AFP USA

Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading Trump foe and the first woman to serve as House of Representatives speaker, announced Thursday that she will step down at the next election.Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through Congress as she navigated America’s bitter partisan divide.In later years, she was a fierce adversary of President Donald Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to Congress live on television.”I want you, my fellow San Franciscans, to be the first to know I will not be seeking reelection to Congress,” she said in a video statement pointedly aimed at her hometown constituents.”With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative.”Pelosi — whose term ends in January 2027 — was the first woman to lead a major political party in the US Congress. Despite entering political office later in life, she quickly rose through the ranks to become a darling of liberal West Coast politics and, eventually, one of the most powerful women in US history.She is in her 19th term and has represented her San Francisco-area district for 38 years. But her fame centers on her renowned skills at the national level, leading her party for two decades.As House speaker for eight years, she was second in line to the presidency, after the vice president, including during Trump’s chaotic first term.To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers on all sides admired her ability to corral her fractious caucus through difficult votes, including Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act.While several Republicans took to social media to pay her tribute despite their political differences, Trump’s reaction was less gracious.”I thought she was an evil woman who did a poor job, who cost the country a lot in damages and in reputation. I thought she was terrible,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office.- ‘Tenacity, intellect, strategic acumen’ -The granddaughter of Italian immigrants, Pelosi was born in Baltimore where her father, Thomas D’Alesandro, was a mayor and congressman who schooled her in “retail politics.” Pelosi moved to San Francisco and raised five children with businessman Paul Pelosi before being elected to Congress at age 47.”Nancy Pelosi will be recorded as the greatest speaker in American history, the result of her tenacity, intellect, strategic acumen and fierce advocacy,” said Adam Schiff, a colleague in the California House delegation before he moved up to the Senate.But her status as a hate figure for the right was brought in stark relief when an intruder, apparently looking for the speaker, violently assaulted her husband in the runup to the 2022 midterm elections.And during the 2021 assault on the US Capitol, supporters of then-president Trump ransacked her office, and a crowd baying for blood chanted “Where’s Nancy?” as they desecrated the halls of Congress.Pelosi moved quickly after that to secure the second impeachment of Trump, whom she called the “deranged, unhinged, dangerous president of the United States.”Her legislative achievements include steering through Obama’s key health care reforms as well as massive economic packages after both the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic.”No matter what title they have bestowed upon me — speaker, leader, whip — there has been no greater honor for me than to stand on the House floor and say, I speak for the people of San Francisco,” Pelosi said.

A US judge dropped criminal charges against Boeing on Thursday over deadly crashes of its 737 MAX 8 aircraft as part of an agreement between the company and prosecutors.Judge Reed O’Connor’s decision stemmed from a May 23 agreement between the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the aircraft manufacturer to resolve the case over two crashes that resulted in 346 fatalities.Under the deal, Boeing will pay $1.1 billion in return for the dismissal of a charge of “conspiracy to defraud the United States” over its conduct in the certification of the MAX, according to a federal filing.The amount includes a $244 million fine, $445 million for a compensation fund for families of victims, and $455 million to strengthen safety, quality and compliance programs at Boeing.The accord, a “non-prosecution agreement,” scuttled a criminal trial that had been scheduled for June in Fort Worth, Texas.The agreement resolves the case without requiring Boeing to plead guilty to fraud in the certification of the MAX.A criminal conviction could have jeopardized Boeing’s ability to secure contracts with the US government, a major customer for its aerospace and defense businesses.Boeing has said it is “deeply sorry” for the crashes of a 2018 Lion Air flight in Indonesia that killed 189 and a 2019 Ethiopian Airlines flight that killed 157.Boeing has blamed the design of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a flight handling system that malfunctioned.”We are committed to honoring the obligations of our agreement with the Department of Justice. We are also committed to continuing the significant efforts we have made as a company to strengthen our safety, quality, and compliance programs,” Boeing said in a statement Thursday.- Public interest -But in his order Thursday, O’Connor wrote that he had to dismiss the fraud charge even though he “disagrees with the Government that dismissing the criminal information in this case is in the public interest.”Attorney Paul Cassell, a former federal judge who represents some family members of MAX victims on a pro bono basis, noted O’Connor’s reservations as he “reluctantly concluded that he was powerless to do anything about the reprehensible deal.” “We believe that the courts don’t have to stand silently by while an injustice is perpetrated,” said Cassell, now a law professor at the University of Utah, in an email to AFP.”We will be rapidly going to the Fifth Circuit to ask it to reverse this decision, enforce the rights of the victim’s families, and deny the Government’s effort to simply drop these charges.”In announcing its plan in May, the DoJ acknowledged the opposition of some families, while noting that others preferred to move on and not prolong the litigation — with the latter informing the agency’s course.”Rather than allow for protracted litigation, this agreement provides finality for the victims and requires Boeing to act now,” the department said Thursday. “We are confident that this resolution is the most just outcome.”Thursday’s announcement is the latest development in a marathon case that came in the wake of the two crashes, which tarnished Boeing’s reputation and contributed to leadership shakeups at the aviation giant.The case dates to a January 2021 DOJ agreement with Boeing that settled charges that the company knowingly defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration during the MAX certification.The 2021 accord included a three-year probation period. But in May 2024, the DOJ determined that Boeing had violated the 2021 accord following a number of subsequent safety lapses.Boeing agreed in July 2024 to plead guilty to the conspiracy charge. But in December, O’Connor rejected a settlement codifying the guilty plea.Boeing also still faces a small group of civil cases on the MAX crashes, despite having settled dozens of cases.A Chicago federal court began hearing this week a claim from family members of one victim over financial damages.  

Canada’s high court on Thursday ended a months-long battle to save some 400 ostriches exposed to avian influenza that had attracted support from the likes of US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.The final legal block to culling the birds was removed when Canada’s Supreme Court refused to hear the case brought by the owners of the ostriches seeking to overturn a kill order.  The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it will now move forward with “depopulation and disposal measures” aimed at mitigating the risk of further avian influenza infections, after a December 2024 outbreak killed 69 birds at Universal Ostrich Farms in rural British Columbia.The owners of the farm had launched multiple legal appeals against the initial cull order, maintaining that the birds developed herd immunity and could have medically valuable antibodies.”They’re healthy. They are everything that we have and everything that we’ve loved for 35 years. They’re healthy, please stop,” said Katie Pastiney, the daughter of the farm owners, in a tearful plea posted to Facebook following the court’s refusal to hear the case. Since January 2025, the movement to “Save the ostriches” has attracted hundreds of in-person protesters and a swell of sympathy online, largely pushing back on government health interventions. The mobilization went international in May when Kennedy sent a letter to the Canadian government criticizing the cull as a “potentially disproportionate measure.”In October, American billionaire John Catsimatidis, who is partially funding Universal Ostrich Farms’ legal fees, called on the Canadian government to allow the US Food and Drug Administration to test the flock, raising the possibility that the birds could be transferred to the United States.Doctors and the poultry industry track outbreaks of avian influenza to prevent the spread of the virus to other farm animals and humans.The latest data from the Canadian government indicates 50 outbreaks of avian influenza in birds across the country in November 2025.Since 2003, the World Health Organization has documented 900 cases of human infection with avian influenza, more than half of which have been fatal.

Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics and the first woman to serve as speaker of the House of Representatives, announced on Thursday that she will step down at the next election.Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered consistently for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through Congress as she navigated America’s bitter partisan divide.In later years, she became a key foe of President Donald Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when images of her ripping up his speech to Congress were beamed on live television around the world.”I want you, my fellow San Franciscans, to be the first to know I will not be seeking reelection to Congress,” she said in a video statement pointedly aimed at her hometown constituents.”With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative.”Pelosi — whose term ends in January 2027 — was the first woman to lead a major political party in the US Congress. Despite entering political office later in life, she quickly rose through the ranks to become a darling of liberal West Coast politics and, eventually, one of the most powerful women in US history.She is in her 19th term and has represented her San Francisco-area district for 38 years. But her fame centers especially on her renowned skills at the national level, leading her party for two decades.As House speaker for eight years, she was second in line to the presidency, after the vice president, including during Trump’s chaotic first term.She was revered for her ability to corral her often fractious caucus through difficult votes, including Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act and Joe Biden’s infrastructure programs.Republicans painted her as the driving force behind a liberal elite that had turned its back on American values and was undermining the social fabric.- ‘No greater honor’ -The granddaughter of Italian immigrants, Pelosi was born in Baltimore where her father, Thomas D’Alesandro, was a mayor and congressman who schooled her in “retail politics” from a young age and staunchly backed Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.Pelosi attended her first Democratic National Convention before hitting her teens and was pictured with John F. Kennedy at his inaugural ball when she was 20.She moved to San Francisco and raised five children with businessman Paul Pelosi while delving into Democratic politics before being elected to Congress at age 47.”Nancy Pelosi will be recorded as the greatest speaker in American history, the result of her tenacity, intellect, strategic acumen and fierce advocacy,” said Adam Schiff, a colleague in the California House delegation before he moved up to the Senate.A San Francisco liberal and multimillionaire, Pelosi is far from universally popular.Her status as a hate figure for the right was brought in stark relief when an intruder, apparently looking for the speaker, violently assaulted her husband in the runup to the 2022 midterm elections.And during the 2021 assault on the US Capitol, supporters of then-president Trump ransacked her office, and a crowd baying for blood chanted “Where’s Nancy?” as they desecrated the halls of Congress.Pelosi moved quickly after that to secure the second impeachment of Trump, whom she called the “deranged, unhinged, dangerous president of the United States.”Her legislative achievements include steering through Obama’s key health care reforms as well as massive economic packages after both the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.”I say to my colleagues in the House all the time, no matter what title they have bestowed upon me — speaker, leader, whip — there has been no greater honor for me than to stand on the House floor and say, I speak for the people of San Francisco,” Pelosi said.

US officials said the scheduled capacity for flights would be cut by 10 percent in 40 busy air traffic areas nationwide on Friday as the longest government shutdown drags on.Federal agencies have been grinding to a halt since Congress failed to approve funding past September 30, with some 1.4 million federal workers, from air traffic controllers to park wardens, still on enforced leave or working without pay.”There is going to be a 10 percent reduction in capacity at 40 of our locations,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told a White House news briefing on Wednesday, adding that the cuts would come into effect on Friday.Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief Bryan Bedford said the reductions would be at “40 high traffic environment markets.”The official list of affected airports is expected to be published later on Thursday but, according to US media outlets, flights will be reduced at some of the busiest airports in the nation, including Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Washington.International flights would not be affected by this measure, a source speaking on condition of anonymity told ABC News.Flight reductions will begin at 4 percent on Friday and gradually reach 10 percent, media outlets reported.AFP contacted the Department of Transport and FAA seeking more details about the airports that would be affected.United Airlines issued a statement on social media that said “long-haul international and hub-to-hub flights will not be impacted.”More than 10,000 flights to or from the United States experienced delays last weekend, according to the tracking service FlightAware.The government shutdown became the longest in US history on Wednesday, eclipsing the 35-day record set during President Donald Trump’s first term.Airport workers calling in sick rather than working without pay — which led to significant delays — was a major factor in Trump bringing an end to that 2019 shutdown.- ‘Jeopardy’ -More than 60,000 air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration officers are now working without pay, and the White House has warned that increased absenteeism could create chaos at check-in lines.House Speaker Mike Johnson said in late October that five percent of flight delays had been the result of staffing shortages but that number had now increased to more than 50 percent.He warned at the time that the “longer the shutdown goes on, and as fewer air traffic controllers show up to work, the safety of the American people is thrown further into jeopardy.”However, Democrats and Republicans have both remained unwavering over the main sticking point in the shutdown: health care spending.Democrats say they will only provide votes to end the funding lapse after a deal has been struck to extend expiring insurance subsidies that make health care affordable for millions of Americans.Republicans insist they will only address health care once Democrats have voted to switch the lights back on in Washington.Trump has sought to apply his own pressure to force Democrats to cave by threatening mass layoffs of federal workers and using the shutdown to target progressive priorities.He repeated on Tuesday his administration’s threat to cut off a vital aid program that helps 42 million Americans pay for groceries for the first time in the scheme’s more than 60-year history, even though the move was blocked by two courts.The White House later clarified that it was “fully complying” with its legal obligations and was working to get partial Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments “out the door as much as we can and as quickly as we can.”

Tesla shareholders will determine on Thursday the fate of a massive pay package meant to retain Elon Musk long enough to achieve technological breakthroughs he vows will change the world.Musk — who has boasted that Tesla’s engineering prowess in artificial intelligence, autonomy and robotics will leave rival tech giants in the dust — stands to garner as much as $1 trillion in an unprecedented package tied to performance benchmarks.Tesla Chair Robin Denholm has appeared on CNBC and other broadcasts in recent weeks to sell the plan in a sign of the board’s continued enthusiastic backing for Musk, despite criticism that the billionaire’s embrace of far-right political figures has weighed on sales.”Without Elon, Tesla could lose significant value, as our company may no longer be valued for what we aim to become: a transformative force reimagining the fundamental building blocks of mobility, energy and labor,” Denholm said in an October 27 message to shareholders.Musk himself has hinted he could leave Tesla or take a back seat if his ownership share is not raised enough to give him the influence over its future that he desires.The package could lift Musk’s holding to more than 25 percent of Tesla shares from its current level of more than 12 percent.”It’s not like I’m going to spend the money,” Musk said on a conference call in October. “It’s just if we build this robot army, (I want to) have at least a strong influence over that robot army.”The outcome of the vote will be announced at the annual shareholder meeting at Tesla’s factory in Austin, Texas, on Thursday.Anti-Musk protesters plan a demonstration outside the Tesla gigafactory that day, after an anti-Musk rally in downtown Austin on Wednesday.”A trillion dollars is way too much any person should have under any circumstances,” activist Ethan McBride told AFP, calling the package a means of “enriching the man who is funding degradation of our democracy.”- Norway fund says no -Musk, witha net worth of more than $500 billion, is already the world’s richest person, according to Forbes’ real-time list of billionaires.He must hit 12 milestones related to market capitalization to receive the full pay package. The first tranche would be available if and when Tesla reaches $2 trillion in market value.The plan also involves a series of operating profit and product goals, such as the delivery of 20 million Tesla vehicles. The package aims to ensure Musk stays at Tesla for at least seven-and-a-half years.Musk has described Tesla’s potential growth as nearly boundless, saying in July that “Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world by far” if the company delivers on its vision for autonomous driving and artificial intelligence.Musk’s success in growing Tesla, SpaceX and other ventures has inspired many believers. However, skeptics have complained that the company has been slow to introduce new models and that Musk has a penchant for pushing back or not delivering on targets that sound difficult if not impossible.The pay proposal has been panned by Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), advisory firms Musk has referred to as “corporate terrorists.”An October 17 ISS analysis of the proposal criticized the rationale for the potential windfall, noting that Musk’s financial interests are already closely tied to Tesla’s fate.As structured, the separation of the overall package into tranches of “unprecedented” value “could undermine the necessity for all goals to be realized,” said ISS, which also flagged the lack of explicit requirements that the busy Musk keep focused on Tesla.Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, one of Tesla’s 10 largest shareholders, said this week it was voting no.”While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution and lack of mitigation of key person risk — consistent with our views on executive compensation,” Norges Bank Investment Management said on its website.Others voting against the proposalinclude New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.Florida state officials have endorsed the plan, noting Musk’s record of creating equity value and calling the package the “gold standard for executive compensation.”

The death toll from a cargo plane crash in the southern US state of Kentucky rose to 12 on Wednesday, with investigators saying the accident was caused by one of the engines catching fire and detaching during takeoff.The McDonnell Douglas MD-11, operated by package delivery giant UPS and bound for Hawaii, crashed at 5:15 pm (2215 GMT) Tuesday, shortly after departing from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport.It exploded into flames as it plowed into businesses adjacent to the airport, killing multiple people on the ground. A three-person crew was aboard.”I’m deeply saddened to share that the death toll has risen to 12, with several individuals still unaccounted for,” Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said on X.Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear called the tragedy “heartbreaking” and “unimaginable.”The National Transportation Safety Board sent teams to Louisville to investigate the accident. NTSB member Todd Inman told reporters that investigators had reviewed closed-circuit airport footage “which shows the left engine detaching from the wing during the take-off roll.”While the plane crashed and destroyed or damaged multiple buildings, leaving a fiery debris field nearly half a mile (800 meters) long, its left engine remained “on the airfield,” Inman said.He added that the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, known as a plane’s black boxes, have been identified and will be sent to Washington for analysis.Tuesday’s crash reportedly was the deadliest in the global package delivery giant’s history. Its main hub, Worldport, is in Louisville, where it employs thousands of people.UPS has halted package sorting operations at its facility. – 38,000 gallons of fuel -Video shared by WLKY showed the left engine ablaze as the aircraft tried to lift off.By early Wednesday, Greenberg said on X that aviation officials had reopened a runway.Airport spokesman Jonathan Bevin said the cargo flight “went down three miles (five kilometers) south of the airfield” after taking off.The plane, filled with some 38,000 gallons of fuel for the long-haul flight to Hawaii, narrowly missed a major Ford vehicle assembly plant that employs some 3,000 people, adjacent to the UPS Worldport facility.”It could have been significantly worse,” Beshear said of the tragedy.Aerial footage of the crash site showed a long trail of debris as firefighters blasted water on the flames, with smoke billowing from the area.Beshear said the aircraft hit a petroleum recycling facility “pretty directly.”According to NTSB, the plane was built in 1991 and was modified into a cargo aircraft. McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1996. Boeing, the US aviation giant which has experienced multiple fatal crashes and safety incidents in the past decade, said in a statement that “we stand ready to support our customer and have offered technical assistance to the NTSB.”UPS travels to more than 200 countries via nearly 2,000 daily flights, with a fleet of 516 aircraft. It owns 294 of those planes and hires the rest.The crash comes amid the longest government shutdown in US history with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warning of “mass chaos” due to a lack of air traffic control staff.”You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers,” Duffy told reporters Tuesday.NTSB member Inman said the agency was not aware of any staff shortages at Louisville’s airport at the time of the crash, although a full investigation into all aspects of the crash including air traffic control staffing has been launched.In January, an American Eagle airliner hit a military helicopter outside Washington’s Ronald Reagan National airport, killing all 67 people on both aircraft.That crash, which ended the country’s 16-year streak of no fatal commercial air crashes, has added to concerns about the US air traffic control system, which some regard as an understaffed operation beset by aging equipment problems.

In a parallel reality, Donald Trump reigns as king, fighter pilot, and Superman, and his political opponents are cast as criminals and laughingstocks — an unprecedented weaponization of AI imagery by a sitting American president.Trump has ramped up his use of artificial intelligence-generated content on his Truth Social channel since starting his second White House term, making his administration the first to deploy hyper-realistic fake visuals as a core communications strategy.Trump, no stranger to conspiracy theories and unfounded claims, has used the content in his breathless social media commentary to glorify himself and skewer his critics — particularly during moments of national outrage.Last month, he posted a fake video showing himself wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet labeled “King Trump” that dumps what appears to be excrement on crowds of protesters.The clip — accompanied by singer Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone” — was posted the same day as nationwide “No Kings” protests against what critics called his authoritarian behavior.In another post, the White House depicted Trump as Superman amid fevered social media speculation about his health.”THE SYMBOL OF HOPE,” the post said.”SUPERMAN TRUMP.”- ‘Distort reality’ -Trump or the White House have similarly posted AI-made images showing the president dressed as the pope, roaring alongside a lion, and conducting an orchestra at the Kennedy Center, a venerable arts complex in the US capital.The fabricated imagery has deceived social media users, some of whom questioned in comments whether they were authentic.It was unclear whether the imagery was generated by Trump himself or his aides. The White House did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.Wired magazine recently labeled Trump “America’s first generative AI president.””Trump peddles disinformation on and offline to boost his own image, attack his adversaries and control public discourse,” Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the advocacy group Free Press, told AFP.”For someone like him, unregulated generative AI is the perfect tool to capture people’s attention and distort reality.”In September, the president triggered outrage after posting an apparent AI-generated video of himself promising every American access to all-healing “MedBed” hospitals.MedBed, a widely debunked conspiracy theory popular among far-right circles, refers to an imaginary medical device equipped with futuristic technology. Adherents say it can cure any ailment, from asthma to cancer.Trump’s phony clip — later deleted without any explanation — was styled as a Fox News segment and featured his daughter-in-law Lara Trump promoting a fictitious White House launch of the “historic new health care system.”- ‘Campaigning through trolling’ -“How do you bring people back to a shared reality when those in power keep stringing them along?” asked Noelle Cook, a researcher and author of “The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging.”Trump has reserved the most provocative AI posts for his rivals and critics, using them to rally his conservative base.In July, he posted an AI video of former president Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and appearing behind bars in an orange jumpsuit.Later, he posted an AI clip of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries — who is Black — wearing a fake mustache and a sombrero.Jeffries slammed the image as racist.”While it would in many ways be desirable for the president of the United States to stay above the fray and away from sharing AI images, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he sees his time in office as a non-stop political campaign,” Joshua Tucker, co-director of the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics, told AFP.”I would see his behavior more as campaigning through trolling than actively trying to propagate the false belief that these images depict reality.”Mirroring Trump’s strategy, California Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday posted an apparent AI video on X lampooning Republicans after Democrats swept key US elections.The clip depicted wrestlers inside a ring with superimposed faces of Democratic leaders knocking down their Republican opponents, including Trump. The post read: “Now that’s what we call a takedown.”

Tech firms are floating the idea of building data centers in space and tapping into the sun’s energy to meet out-of-this-world power demands in a fierce artificial intelligence race.US startup Starcloud this week sent a refrigerator-sized satellite containing an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) into orbit in what the AI chip maker touted as a “cosmic debut” for the mini-data center.”The idea is that it will soon make much more sense to build data centers in space than it does to build them on Earth,” Starcloud chief executive Philip Johnston said at a recent tech conference in Riyadh.Along with a constant supply of solar energy, data centers are easier to cool in space, advocates note.Announcements have come thick and fast, the latest being Google this week unveiling plans to launch test satellites by early 2027 as part of its Suncatcher project.That news came just days after tech billionaire Elon Musk claimed his SpaceX startup should be capable of deploying data centers in orbit next year thanks to its Starlink satellite program.Starcloud’s satellite was taken into space by a SpaceX rocket on Sunday.- Junk and radiation -Current projects to put data centers into orbit envision relying on clusters of low Earth orbit satellites positioned close enough together to ensure reliable wireless connectivity.Lasers will connect space computers to terrestrial systems.”From a proof concept, it’s already there,” University of Arizona engineering professor Krishna Muralidharan, who is involved with such work, said of the technology.Muralidharan believes space data centers could be commercially viable in about a decade.Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the tech titan behind private space exploration company Blue Origin, has estimated it might take up to twice that long.Critical technical aspects of such operations need to be resolved, particularly harm done to GPUs by high levels of radiation and extreme temperatures as well as the danger of being hit by space junk.”Engineering work will be necessary,” said University of Michigan assistant professor of engineering Christopher Limbach, contending that it is a matter of cost rather than technical feasibility.- Sun synched -The big draw of space for data centers is power supply, with the option of synchronizing satellites to the sun’s orbit to ensure constant light on solar panels.Tech titans building AI data centers have ever-growing need for electricity, and have even taken to investing in nuclear power plants.Data centers in space also avoid the challenges of acquiring land and meeting local regulations or community resistance to projects.And advocates argue that data centers operating in space are less harmful overall to the environment, aside from the pollution generated by rocket launches.Water needed to cool a space data center would be about the same amount used by a space station, relying on exhaust radiators and re-using a relatively small amount of liquid.”The real question is whether the idea is economically viable,” said Limbach.An obstacle to deploying servers in space has been the cost of getting them into orbit.But a reusable SpaceX mega-rocket called Starship with massive payload potential promises to slash launch expenses by at least 30 times.”Historically, high launch costs have been a primary barrier to large-scale space-based systems,” Suncatcher project head Travis Beals said in a post.But project launch pricing data suggests prices may fall by the mid-2030s to the point at which “operating a space-based data center could become comparable” to having it on Earth, Beals added.”If there ever was a time to chart new economic paths in space — or re-invent old ones — it is now,” Limbach said.

Boeing reached a last-minute settlement in one of two lawsuits in this week’s trial in Chicago over a 2019 737 MAX crash that killed 157 people, attorneys announced Wednesday.The agreement leaves a single plaintiff remaining in the first civil trial over the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash, which began in earnest Wednesday after jury selection wrapped up a day earlier.The litigation centers on how to calculate monetary damages to plaintiffs from Boeing, which acknowledges the need to compensate victims but disputes the amount.Opening statements were pushed back after the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Clifford, announced a settlement involving the relatives of Kenyan-born Mercy Ndivo, who died in the crash aged 28 along with her husband, leaving behind a daughter and her parents.”Our clients are very appreciative of the court allowing them to use its resources to achieve the justice they required,” said Clifford, adding that the settlement amount was confidential.During Wednesday’s proceeding, Ndivo’s father, Frederick Ndivo, approached US District Judge Jorge Alonso and expressed gratitude. Ndivo was joined in the courtroom by his wife and eldest daughter.”We are so grateful,” Ndivo said in court. “We wish the legal system of the United States will continue upholding the rights of the people… the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”The lawsuits stem from the March 10, 2019, flight that crashed six minutes after departing Addis Ababa for Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board.Family members of 155 victims filed lawsuits between April 2019 and March 2021, alleging wrongful death and negligence, among other claims.Alonso has been splitting the cases into groups with five or six plaintiffs at a time. In prior rounds, the judge has canceled proceedings after all the cases in a group settled.In addition to Ndivo, Clifford reached settlements with relatives of two other victims, Abdul Jalil Qaid Ghazi Hussein, 38, the father of seven children and Nasrudin Mohammed, 30, who was pregnant with a fourth child.- Remaining litigants -Litigants in the remaining case are the relatives of Shikha Garg of New Delhi, a consultant for the United Nations Development Program who had been traveling to Nairobi for a UN Environmental Assembly.In opening remarks on the case, Shanin Specter, an attorney for Garg’s survivors, described the victim as “beautiful, inside and out.”He painted a picture of an accomplished young woman who had just married her partner of six years, Soumya Bhattacharya, three months before the crash.A photo showed Bhattacharya and Garg on their wedding day, dressed in traditional Indian clothes of red and glittering gold. The two had met while working at the United Nations and were supposed to fly to Kenya together, but Bhattacharya had a work conflict.”It’s one of the biggest remorse in my life that I had not been able to be with her,” Bhattacharya said. He said they wanted to have children together, adding: “We would have been a happy family.” He explained he is now afraid to fly, especially on Boeing-manufactured planes.”She wrote to him that she would call him when she landed,” Specter said. “A phone call that was never made.”- Damages -The jury must award money in four categories including compensating Garg’s lifetime earnings, the trauma she endured before the crash, fair compensation for Bhattacharya’s loss of companionship and the harms associated with his grief.”Mr. Bhattacharya is not here for your sympathy!” Specter said. “He is here for justice.”In his opening statement defending Boeing, attorney Dan Webb did not dispute Boeing’s full responsibility for the accident. He urged the jury to render a verdict that would compensate Garg and her husband, but disputed Specter’s contention that Garg suffered injuries before the crash. “Boeing agrees with Mr. Specter that Boeing should pay significant compensation,” Webb said. “We disagree on the actual amount.”