American Airlines is grounding 14 planes to fix overhead bins on jets that recently underwent cabin makeovers.
An airline spokesman said Friday that nearly 40 flights had been canceled as a result.
American says it spotted problems with the quality of a vendor’s work on the bins of two Boeing 737-800s, and grounded 12 more jets that had been worked on by the same vendor.
The president of the American mechanics’ union says the bins pop open and poorly installed battery cables could chafe and catch fire.
American isn’t identifying the vendor, but KXAS-TV reports that Aviation Technical Services, based near Seattle, confirms it did the work.
Separately, a Delta Air Lines passenger tweeted photos of a bin held shut by masking tape. Delta didn’t immediately respond for comment.
Regulators OK salmon genetically modified
U.S. regulators on Friday gave the green light to salmon genetically modified to grow about twice as fast as normal, but the company behind it may face legal challenges before the fish can be sold domestically.
The Food and Drug Administration said it lifted an alert had that had prevented AquaBounty from importing its salmon eggs to its Indiana facility, where they would be grown before being sold as food. The agency noted the salmon has already undergone safety reviews, and that it lifted its alert because the fish would be subject to a new regulation that will require companies to disclose when a food is bioengineered.
The move comes despite a pending lawsuit filed by a coalition of consumer, environmental and fishing groups that challenged the FDA’s approval of the fish.
“We think a remedy in our case would stop sale of the fish before they’re allowed to be sold,” said George Kimbrell, legal director for the Center for Food Safety, one of the groups suing the FDA.
AquaBounty was founded in 1991, and it has been working through years of safety reviews and regulatory hurdles to sell its fish in the United States. In 2015, its salmon became the first genetically modified animal approved by the FDA for human consumption. But the agency subsequently issued an alert that stopped the Maynard, Massachusetts-based company from importing its fish eggs until disclosure guidelines for genetically modified foods were resolved.
Dress code change at Goldman Sachs
Business casual has become such an entrenched trend that even Goldman Sachs surrendered to it with a memo to employees announcing a flexible dress code.
The 150-year-old company sent the memo this week saying the time was right “to move to firmwide flexible dress code” while urging its 36,000 employees to “exercise good judgment in this regard.”
The drift toward relaxed workplaces began 1990s when companies started introducing “casual Fridays,” said Robert Burke, CEO of Robert Burke Associates, a retail and fashion consulting firm. It rapidly became entrenched with the rise of West Coast tech giants like Amazon and Facebook and their young moguls.
“Goldman was one of the last holdouts of a more formal dress code,” Burke said.
Martin Shkreli probed for prison phone
Federal authorities said Friday they are investigating claims that Martin Shkreli has been running his pharmaceutical company from behind bars using a contraband smartphone.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press it has opened an inquiry into whether the man nicknamed the “Pharma Bro” violated prison rules forbidding inmates from conducting business and possessing cellphones.
Shkreli, 35, is serving a seven-year sentence for securities fraud at the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix, New Jersey, a low-security prison complex about 40 miles (65 kilometers) from Philadelphia. He was found guilty of lying to investors in two failed hedge funds and cheating them out of millions.