Author: NY TIMES

For SpaceX, 2025 should have been the best year yet.Elon Musk, the founder of the private space company, is one of the most influential people in the Oval Office, and President Trump has endorsed his vision of sending humans to Mars.But so far, it has not been a great year for the rocket company. The vehicle that is central to the Mars goal, SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket, has launched twice this year, and twice, it has blown up.The latest explosion occurred on Thursday during the eighth test flight of Starship, less than two months after the seventh test flight also…

Tesla charging stations were set ablaze near Boston on Monday. Shots were fired at a Tesla dealership in Oregon after midnight on Thursday. Arrests were made at a nonviolent protest at a Tesla dealership in Lower Manhattan on Saturday.The electric car company Tesla increasingly found itself in police blotters across the country this week, more than seven weeks after President Trump’s second inauguration swept Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, into the administration as a senior adviser to the president.Mr. Musk, 53, is drawing increasing backlash for his sweeping cuts to federal agencies, a result of the newly formed cost-cutting initiative…

Joan Dye Gussow, a nutritionist and educator who was often referred to as the matriarch of the “eat locally, think globally” food movement, died on Friday at her home in Piermont, N.Y., in Rockland County. She was 96.Her death, from congestive heart failure, was announced by Pamela A. Koch, an associate professor of nutrition education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where Ms. Gussow, a professor emeritus, had taught for more than half a century.Ms. Gussow was one of the first in her field to emphasize the connections between farming practices and consumers’ health. Her book “The Feeding Web: Issues in…

Gwen McCrae, whose gospel-infused R&B hits of the early 1970s like “Lead Me On” and “Rockin’ Chair” featured bouncing, dance-floor-friendly grooves that helped open the door to disco, died on Feb. 21 in Miami. She was 81.Her former husband and frequent singing partner, George McCrae, said she died in a care facility from complications of a stroke she had in 2012.Though she had her share of nationwide hits, Ms. McCrae was best known on the music scene in the Miami area, where her upbeat R&B fit perfectly with the hot nights and subtropical vibe.She released most of her best-known songs…

Itay Svirsky, 40, was a therapist who loved philosophy. Eden Yerushalmi, 24, was training to become a Pilates instructor. Alex Lobanov, 32, a father of three, never met his youngest child.They are among the 41 hostages killed since being taken captive by Hamas and its allies during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to an analysis by The New York Times of forensic reports and military investigations into their deaths, as well as interviews with more than a dozen Israeli soldiers and officials, a senior regional official and seven relatives of hostages.Some were killed by Hamas, some by Israeli…

There really was a woman who photocopied her butt at a workplace in the 1980s.Curtis Sittenfeld, 49, heard about the incident when she was a girl and filed it away. Four decades later, the Great Butt Xeroxing makes an appearance in her new short story collection, “Show Don’t Tell.”She mentioned it one day last week when she met up with her oldest childhood friend, Anne Morriss, in Cincinnati, where they had both grown up. Ms. Sittenfeld, who lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two daughters, was back in town while on tour for her latest book. Ms. Morriss, a…

Ki’lolo Westerlund knows she played the lead role in the NFL Flag 50 commercial football game, which will air during Super Bowl Lix. She knew she would show up with past and present NFL players like Myles Garrett, Justin Jefferson and Marshawn Lynch. She just didn’t sone it. It immediately aired millions of screens worldwide after the half-time, but the 17-year-old flagpole star actually played in New Orleans with her father.Westerlund is an outstanding receiver and defensive back at Las Vegas Free high school. She also helped the U.S. Women’s Junior National Team win gold medals in the 15U and…

For decades a core objective of the Soviet Union was to “decouple” the United States from Europe. Decoupling, as it was called, would break the Western alliance that kept Soviet tanks from rolling across the Prussian plains.Now, in weeks, President Trump has handed Moscow the gift that eluded it during the Cold War and since.Europe, jilted, is in shock. The United States, a nation whose core idea is liberty and whose core calling has been the defense of democracy against tyranny, has turned on its ally and instead embraced a brutal autocrat, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Gripped by…

Sitting beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, more than two dozen of the most powerful figures in the U.S. cryptocurrency industry, together worth many billions of dollars, gathered in the White House on Friday for an audience with President Trump.When Mr. Trump entered the ornate State Dining Room after a short wait, the executives rose to applaud him.“Many of you have been fighting for years for this,” Mr. Trump said as the room quieted. “It’s an honor to be with you at the White House.”Mr. Trump was holding a first-of-its-kind “crypto summit,” meeting face to face with the leaders of…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning to conduct a large-scale study to re-examine whether there is a connection between vaccines and autism, federal officials said Friday.Dozens of scientific studies have failed to find evidence of a link. But the C.D.C. now falls under the purview of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long expressed skepticism about the safety of vaccines and has vowed to revisit the data.“As President Trump said in his Joint Address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. C.D.C. will leave no stone unturned in…