FORT WORTH, TEXAS (AP) – A federal prosecutor said on Friday that a former Boeing test pilot lied to regulators about changes to a critical flight-control system on the 737 Max to reduce the cost of pilot training and save the company tens of millions of dollars.

However, a defence lawyer said Boeing engineers kept Mark A Forkner in the dark about changes to the system, which played a role in two crashes that killed 346 people.

Forkner went on trial in United States (US) district court in Fort Worth on four charges of fraud. He is the only person facing criminal charges in the case, which brought widespread condemnation to Boeing.

As the trial started with jury selection and opening statements, Forkner spoke only briefly, when the judge asked for his plea.

“I am not guilty,” he said, standing and turning to face the jury.

Based on court filings by both sides, the trial is likely to feature testimony from technical experts and also internal Boeing communications to shed light on discussions about the Max inside the company.

Prosecutors will also attempt to use Forkner’s own text messages against him, especially one in which he said, “So I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly).”

“The defendant had contempt for these regulators, and he mocked these regulators,” prosecutor Scott Armstrong told jurors, adding that as Forkner learnt more about changes to the flight-control system called MCAS, “He doubled down on the lies.”

Defence attorney David Gerger said his side will show jurors that Boeing engineers withheld information from Forkner.

And it wasn’t Forkner who set out to save the company money by minimising pilot-training requirements, that objective came down directly from Boeing’s board of directors, he said.

The opening statements came after the selection of a jury of 11 men and one woman, plus four alternates.

An American Airlines pilot was dismissed; so was a man who said he had flown several times on Boeing Maxes.

Judge Reed O’Connor made it clear there was no way to disqualify every potential juror who had read or seen news accounts about the Boeing Max.

He quizzed several people whether they could set aside their notions of the issue and focus on evidence that will be presented when testimony starts tomorrow.

Until he left in 2018, Forkner was Boeing’s chief technical pilot for the Max, which gave him a key role in evaluating the differences between the Max and previous 737s, and deciding how much training pilots needed to fly the new version.

According to the indictment, Forkner knew about changes that made a key flight-control system activate more often than originally planned, but he withheld that knowledge from Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulators.

As a result, information about the new flight-control system, MCAS, was deleted from an FAA report and airplane manuals. Most pilots didn’t know about it.

MCAS activated on faulty sensor readings minutes before crashes in 2018 off the coast of Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia. It repeatedly pushed the noses of the planes down, and pilots were unable to regain control.

SAO PAULO (AP) – A justice of Brazil’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered the shutdown of messaging app Telegram nationwide, arguing it has not cooperated with authorities.

The move is a blow to President Jair Bolsonaro, who has more than one million followers on the platform and defends it as a key tool for his re-election bid in October.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes said in his ruling that Telegram repeatedly ignored requests from Brazilian authorities, including a police request to block profiles and provide information linked to blogger Allan dos Santos, an ally of Bolsonaro’s accused of spreading falsehoods.

The justice added that Telegram has also failed to name a legal representative in Brazil, unlike its competitors.

Many of Bolsonaro’s supporters have turned to Telegram since the messaging app’s competitor WhatsApp changed its policies on message sharing. The president has often accused de Moraes and Brazil’s top court of rulings that go against freedom of speech.

De Moraes, who chairs a probe on misinformation in Brazilian social media, issued a warrant for dos Santos’ arrest last October. The activist, a fugitive now based in the United States (US), has remained active on Telegram, though.

“The Telegram platform, at every possible opportunity, failed to heed judicial orders in a total disregard for the Brazilian judiciary,” de Moraes said in his ruling. He added the suggestion to shut down the app came from federal police.

Dos Santos said de Moraes’ decisions “are based solely on his will”.

“At some point he will have to stop or be stopped,” the blogger told Jovem Pan, a radio and TV channel which broadcasts Bolsonaro’s live transmissions every week. “I don’t believe the Brazilian people will accept these atrocities.”

The justice said in his ruling that “the complete and full suspension of the works of Telegram in Brazil will remain until the judicial decisions previously issued are carried out”.

De Moraes gave Apple, Google and Brazilian phone carriers five days to block Telegram from their platforms.

Bolsonaro and his allies have encouraged followers to join Telegram since January of 2021 – the same month former US President Donald Trump, an inspiration for the Brazilian leader, was permanently suspended from Twitter in the wake of the riot at Capitol Hill.

In January, Bolsonaro was asked by supporters what he thought about investigations into Telegram.

“It is cowardice what they are trying to do to Brazil,” he responded.