FirstCircle

For most of his career at Spirit AeroSystems, Santiago Paredes worked at the end of the line. It was his job to catch production errors before the fuselage left the factory in Wichita, and Paredes caught a lot of them.

“It’s poor quality. Poor quality of work, just plain and simple,” he says, flipping through photos on his phone of the serious mistakes that he flagged during his dozen years as a quality inspector at Spirit.

Boeing is trying to rebuild its battered reputation for quality after a door plug blowout on a 737 Max in midair last January. The troubled plane-maker is in talks to buy Spirit AeroSystems, a key supplier that makes the fuselage for Boeing in Wichita, Kan.

“They say the correct things like they've always said,” said whistleblower Santiago Paredes. “But I know how they really are.” A clash with management

Paredes says he brought his concerns to his managers repeatedly. But they were more worried about getting fuselages out of the factory faster to keep up with Boeing’s backlog.

“They were upset for me finding defects,” Paredes said. “It was never the people that created the defects fault. It was my fault for finding it.”

It got to the point, Paredes says, that a manager ordered him in writing to essentially undercount the number of mistakes.

“They wanted me to basically falsify the documentation on the amount of defects that were being found,” Paredes said. “They were telling me to lie.”

Less than an hour after taking off from Phoenix on May 25th, the plane experienced an uncontrolled side-to-side yawing motion known as a Dutch roll while cruising at 32,000 feet. The pilots of Southwest flight 746 were able to regain control and the plane landed safely in Oakland, according to a preliminary report from the FAA.

“A Dutch roll is definitely not something that we like to see,” said Shem Malmquist, a commercial pilot who flies the Boeing 777 and an instructor at Florida Tech.

The Boeing 737 Max 8 jet involved in the Dutch roll incident is less than two years old. According to the FAA, a post-flight inspection revealed damage to a backup power control unit, known as a PCU. That system controls rudder movements on the plane's tail.

For senior Boeing engineer and whistleblower Martin Bickeböller, a 37-year career at the jet maker is coming to a frustrating end.

For a decade, in complaints filed internally at Boeing as well as with the Federal Aviation Administration and Congress, Bickeböller documented significant shortfalls in Boeing’s quality control management at suppliers that build major sections of the 787 Dreamliner.

The FAA substantiated his claims in complaints in 2014 and 2021 and required Boeing to take corrective action. His latest complaint, submitted in January, alleges Boeing has not properly implemented the fixes it committed to after those earlier complaints.

Bickeböller doesn’t point to a single safety issue but rather to a systemically flawed oversight process.

He asserts that Boeing lacks control of the manufacturing processes at its suppliers to the extent that it cannot ensure — as safety regulations require — that every plane delivered meets design specifications.

Separately in January, Bickeböller filed an aviation whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Labor Department alleging that Boeing has retaliated against him.

He claims Boeing sidelined him from his central work and penalized him with lowered performance reviews.

Bickeböller, 66, earned his doctorate in theoretical nuclear physics at UW. He joined Boeing in 1987 and rose to become a technical fellow, designating him a top company engineer.

His expertise at Boeing and his central concern is what’s called “configuration control” — which means guaranteeing that any jet delivered to an airline is built exactly as designed with all parts installed correctly.

Annabelle Jenkins walked onto the stage during her graduation ceremony from the Idaho Fine Arts Academy in the West Ada School District with a book tucked into her sleeve.

When she stood before West Ada Superintendent Derek Bub, she slipped out the book — the graphic novel of “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and Renee Nault — faced the audience and smiled, and handed it toward Bub. It was one of 10 books the West Ada School District had removed from libraries earlier in the school year.

Bub did not take the book. Jenkins dropped it at his feet and walked off the stage without shaking his hand.

A TikTok video she posted of the incident that night garnered over 24 million views and more than 15,000 comments.

As the week draws to a close, clients of Cencora and The Lash Group have been submitting breach notifications to state attorneys general.

The Lash Group partners with pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies, and healthcare providers to facilitate access to therapies through drug distribution, patient support and services, business analytics and technology, and other services. Their substitute notice explains that based on their investigation, personal information including personal health information was affected, “including potentially first name, last name, date of birth, health diagnosis, and/or medications and prescriptions.”

With only partial numbers from some clients available, there are already 542,062 patients affected. When full numbers are revealed, the grand total for this incident will likely be significantly higher. (See UPDATE below)

Update 1: Added Johnson & Johnson entries and Abbott entry, bringing current partial total affected to 717,723 for 18 clients.

Update 2: Added Amgen, but no numbers available, so partial total remains at 717,723 but for 19 incidents.

Trump is a fascist. But the mainstream political press doesn’t want to say it. They want to act like 2024 is just another election year.

With their obsession with horse-race coverage, political reporters tend to judge what Trump says or does by whether his words and actions will help him politically. By doing so, the press is saying that Trump’s racism, corruption, criminality, and insane abuses of power matter only so far as his electability.

There are exceptions: major news organizations, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have done some important stories about Trump’s dictatorial plans for a second term. But those investigative stories are drowned out by the chorus of horse-race stories — sometimes published on the same days and by the same news organizations behind more substantial coverage.

The media is sleepwalking.

I’ve often wondered how the press, both in Germany and around the world, failed to see Hitler for the monster that he was before he gained power. After Trump, I think I understand.

The bodies of four Israeli hostages were recovered from Gaza. The Israeli government intensified its attacks in the northern and southern parts of the strip, five Israeli soldiers were killed and seven more were injured by friendly fire in Jabalia, and an estimated 800,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah. The Rafah crossing remained closed, and Egypt blamed Israel for blocking aid from entering Gaza. In the West Bank, Israeli settlers looted aid trucks, destroyed food packages, and torched vehicles that they mistakenly believed were delivering aid to Palestinians, injuring drivers, two Israeli officers, and a soldier. “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance,” the U.S. State Department said in a report, which concluded both that Israel likely violated international law using American weapons and that there was no hard evidence that Israel violated international law. The first shipment of aid arrived through a U.S.-made floating pier off the coast of Gaza, which cost about $320 million to build. “One cabinet sends humanitarian aid convoys and the other burns them,” the Israel opposition leader Yair Lapid posted on X, criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.14 Seventeen American doctors were evacuated from a Rafah hospital, but at least three refused to leave, and another U.S. government official resigned over Biden’s response to the war. “Encourage the voluntary departure of Gaza’s residents … It is ethical! It is rational! It is right! It is the truth!” Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said at a rally attended by thousands, including several other ministers. After pausing a single shipment of bombs, the United States government announced another $1 billion in military aid to Israel. The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor has requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders. At a bar in Kyiv, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken performed “Rockin’ in the Free World” by Neil Young a day before announcing $2 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine. “The United States is with you, so much of the world is with you. And they’re fighting, not just for Ukraine but for the free world,” he said from the stage. “What the United States performs for the free world is not rock ’n’ roll, but some other music similar to Russian chanson,” said a Ukrainian lawmaker and former diplomat.

Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, and its foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, died in a helicopter crash, and Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister, was hospitalized after being shot multiple times. France declared a state of emergency in New Caledonia after a clash between voting-reform protesters and security forces in which four people were killed and more than 300 were injured. At New York University, pro-Palestine student protesters were required to complete a 49-page disciplinary workbook that included a section inspired by an episode of The Simpsons in which Lisa cheats on a test. “What, if anything, could Lisa have done or thought about to make better decisions?” the workbook asked. Columbia University faculty members passed a no-confidence vote against President Nemat Shafik over her response to student protests, and Sonoma State University’s president, Mike Lee, announced his early retirement after being placed on leave for publicizing an agreement with protesters via email. At their graduation ceremonies, Morehouse College students turned their backs on Biden, and Duke University students walked out on Jerry Seinfeld. Democratic Senator Bob Menendez blamed his wife for bribery charges at his corruption trial, and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito blamed his wife for displaying an upside-down American flag, a symbol associated with the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement and the January 6 insurrection, at their home in Virginia days before Biden’s inauguration. “Her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother,” said the Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker of his wife at a commencement speech at Benedictine College before encouraging young women to give up on having careers. Sixteen women accused the magician David Copperfield of sexual assault, and Brett Kavanaugh beat other justices in a three-mile race in Washington, D.C.

Buckingham Palace unveiled King Charles III’s first official portrait since his coronation. “It was a bit of a shock—all that red, dripped here and there and scrubbed on and scrubbed off,” one artist said of the painting, adding, “Is it the blood that has been shed as a result of British colonialism for centuries?” “Yes, you’ve got him,” was Queen Camilla’s response to the work. In Taiwan, MPs brawled after spending more than 10 hours debating legislative reforms; they pulled, shoved, punched, and tackled each other, and one ran off with the bill. Snakes bit a West Virginia politician, delayed a train in Tokyo, crashed a wedding in Arizona, and invaded an Indy 500 track, and an Australian woman chose to share her car with a red-bellied black snake after several removal attempts failed. In Germany, the world’s oldest sloth turned 54. A dog named Luna was awarded a New York City Council citation for killing more than 200 rats, and a cat named Max received a doctorate in “Litter-ature” from Vermont State University. Seven hundred and six Kyles in Kyle, Texas, failed a second attempt to break the world record for the largest same-name gathering, and more than 3,000 people in dinosaur costumes in Drumheller, Alberta, didn’t receive a Guinness World Record; organizers “weren’t entirely prepared for that many people to come.” The New York–Dublin Portal was shut down after an OnlyFans model flashed it. “I thought the people of Dublin deserved to see my two New York, homegrown potatoes,” she said in an Instagram video. In Texas, 50,000 pounds of potatoes were given away after an anonymous donation.

Did you hear? Eleventy bazillion people showed up to hear Donald Vonshitzinpants drone on for hours about himself in Wildwood, New Jersey. Welp, Lisa Fagan, spokesperson for the city of Wildwood, is the one who guestimated that between 80,000 and 100,000 attendees were there, "based on her own observations on the scene Saturday, having seen 'dozens' of other events in the same space." This really needs a 'Sure, Jan" gif. Trumpers ran with that number, but Fagan and I'm going to guess that she's a Trump supporter, who knows, was way off.

The story has changed. Wildwood officials now say the 80K to 100K number was not the number on the beach at the rally but the total number of people "in our town," including restaurants, bars, and other places. Imagine that.