LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles jury dealt a blow to social media giants Meta and YouTube this week when it found that the platforms were negligent for designing addictive features that harmed the mental health of a California woman.

Both companies plan to appeal, but the ruling has ignited uncertainty around the tech companies' future and ...Read more

One of the most compelling theories about the future of artificial intelligence comes, oddly enough, from a 161-year-old paper about the coal industry. In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that improvements to the coal-fired steam engine had not reduced Britain’s coal consumption. Instead, they had massively increased...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — Before the four astronauts of the Artemis II mission travel farther from Earth than any human ever has, they first had to get to the launch site.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen arrived from Houston at 2:15 p.m. to Kennedy Space Center as ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — As more retailers bring AI-powered technologies into stores — including charging different customers different prices for the same item — union leaders and lawmakers are starting to push back.

Retail chains have long varied prices from store to store. But with AI, companies are experimenting with more data-driven pricing, ...Read more

Social media biggies have taken it on the chin from juries this week. And although, for reasons I’ll get to, I’m skeptical that the verdicts will hold up on appeal, I do think there are some important lessons here.

The cases themselves are, by now, well known. On Tuesday, a jury in New Mexico awarded $375 million against Meta Platforms Inc....Read more

The seemingly limitless proliferation of cases in which lawyers have been caught letting fictitious AI-generated legal citations contaminate their briefs continues to amaze.

That's not only because judges are fining more lawyers for their laziness, but because the publicity about these embarrassments has been inescapable.

Here's one involving ...Read more

The oil-dependent world is in crisis. Ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz – through which more than a quarter of global seaborne oil trade and a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas flow – is at a virtual standstill. Oil prices have climbed, briefly topping US$119 a barrel.

The largest release of oil from countries’ ...Read more

Primatologist Birutė Galdikas died on March 24, 2026, and an era of science that began in the forests of Tanzania, Rwanda and Borneo studying humanity’s closest living relatives more than half a century ago is coming quietly to a close. Her passing marks more than the loss of a scientist – it’s the end of one of the most extraordinary ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — Before the four astronauts of the Artemis II mission travel farther from Earth than any human ever has, they first have to get to the launch site.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Glover are set to arrive from Houston today at Kennedy Space Center ...Read more

Most people have some amount of Neanderthal DNA from the extinct cousins of modern humans who lived in Europe and Asia until about 40,000 years ago. New research on available Neanderthal genetic material shows a strong bias toward male Neanderthals mating with Homo sapiens women.

It’s unclear why Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Imagine waking up early, eager to peep dazzling carpets of brilliant orange flowers at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. Instagram posts promised a spectacle.

You drive to the reserve north of Los Angeles, but the rolling hills aren’t alive with color.

Bummer. The bloom is over.

Thanks to AI, and a local ...Read more

The fight against infectious disease is a race against evolution. Bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. Viruses adapt to spread more quickly. Diseases transmitted by insects present another evolutionary front: Insects themselves can evolve resistance to the poisons that people use to kill them.

In particular, the mosquito-borne ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Netflix prices in the U.S. are going up — again.

For the second time in a little over a year, the streaming service will demand a few more dollars a month from its subscribers. Netflix's standard plan with ads will now cost $8.99, up $1. Both the prices for the standard plan with no ads and the premium plan are rising by $2, ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — Reports of a mystery rocket seen launching from Cape Canaveral on Thursday could be another hypersonic missile test for the Department of Defense.

The U.S. Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security had posted navigational warnings earlier this week with air and maritime space keep-out zones similar to previous hypersonic...Read more

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Nine people will take the ride to the top of the launch tower for the Artemis II moon mission, but only five will ride back down.

That’s if NASA’s plans to launch four astronauts on board the Orion spacecraft atop the Space Launch System rocket go as planned. Targeting liftoff as early as next Wednesday, the quartet...Read more

Paul Ehrlich opened his 1968 book “The Population Bomb” with a scene recounting returning to his hotel through a crowded Delhi neighborhood on a stifling night in the mid-1960s. He described the physical sensation of overpopulation: people eating, washing, arguing, begging – “people, people, people, people.”

From that ...Read more

What’s the difference between a Roomba and “The Jetsons” robot maid, Rosie? It’s not a joke, it’s a challenge University of Maryland doctoral student Seungjae “Jay” Lee is tackling in hopes of training real-world domestic robots to master housekeeping tasks.

His work focuses on incorporating the vast reservoir of web videos to ...Read more

The disruptions from the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran spread quickly to commercial aircraft, shipping lanes and the world’s energy supply. Those repercussions have already hit fuel costs, including for motorists, truckers and fishermen, and are set to spread even more widely, to packaging, household goods, appliances, medicines and ...Read more

TOKYO — Sony’s new LinkBuds Clip may not be the best-sounding earbuds in the world, and their little case could be mistaken for a ring box, but there are at least two things that make them stand out from the crowded market of earbuds.

Unlike most earbuds and headphones these days, they're not pretending to let you keep the world out. In ...Read more