Before booking a flight from Seattle to New York this week, Merle Meyers checked what type of airliner he would be flying on – because there are two he won’t risk boarding.
After working at Boeing for 31 years, Meyers claims to have uncovered dangerous practices on the company’s production lines – including faulty components allegedly being used on new aircraft – which left him with deep concerns about the company’s 787 Dreamliner.
Factory staff who struggled to meet deadlines were “raiding the scrap area” to use items that were “supposed to be destroyed”, he claims. “They were getting bootleg parts, bad parts with no traceability, and putting them on airplanes.”
He doesn’t trust the 737 Max either, following two crashes in 2018 and 2019 which killed a total of 346 people. So what would he do if an airline switched planes and he realised he was booked on a Max or a Dreamliner? “I wouldn’t fly,” he says. “I would decline that flight.” Other whistleblowers agree.
How climate change is pushing giant whales to Greenland
Giant whales are now moving into inaccessible areas in East Greenland after climate change has warmed the sea and melted ice caps.
Due to the ice blocking them whales have not normally been seen in these waters, but now a decades-long study has recorded hundreds of the species feeding in ice-free seas along the coast in summer.
Scientists describe the result of the melted ice as seasonal Arctic “feeding frenzies”.
A huge increase in whale sightings
The difference is striking – ship-based surveys did not record a single humpback whale sighting there until 2006.
Then in 2007, seven were seen and in 2024, there were 150 ship-based sightings.
An estimated 4,000 humpback whales, 6,000 fin whales and 6,000 minke whales travelled to the Greenland Sea in the summer of 2024.
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Why the whales go to Greenland
Rising sea temperatures have meant fish have travelled to the waters of East Greenland and the whales have moved in to feast on them. Scientists estimated the three whale species would eat 800,000 tonnes of fish and krill during a summer feeding season.
- However, the relocation of the whales means they share a habitat with other whales such as narwhals and belugas, and can displace them in some instances.
Five things to know after major cancer vaccine breakthrough
Cancer vaccines given as treatment for the disease have moved a step closer after promising results in a landmark trial.
Vaccine could halve cancer recurrence
The treatment, developed by Moderna and Merck, is based on the same technology used to make Covid vaccines. It was given to patients with high-risk melanoma who remained free of cancer after surgery.
The manufacturers have not yet said exactly how much the treatment reduced cancer return, but a previous small study found the treatment halved its recurrence.
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How it works
The vaccine works by revving up the immune system so it is better able to recognise the unique proteins made by the cancer cells’ mutated DNA. Treatment involves surgically removing the patient’s cancer, then genetically sequencing the tumour cells to make mRNA.
- The mRNA is then injected into the person’s body, and their cells start producing the cancer proteins in small amounts. This trains the person’s immune cells to react more aggressively to the cancer cells.
Potential for patients to be
cancer-free for longer
The vaccine, which is called Intismeran, is personalised to each patient’s tumour. It is used along with another cancer drug already prescribed by the NHS, Keytruda.
The combination treatment “has the potential to establish a new treatment paradigm, helping patients remain cancer-free for longer”, said Professor Georgina Long, the study’s principal investigator and medical director of Melanoma Institute Australia.
When will it be used in the UK?
- The treatment could be at least a year or two away from being used within the NHS.
- The manufacturers first need to file for approval of their treatment with the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
- Then, the financial body Nice would need to decide if the treatment could be administered on the NHS, if it determines it to be cost-effective.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are planning to move back to Britain more than six years after relinquishing their royal duties and leaving the UK for California.
Will Harry and Meghan resume their duties?
There are currently no plans for either Harry or Meghan to return to their official working roles within the Royal Family. However, the move raises the possibility that the couple could return to their posts in the future.
- Harry and Meghan stood down from their roles as working royals in 2020. The pair, in part, made the decision to due to media intrusion and the inability to set up their “SussexRoyal” brand.
What has been the King’s reaction?
King Charles was informed of the move on Sunday and it is understood he is pleased for the opportunity to see them on a regular basis.
However, it is reported the King is clear that the Duke and Duchess’s status as non-working royals and private individuals, in keeping with their previously expressed wishes, will remain unchanged.
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What arrangements are being made?
Security arrangements for the Duke and Duchess have not yet been disclosed, but the government has so far refused to provide Harry with taxpayer-funded police protection when in the UK.
The couple will reportedly retain their homes in Montecito, California, and Portugal, while the Duchess will continue to run her lifestyle brand, As Ever, from their new base.
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How did we get here?
- Harry and Meghan married in May 2018 and originally worked closely with Prince William and Kate as senior members of the Royal Family.
- Reports later emerged of a rift between the two couples and in March 2019, Buckingham Palace announced Harry and Meghan would set up their own, separate household.
- Around a year later, the couple said they were scaling back their involvement with the Royal Family and would split their time between the UK and US.
- Harry and Meghan then made a series of startling allegations about the family.
- The couple then formally relinquished their royal titles and took part in a bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Trump threatens Iran with ‘economic D-Day’ – the latest
Donald Trump has threatened Iran with “economic D-Day” in a post on Truth Social and warned he will launch tougher economic measures on any country that does business with Tehran.
The context
The threat comes after a 60-day ceasefire – which was largely ignored when hostilities resumed around a month in – officially expired on Monday.
Trump’s latest is an attempt to ramp up the economic pressure on Iran as the war continues almost five months on from Israel and America’s first strikes, and the ensuing shocks to oil prices.
Trump’s crackdown
ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.
Donald trump writing on truth social
Iran loses key economic stream
- The declaration by Trump comes a day after the United Arab Emirates severed all economic ties with Iran.
- This was prompted by the UAE’s defence ministry saying it detected two Iranian missiles targeting maritime traffic.
- Iranian entities have long used Dubai’s financial system to transfer money through exchange houses and shell companies.
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Designs on Hormuz
On Tuesday, the President posted a captionless image of the Strait of Hormuz, labelling it as a US territory.
It’s closure by the Iranian regime has spiked oil prices and caused global economic turmoil, something that has become a key issue for Trump himself.
The President first claimed the strait would become a “US territory” at an event last week, though America has so far been unable to guarantee safe passage for ships through the waterway.
The dog food recalled after reports of pets losing sight
A premium pet food brand has recalled all of its fresh meals following reports of suspected eye problems in dogs.
Here is everything you need to know.
What has happened?
The brand Years said owners should stop feeding its fresh meals to dogs “immediately”, and told them not to feed the meals to any other animal, or to donate or sell them. The firm runs a subscription-service delivering “personalised” gourmet meals for dogs.
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What are the eye problems?
- Years said it had 192 customers report “potential, yet unverified, eye issues” out of roughly 40,000 customers.
- The condition is known as sudden bilateral dry eye. Dry eye occurs when a dog is unable to produce tears, making their eyes very sore.
- Affected dogs may rub at their eyes, squint or be sensitive to light.
- Some experts say the condition can require lifelong management.
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How has this happened?
Years said the recall followed reports of some dogs having a potential eye reaction to buckwheat, an ingredient in its meals.
- Buckwheat was reportedly added to the meals several months ago.
- Years told customers that their subscription will be paused for an initial period of six weeks while it makes fresh meals using quinoa instead of buckwheat.
What the company said
Further independent laboratory testing around the buckwheat supply is ongoing. Years has chosen to voluntarily recall the meals as a precautionary measure, without causation having yet been proven.
Years says on its website
How AI is threatening musicians as regulations fall behind
Musicians face being “squeezed out” and “marginalised” from their industry by AI, a study from Queen’s University Belfast has warned.
What you need to know
Dr Katherine Pittalis has examined how AI is used in music-streaming platforms, online retail for concert tickets and music-related content on social media.
She says that UK music regulations lag “woefully behind” that of the EU and US in terms of transparency around malicious actors’ use of bot technologies.
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What else does the research investigate?
Pittalis’ research investigates “metric bots” – which can inflate metrics such as likes and follows on social media – as well as “artificial musicians”, which utilise deepfake technology to create an AI “influencer”.
- These phenomena are becoming ever-more sophisticated to circumvent rules on their platforms.
A closer look at the findings
- The research found evidence of scams where consumers bought high-demand concert tickets for inflated prices, only to find they never existed.
- Bots were also occasionally found to be moderating highly unregulated “buy and sell” groups on platforms like Facebook.
- Pittalis is also looking at AI-generated music, as musicians start to use AI in their production and sometimes whole songs are created with it.
The products that increased in price most since 2021
Inflation has risen by a cumulative 28 per cent since the cost-of-living crisis began, but the prices of some products have risen by much more than others according to research by AJ Bell.
Food and drink
Olive oil
A combination of poor harvests and higher energy costs mean the price of olive oil has risen by 116.3 per cent.
A staple of many people’s diets, egg prices have risen by 56.7 per cent.
Now seen by many as a luxury, takeaways and fast food are up by 38.1 per cent.
Energy and household items
Motor insurance
Factors similar to those that pushed up gas prices have seen the cost of electricity surge by 40.8 per cent.
The items that have fallen in price over five years
Sound and vision equipment has experienced the sharpest fall, at 30 per cent. Decades of technological advances have seen the price of computers also decrease, by 24.6 per cent. Motorcycles also dropped in price by 5 per cent.
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Boeing says it has been putting into action “a comprehensive plan across the company to deliver safety and quality at every step” since 2024, with its CEO Kelly Ortberg having introduced “new values and behaviours that are strengthening our culture”, in line with feedback from staff.
“Boeing employees are holding themselves and others accountable to keeping people safe, speaking up, and doing the right thing,” says a spokesperson.
Industry experts underline that statistics show flying Boeing aircraft remains extremely safe. Indeed, its 747 “Jumbo Jet” is widely regarded as one of the most reliable airliners in history.
Problems with computer software were blamed for the two Max disasters. Boeing fixed this, but its record was questioned again after a panel dropped from one of the aircraft shortly after take off in 2024, leaving a hole in the side of the plane. It later emerged that key bolts appeared to be missing.
Ryanair is one of its biggest users, flying about 200 Max jets with another 300 on order. Its CEO, Michael O’Leary, has said the “very proud to fly them”, insisting: “Boeing make great aircraft.” Other customers include American Airlines, Air Canada, United Airlines, Turkish Airlines and Icelandair.
Last year came another catastrophe: a Dreamliner crashed in India with 19 fatalities on the ground and 241 on the plane, including 53 British passengers.
It was flown by Air India, but other users include British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Etihad, Nippon Airways and Singapore Airlines. People are able to check which type of aircraft will be used on specific flights through websites such as FlightRadar24 or Google Flights.
A preliminary report on the India crash suggested one of the pilots may have turned off the engines. Full investigation findings are not expected until October, but Meyers suspects the calamity may have been down to issues with aircraft VT-ANB.
“They always start with pilot blaming,” he says. “I would start looking at electrical systems.”
The Foundation for Aviation Safety, a US campaign group run by former Boeing manager Ed Pierson, has revealed that VT-ANB suffered an in-flight fire in 2022. In fact, Pierson found, the plane had a record of “engineering, manufacturing, quality, and maintenance problems” since its first flight.
Boeing has always maintained that the 787 is a safe aircraft with a strong record, and before the India crash, it had operated for nearly a decade and a half without a single fatality.
Meyers, 67, says this “very difficult plane” was made by a team he oversaw at the huge factory in Everett, near Seattle.
He tells The i Paper that company pressure for Dreamliner workers to meet targets led to internal rivalries, with managers “stealing parts off each other’s airplanes”. Some aircraft were also “cannibalised” to supply components for others without records being kept.
Meyers, who remains in touch with Boeing workers, heard that some managers logged onto computer systems after the Air India crash to check if they were responsible for any parts used on the plane. “That’s a guilty conscience,” he believes.
Meyers tried alerting management about poor standards, but says he faced retaliation and was forced out in 2023. He went public with his concerns the following year.
Now he’s appearing alongside other veterans from the firm in a new Netflix documentary, Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, which details just how worrying the situation has become – and how one whistleblower paid with his life.
Meyers joined Boeing in 1979. His mother had worked for the company, as did his wife’s father and grandfather. The firm was like a second family.
He left the company a couple of times before a solid stint from 2005 onwards, working in quality control – and remembers hearing on his first day back how badly standards had slipped.
He says that one of his team claimed that procurement and production managers wanted them to overlook inspection requirements and pressured them “for not breaking the rules fast enough”.
He realised that pieces of machinery were being used without safety checks being logged. “I counted about 50,000 parts and assemblies – like flaps, rudders, electrical systems, many of them flight-critical – that had escaped into the fleet. That really was a big shock,” he says.
“The closer you get to the airplane, the bigger the chicanery, the cutting of corners. It was a real eye opener.”
He claims that staff would “falsify records” on usage of parts through “all sorts of little tricks” in paperwork, such as smearing the ink of inspection stamps so they couldn’t be read.
Like many experienced staff at Boeing, he felt the safety culture declined after the company merged with McDonnell Douglas, leading bosses to focus on profits. “Standards were just terrible compared to what we expected,” he says.
To reduce costs, the company outsourced Dreamliner production to other firms around the world, with parts being flown to the US for final assembly. As the documentary shows, sometimes huge sections made by different suppliers wouldn’t fit together.
It also moved Dreamliner operations from the state of Washington to a new factory in South Carolina to avoid union agreements.
One of Meyers’ friends in quality control, John Barnett, worked at the new plant and alerted managers to safety risks, such as metal shavings on the aircraft that could damage wires and cause short circuits.
Barnett believed he was demoted for slowing down production by raising problems like this. He retired in 2017 and sued Boeing using legislation to protect whistleblowers.
Barnett’s lawyer, Brian Knowles, told The i Paper a few months after his client’s death that the tragedy “emboldened people to speak out” on other failings within the firm, because they “didn’t want his death to be in vain”.
Meyers is one of them. He hopes the new documentary, which tells Barnett’s full story, will finally lead to reforms. “He wanted to make a difference,” he says of his late friend – a “great guy” who was very “passenger-safety conscious”.
‘They got tired of me’
Meyers says he suffered mentally from the “anger and frustration” of worrying that lives were at risk. He provided managers with “reams of evidence” about problems but these were “brushed under the carpet”, he claims.
A colleague warned he would be “singled out” if he continued fighting – and sure enough, he says, “they got tired of me”.
He claims he was reprimanded for “misuse of company time and resources for doing my job” and was told he would be fired if he didn’t agree a severance package. “So that’s what I did. I knew quality would not be taking the lead again anytime soon.”
Asked about Meyers’ comments, a Boeing spokesperson says allegations made by him and other whistleblowers in the Netflix film “have been widely reported over the years”.
“Some remain unfounded claims to this day while others are issues that Boeing thoroughly addressed or continues to improve upon under the rigorous oversight of our regulators,” they said.
“Today, we are grateful that customers, industry experts, policymakers, and our employees are seeing improvements in how we work together and deliver quality products. Our team is working every day to meet our commitments and earn the trust of those who depend on us.”
But last month’s life-threatening incident on a Boeing 737-800 owned by Ryanair raised further safety concerns, when a cabin window was smashed by broken engine fragments, seriously injuring a passenger whose head was sucked through the hole.
Separately, the Federal Aviation Administration in the US has found cracks in the fuselage of Max jets and demanded checks on hundreds of others.
Crash victims’ families continue their fight for justice meanwhile, arguing that the company and senior executives who previously ran it – earning hundreds of millions of dollars each – should face criminal charges.
The whistleblower thinks the company has an “incestuous relationship” with the US government because it’s such a major employer and important supplier of military hardware. Given Washington’s reluctance to launch criminal proceedings against Boeing, he fears genuine action may only come “after the next crash”.
Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing‘ is available to stream on Netflix now