Lithuanians vote on Sunday (12 May) in a presidential election expected to hand a new term to incumbent Gitanas Nausėda, a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its two-year war with Russia, following a campaign focusing on security concerns in the Baltic states.

Tens of thousands of Georgians descended onto Tbilisi's Europe Square Saturday (11 May) in the latest mass protest against a "foreign influence" bill likened to repressive Russian legislation that has sparked outrage.

The Biden administration on Friday (10 May) said Israel's use of US-supplied weapons may have violated international humanitarian law during its military operation in Gaza, in its strongest criticism to date of Israel.

Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of the Polish capital Warsaw on Friday (10 May) to show their opposition to European Union environmental regulations that farmers say are driving them out of business.

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday (10 May) overwhelmingly backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognizing it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council "reconsider the matter favorably."

Malta deputy prime minister Chris Fearne resigned on Friday (10 May) amid a corruption scandal over a 2015 government concession for the management of three state hospitals granted to a previously unknown healthcare group.

The United States is working around the clock to provide Ukraine with supplies to defend itself against an intensified Russian attack that could target Kharkiv, the White House said on Friday (10 May).

The Olympic flame arrived in Marseille on Wednesday in front of 200,000 spectators, just weeks before the opening of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. What economic impact will the competition have on France?

Even before Chinese leader Xi Jinping's jet touched down in Paris on Monday, Europe was anxious about how to deal with the Asian giant. Could a free trade agreement with India solve the Chinese conundrum?

Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of the Polish capital Warsaw on Friday to show their opposition to European Union environmental regulations that farmers say are driving them out of business.

With around 10% of food made available to EU consumers going down the drain - and just six years to meet the 2030 UN target of halving food waste – there is neither time nor food to waste.

How do you envisage the creation of a product which you ideally don’t want to use? That was the focal point of the Belgian presidency’s high-level meeting on how the EU should coordinate its response to antibiotic resistance (AMR).

While all eyes were on Xi Jinping’s visit to Europe, leaders in Berlin debated on how the global transition towards climate neutrality affects the economy – and vice versa.

While Russia meticulously orchestrates its interference in Georgia, Brussels seems oblivious to the increasing urgency of the situation, writes Tinatin Akhvlediani. Tinatin Akhvlediani is a research fellow in the EU Foreign Policy Unit at CEPS. In 2023, Georgia found itself...

Research and innovation policy in Europe and elsewhere has for decades been increasingly designed with the singular purpose of enhancing the bettering valorisation of research investment, and the route to this goal has generally been assumed to be through industrial development

Welcome to Euractiv’s Tech Brief, your weekly update on all things digital in the EU.

Most Slovaks see the EU and its institutions as the main risk factor for foreign interference in the European elections, ahead of the United States and Russia, according to a recent survey.

A Polish judge with access to classified information who fled to Belarus was on Thursday (9 May) stripped of his legal immunity, opening the way for potential espionage charges.

New York, May 9, 2024 (AFP) - Boeing has been in the headlines lately following a series of problems with its aircraft, with the most recent incidents in Turkey and Senegal.

The episodes, which follow a near-disastrous panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines jet in January, point to production and maintenance issues, say experts, who don't see an obvious pattern behind the myriad incidents.

- Rash of incidents -

The US plane maker has been under scrutiny since January 5, when a Boeing 737 MAX 9 operated by Alaska Airlines made an emergency landing after a fuselage panel blew out, somehow avoiding serious injuries in an incident that safety officials say could have been catastrophic.

United Airlines has experienced recent issues on various flights involving Boeing planes, as has Southwest Airlines, which in early April had an engine fire on one flight.

On Thursday, a Boeing 737-300 skidded off a runway in Senegal, resulting in 11 injuries, including four that were serious.

That followed a Wednesday incident in Istanbul in which a Boeing 767 cargo plane belonging to FedEx landed on its nose after its front landing gear failed to deploy.

Such a confluence of incidents is "pretty rare" within air travel, said aviation expert Bertrand Vilmer, who described the myriad "abnormal" problems as reflecting "an alignment of unfavorable planets."

- Alternative causes -

Aviation experts usually look to three possible explanations for problems.

There can be a design defect, as with the two fatal crashes on 737 MAX jets in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia that involved a flaw in a flight stabilizing system.

Aviation watchers have pointed to a production defect as the likely source of the Alaska Airlines incident, which entailed a Boeing 737 MAX 9 that had only been delivered in October.

A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board published in February found that four bolts meant to help secure the panel that blew off were missing.

A third possible cause would be insufficient maintenance.

While design and production are the responsibility of the plane maker, the airline is in charge of keeping up the plane once it receives it.

"Once the aircraft is delivered, Boeing has nothing to do with it anymore" in relation to maintenance, said Richard Aboulafia of AeroDynamic Advisory.

- Safest form of transport? -

Notwithstanding the recent spate of incidents, aviation experts point to a strong safety record overall.

"We haven't had a single casualty in the entire US airline industry in way over a decade, despite millions of people flown," said Aboulafia. "That's incredible."

Aboulafia calls modern flying "the safest form of transport ever created by people," noting that "everyday, hundreds of people get killed on the roads."

Boeing's rival, Airbus, has not been completely spared of difficulty. Hundreds of planes produced by the European company are being taken out of service to check for microscopic "contamination" of metals in engines made by Pratt & Whitney.

Airbus also had a public dispute with Qatar Airways involving the degradation of exterior plane surfaces.

But there have been fewer such issues at Airbus and not one incident that drew a comparable level of attention as Alaska Airlines, experts said.

"Every incident that has occurred on Boeing airplanes this year has made headlines, suggesting that Boeing airplanes are unsafe," said a note from equity research firm Bernstein.

"The reality is that the number of incidents in the US on Airbus and Boeing airplanes so far this year is proportional to the number of airplanes in the fleets of US carriers."

The US commercial fleet currently has about 4,800 planes, with about 60 percent Boeing planes, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.

Speaking at the FT's Future of the Car conference, Shu said that BYD will bring a low-cost electric vehicle based on its Chinese Seagull model to Europe.