Random News Stories

[Martin McCaffery]

To quote a Bob Dylan lyric, “Everything is broken.”

I won't say that lyric is totally obscure, but jeez, it's not like those three words have never been spoken before. Just how old is this reporter, anyway.

Fun late era Bob, nonetheless

[Randy Stankey]

It sounds to me like the city council fiddles while Rome burns, letting the Chief of Police who has only been on the job for two years speak for them.

The City Council members are all saying things like, "We're shocked!" and "We don't know what to do!" but the Chief is forced to stand there with his ass in his hands, telling people that the city had been paying $100 grand per year for nothing until they canceled the contract, three years ago without telling anybody.

Now, the problem hits the news and the only thing anybody can say is, "I dunno'..."

This is a classic case of nobody doing their jobs then blame shifting and pointing fingers when they get caught cold.

I've always been under the impression that an AM signal has greater range.

FM radio propagates mostly by line of sight while AM radio can reflect off different layers of the atmosphere. You can pick up an AM signal from "skip" which makes it possible to receive from hundreds of miles away or, in some cases, around the world while, with FM, you have to be "under the umbrella" of the transmitter.

[Leo Enticknap]

A variation on this is happening in the city next door to me, too.

In San Bernardino, street lights are dark, cameras are dead

By David Allen | dallen@scng.com | Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
PUBLISHED: February 8, 2024 at 12:49 p.m. | UPDATED: February 9, 2024 at 12:57 a.m.

In Hollywood, it’s lights, cameras, action. In San Bernardino, they’re promising action over the city’s street lights and surveillance cameras.

Hundreds of lights are dark all over the city due to stolen wiring. Pole-mounted police cameras are so decrepit, only a few are able to transmit images. To quote a Bob Dylan lyric, “Everything is broken.”

Let’s start with the cameras. They went up on traffic poles and other vantage points around San Bernardino starting in 2009, Police Chief Darren Goodman told the City Council last week.

There are 95 cameras.

“Currently,” Goodman reported, “only four of those cameras work.”

Uh, 91 out of 95 cameras are dead? I hope no criminals follow my columns or this might spark a crime wave.

(Then again, my goal is to serve all segments of the community. If you’re a bad guy, you might be thinking, “About time dis crummy newspaper printed sum good nooze.”)

Why don’t the cameras work? The manufacturer no longer makes parts for the 15-year-old cameras, and officials never had “a self-sustaining plan” to maintain or upgrade cameras, said Goodman, who was hired less than two years ago.

Goodman said 15 of the cameras are downtown but didn’t indicate how many, if any, are working. He did say nobody monitors the live footage.

Councilmember Sandra Ibarra reacted in alarm.

“I’m pretty shocked at the news that of 95 cameras, only four are working,” Ibarra said. She recalled that the city had contracted a few years ago with a company to maintain them.

The city halted that nearly $100,000-a-year contract in 2021, Goodman said, and with good reason.

Because no parts were available to fix broken cameras, the chief said, “All they were doing was coming out and cleaning the lenses.”

For 100 grand, no less. What were they polishing the lenses with, truffle oil?

Goodman and City Manager Charles Montoya said they will return to the council in the near future with parameters for a new, better camera system and for civilian staffing to monitor them. Chino police have such staffing, Goodman noted.

San Bernardino’s preferred cameras would have 360-degree panning and software that would allow for quick searches. Downtown would be the initial focus, with annual expansion to other parts of the city.

Goodman said the new cameras would display city logos to let people know police are watching and thus deter crime.

Bad guys, moaning: “Chee, we t’ought dis was gonna be a positive article!”

Sorry, bad guys.

Now, back to the street lights.

Some downtown business owners brought up that problem during the Jan. 31 council meeting. Darkness might be making the area less safe, they said.

The Fourth Street boba shop Viva La Boba had been broken into twice in two weeks, co-owner Tansu Philip said.

With so many broken street lights downtown, “we’re doing business in the dark,” complained the shop’s other owner, David Friedman. He’d submitted 21 service requests through the city’s app.

Marco Romero, owner of The Barbers Club, said a break-in that week at his E Street shop cost barber students the tools they’d invested in to learn their trade.

Some of the ire was directed at Councilmember Theodore Sanchez, who represents downtown and the west side.

“I ask for people’s patience,” Sanchez responded. “A lot of this is copper being stolen.”

As an example, he said, new street lights had been installed on the west side. As a deterrent to copper thieves, concrete had been poured into the crevices to prevent anyone from getting at the wiring. Nice try.

“A week later,” Sanchez said, “they were out.”

Montoya agreed: “It’s not like replacing a light bulb. It’s replacing the entire fixture. It’s not a cheap fix.”

He’d signed an emergency purchase order to spend up to $100,000, the limit of his purchase authority without council action, to repair and replace lights downtown and on transit corridors.

Councilmember Fred Shorett said he’d already noticed a positive difference.

“Driving in today,” Shorett said during the meeting, which began at 3 p.m., “I noticed lights on that I haven’t seen on in a long time. But turn them on at 5 p.m., not at 3.”

I left the meeting at 6 p.m., driving a block south on E Street and hanging a right on Fourth. Noticing that my drive was on darkened streets, I pulled into the Regal Cinema lot and got out to take photos.

More than half the lamps around just that one intersection were dark.

As of Wednesday, one week later, they were still out.

“The street lights are not fixed. They’re anywhere from cracked and broken to stripped at the bottom,” Friedman told me. “Up and down Fourth Street, up and down E Street.”

Repairs were delayed due to the heavy rain, as public works had more immediate concerns about street flooding and flashing traffic signals. But street light repair “is imminent,” promised city spokesperson Jeff Kraus.

The scope of the problem is, frankly, staggering.

“You asked how many street lights were or are out,” Kraus said when we spoke Wednesday. “Citywide we’re estimating about 700.”

Holy moley. But it’s not just a local problem. In the city of L.A., the neighborhoods of Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights and El Sereno have more than 3,700 broken lights, the Times reported.

“Copper wire theft is back,” Kraus said. People have been breaking into lamps’ access points, cutting wires and pulling them out to sell the copper.

As fixtures are replaced, such as on Sixth Street, the lights are staying on 24/7 to keep the electrical wires “live,” thus deterring thieves from cutting them, Kraus explained. That’s why Shorett noticed lights on during the day.

Montoya has requested proposals from private firms on repairing and replacing lights in the rest of the city, with a Feb. 14 deadline to respond. That job may approach $500,000 and will require a council vote.

The city will explore how to “harden” the circuits to make them tamper-proof, Kraus said, and may extend a pilot program to install solar-powered lights, which have no copper wire and have not been vandalized.

At least as of press time.

[Frank Cox]

I've always been under the impression that an AM signal has greater range. So if an AM radio station that someone listens to suddenly switches to FM only couldn't he lose access?

[Harold Hallikainen]

It's interesting that no one at the station, and apparently no listeners, missed the AM signal. A landscaping crew discovered that the tower and transmitter were missing. Many AM stations have FCC licensed FM translators that "rebroadcast" the AM signal. Most (probably all) FM translators are fed directly instead of from the AM signal. This results in a lot of expense (land, electricity, maintenance) to keep an AM signal on the air that no one is listening to. But, since the FM translator is only authorized to "rebroadcast" the AM signal, the FM translator had to shut down when the AM went down. The FCC originally authorized FM translators for AM stations as part of their AM improvement program. The net result was decreased listenership to AM.

[Leo Enticknap]

This was covered on an AM talk radio station I listen to this afternoon: the presenters spent several minutes speculating as to what a bush hog crew is. Professor Google gave me the answer in a few seconds!

I'm guessing that the criminals wanted the tower for the scrap metal. Last fall in Southern California, thieves made off with about 500 yards of railroad track (the actual rails) in the middle of a night. Apparently the scrap value of very high grade steel like that is pretty lucrative, even on the black market.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.rocketcitynow.com/video/...b-5da2cf3eca91

https://www.actionnews5.com/2024/02/...t-radio-tower/

JASPER, Ala. (WBRC/Gray News) - A 200-foot AM radio tower in Alabama is gone, stolen without a trace.

WJLX’s AM station signal has been greatly impacted by the theft in Walker County.

Station general manager Brett Elmore said he remains hopeful that somebody will share information to help law enforcement find those responsible for the theft. Still, he said he is blown away by what happened.

“I have tried all weekend to figure it out, and I just can’t. I have been in the radio business, around it all my life and then in it professionally for 26 years, and I can say I have never heard of anything like this. I can say I’ve seen it all now,” Elmore said.

He said they first learned of the theft on Friday. He said a bush hog crew went down to the WJLX tower site to clean up the property, but the thieves had already cleared it out.
“When he arrived, he called me Friday and said, ‘The tower is gone.’ I said, ‘What do you mean the tower is gone? Are you sure you are at the right place?’ you know. He said, ‘The tower is gone. There is wires everywhere, and it is gone.’”

Elmore said they are working with the FCC to get temporary authority to carry on while they rebuild the AM side of their operations. Still, its unclear just how long the rebuild efforts could take.

“This really hurts a small operation like this, but like I said, I believe we will find out who did this. It is a federal crime and it absolutely will not be worth it to them,” he said.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/busi...dals-turf-war/

Movie exhibitors including Cineplex Inc. [42]CGX-T have pulled screenings
of a South Indian-language film across Canada after individuals opened
fire at four cinemas in the Greater Toronto Area last week, the latest
incidents of intimidation related to Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam
blockbusters.

Videos obtained by The Globe and Mail show a person in a hoodie shooting a
gun multiple times through the passenger window of a vehicle at the
entrances of Cineplex locations in Scarborough and Vaughan. In a separate
video, the driver of the vehicle fires at a Cineplex in Brampton. York
Cinemas, a theatre in Richmond Hill, Ont., was also hit by gunfire. The
shootings shattered glass and left bullet holes in windows. According to
York Regional Police, the incidents occurred in the early morning hours,
when the theatres were closed.

The videos were e-mailed to a few theatres and film distributors just
ahead of the Jan. 24 premiere of Malaikottai Vaaliban, a fantasy-action
epic. Cineplex pulled the movie, as did CinéStarz, which owns six theatres
in Ontario and Quebec.

Film distributors have contended that a [43]turf war is being waged and
that a group of individuals is trying to control the lucrative market for
South Indian-language films in Canada, using vandalism and intimidation to
pressure theatres and distributors to drop certain titles and ensure the
films run in favoured cinemas.

“With reference to the incidents at our theatres, we are working closely
with local authorities, who are leading this investigation, and can’t
share more details at this time,” said Michelle Saba, vice-president of
communications at Cineplex. “Due to circumstances beyond our control, we
are no longer playing Malaikottai Vaaliban at Cineplex theatres.”

Incidents of vandalism started around 2015 in the GTA, as Cineplex, the
country’s largest theatre chain, was making a bigger push into the Tamil
film market. Vandals have slashed screens at Cineplex theatres showing
Tamil movies and released noxious substances such as pepper spray inside
auditoriums, prompting the chain to pull some titles.

In recent years, Telugu and Malayalam movies have been affected, too. The
Globe has found [44]more than 20 incidents at Cineplex locations,
independent theatres and other chains such as Landmark Cinemas across
Southern Ontario, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Surrey, B.C.

In December, noxious substances were sprayed inside [45]three GTA Cineplex
theatres, forcing audience members to evacuate.

Despite the turmoil, Saleem Padinharkkara had high expectations for
Malaikottai Vaaliban. His company, KW Talkies, partnered with an
international distributor for the Canadian rights to the film. About 8,000
tickets had been sold. “This is unheard of for a Malayalam movie,” he
said. “This is an untapped market.”

In the days before the premiere, another distributor, 2kerala
Entertainment Network, sent letters through a law firm to some theatres
showing the film, claiming to hold the exclusive distribution rights.
2kerala demanded that the theatres negotiate for the rights or drop the
movie.

Jeff Knoll, who runs a movie house in Oakville, Ont., received the letter
but had no doubt that Mr. Padinharkkara held the rights to the film,
having worked with him in the past. “He showed us he had the film,” Mr.
Knoll said. “I don’t think he would put himself out there if he didn’t
have the rights.”

A few days later, on Jan. 22, both Mr. Padinharkkara and 2kerala received
an anonymous e-mail demanding $200,000 and threatening to stop the
distributors from obtaining rights in the future. “Remember we know
everything about you and your family,” the e-mail read. “Don’t be [an]
idiot.”

A follow-up e-mail arrived the next day. Mr. Padinharkkara didn’t see
either one until later, since the sender used a company e-mail address
that he rarely checks. But on Jan. 24 he received yet another e-mail that
contained the videos of the four shootings. He declined to provide a copy
of that e-mail, citing a police investigation.

“Investigators are aware of all four incidents and are working in
partnership with the other services,” said media relations officer Ashley
Visser of the Toronto Police Service.

York Regional Police also issued a news release Tuesday seeking witnesses
to “drive-by shootings” at movie theatres. Investigators believe the four
incidents are linked, according to the release.

Distributors lose money when film screenings are cancelled, and some have
abandoned the market. International distributor Aashirvad America, which
partnered with Mr. Padinharkkara on Malaikottai Vaaliban, is now
reconsidering bringing movies to Canada. “I don’t see us doing a film in
Canada until we get this resolved,” said representative Neil Vincent.

Moviegoers, meanwhile, are being deprived of the chance to see
blockbusters in theatres when companies are forced to drop titles.

“At this time CinéStarz is not playing the movie Malaikottai Vaaliban in
any of its cinemas. Our priority includes the safety of people while this
sensitive matter is currently under investigation,” said spokesperson
Melissa DiMarco.

York Cinemas and a few other Ontario theatres with the same owner are also
not screening the film. (These theatres were working with 2kerala, not Mr.
Padinharkkara, according to an online advertisement.) Representatives for
the theatres did not reply to a request for comment, nor did 2kerala.

Only two theatres are still showing Malaikottai Vaaliba: the TIFF Lightbox
in Toronto and Mr. Knoll’s [46]Film.ca theatre in Oakville. So far, the
movie is drawing only modest audiences, according to Mr. Knoll. “Some of
these incidents probably dampen some excitement,” he said. “Who’s going to
bring their kids to a movie if there’s a risk of bear spray?”

Mr. Knoll, who is also a city councillor in Oakville, has experienced the
vandalism first-hand. In February, 2022, individuals slashed two screens
at the theatre. Still, he’s not planning to pull any films. “No one’s
going to tell me what to play,” he said.

[Frank Cox]

https://canoe.com/news/crime/police-...a-3d9ae750a4cc

Police tracked Quebec cold case suspect to cinema, seized drinking cup, trial hears

SAGUENAY, Que. — A Quebec police officer described for a jury on Thursday how he and his partner tracked a suspected killer to a movie theatre, where the officer sat in the seat next to the suspect for nearly two hours before secretly taking his discarded soft drink cup for a DNA test.

Provincial police Sgt.-Det. Christian Royer took the stand in the Saguenay, Que., trial of Marc-Andre Grenon, who is charged with the first-degree murder and aggravated sexual assault of Guylaine Potvin in April 2000.

Royer said he was sent to Grenon’s apartment in Granby, east of Montreal, in August 2022 after the province’s forensics lab identified him as a possible person of interest in the 19-year-old’s death.

While he was originally only asked to verify Grenon’s address, Royer and his partner saw him get into the passenger seat of a vehicle driven by a woman and decided to follow.

“Since ultimately the goal was to recover DNA, we said to ourselves, we’ll follow them to see where they go,” he told the trial.

From there, Royer and his partner followed Grenon and his companion to a cinema, where the officer purchased a ticket for the same movie, which had assigned seating.

He said it turned out that the last available seat in Grenon’s section was directly on Grenon’s left. While his partner stationed himself near the closest garbage cans, Royer spent the next two hours less than a metre from Grenon, watching him sip his drink and checking to see if anyone else touched the cup.

“I don’t have to tell you, I wasn’t very absorbed in the movie,” he told the courtroom, drawing laughs.

Royer said he and his partner followed Grenon out of the theatre, where they watched him throw his soft drink cup in the garbage. The officer said he donned gloves and fished it out, and it was bagged as potential evidence and later sent for DNA testing.

Potvin was found dead in April 2000 in her apartment in Jonquiere, now part of Saguenay, 215 kilometres north of Quebec City. A pathologist concluded she’d been sexually assaulted and strangled to death.

The Crown has previously said the accused became a person of interest in the case in 2022 after a database that links DNA to male surnames suggested the sample collected at the crime scene might be connected to the name “Grenon.”

Crown lawyers have said Grenon was arrested after DNA collected from the cup and straws at the theatre were found to match the previously unidentified male DNA collected at the crime scene more than 20 years earlier.

A second officer, Pierre-Antoine Cote, described arresting Grenon in Granby on Oct. 2. The suspect was then taken to Montreal, where a warrant had been issued for fingerprinting, a dental imprint test and a new DNA test, testified Cote, who added that Grenon was co-operative.

Earlier Thursday, the jury learned that Grenon had been cited in 2001 as a “person of interest” in the crime because he had previously lived in a building behind the residence where Potvin lived and was killed.

Grenon, 49, has pleaded not guilty. On cross-examination, Royer told the defence that he didn’t take photos of the suspect holding the cup or sitting in the theatre. He also acknowledged that the evidence bag had been mislabelled as containing one straw, not two.

The trial resumes Monday.

[Leo Enticknap]

Groucho is in a glitzy Hollywood graveyard (Eden Memorial Park), where I suspect you'd need rather more than $25K to join him. Maybe Karl and his fellow travelers aren't such a bad deal after all!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I'm not sure what she wants to get across as it was a dead link...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

"I'd rather be buried next to Groucho Marx. . ."


I claim the other side!

[Jim Cassedy]

I'd rather be buried next to Groucho Marx. . .

[Leo Enticknap]

I guess Marx would have considered this a vindication of his theories:

Want to be buried next to Karl Marx? Highgate Cemetery will make room for you ... for £25,000

North London graveyard secures £100,000 of National Lottery funding to help add lucrative new burial sites

Craig Simpson 16 January 2024 • 8:00am

Highgate Cemetery will make room for new graves near Karl Marx’s tomb and charge £25,000 for each one.

The working cemetery and north London tourist site has secured £100,000 of National Lottery funding to help secure its future through conservation work, and landscaping to add to the 53,000 graves on the crowded site.

Highgate will begin making room for lucrative new burials near the tomb of Marx, on ground that is particularly coveted by communists.

Former leaders in the Iraqi and South African Communist parties are buried near the final resting place of the German philosopher, whose Left-wing cachet could help maintain the cemetery’s income stream.

Ian Dungavell, the chief executive of the cemetery, said that new burials were important to keep Highgate a “living” attraction.

He said: “What makes Highgate Cemetery so interesting is that it is living heritage, not just a relic. It is still a place where things are happening now, where people are buried, and where people come to remember them.

“From its earliest days, it was a visitor attraction and a place of burial, and both activities are essential to its future.”

Space is at a premium in the 37-acre site near Hampstead Heath, which is the final resting place of famous figures including George Michael, George Eliot, Douglas Adams and Michael Faraday.

The cost of burial at the site ranges from around £5,000 for cremation plots, to £25,000 and upwards for a full grave, depending on size and location.

The cemetery was given powers under the Highgate Cemetery Act 2022 to clear old graves and make room for new burials, which represent around 50 per cent of its income, with visitors’ entrance fees roughly making up the other half of its funding.

Some older grave-sites, where the monuments are crumbling and contemporary relatives of the deceased are also long dead, have been earmarked for new burials, and the prime real estate near the occasionally defaced tomb of Marx will be first to be developed.

Mr Dungavell has set up an objection system, allowing surviving relatives of the 173,000 people buried in Highgate to stop individual graves being redeveloped.

The exiled Marx died in London in 1883 and was buried in a modest grave, before his body was reinterred in 1954 under a vast tomb paid for by the Communist Party of Great Britain, close to which were later buried Saad Saadi Adi, the Iraqi communist leader, Dr Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo, the chairman of the South African Communist Party, and Paul Foot, the Socialist Worker journalist.

Highgate will develop the crumbling graves near Marx’s original grave, around 20 feet from his current tomb, but work will rely on extensive landscaping and flood-proofing.

The cemetery has secured a £100,000 National Lottery Heritage Fund grant which will support this work as part of the Unlocking Highgate Cemetery project covering landscaping, building conservation, and improving visitor experience of the site.

The site of the 19th-century cemetery, built for profit at a time when churchyards were filling up, is covered with ash trees riddled with ash die-back and at risk of falling on to grave monuments and visitors.

Many of these trees will be cleared in planned landscaping, drainage will be improved, wildlife protected, and paths will be relaid to provide easier and step-free access for visitors.

A Grade I listed row of Egyptian-themed tombs will be conserved with help from the Heritage Fund, along with Grade I listed catacombs at the highest point in the cemetery.

An Anglican and a Dissenters’ chapel on the site will also be restored, and opened up as public spaces. Funding will also support community outreach, to help make tours and interpretation of the site more wide-ranging and accessible.

Lottery funding is part of a £15 million tranche of grants aimed at providing better access to green spaces.

[Leo Enticknap]

This one really hits close to home: ONT is my local airport (I live 19 miles from it), I have flown on Alaska PDX-ONT flights several times in the past, and I always try to get an exit row seat if possible (I'm 6'3" and with abnormally long upper legs, so I do so for the legroom) when I do so.

San Bernardino Sun

Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737-9 Max jets after window appears to blow out on Ontario-bound flight
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 returned safely to Portland International Airport around 5 p.m. PT after “the crew reported a pressurization issue”

By Cnn Com Wire Service
PUBLISHED: January 6, 2024 at 7:14 a.m. | UPDATED: January 6, 2024 at 8:37 a.m.

Alaska Airlines has temporarily grounded its fleet of Boeing 737-9 Max aircraft after one of its planes made an emergency landing in Oregon on Friday, officials said – an incident that a passenger says involved a panel and window blowing out in flight.

A panel of the fuselage, including the panel’s window, popped off shortly after takeoff, passenger Kyle Rinker told CNN.

“It was really abrupt. Just got to altitude, and the window/wall just popped off and didn’t notice it until the oxygen masks came off,” Rinker said.

Firefighters were called to assess minor injuries after the landing, and no serious injuries were reported, the Port of Portland Fire Department said.

A passenger’s video posted to social media shows a side section of the fuselage, where a window would have been, missing – exposing passengers to the outside air. The video, which appears to have been taken from several rows behind the incident, shows oxygen masks deployed throughout the airplane, and least two people sitting near and just behind the missing section.

In a statement late Friday, Alaska Airlines said it was working with Boeing to understand what took place on Flight 1282. The aircraft is a 737-9 Max that received its certificate of airworthiness on October 25, 2023, according to the FAA.

The airline’s grounded fleet of 65 Boeing 737-9 aircraft is expected to undergo full maintenance and safety inspections over the next several days before being returned to service, the airline said.

“My heart goes out to those who were on this flight – I am so sorry for what you experienced,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said in a statement.

Though the airline has acknowledged an incident on Friday’s Flight 1282, it has not detailed what the incident entailed. The plane “landed safely back at Portland International Airport with 171 guests and six crew members,” the airline said.

According to FlightAware, the flight was airborne for about 20 minutes. The plane departed from Portland International Airport around 5:07 p.m. local time and landed at 5:27 p.m.

‘A really loud bang… and a whoosh noise’

Evan Smith, a passenger on the flight, told CNN affiliate KPTV that he was sitting at least six rows in front of the section where the incident took place. “There was a really loud bang toward the rear of the plane and a whoosh noise and all of the masks dropped,” Smith said.

Emma Vu, another passenger, was asleep and woke up to a sensation of falling and seeing emergency masks drop down, she told CNN in a phone call. She apparently woke up after the panel section popped off; it wasn’t clear how close to the missing panel she was.

Vu said she texted her parents their code word for emergencies to let them know about the incident. “I’ve never had to use it before, but I knew that this was that moment,” Vu said.

People sitting on either side of her comforted her, she said. “The flight attendant came over too, and told me it was going to be OK,” Vu said. “The fact that everyone was kind of freaking out and she took that time to kind of make me feel like I was the only passenger – honestly that was really sweet.”

Vu plans to take a different flight to her intended destination on Saturday morning, she said.

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the incident, both agencies said.

In a statement to CNN, Boeing said it was aware of an incident involving Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 and was working to gather additional information.

Previous issues with Boeing’s 737 Max jets

CNN reported last month that Boeing has asked airlines to inspect all of their 737 Max jets for a potential loose bolt in the rudder system after an airline discovered a potential problem with a key part on two aircraft.

CNN transportation analyst Mary Schiavo said Saturday that issue probably had nothing to do with Friday’s incident. But, overall, the issues raise serious questions about Boeing quality control in manufacturing that the FAA must investigate, Schiavo said.

Boeing’s engineering and quality problems have posed major challenges for the company. The crashes of two of 737-8 Max jets that killed all 346 people on board the flights led to a crippling 20-month grounding of the plane. It also was one of the most expensive corporate tragedies in history, costing Boeing more than $20 billion.

The Max returned to the air carrying passengers in most markets around the globe beginning in late December 2020. But it has encountered other problems, including in April when Boeing said it has discovered a manufacturing issue with some 737 Max aircraft after a supplier used a “non-standard manufacturing process” during the installation of two fittings in the rear fuselage – although Boeing insisted the problem did not constitute a safety risk.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

CNN’s Paradise Afshar and Tina Burnside contributed to this report.

It seems to me that four absolute miracles happened here:

• The accident happened 20,000 feet or so below cruising altitude, at which the higher speed and pressure differential would likely have been able to suck people out from a greater distance, and nearby passengers would likely have taken their seatbelts off
• The window seat next to the plug door that blew out was unoccupied
• The door plug did not damage any control surfaces after separating from the fuselage
• The door plug did not cause any injuries (or worse) when it hit the ground

I would further speculate that they're going to have to find the door plug in order to figure out what happened, which, as it looks like the accident took place somewhere over the Cascades, is going to be about as easy as finding D.B. Cooper's loot (which is probably in the same vicinity).