The Federal Aviation Administration is seeking $3.1 million in fines from Boeing over safety violations, including ones related to an Alaska Airlines jetliner losing a door plug panel on its fuselage in midflight.
The proposed penalty is for safety violations that occurred from September 2023 through February 2024, the FAA said Friday.
That period includes the January 2024 blowout of a paneled-over exit door — called a door plug —- on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 shortly after it took off from Portland, Oregon.
None of the 171 passengers or six crew members on the flight were seriously injured. Pilots landed the plane safely back at the airport.
In June, the National Transportation Safety Board said its 17-month long investigation found that lapses in Boeing’s manufacturing and safety oversight, combined with ineffective inspections and audits by the FAA, led to the door plug blowout.
The FAA said Friday that it identified hundreds of quality system violations at Boeing’s 737 factory in Renton, Washington, and Boeing subcontractor Spirit AeroSystems’ 737 factory in Wichita, Kansas.
Among other violations, the regulator also found that a Boeing employee pressured a member of Boeing’s ODA unit, which is tasked with performing certain inspections and certifications on the FAA’s behalf, to sign off on a 737 Max airplane “so that Boeing could meet its delivery schedule, even though the ODA member determined the aircraft did not comply with applicable standards.”
Arlington, Virginia-based Boeing has 30 days to respond to the FAA.
In a statement Saturday, Boeing said it is reviewing the agency’s proposed civil penalty, noting that the company put in place a safety and quality plan last year, under FAA oversight, that aims to enhance safety management and quality assurance in its airplane production.
“We regret the January 2024 door-plug accident and continue to work on strengthening our safety culture and improving first-time quality and accountability across our operations,” the company said.
The Justice Department reached a deal in May allowing Boeing to avoid criminal prosecution for allegedly misleading U.S. regulators about the Max before the two crashes.
Boeing was also in the news in June when a 787 flown by Air India crashed shortly after takeoff and killed at least 270 people. Investigators have not determined what caused that crash, but so far they have not found any flaws with the model, which has a strong safety record.
By JESSE BEDAYN, HANNAH SCHOENBAUM, LINDSEY WASSON and RIO YAMAT Associated Press
OREM, Utah (AP) — One student holed up in his house for two days after witnessing Charlie Kirk’s assassination, nervous about going back to the Utah college campus where the conservative activist was shot. Another, unable to sleep or shake what she saw and heard, called her dad to come take her home.
As investigators spend the weekend digging deeper into suspect Tyler James Robinson ahead of his initial court appearance Tuesday, students who witnessed Wednesday’s shooting at Utah Valley University are reckoning with trauma, grief and the pall the killing has cast on their community.
Charlie Kirk was killed Wednesday during an outdoor debate event on campus. Students who witnessed his assassination are reckoning with trauma and grief. Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, was a top podcaster, culture warrior and ally of President Donald Trump. (AP video by Thomas Peipert)
Robinson’s arrest late Thursday calmed some fears. Still, questions persist about the alleged shooter’s motive and planning, as well as security lapses that allowed a man with a rifle to shoot Kirk from a rooftop before fleeing.
The university has said there will be increased security when classes resume on Sept. 17.
In Robinson’s hometown, about 240 miles (390 kilometers) southwest of campus, a law enforcement presence was significantly diminished Saturday after the FBI executed a search warrant at his family’s home. A gray Dodge Challenger that authorities say Robinson drove to UVU appeared to have been hauled away.
No one answered the door Saturday at his family’s home in Washington, Utah, and the blinds were closed.
The killing has prompted pleas for civility in American political discourse, but those calls were not always heeded, and some people who have criticized Kirk in the wake of his death have been fired or suspended from their jobs.
On Friday, Office Depot said it fired a worker at a Michigan store who was seen on video refusing to print flyers for a Kirk vigil and calling them “propaganda.” On Thursday, a conservative internet personality filmed a video outside Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker’s home, urging viewers to “take action” after Kirk’s assassination. Pritzker’s security has been stepped up.
At a makeshift memorial near Utah Valley University’s main entrance in Orem, people have been leaving flowers. Cars looped nearby streets Saturday, honking horns, flying American flags and displaying messages such as “We love you Charlie,” “Charlie 4 Ever” and “RIP Charlie.”
In the area where the Turning Point USA co-founder was shot, a crew has begun taking down tents and banners and scrubbing away reminders of the killing.
A memorial to Kirk brings stunned students together
Student Alec Vera stopped at the memorial after finally leaving his house Friday night for a drive to clear his head. Vera said he had been in a daze, unable to concentrate and avoiding people, since watching Kirk collapse about 30 or 40 feet (9 to 12 meters) in front of him.
“I just kind of felt the need to come here, to be with everyone, either to comfort or to be comforted, just to kind of surround myself with those that are also mourning,” Vera said.
One woman knelt, sobbing. Others stood quietly or spoke softly with friends. On the campus’ perimeter, trees were wrapped in red ribbons.
A handful of cars remained stranded in parking lots by students who left behind keys while fleeing the shooting. One student pleaded with an officer to let him retrieve his bike from beyond the police tape and cracked a smile as the officer let him through. The university said people can pick up their belongings early next week.
Anxious about returning to campus
Student Marjorie Holt started crying when she brought flowers to campus Thursday, prompting her to change her mind about returning to campus this weekend.
Hours after the shooting, the 18-year-old said she lay in bed, haunted by the horror she witnessed: the sound of a single gunshot as Kirk answered a question and then, “I saw him fall over, I saw the blood, but for some reason it couldn’t click to me what happened.”
Unable to sleep because of a pounding headache, nausea and the day’s trauma, she called her dad, who brought her home to Salt Lake City, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) to the north.
Returning to campus, Holt said, is “going to feel like a terrible, like a burden on my heart.”
Vera said Kirk was shot in the campus’ main gathering spot — where students take naps, meditate, do homework and hang out.
“Seeing it when I go back, I will be pretty uncomfortable at first, knowing I have to walk past it each time, knowing what had just occurred here,” Vera said.
Struggling with flashbacks and a weird heaviness
Student Alexis Narciso said he has flashbacks when he hears a bang, a honking horn or other loud noise. He was about 10 feet (3 meters) away.
“I just feel numb. I don’t feel anything,” Narciso said. “I want to cry but at the same time I don’t.”
Jessa Packard, a single mother of two who lives nearby, said even with a suspect in custody, her feeling of unease hasn’t lifted. Packard’s home security system captured video of the Dodge Challenger that police say Robinson drove to campus. After the shooting, she said, law enforcement officers descended on her neighborhood, searching yards and taking security footage.
“There’s this really weird heaviness and I think, honestly, a lot of fear for me personally that hasn’t gone away,” Packard said. “The fact that there was like this murderer in my neighborhood, not knowing where he is but knowing he’s been through there, coursing things out, is a really eerie feeling.”
Searching for closure from one campus to another
Halle Hanchett, 19, a student at nearby Brigham Young University, said she had just pulled her phone out to start filming Kirk when she heard the gunshot followed by a collective gasp. Hanchett said she saw blood, Kirk’s security team jump forward and horror on the faces around her. She dropped to the ground in the fetal position, wondering: “What is going on? Am I going to die?”
On Friday, she brought flowers and quietly gazed at the place where the kickoff to Kirk’s “American Comeback Tour” ended in violence.
“The last few days I’ve just, haven’t really said much, I just kinda like zone out, stare off,” Hanchett said, standing with her fiancé as water fountains bubbled nearby. “The memory, it just replays.”
She’s praying for the strength to move forward, she said, “and take it as: ‘OK, I was here for this. How can I learn from this? And how can I help other people learn from this?’”
A neighbor of Robinson’s looks for answers
In Robinson’s hometown, neighbor Kris Schwiermann recalled him as a shy, studious and “very respectful” student who loved to read. Schwiermann, 66, was head custodian at the elementary school that Robinson and his siblings attended.
She said she was stunned by the news of his arrest, describing the Robinsons as a “very tight-knit family.”
Like the Robinsons, Schwiermann is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said they belonged to the same congregation, though she said the family hadn’t been active in the church in at least eight years.
“I want to make sure that people know that we don’t have any ill feelings towards their family or him,” Schwiermann said. “He made the wrong choice.”
___
Yamat reported from Washington, Utah, and St. George, Utah. Associated Press reporters Sejal Govindarao in Phoenix, Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Michael R. Sisak in New York also contributed to this report.
MJ has free tickets for The Marias at Red Hat Ampitheater on Tuesday, September 23rd. Win by correctly answering MJ’s Question Of The Day, just after 3P!
By ERIC TUCKER, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, JESSE BEDAYN and HANNAH SCHOENBAUM Associated Press
OREM, Utah (AP) — The man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk had expressed opposition to the conservative activist’s views and indicated that he was responsible for the shooting, authorities said Friday as they announced an arrest in the killing that raised fresh alarms about political violence in a deeply polarized United States.
Tyler Robinson, 22, had become “more political” in the run-up to the shooting and mentioned during a dinner with family that Kirk would be visiting Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox told a news conference. The governor cited as evidence engravings on bullet casings found in the rifle that authorities believe was used in the attack, as well as chat app messages attributed to the suspect that a roommate shared with law enforcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we got him,” Cox told a news conference soon after the arrest was first heralded by President Donald Trump on the Fox News show “Fox & Friends.”
Robinson, who was from Utah, is believed to have acted alone, and the investigation is ongoing, Cox said. He was arrested on suspicion of capital murder, weapons and obstruction offenses. He was expected to be formally charged early next week ahead of an initial court appearance.
Robinson’s arrest late Thursday capped a frenetic day-and-a-half search that just hours earlier seemed stuck when authorities pleaded for tips and leads from the public. The assassination captivated the public not only because of Kirk’s outsize influence in conservative political circles and his close connections with Trump but also because of the pressing questions it raised about the escalating toll of political violence that has spanned the ideological spectrum.
“This is our moment: Do we escalate or do we find an off-ramp?” Cox asked, making an impassioned plea for young people to bridge differences through common ground rather than violence. “It’s a choice.”
New details on evidence
Authorities have yet to reveal a motive, but they did describe evidence they said shed potential light on the slaying.
That includes engravings on bullet casings recovered from the high-powered rifle believed used in the attack, including one that said, “Hey, fascist! Catch!” Cox said.
In addition, a roommate shared with authorities messages from the chatting app Discord that involved a contact named Tyler and discussed a rifle wrapped in a towel, engraved bullets and a scope, the governor said. A Mauser .30-caliber, bolt-action rifle was found in a towel in a wooded area along the path investigators believe Robinson took after firing a shot from a distant roof and then fleeing.
The clothes the suspect wore when confronted by law enforcement late Thursday were consistent with what he had on when he arrived on campus a day earlier, and a family member confirmed that a drove a grey Dodge Challenger that surveillance video captured him driving to the universities, Cox said.
Robinson’s father recognized him from the photos released by the FBI and told him to turn himself in. Robinson refused at first, but then changed his mind, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. His father reached out for help to their youth pastor, who also occasionally works with the U.S. Marshals and called the agency so he could turn himself in.
Meanwhile, investigators continued to dig into the background of Robinson, who was admitted to Utah State University on a prestigious academic scholarship, according to a video of him reading his acceptance letter posted to a family member’s social media account. However, he attended for only one semester in 2021, a university spokesperson said.
Robinson’s address was still listed as his parent’s home, and he is registered as an unaffiliated voter, according to Utah state records. He does not appear to have a prior criminal record. The family lives in a suburb of the city of St. George in southern Utah, about a 3.5-hour drive south of the Utah Valley University campus where Kirk was shot.
Family members of Robinson did not immediately return messages seeking comment. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.
‘He didn’t deserve this’
Kirk was a conservative provocateur who became a powerful political force by rallying young Republican voters and was a fixture on college campuses, where he invited sometimes-vehement debate on social issues.
Kirk co-founded the nonprofit political organization Turning Point USA, based in Arizona. He had had been speaking at a campus debate on the first stop of his “American Comeback Tour,” at the time of Wednesday’s shooting.
He was taking questions from an audience member about gun violence. when suddenly a shot rang out. Kirk reached up with his right hand as blood gushes from the left side of his neck. Stunned spectators gasped and screamed before people started running away.
Trump, who was joined by Democrats in condemning the violence, said he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S. Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, visited with Kirk’s family Thursday in Salt Lake City. Vance posted a remembrance on X chronicling their friendship, dating back to initial messages in 2017, through Vance’s Senate run and the 2024 election.
“He wanted to help young people, and he didn’t deserve this,” Trump said Friday. “He was really a good person.”
___
Tucker and Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Nicholas Riccardi in Denver; Michael Biesecker, Brian Slodysko, Lindsay Whitehurst and Michelle L. Price in Washington; Ty O’Neil in Orem, Utah; Hallie Golden in Seattle; and Meg Kinnard in Chapin, S.C., contributed to this report.
By DAVID A. LIEB and M.K. WILDEMAN Associated Press
President Donald Trump has approved federal disaster aid for six states and tribes following storms and floods that occurred this spring and summer.
The disaster declarations, announced Thursday, will allow federal funding to flow to Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota and Wisconsin, and for tribes in Montana and South Dakota. In each case except Wisconsin, it took Trump more than a month to approve the aid requests from local officials, continuing a trend of longer waits for disaster relief noted by a recent Associated Press analysis.
Trump has now approved more than 30 major natural disaster declarations since taking office in January. Before the latest batch, his approvals had averaged a 34-day wait from the time the relief was requested. For his most recent declarations, that wait ranged from just 15 days following an aid request for Wisconsin flooding in August to 56 days following a tribal request for Montana flooding that occurred in May.
The AP’s analysis showed that delays in approving federal disaster aid have grown over time, regardless of the party in power. On average, it took less than two weeks for requests for a presidential disaster declaration to be granted in the 1990s and early 2000s. That rose to about three weeks during the past decade under presidents from both major parties. During Trump’s first term in office, it took him an average of 24 days to approve requests.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the AP that Trump is providing “a more thorough review of disaster declaration requests than any Administration has before him” to make sure that federal tax dollars are spent wisely.
But delays mean individuals must wait to receive federal aid for daily living expenses, temporary lodging and home repairs. Delays in disaster declarations also can hamper recovery efforts by local officials uncertain whether they will receive federal reimbursement for cleaning up debris and rebuilding infrastructure.
Trump’s latest declarations approved public assistance for local governments and nonprofits in all cases except Wisconsin, where assistance for individuals was approved. But that doesn’t preclude the federal government from later also approving public assistance for Wisconsin.
Preliminary estimates from Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ administration said more than 1,500 residential structures were destroyed or suffered major damage in August flooding at a cost of more than $33 million. There was also more than $43 million in public sector damage over six counties, according to the Evers administration.
Evers requested aid for residents in six counties, but Trump approved it only for three.
“I will continue to urge the Trump Administration to approve the remainder of my request, and I will keep fighting to make sure Wisconsin receives every resource that is needed and available,” Evers said in a statement in which he thanked Democratic officeholders for their efforts, but not Trump or any Republicans.
Trump had announced several of the disaster declarations — including Wisconsin’s — on his social media site while noting his victories in those states and highlighting their Republican officials. He received thanks from Democratic North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein and Republican officials elsewhere.
Trump’s approval of six major disaster declarations in one day would have been unusual for some presidents but not for him. Trump approved seven disaster requests on July 22 and nine on May 21.
But Trump has not approved requests for hazard mitigation assistance — a once-typical add-on that helps recipients build back with resilience — since February.
___
Associated Press writers Gabriela Aoun Angueira, Scott Bauer, Jack Dura and Gary D. Robertson contributed to this report.
Win a $50 Gift Card to Metro Diner by playing Matt Murphy’s 7:10 a.m. Carpool Games. Cozy up to your favorite comfort dishes this fall at Metro Diner! Buffalo lovers can rejoice with limited-time favorites like the Buffalo Chicken Sandwich, Oven Bake and Salad — perfect for game day or anytime you’re craving something savory. For more information, visit www.metrodiner.com
These homemade sweet potato fries are the perfect addition to any meal. They’re crispy, warm and the best combination of sweet and savory.
Ingredients
2 lbs. sweet potatoes (3 medium-sized)
2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil
1 tsp. sea salt
(optional) 1/s tsp. smoked paprika or 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
Instructions
1. Preheat the oven Preheat the oven to 425 degrees f.
2. Prep the potatoes Wash and peel the sweet potatoes, then cut them into thin, even wedges.
3.Season the fries In a bowl, coat the sweet potato wedges with the oil and toss, then add the salt and/or spices and toss until they are evenly distributed.
4. Bake Line the fries up evenly on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Then, bake in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes and take them out to flip. Next, put the fries back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes, or until they are crispy.
5. Serve and enjoy Serve immediately with your favorite dipping sauce and enjoy!
Bobby is still very much a big, lovable puppy with a heart full of curiosity and a nose for adventure. He’s got medium energy and gets excited for outings—so don’t be surprised if he gets a little jumpy when the leash comes out. But once he’s outside and away from the chaos of the shelter, Bobby’s sweet and playful side really starts to shine.
Bobby lives for belly rubs, snuggles, and being close to his people. He’s learning his manners and already takes treats gently, which makes training a breeze. While he can be a bit reactive to other dogs in the kennel environment, he’s making great progress in playgroups.
Recently, Bobby has really come out of his shell. He’s now played well with both male and female dogs—after a moment to warm up, he engages in bouncy, playful fun. His latest session with a young male ended in zoomies and tail wags, and he’s had equally positive playtime with female pups, too.
Whether he’s sniffing every inch of the yard like a true explorer or learning the ropes of polite doggy play, Bobby is eager to grow, learn, and love. He’d thrive with a family ready to offer guidance, patience, and maybe a backyard where he can put his nose to work.
If you’re looking for a goofy, affectionate, and trainable companion, Bobby’s ready to be your best friend and your most loyal adventure partner.
Although he is heartworm positive, it is treatable and not contagious. Friends of Wake County Animal Center has provided a $700 sponsorship to help cover the cost of treatment.
He is up to date on vaccinations, flea/tick, and heartworm prevention, is microchipped, and will be neutered prior to going home. If you have dogs or cats, we recommend slow introductions over time. If you have children in your home, we recommend supervision between animals and children at all times.
About Bobby:
Breed: Australian Cattle Dog Mix
Sex: Male
Age: 1 year 11 months
Weight: 62 pounds
Spayed/Neutered: No
Location: Shelter
Date In Shelter: 4/09/2025
If you’re interested in learning more about Bobby, please reach out to Wake County Animal Shelter’s volunteer matchmakers at [email protected] with the subject line “Bobby / Panda 247480.”
