Many people’s worst fears came to life Friday night when an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 jet bound for Ontario, CA, returned to Portland for an emergency landing after a panel blew out around 10 minutes after takeoff. No one was seriously injured, but Boeing is facing fresh scrutiny just as it hoped to put past safety issues behind it.

It could have been much worse. The seats near the blowout were unoccupied, and it’s likely all passengers were wearing seat belts, since the aircraft was still climbing at an altitude of ~16,000 feet.

An investigation into what went wrong is ongoing. Supplier Spirit AeroSystems manufactured and installed the aircraft’s fuselage, but Boeing has a key role in the completion process, Reuters reported. Aviation authorities said a broader design problem wasn’t suspected “at this time,” and Boeing, which said it supports the investigation, is providing technical help.

Regulators are keeping the plane on the ground. The FAA ordered the temporary grounding of the 171 Max 9s in use across US airlines for an inspection that was estimated to last four to eight hours per aircraft.

• On Sunday, Alaska canceled 163 flights (21% of its schedule), United scrubbed 180, and airlines in Mexico, Panama, and Turkey temporarily took most or all of their Max 9s out of service.

Boeing has more questions to answer

A report by NBC News detailed almost a dozen equipment problems involving Boeing aircraft dating to 2012. The most damaging were two crashes of its 737 Max 8 less than five months apart—one in Indonesia in 2018 and another in Ethiopia in 2019—that killed a total of 346 passengers, leading to the grounding of all 737 Max 8s globally for 18 months.

Following the mishaps, whistleblowers accused Boeing of fostering a company culture that put profits ahead of safety concerns, and a US House investigation into the fatal crashes bashed Boeing and the FAA for “repeated and serious failures.” Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun, who has been in the role since January 2020, has tried to restore confidence in the planemaker, but this open-air Alaska flight is sure to put Boeing’s business practices under the spotlight once again.—DL

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Oppenheimer dominated the Golden Globes. The Golden Globes kicked off Hollywood’s award season last night, and in their first showdown since the summer 2023 box office, Oppenheimer bested Barbie with five awards (including best drama) to two. Lily Gladstone became the first Indigenous person to win best actress in a dramatic film for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon, and she began her speech in the language of Blackfeet Nation, her native tribe. Succession was the big winner of the television categories, while the only thing host Jo Koy won was a death stare from Taylor Swift after his joke about her attending NFL games fell flat. In defense of his bad jokes, the comic said he was asked to be the host 10 days ago.

Winter has arrived. Hundreds of flights were canceled across the country, I-80 was temporarily closed in California as heavy snow fell on the Sierra Nevada, and every kind of nasty precipitation you can think of—snow, sleet, freezing rain, ice—pummeled the Northeast through Sunday. You won’t get much of a break to shovel your driveway: Another fast-moving, powerful winter storm will make its way across the country in the middle of the week, delivering significant snowfall to a handful of states. But probably not here in Manhattan, which as of today has gone a record 694 days without an inch of snow.

Musk’s drug use reportedly worries his company’s leaders. Execs and board members at SpaceX, Tesla, and other companies run by Elon Musk are concerned about the business impacts of Musk’s persistent drug use, according to the WSJ. Musk’s reported use of drugs, including ketamine, cocaine, LSD, and ecstasy, at parties could imperil SpaceX’s lucrative contracts with NASA and violate company policies at Tesla, a publicly traded company with a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, the WSJ notes. Musk’s lawyer responded that the billionaire has never failed a drug test at SpaceX.

The space industry has waited a long time for this morning—a rocket launch sent a US company’s lunar lander on a mission to the moon. If Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander arrives in one piece next month, it’d be the first American spacecraft to touch down on the lunar surface in 50+ years and mark a key milestone in NASA’s efforts to get humans back to playing low-gravity golf.

But one community wanted to delay the launch: Navajo Nation, the US’ largest Native American tribe. That’s because the spacecraft’s payload includes cremated human remains that will be deposited on the moon, which is a sacred place for the Navajo and other Indigenous tribes.

• “The placement of human remains on the moon is a profound desecration of this celestial body revered by our people,” Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said in a statement.

The White House held a last-minute meeting with Navajo Nation to hear out their concerns, but the government emphasized it can’t dictate what cargo a private company carries up to the moon.

The CEO of Celestis, the company that sold the memorial spaceflight, also pushed back, saying, “No individual religion can or should dictate whether a space mission should be approved.”

Looking ahead…NASA admitted that its increased reliance on the private sector could lead to more contentious moon missions in the future.—NF

Bitcoin ETF cleared for launch? The crypto equivalent of a new Rihanna album—the first spot bitcoin ETF—could be approved by regulators this week in what would be a watershed moment for Wall Street’s embrace of digital tokens. The hype around these proposed funds, which would allow regular investors to gain exposure to bitcoin without buying it directly, drove bitcoin’s price up 162% over the past year.

AI takes center stage at CES 2024. If you have a gadget that doesn’t include AI, you may as well not show up to the Brobdingnagian consumer electronics trade show that starts in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Dozens of companies are planning to unveil new products that incorporate AI, from safety systems in automobiles to PCs and smartphones. Notable no-shows: Apple, which has snubbed the event for years, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

Another deadline looms for a government shutdown. Congress is back in session today after its holiday break and faces a familiar problem—agreeing to a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown on Jan. 20. This historically unproductive group of lawmakers will have to resolve contentious issues of border security and foreign aid, but leaders took a big step toward preventing a shutdown yesterday by striking an agreement to set topline spending for 2024 at $1.6 trillion.

Everything else…

• Michigan will take on Washington in the college football championship tonight. All signs point to a competitive game.
• OpenAI’s store for custom apps based on its large language models will go live this week.
• Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley will be the only two candidates on stage Wednesday at the final Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15.
• Ariana Grande will release a long-awaited new single on Friday.

Stat: In Japan, a record 34.1% of adults between the ages of 20 and 49 have never been in a romantic relationship, and more than 25% have no intention of getting married, according to a survey that offers insight into the attitudes of a country where the birthrate declined for a seventh consecutive year in 2022. Nearly one-fifth of women in their twenties and nearly one-quarter of men in the same age bracket said having a romantic relationship is a waste of time and money. Facing the prospect of widespread labor shortages, the government in June announced plans to provide $25.2 billion in funding for childcare, including financial allowances for childbirth and rearing, as well as increased subsidies for higher education.

Quote: “We’re still definitely in survival mode trying to find a way to stay in business.”

Alaska’s snow crab season has been canceled for the second year in a row, and with climate change at the heart of the issue, commercial fishers like Gabriel Prout are growing concerned about the future of their industry. In early 2022, biologists discovered that 90% of the snow crab population had disappeared, which they connected to rising temperatures in the Bering Sea affecting the cold-water crustaceans’ food supply and driving them to starvation. Last year’s cancellation did little to replenish the population, but biologists hope one more year without snow crab fishing will steady Alaska’s fisheries, which provide 60% of the country’s seafood.

Read: What if money expired? (Noema Magazine)

Salt day: How to use all the different salts in your cooking.

Doze off: This breathing method could help you fall asleep faster.

Look like a snack: Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith decide on the best American snack.

Go there and back again: The lopsided demographics of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

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