Author: KnowledgeHippo
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating claims by a Boeing engineer that parts of the 787 Dreamliner’s fuselage are not properly fastened together and could break in flight after thousands of trips.The engineer, Sam Salehpour, who worked on the plane, explained his allegations in interviews with the New York Times and in documents sent to the FAA. An agency spokesman confirmed it was looking into the allegations but declined to comment.Mr. Salehpour, whose resume says he has worked at Boeing for more than a decade, said the problems arose from changes in the way the huge parts were placed and…
Beeper, the app that brought iPhone messaging to Android smartphones, has been acquired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, to support the development of a single service for sending and receiving WhatsApp chats, Signal, LinkedIn and more.The deal, valued at about $125 million, was announced Tuesday. It comes as regulators in Europe and the United States pressure the biggest tech companies to open up their messaging services to third parties. Regulators believe this will make it easier for people to contact friends and family and switch messaging providers.Automattic is betting that the changing regulatory environment will make people more interested…
Zwickau, a city in eastern Germany, may not be as famous as Detroit, but its economy has revolved around internal combustion engines since August Horch founded Audi here in the early 20th century.So when Volkswagen announced in 2018 that it would convert its factory in Zwickau, the largest private employer in the region, to make nothing but electric vehicles, it was a big deal.”A lot of people were skeptical,” said Michael Fuchs, who has worked at the plant for more than a quarter of a century. They asked themselves: “What will happen?” he said.Volkswagen shut down assembly lines building its…
New Yorkers, take note: If you come across a bird or animal that is sick, dead or acting strangely, keep yourself and your pets at a safe distance. The bird flu virus, H5N1, is present in at least a small portion of New York’s birds, according to a new study.The finding is not surprising given that H5N1 has now been shown to affect migratory birds, a wide range of wild animals, poultry and, since last month, dairy cows. However, its discovery in the city is an unpleasant reminder that urban spaces are not exempt.People generally associate zoonotic diseases with rural…
Europe’s top human rights court said in a landmark ruling on Tuesday that the Swiss government violated the human rights of its citizens by not doing enough to stop climate change.However, the court rejected climate cases brought by the former mayor of a coastal town in France and a group of young people in Portugal as inadmissible.The cases, the first of their kind to be heard at the court, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, are part of a wider movement of climate-related lawsuits aimed at using human rights law to push governments to act against global…
Jennifer and James Crumbley, who were convicted of involuntary manslaughter for failing to stop their teenage son from killing four classmates in the worst school shooting in Michigan history, will be sentenced by a judge on Tuesday.Separate jury trials resulted in guilty verdicts in February and March, making them the first parents in the country to be convicted of the deaths of their child in a mass shooting.Involuntary manslaughter charges are punishable in Michigan by up to 15 years in prison, and prosecutors asked in sentencing briefs filed in court last week that the Crumbleys serve at least 10 years…
Investors were betting on Federal Reserve rate cuts as early as 2024, betting that central bankers would cut rates to around 4 percent by the end of the year. But after months of persistent inflation and strong economic growth, the outlook is starting to look much less dramatic.Market pricing now suggests that rates will end the year in the neighborhood of 4.75%. That would mean Fed officials had cut interest rates two or three times from today’s 5.3 percent.Policymakers are trying to strike a delicate balance as they consider how to respond to the economic moment. Central bankers don’t want…
Westfield Public Schools held a regular board meeting in late March at the local high school, a red brick complex in Westfield, NJ, with a scoreboard outside proudly welcoming visitors to the “Home of the Blue Devils” sports teams.But it wasn’t business as usual for Dorota Mani.In October, some 10th-grade girls at Westfield Middle School – including Ms. Mani’s 14-year-old daughter Francesca – notified administrators that boys in their class had used artificial intelligence software to construct sexual images of them and circulated fake images. Five months later, the Manis and other families say, the district has done little to…
Tesla on Monday settled a lawsuit that blamed the automaker’s driver-assistance software for the 2018 death of a California man, averting a trial that would have focused attention on the company’s technology several months before it plans to introduce a self-driving taxi.The trial stemming from the death of Wei Lun Huang, an Apple software engineer who went by Walter, was scheduled to begin Monday with jury selection. The case was one of the most high-profile involving Tesla’s Autopilot software, drawing public attention and prompting an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.The terms of the settlement with Mr. Huang’s children…
This includes makeup, dental floss and menstrual products. They are found in non-stick pans and food wrappers. The same with jackets and firefighting equipment, as well as pesticides and artificial turf in sports fields.They are PFAS: a class of man-made chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They are also called “forever chemicals” because the bonds in their chemical compounds are so strong that they do not break for hundreds to thousands of years, if at all.It’s also in our water.A new study of more than 45,000 water samples worldwide found that about 31 percent of groundwater samples tested that were…