February 2024 - Page 8 of 13

SpaceX to Launch Intuitive Machines Nova-C Moon Lander: How to Watch

Feb

SpaceX to Launch Intuitive Machines Nova-C Moon Lander: How to Watch

Another month, another try at the moon.A robotic lunar lander is scheduled to launch in the early morning hours of Wednesday. If all goes well, it will become the first American spacecraft to set down softly on the moon’s surface since the Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972.It is also the latest private effort to send spacecraft to the moon. Earlier attempts have all ended in failure. But the company in charge of the latest effort, Intuitive Machines of Houston, is optimistic. “I feel fairly confident that we’re going to be successful softly touching down on the moon,” said Stephen…

January CPI Report Live Updates: Prices Cool Less Than Expected

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Investments and Business

January CPI Report Live Updates: Prices Cool Less Than Expected

Inflation cooled less than expected in January and showed worrying staying power after stripping out volatile food and fuel costs — a reminder that bringing price increases under control remains a bumpy process.The overall Consumer Price Index was up 3.1 percent from a year earlier, which was down from 3.4 percent in December but more than the 2.9 percent that economists had forecast. That figure is down from the latest peak of 9.1 percent in the summer of 2022.But after stripping out food and fuel, which bounce around in price from month to month, “core” prices held roughly steady on…

Israel-Hamas War in Gaza News: Live Updates

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Politics

Israel-Hamas War in Gaza News: Live Updates

A photo released by the Israeli military shows two freed hostages, Fernando Simon Marman, right, and Louis Har, second from left, being reunited with their families in Israel on Monday.Credit...Israeli military, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIsraeli security forces said early Monday that they had freed two hostages who were being held in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, in only the second known rescue of its kind in Gaza since the start of the war. Officials in Gaza said that accompanying Israeli strikes had killed dozens of Palestinians in the city overnight.The hostages, Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis…

Brooke Ellison, Prominent Disability Rights Advocate, Is Dead at 45

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Politics

Brooke Ellison, Prominent Disability Rights Advocate, Is Dead at 45

Brooke Ellison, who after being paralyzed from the neck down by a childhood car accident went on to graduate from Harvard and became a professor and a devoted disability rights advocate, died on Sunday in Stony Brook, N.Y., on Long Island. She was 45.Her death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of quadriplegia, her mother, Jean Ellison, said.As an 11-year-old, Brooke had been taking karate, soccer, cello and dance lessons and singing in a church choir. But on Sept. 4, 1990, she was struck by a car while running across a road near her home in Stony Brook. Her…

Caitlin Clark’s green-light range made her the gold standard in women’s college basketball

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Politics

Caitlin Clark’s green-light range made her the gold standard in women’s college basketball

IOWA CITY, Iowa — It’s impossible to pinpoint the exact moment when it was determined in Iowa that any shot that left Caitlin Clark’s hands was not just a reasonable shot, but also a good shot. Because there are green lights, and then there are green lights. And Clark has matter-of-factly operated in the latter for much of her career.But there’s a solid argument to be made that it was Feb. 6, 2022.It was Clark’s sophomore season, and while she had been putting up big numbers, she wasn’t yet considered the one-woman wrecking crew that she has now become. To…

When the Voice You Hear Is Not the Actor You See

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Science and Technology

When the Voice You Hear Is Not the Actor You See

In the darkest moments of a family tragedy, when the playwright Mona Pirnot couldn’t find the strength to verbalize her feelings to her boyfriend or her therapist, she tried something a little unorthodox: She typed her thoughts into her laptop, and prompted a text-to-speech program to voice them aloud.It was a coping mechanism that also sparked a creative pivot: Pirnot’s then-boyfriend, now-husband, Lucas Hnath, is also a playwright, with a longtime interest in sound and a more recent history of building shows around disembodied voices. His last play, “A Simulacrum,” featured a magician re-creating his side of a conversation with…

Pro Sports in Las Vegas Aren’t Cheered by Everyone

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Investments and Business

Pro Sports in Las Vegas Aren’t Cheered by Everyone

The history of Las Vegas has been marked by a relentless churn of hotels, casinos, theaters and restaurants. But only recently has the city’s landscape included major professional sports teams.The Golden Knights of the National Hockey League were the first to start play here in 2017. The Aces of the Women’s National Basketball Association started in 2018, and the National Football League’s Raiders arrived from Oakland in 2020. Last year, Major League Baseball’s Athletics were given the go-ahead to make the same Oakland-to-Las Vegas move, and the National Basketball Association is expected to add a team in the coming years.Las…