DENVER (AP) — An American Airlines plane that caught fire after landing in Denver, sending 12 people to the hospital, is the latest in a string of aviation incidents that are fueling safety concerns about flying.

Incidents have ranged from the midair collision that killed 67 people near Washington in January to an airliner clipping another in February while taxiing at the Seattle airport.

Federal officials have tried to reassure travelers that flying is the safest mode of transportation, and statistics support that. But the cascade of headlines about things going wrong on airplanes is drawing increasing attention.

Here is a look at some of the recent tragedies and mishaps:

Recent fatal crashes

— Two small planes collided in midair near an Arizona airport in mid-February, killing two people who were on one of the aircraft. Following the collision, one plane landed uneventfully but the other hit the ground near a runway and caught fire. The crash happened at Marana Regional Airport near Tucson.

— A small commuter plane crashed in western Alaska in early February, killing all 10 people on board. The crash was one of the deadliest in the state in 25 years. Radar data indicated that the plane rapidly lost elevation and speed. The Coast Guard was unaware of any distress signals from the aircraft.

— A medical transport plane that had just taken off plummeted into a Philadelphia neighborhood in late January, killing all six people on board and one person on the ground. The National Transportation Safety Board said its cockpit voice recorder likely hadn’t been functioning for years. The crew made no distress calls to air traffic control.

— The collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter above the nation’s capital killed everyone aboard both aircraft in late January. It was the deadliest plane crash in the U.S. since Nov. 12, 2001, when a jet slammed into a New York City neighborhood just after takeoff, killing all 260 people on board and five on the ground.

— A jetliner operated by Jeju Air skidded off a runway, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into flames in late December in South Korea after its landing gear apparently failed to deploy. All but two of the 181 people aboard were killed in one of that country’s worst aviation disasters.

Incidents with injuries

— The American Airlines plane that caught fire at Denver International Airport on Thursday had been diverted there because the crew reported engine vibrations. While taxiing to the gate, an engine caught fire, prompting slides to be deployed so that passengers could evacuate quickly. The people taken to hospitals had minor injuries.

— A single-engine plane carrying five people crashed and burst into flames on Sunday in the parking lot of a retirement community near a small airport near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Everyone on board survived. Three people were taken to an area burn center.

— A Delta Air Lines jet flipped over while landing at Toronto’s Pearson Airport in February. All 80 people on board survived, but some people received minor injuries. Witnesses and video from the scene showed the plane landing so hard that its right wing was sheared off. Investigators said that when trying to determine the cause, they would consider the weather conditions and the possibility of human error.

Close calls

— A FedEx cargo plane made an emergency landing at a busy New Jersey airport earlier this month after a bird strike caused an engine fire that could be seen in the morning sky. The plane landed at Newark Liberty International Airport. There were no reported injuries.

— Pilots on a Southwest Airlines flight that was about to land at Chicago’s Midway Airport were forced to climb back into the sky to avoid another aircraft crossing the runway in late February. Video showed the plane approaching the runway before it abruptly pulled up as a business jet taxied onto the runway without authorization, federal officials said.

— In early February, a Japan Airlines plane was taxiing on the tarmac of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport when it apparently clipped the tail of a parked Delta plane. There were no injuries reported.

— In early January, passengers panicked when a man aboard a JetBlue plane that was taxiing for takeoff from Boston’s Logan International Airport opened an exit door over a wing, trigging an emergency slide to inflate. Other passengers quickly restrained the man and the plane didn’t take off.

Some celebrities, after becoming famous, embark upon unexpected “side quests.”

Earlier this year, singer Harry Styles ran the Tokyo Marathon in an impressive 3 hours, 24 minutes. Beyonce is a real-life beekeeper; the touring electronic music producer DJ Diesel is better known as basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal; comedian Steve Martin is quite skilled on the banjo. Actor Bill Murray co-founded and owned the St. Paul Saints until a few years ago.

Speaking of that last guy…

Murray has also embraced a music career as of late, touring this year as Bill Murray and his Blood Brothers with noted blues musicians Mike Zito and Albert Castiglia. They’re accompanied by a band including Jimmy Vivino, who also moonlighted for years as the lead of late-night host Conan O’Brien’s house band.

The 10-piece band stopped at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis on Thursday night, with a setlist consisting of some Zito and Castiglia originals and plenty of classic covers, about a half dozen or so of which featured Murray on lead vocals.

Murray is perhaps best known for acting in movies such as “Groundhog Day,” “Caddyshack” and every Wes Anderson film between 1998 and 2021. He has occasionally sung on-screen, including a karaoke scene in “Lost in Translation” and an iconic Saturday Night Live role as Nick the Lounge Singer, but these roles lean into imperfections as part of the act: The music was in service of a bigger joke that Murray, too, was in on.

His performances with the Blood Brothers are not jokes, though. At the Orpheum, without comedy as a safety net, Murray occasionally came across like a bumbling bar patron roped into a high-stakes karaoke night. Early on in the evening, singing The Kinks’ “Tired of Waiting For You” and Larry Williams’ “Slow Down,” Murray was fidgety and ambled around the stage between verses. During other songs, on backup percussion (tambourine, cowbell, triangle, bongos), he had the vibe of a band member’s brother tagging along because mom said so.

But he found his footing near the end of the show, delivering actually quite solid performances of Wilson Pickett’s bluesy-soul “In The Midnight Hour” and the local-crowd-pleasing “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan. Whatever his light switch moment was, it came suddenly and late in the game, but seeing gritty, raw emotion pour through his voice and body language during the concert’s final half-hour was revelatory.

However, sound mixing problems plagued the show all night. The mics appeared to be turned up way too high, so the already-loud show became discordant and crash-y when all the instruments onstage — two full drum sets, three electric guitars, a bass, an upright piano, a keyboard, a saxophone, a mic’d-up harmonica and Murray’s backup percussion — were playing together.

A guitar riff by Castiglia that I’m sure was very impressive was almost completely indistinguishable, as was a sax solo I would have loved to hear. (Speaking of, the theater also kept a spotlight trained on Murray almost the entire night, even when he was not the main event: During that sax solo, for instance, Murray was well-lit in the back while the saxophonist was wailing away up front in half-darkness.)

In fact, the evening’s best-sounding song came when Vivino, leading the band in his own tune “Blues In The 21st,” gave up on using the microphones altogether. I’ll also say: During that song, Vivino’s main moment in the limelight, he was funnier and more engaging to watch onstage than Murray was.

To be perfectly clear, though, the whole night was fun, and opening musical comedian Dave Hill demonstrated himself to be a talented rock guitarist and pretty funny stand-up act.

Now, were more audience members there to see Murray than the pro blues rockers? Probably. But while we all waited for Murray to find his A-game, Zito, Castiglia, Vivino and the band — skilled, seasoned performers — had no problem carrying the rest of the show.

And the mostly full house Thursday night was into it: clapping, dancing in the aisles, shouting, “I love you, Bill Murray!” Murray is, first and foremost, a goofball, and seeing him on an unexpected side quest was a delight in itself.

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By LAURAN NEERGAARD

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama woman who lived with a pig kidney for a record 130 days had the organ removed after her body began rejecting it and is back on dialysis, doctors announced Friday – a disappointment in the ongoing quest for animal-to-human transplants.

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Towana Looney is recovering well from the April 4 removal surgery at NYU Langone Health and has returned home to Gadsden, Alabama. In a statement, she thanked her doctors for “the opportunity to be part of this incredible research.”

“Though the outcome is not what anyone wanted, I know a lot was learned from my 130 days with a pig kidney – and that this can help and inspire many others in their journey to overcoming kidney disease,” Looney added.

Scientists are genetically altering pigs so their organs are more humanlike to address a severe shortage of transplantable human organs. More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant list, most who need a kidney, and thousands die waiting.

Before Looney’s transplant only four other Americans had received experimental xenotransplants of gene-edited pig organs – two hearts and two kidneys that lasted no longer than two months. Those recipients, who were severely ill before the surgery, died.

Now researchers are attempting these transplants in slightly less sick patients, like Looney. A New Hampshire man who received a pig kidney in January is faring well and a rigorous study of pig kidney transplants is set to begin this summer. Chinese researchers also recently announced a successful kidney xenotransplant.

Looney had been on dialysis since 2016 and didn’t qualify for a regular transplant – her body was abnormally primed to reject a human kidney. So she sought out a pig kidney and it functioned well – she called herself “superwoman” and lived longer than anyone with a gene-edited pig organ before, from her Nov. 25 transplant until early April when her body began rejecting it.

NYU xenotransplant pioneer Dr. Robert Montgomery, Looney’s surgeon, said what triggered that rejection is being investigated. But he said Looney and her doctors agreed it would be less risky to remove the pig kidney than to try saving it with higher, riskier doses of anti-rejection drugs.

“We did the safe thing,” Montgomery told The Associated Press. “She’s no worse off than she was before (the xenotransplant) and she would tell you she’s better off because she had this 4½ month break from dialysis.”

Shortly before the rejection began, Looney had suffered an infection related to her prior time on dialysis and her immune-suppressing anti-rejection drugs were slightly lowered, Montgomery said. At the same time, her immune system was reactivating after the transplant. Those factors may have combined to damage the new kidney, he said.

Rejection is a common threat after transplants of human organs, too, and sometimes cost patients their new organ. Doctors face a balancing act in tamping down patients’ immune systems just enough to preserve the new organ while allowing them to fight infection.

It’s an even bigger challenge with xenotransplantation. While these pig organs have been altered to help prevent immediate rejection, patients still require immune-suppressing drugs. Which drugs are best to prevent different, later forms of rejection isn’t clear, said Dr. Tatsuo Kawai of Massachusetts General Hospital, another xenotransplant pioneer. Different research groups are using different combinations, he said.

“When we have more experience, we’ll know what kind of immunosuppression is really necessary for xenotransplant,” Kawai said

Montgomery said Looney’s experience offers valuable lessons for the upcoming clinical trial.

Making xenotransplant ultimately work “is going to be won with singles and doubles, not swinging for the fence every time we do one of these,” he said.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.