News Wrap: FAA grounds Boeing Max jets for inspection after mid-air emergency

John Yang:

Good evening, I'm John Yang. Late today, the FAA ordered the temporary worldwide grounding of about 171 Boeing 737 Max 9s until the planes can be inspected. It comes after a window blew out of a month old 739 Max 9 last night at about 16,000 feet six minutes after the Alaska Airlines Flight took off from Portland, Oregon.

The rapid depressurization sucked a t shirt off a child. No one was seriously hurt in the plane made an emergency landing safely back in Portland.

The first weekend of the new year is seeing the first major winter storm of the season that's for millions of people along the East Coast. This afternoon it's been mostly rain over the Mid Atlantic, but highway crews from the Carolinas to Maine have been treating roads in anticipation of as much as a foot of snow by Monday in Boston in upstate New York.

A separate weather system dropped snow in the Midwest. In Kansas snow plows cleared roads and runways in Arkansas an icy I-94 became an obstacle course. Farther south it was heavy rain.

Hezbollah launched more than 60 rockets from southern Lebanon into northern Israel today. They said it was the initial response to this week's targeted killing of a Hamas commander in Beirut, Israel Senate responded with a drone strike. Tension along that border is stoking fears of a wider conflict. And that's what Secretary of State Antony Blinken is working to avoid on a diplomatic mission to the region. His trip began today in Turkey and his to include several days next week in Israel and the West Bank.

On the third anniversary of the January 6 assault on the capital, the FBI said it's arrested three more defendants in the case. All were indicted in 2021. One has been in hiding since shortly after January 6, the other to jump bail last March before they were to go on trial.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been in Walter Reed Medical Center since Monday but the Pentagon didn't disclose it until last night. And there are reports that he spent four days in the intensive care unit. Austin spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said he was admitted for complications from an unspecified minor medical procedure.

Today, Ryder said Austin resumed his full duties last night while still in the hospital, but couldn't say when Austin would be released.

And the date for President Biden's Third State of the Union has been set for Thursday March 7. That's the latest State of the Union speech has ever been scheduled. It comes two days after Super Tuesday and a month after a deadline for a potential government shutdown.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, Serbians take to the streets to claim election fraud, and how states are redesigning their flags to make them more appealing and culturally sensitive.