*By Carlo Versano*
Boeing announced on Monday that Dennis Muilenburg, the aerospace giant's CEO, was resigning effective immediately. David Calhoun, Boeing's chairman, will replace Muilenburg as chief executive on Jan. 13. Until then, Boeing CFO Greg Smith will be elevated to interim CEO, the company said.
Boeing's board reportedly decided over the weekend that it was time for Muilenburg to leave, nearly 14 months to the day since a Boeing 737 Max operated by Lion Air crashed off the coast of Indonesia, sending the company into the biggest crisis in its corporate history. Less than six months after that Lion Air flight crashed, another Max jet operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed. The two accidents, believed to be a combination of pilot error and faulty software, killed a combined 346 people.
Muilenburg was faulted for Boeing's early response to those two crashes, the second of which led to an unprecedented global grounding of the entire 737 Max fleet earlier this year. Since then, he became the face of the chastened company, testifying to Congress and apologizing to family members while Boeing technicians worked around the clock on a software fix to the system, known as MCAS, that's believed to have caused two otherwise routine commercial flights to fall from the sky.
Just last week, Muilenburg made the decision to temporarily stop production of the 737 Max entirely, at least until the FAA gave the go-ahead for the software fix. Then, over the weekend, the company took another morale hit when its Starliner space capsule had to abort an unmanned mission to the ISS because its internal clock was set wrong.
Shares of Boeing rose nearly 3 percent on the announcement of Muilenburg's departure.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
