World

Boeing delivered a 787 Dreamliner to American Airlines on Wednesday, the first of that aircraft to be sent to a customer in over a year due to defects discovered in the plane.

US air safety regulators on Monday cleared the aviation giant to resume deliveries of the top-selling widebody after Boeing made changes to its production process.

“We have resumed 787 deliveries, following our thorough engineering analysis, verification and rework activities to ensure all airplanes conform to Boeing’s exacting specifications and regulatory requirements,” a company spokesperson confirmed to AFP.

It was the first delivered to a customer since June 2021. 

But for American the wait was longer.

“Today is an exciting day! We’re thrilled to welcome our first BoeingAirplanes 787-8 delivery since April 2021,” the company said on Twitter.

The 787’s travails date to late summer 2020, when the company uncovered manufacturing flaws with some jets, and subsequently identified additional issues, including with the horizontal stabilizer.

The difficulties curtailed deliveries between November 2020 and March 2021. Boeing suspended deliveries later in spring 2021 after more problems surfaced.

However, the company said none of the issues posed “an immediate safety of flight concern for the in-service 787 fleet.”

The news will be welcomed by US airlines and travelers who have suffered from massive delays and canceled flights in recent weeks, partly due to the shortage of aircraft.

American said it currently has 47 of the planes in its fleet, and has ordered another 42.

Inability to deliver the Dreamliner has dragged down Boeing’s profits, which plunged 67 percent in the second quarter. And the manufacturing changes have led to billions in additional costs for the company.

The firm has delivered just over 1,000 of the planes since it was first introduced in 2004.

Donald Trump on Wednesday declined to answer questions under oath about alleged fraud at his family business, as legal pressures pile up for the former president whose house was raided by the FBI just two days ago.

Trump said he had “no choice” but to invoke the Fifth Amendment — which allows individuals to remain silent under questioning — during hours of deposition at the New York attorney general’s office in Manhattan.

“I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution,” Trump said in a statement.

“When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media, you have no choice.”

After about six hours, Trump emerged from the office building where the deposition took place, waving through the closed windows of his vehicle at a small crowd of onlookers as his motorcade pulled away.

“A very professional meeting,” he wrote his Truth Social site. “Have a fantastic company with great assets, very little debt, and lots of CASH. Only in America!”

The deposition followed a Federal Bureau of Investigation search earlier this week at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, signaling an escalation of legal woes for the 45th president.

– ‘Pursue the facts’ –

Trump on Wednesday again took aim at the search, decrying what he called a lack of “moral and ethical bounds of decency.”

He said his team had complied with an official request to install an extra lock on a storage area at the residence.

“Then on Monday, without notification or warning, an army of agents broke into Mar-a-Lago, went to the same storage area, and ripped open the lock,” he said on Truth Social.

Trump had arrived in a convoy of cars guarded by Secret Service agents at the offices of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

James suspects the Trump Organization fraudulently overstated the value of real estate properties when applying for bank loans, while understating them with tax authorities to pay less in taxes.

If James, a Democrat, finds any evidence of financial misconduct, she can sue the Trump Organization for damages but cannot file criminal charges, as it is a civil investigation.

“Attorney General Letitia James took part in the deposition during which Mr Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right,” her office said in a statement.

“Attorney General James will pursue the facts and the law wherever they may lead.”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, meanwhile, is running a parallel probe into the Trump Organization that does have the potential for criminal charges.

That investigation could be a reason Trump’s legal team advised him to remain silent, as his deposition could energize the case.

The brash billionaire, 76, did not mince words in attacking James, calling her a “failed politician who has intentionally colluded with others to carry out this phony years-long crusade.”

The Trumps have denied any wrongdoing. Trump and his eldest children, Donald Jr and Ivanka, had been due to start testifying under oath in July, but the depositions were postponed due to the death of the former president’s first wife.

– Possible White House return –

Trump’s myriad legal battles have the potential to complicate any bid for another run for the White House in 2024.

The FBI declined to provide a reason for the raid on Trump’s Florida home.

But US media outlets said agents were conducting a court-authorized search related to the potential mishandling of classified documents that had been sent to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House in January 2021.

White House officials say President Joe Biden did not have any advance notice about the raid and respected the independence of the Justice Department.

Since leaving office, Trump has remained the country’s most divisive figure, continuing to sow falsehoods that he won the 2020 presidential vote.

He also has faced legal scrutiny for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and over the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

Several dozen prominent US and international economists urged the United States Wednesday to hand over to Afghanistan $7 billion in central bank reserves frozen when the Taliban seized control of the country nearly one year ago.

“We are deeply concerned by the compounding economic and humanitarian catastrophes unfolding in Afghanistan, and, in particular, by the role of US policy in driving them,” 71 economists and development experts said in a letter to US President Joe Biden and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. 

“Without access to its foreign reserves, the central bank of Afghanistan cannot carry out its normal, essential functions,” they wrote.

“Without a functioning central bank, the economy of Afghanistan has, predictably, collapsed.”

The signatories included Nobel economics prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and Yanis Varoufakis, who served as Greece’s minister of finance when the country was negotiating with creditors after the 2008 economic collapse.

In the letter they argued the United States could not justify holding onto the reserves, which it froze in American banks as the prior Washington-backed government in Kabul fell to the Islamist Taliban in August 2021.

The economists said that the plunge in economic activity and the sharp cuts to foreign aid by previous supporters of the country after the US military withdrawal had sent the Afghan economy into a tailspin.

“Seventy percent of Afghan households are unable to meet their basic needs,” they wrote. “Some 22.8 million people — over half the population — face acute food insecurity, and three million children are at risk of malnutrition.” 

This is worsened by the refusal of the United States to return to the Afghan central bank the $7 billion in foreign exchange reserves, as well as $2 billion blocked by Britain, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates, they said.

“These reserves were critical to the functioning of the Afghan economy, in particular, to manage money supply, to stabilize the currency and to pay for the imports  — chiefly food and oil — on which Afghanistan relies,” they wrote.

The economists said a recent US offer to give the Taliban access to half the money by setting up a trust with international oversight was not enough.

“By all rights, the full $7 billion belong to the Afghan people,” they said.

“Returning anything less than the full amount undermines the recovery of a devastated economy.”

Red-hot US inflation cooled slightly in July, which could open the door for the Federal Reserve to dial back its aggressive interest rate hikes while bringing a much-needed boost to President Joe Biden just months before crucial midterm elections.

Helped by the drop in energy costs dropping in recent weeks, the annual consumer price index dipped to 8.5 percent last month, the Labor Department reported Wednesday, lower than markets were projecting.

That 12-month increase soared 9.1 percent in June, the highest in 40 years, fueled by aggressive consumer spending of pandemic savings, global supply chain snarls, domestic worker shortages and Russia’s war on Ukraine.

But the big surprise was that the latest data showed the key inflation index was flat compared to June, a dramatic shift from the steep jump the prior month. Other than the drop in prices seen at the start of the pandemic, it was the first time monthly CPI was unchanged since June 2019.

“Today we received news that our economy had zero percent inflation in the month of July. Zero percent,” Biden said at a White House event.

“We are seeing signs that inflation may be beginning to moderate,” he said, although he acknowledged that the global challenges remain and the economy could face “additional headwinds.”

When volatile food and energy prices are excluded from the calculation, the so-called core CPI rate rose just 0.3 percent in the month — the smallest in four months — according to the report. But the annual increase remained stuck at the same level as June.

Soaring prices have squeezed family budgets — and by extension Biden’s popularity — with many costs still rising, especially food and housing.

Biden’s opponents accuse the president of precipitating the inflationary spike with a gigantic $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, enacted in March last year shortly after assuming office.

Republicans have renewed their criticism of Biden’s economic policy, warning that Sunday’s passage in the Senate of his massive climate and health care bill titled the “Inflation Reduction Act,” would do the opposite of its stated purpose.

But the president said his plan is working.

In addition to cooling inflation “jobs are booming” and wages are rising, he said. “That’s what happens when you build an economy from the bottom up from the middle out.”

“Our work is far from over… (but) the economic plan is working.”

– Devil in the details –

Still, the devil is in the details. 

Economists caution against taking too much solace from a single good report, or betting the Fed will ease up on its anti-inflation campaign.

The US central bank has increased borrowing costs four times this year, to a range of 2.25 to 2.5 percent, including two consecutive 0.75-point hikes.

Fed officials have made it clear that a third jumbo rate increase remains on the table at next month’s policy meeting.

Neel Kashkari, head of the Minneapolis Fed Bank, said while the latest data is welcome “this is just the first hint that maybe inflation is starting to move in the right direction.”

Policymakers are “far, far, far away from declaring victory,” he said at a conference Wednesday, and they remain committed to bringing inflation back down to the 2 percent goal.

But investors did not let the comments spoil their optimism. Wall Street shares soared, with the benchmark Dow gaining more than 500 points, even as economists say the Fed is likely to produce another big rate hike next month.

The question now facing Washington is whether it will be possible to bring inflation down without plunging the world’s largest economy into recession, after two quarters of economic contraction in the first half of the year.

Spending has remained resilient and the US enjoys a robust jobs market, which pushed the July unemployment rate to the pre-pandemic level of 3.5 percent. 

But that has a downside: There are still nearly two job openings for every available worker, and labor costs have risen sharply, which pushes wages up and fuels more inflation.

Rubeela Farooqi of High-Frequency Economics cautioned that “prices remain uncomfortably high.”

“Coupled with strength in job growth and wages, the data support the case for another aggressive rate hike in September,” she said in an analysis.