. Police said the “criminal damage” to both memorials happened in the early hours of Thursday. “It is understood the [Cook]…

On a frigid morning last week, hundreds of men, wrapped up in woollens and blankets, queued up inside a sprawling university campus in India’s northern state of Haryana. The men, carrying backpacks and lunch bags, were queueing up for practical exams for construction jobs – plastering workers, steel fixers, tile setters – in Israel. For those like Ranjeet Kumar – a university educated, qualified teacher who has only ever managed to find work casually as a painter, steel fixer, labourer, automobile workshop technician, and a surveyor for a non-profit – it is a chance too good to pass up. The…

There are shooting wars and there are information wars and countries that are fighting do battle on both fronts. For the rest of us, it can make establishing facts very difficult. But whilst that’s true in this war as in any, it’s important to remember that Russia specifically has a long history of brazen lies and disinformation. That was proven with the shooting down of MH17 and the Salisbury Novichok poisonings, to name just two major incidents in the past decade. Even the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched on a lie: the false claim that a “Nazi” regime was putting Russian speakers…

A fertility breakthrough has offered hope for saving the northern white rhino from extinction – there are only two of the animals left on the planet. Scientists have achieved the world’s first IVF rhino pregnancy, successfully transferring a lab-created rhino embryo into a surrogate mother. The procedure was carried out with southern white rhinos, a closely related sub-species of northern whites. The next step is to repeat this with northern white embryos. “To achieve the first successful embryo transfer in a rhino is a huge step,” said Susanne Holtze, a scientist at Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in…

Thailand’s reformist political champion will be re-instated as an MP after winning a trial his supporters say was aimed at ending his political career. The Harvard-educated Pita Limjaroenrat and his Move Forward party won the most votes in a huge election win last year. But he failed to take charge after being blocked by the unelected Senate. The charismatic young leader was seen as a threat to the establishment for promising to reform harsh royal insult laws and to tackle military influence. While negotiating to form a coalition government after his election victory, two court cases were lodged against him.…

Ben Stokes says there was “never a chance” England would boycott the first Test against India because of the delay with Shoaib Bashir’s visa. The uncapped Somerset spinner, who is of Pakistani heritage, is out of contention for the Test, which starts on Thursday, because of the issue. England captain Stokes said he was “devastated” for the 20-year-old. He admitted he had floated the idea of a boycott among the team, but said it was “tongue in cheek”. “As a leader, as a captain, when one of your team-mates is affected by something like that you do get a bit…

Six people have died – including three firefighters – after a truck carrying 60 tons of liquefied natural gas crashed and exploded in the Mongolian capital. Hundreds of firefighters had been sent to battle the blaze following the collision with a car in Ulaanbaatar on Wednesday morning, officials said. At least 11 people were injured, with the fire spreading to nearby buildings. One local resident described how he initially thought a plane had crashed. Erdenebold Sukhbaatar, a 40-year-old lawyer, told Reuters news agency the crash, which took place just after 01:00 local time (17:00 GMT on Tuesday), had felt like…

Australia has publicly named and imposed cyber sanctions on a Russian national for his alleged role in a 2022 ransomware attack, in the country’s first use of the penalty. The attack stole sensitive personal data from 9.7 million customers of Medibank, one of Australia’s largest private health insurers: including names, dates of births, medical information and Medicare numbers. Some of these records were published on the dark web, according to Australian authorities. At the time, the Australian Federal Police said investigators knew the identity of the attackers but declined to name them. On Tuesday, the Australian government revealed the name of the…

One of Europe’s most valuable companies is restructuring 8,000 jobs as it joins a growing list of firms shifting their focus to artificial intelligence. SAP (SAP), the enterprise software giant, announced Tuesday that it would spend €2 billion ($2.2 billion) this year on the transformation, including buyouts and retraining programs. The decision was necessary “to prepare the company for highly scalable future revenue growth,” the German firm said in a statement. As a result, a significant part of its workforce, more than 7% of its 108,000 workers, will be impacted. “The majority of the approximately 8,000 affected positions is expected to be covered by…