Hmmmm … By default, only so-called whites are promoted, anything to distract from Epstein!
Click the link below the picture
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In a move that disproportionately targets women and minority officers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of nine Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior Navy admirals.
The net result of Mr. Hegseth’s intervention is a slate of 22 nominees to be one-star admirals that bears little resemblance to the broader force these officers will help lead.
Three of the officers removed by Mr. Hegseth from the promotion list are women and two are Black men. An additional four are white men.
Mr. Hegseth’s actions, which appear to violate the rules governing a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based, were described by five current and former defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.
No female officers were included on the new one-star list, which was released publicly in late May, despite the fact that women make up about 21 percent of the active-duty Navy. The list appears to include only two nonwhite officers, even though sailors who identify as racial minorities make up about 38 percent of the active-duty Navy.
Mr. Hegseth’s removal of the officers from the one-star list is highly unusual, said the current and former defense officials. According to Pentagon rules, the defense secretary is supposed to pull officers from the list only for moral, mental, physical or professional failings that raise questions about the officers’ fitness to lead.
Mr. Hegseth’s actions are the latest in a series of firings and personnel interventions that appear to be driven by his anti-diversity politics rather than the officers’ performance. Taken together, they could reshape the military’s top ranks for years to come.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, declined to say why Mr. Hegseth pulled the officers off the Navy one-star list. “Military promotions are given to those who have earned them,” Mr. Parnell said. “The department will never consider the color of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor in promotions.” The Navy declined to comment.
Since taking office, Mr. Hegseth has fired or sidelined nearly three dozen senior military officers as part of a broader campaign designed to purge the Pentagon of leaders he has disparaged as “foolish,” “reckless,” and “woke.” He has consistently refused to explain why he has chosen to fire officers or pull them from promotion lists.
His scrutiny has fallen heavily on female and minority officers, who have borne the brunt of the dismissals. Nearly 60 percent of the senior officers Mr. Hegseth has fired are female or Black, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in recent Senate testimony. Women and minorities currently account for fewer than 20 percent of all generals and admirals.
“You are hollowing out the military’s bench of experience and highest-performing senior officers, while making young officers wonder if they should continue to serve,” Mr. Reed told Mr. Hegseth at another recent hearing.
Among those dismissed were Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s removal of at least seven officers from the list appears to violate rules governing the promotion system, according to current and former defense officials. Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
Unseasonably hot weather in Europe has already claimed at least 18 lives. And history shows more are likely on the way
Stark new data show how much the spring heat wave that has been affecting much of Western Europe has shattered temperature records. The heat has been linked to 12 deaths in the U.K. alone. Three occurred on Wednesday and Thursday, when three teenage boys died in separate water incidents while they sought reprieve from temperatures that beat the previous records by several degrees in portions of the nation.
The gravity of the situation can be seen in an image captured by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite, which is used to monitor surface temperatures, on May 26. The areas in red are indicative of temperatures well in excess of 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) and include major European cities such as Madrid and Paris.
The heat wave has broken a “remarkable number” of records for temperature, the U.K.’s Met Office said in a statement. Some 23 weather stations across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland have reported temperatures exceeding the previous U.K.-wide record of 32.8 degrees C (91 degrees F), which was set in 1922 and 1944. On Tuesday, a research station in London’s Kew Gardens recorded temperatures of 35.1 degrees C (95.2 degrees F), obliterating its previous record of 29.3 degrees C (84.7 degrees F) for the month.
Amanda Montañez; Source: Met Office, U.K.
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At least seven other deaths in France, five from drowning, have also been tied to the sweltering conditions. May 26 was the hottest May weather in the country’s history, according to Météo-France, the French national weather service, with an average temperature of 24.9 degrees Celsius (76.8 degrees F). Two days later, daytime highs peaked at almost 40 degrees C (104 degrees F) in several regions.
“Such high temperatures have never been recorded in May since records began,” Météo-France said in a French-language statement.
The heat was bad enough to affect tennis’s French Open: top-ranked player Jannik Sinner was eliminated on Thursday after he took a medical time-out for cramping that was likely caused by dehydration.
The weather is being driven by a heat dome—a block of high pressure that traps hot air—hovering over Western Europe. But even with the heat dome factored in, temperatures have hit levels that are unusual at the peak of summer in several countries.
The heat seen since May 22 across much of France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Liechtenstein, Spain, Portugal, and the U.K. was likely made three to five times more likely because of the effects of climate change, according to Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index.
Recent experience suggest more deaths are likely: unlike in the U.S., where an estimated 90 percent of households are equipped with air-conditioning, Europeans lag behind at only 20 percent, according to the International Energy Agency. That can make high temperatures particularly dangerous on the continent—in 2025, a series of heat waves led to some 24,400 deaths, 16,500 of which were attributed to climate change, while more than 62,700 people died of heat-related causes the year before.
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A map of temperatures across Europe captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite on May 26, 2026. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2026), processed by ESA
Pensions aren’t as common as they used to be in the private sector, as more companies have shifted away from traditional pension plans in the past few decades.
According to the latest government data, only 15% of private-sector workers had access to defined benefit plans. Most employees now rely on 401(k)s and other similar retirement savings options.
Sponsored by employers or unions, pension plans offer a fixed and dependable income stream during retirement for life. They are also less risky than a 401(k) plan, as the investments are managed and insured by your company. Finally, pension plans have specific tax advantages that might make them more attractive to some folks.
That being said, some states are more tax-friendly than others when it comes to your pension. Here’s what you need to know to make the most out of your retirement savings.
Is my pension taxable?
When it comes to taxes, pensions can be a bit tricky. Generally speaking, pension income is taxable at the federal level, so you need to consider this when planning your retirement budget. For more information, see How the IRS Taxes Retirement Income.
However, as Kiplinger reports, taxes in retirement vary from state to state. For instance, some states tax pension income fully, while others offer partial or complete exemptions.
As you consider where you’d like to retire, you should know how your pension and other retirement income will be taxed in your state of choice. That way, you can avoid unwelcome surprises when it’s time to file your tax return.
Some states don’t tax Social Security
All this talk of pensions might have you wondering about states that tax Social Security.
As of 2026, eight states tax Social Security benefits, with rules varying by age and income, similar to pensions. Some states offer tax benefits for individuals under a certain age, while others provide exemptions based on adjusted gross income (AGI).
Meanwhile, many states either don’t tax Social Security income or offer specific exemptions.
16 states that don’t tax your pension income
Some states don’t tax your retirement income at all, but others might have certain exemptions on private or government pensions.
Here’s our list of the 16 states that will give you a tax break on some of your retirement income. (States are listed alphabetically.)
Click the link under the picture for the complete list of states
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(Image credit: Getty Images)
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Click the link belowfor the complete article (click link for list of states):
Oil prices, after falling last week, climbed on Monday as investors weighed a renewed exchange of military strikes between the United States and Iran against indications that both sides remain engaged in negotiations aimed at securing a lasting peace agreement.
Stocks were mixed, pulled higher in East Asia by the continued surge in interest in artificial intelligence, and lower in Europe.
The United States said it carried out a series of “self-defense” strikes in Iran over the weekend, the latest in a series of attacks in the past week. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced that it had struck a U.S. air base in retaliation for a U.S. attack on a communications facility.
Here is the latest:
Oil pushes higher.
Stocks are mixed.
Gasoline prices slide.
Oil pushes higher.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose nearly 3 percent to about $94 a barrel for August delivery, the most heavily traded contract.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, jumped 3.5 percent to about $91 a barrel for July delivery, its most popular contract.
Stocks are mixed.
Futures on the S&P 500 pointed to a 0.3 percent increase when stocks resume trading in the United States on Monday.
Stocks in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas, were mixed. South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI surged 4 percent higher, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose nearly 1 percent. Stocks in mainland China declined.
In Europe, stocks were mixed. The Stoxx 600, a broad-index that tracks the region’s largest companies, was down slightly. Germany’s Dax index was up 0.5 percent.
Gasoline prices slide.
Gas prices fell again on Monday, dropping to a national average of $4.32 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. Still, the overall increase in gasoline prices has raised the cost for drivers by 45 percent since the war began.
Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days.
The average price of diesel pulled back three cents to $5.45 on Sunday, up 45 percent since the start of the war.
More on the Fighting in the Middle East
Iran’s Hard-Liners: A political fight is playing out in Iran, where the small but loud faction has used rallies, state media and private and public statements to try to undermine negotiations.
Eid al-Adha: From Iran to Gaza, the celebrations that mark the sacred Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca were muted as war dragged on and shortages of food and fuel roiled the region.
War Insurance: Many of the ships stranded in the Persian Gulf depend on coverage negotiated at Lloyd’s, the center of marine insurance for more than 300 years.
Iran’s Internet Blackout: Iran began restoring internet access for tens of millions of Iranians, a senior official said, lifting a blackout imposed after the United States and Israel launched military strikes on the country.
World Cup: The participation of Iran’s soccer team has been in doubt due to the war. With less than two weeks until the start of the tournament, Iran is continuing preparations at a training camp for three matches on the American West Coast.
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How High Are Gas Prices Where You Live?
Here is a county-level look at where drivers are facing the highest costs.
Here’s one of the more unsettling schemes to recently emerge from Silicon Valley: human clones grown without a conscious brain. At least one biotech start-up reportedly has quixotic ambitions of breeding spare, unfeeling meat sacks as a way to clear the ethical path for procedures called “body transplants”—and, hypothetically, immortality. The idea seems to be that if these surrogate bodies are wholly unconscious, without even the faintest awareness of the world or themselves, then there’s no harm done.
It isn’t clear how much—or how little—of a brain these clones would have, but they’d certainly lack a cerebral cortex, the wrinkly outer layer that’s responsible for sophisticated cognitive functions such as language, self-reflection, and abstract thought. Most theorists have long assumed that the cortex is where consciousness, or our subjective experience of the world, arises. If they’re right, an organism without one would have no thoughts, sensations, or emotions—no inner life at all.
But what if they’re wrong? A growing number of consciousness researchers are seriously considering the possibility that consciousness could originate deep within the brain’s most evolutionarily ancient realm: the subcortex. They argue that, just as astronomy once labored under a false geocentric model, consciousness research is in thrall to the mistaken notion that cortical processing lies at the center of all experience—the corticocentric model. The idea is “as old as any attempt to relate brain to mind” in neuroscience, says Mark Solms, a neuropsychologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. “It’s a foundational theory about where the mind is.”
Yet over the past several decades, Solms and others have marshalled counterevidence in hopes of forcing a Copernican upheaval in their field. The subcortical revolution, should it come to pass, would have massive implications for how we define and measure consciousness—and for which creatures we deem worthy of moral consideration.
The Brain in Two Parts
The cortex is neuroanatomy’s latest innovation, and it has done well for itself. Its size varies across species, but in humans and many other mammals, the cortex now swells to epic proportions—around 75 percent of brain mass, in our case—and envelops the older structures beneath it. The inmost region, the subcortex, holds more foundational responsibilities than the upstart upstairs: maintaining arousal, processing emotions, regulating the body, and relaying sensory information.
Amanda Montañez
The cortex and the subcortex are tightly interconnected. When most sensory information enters the brain, it flows through deep-brain relay points in the subcortex on its way up to the cortex, which then responds with feedback signals in an ongoing communication loop. Virtually all neuroscientists agree that, in healthy human brains, consciousness depends on this continuous dialogue between cortex and subcortex; it’s been clear for nearly a century that if certain parts of the subcortical brain stem get damaged, “the lights go out,” as Solms puts it. The question is whether the subcortex is merely a power supply keeping the cortex’s consciousness online, as corticalists hold, or whether it can sustain basic consciousness by itself.
Unconscious Zombies
The most intuitive evidence that the subcortex is more powerful than we thought is that many organisms without a cortex nevertheless seem conscious. We need not wait for Silicon Valley’s clones: children with a rare developmental disorder called hydranencephaly are already born sans cortex and, on that basis, are often classified as being in an unconscious vegetative state.
But in 2004, at what turned out to be a pivotal moment for how researchers think about the subcortex, Swedish neuroscientist Bjorn Merker joined five families that included children with hydranencephaly at Disney World.
He spent a week observing the children’s behavior. They giggled, played with toys, and generally showed “responsiveness to their surroundings in the form of emotional or orienting reactions to environmental events,” as he later wrote. They struck Merker as utterly normal, if developmentally delayed. Though they couldn’t speak and thus couldn’t report on their internal state, he simply could not believe he was in the presence of philosophical zombies—hypothetical beings that act like normal humans but have no felt experience.
Solms, following Merker’s example, also spent time around children with hydranencephaly. “The evidence that they are not ‘zombies’ is exactly the same evidence that your dog and your cat are not zombies,” he says. “They’re reporting by their behavior that they’re feeling things.”
Of course, the appearance of consciousness and consciousness itself are not the same thing. Strictly speaking, we can’t determine whether an organism is conscious unless it can somehow narrate its experience, leaving us to speculate about babies, brain organoids, and nonhuman animals. (What this means for large language models, which can narrate their “experience,” is another question.) So we seem to be at an impasse: How can nonverbal life-forms possibly prove they aren’t mindless automatons?
When language isn’t an option, most researchers will use other information to infer consciousness. Matthias Michel, a philosopher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is prepared to attribute consciousness to other mammals, which have a cortex, and to birds, which have a functional equivalent in the pallium—but not to fish or insects, which do not.
There is a whirr, a flurry of dust, a pause as the grainy image recalibrates, and then a devastating blast.
Underground, dozens of miles away, veterans of the most brutal urban battles in Ukraine, of Avdiivka and Bakhmut, are commanders in a new kind of killing – one they cannot feel, smell, or see up close. An entire mission directing six blasts against three Russian frontline targets in eastern Ukraine will involve no Ukrainian troops on the ground; the battle instead directed from gamer chairs, observed from reconnaissance drones above, run over dedicated livestreams.
Ukraine, suffering for months from manpower crises and uncertain backing from the United States, has undergone a remarkable evolution. Large parts of its war effort are now unmanned, the robots, drones, and remotely piloted tanks giving it a sudden, albeit fragile, edge over a lumbering and strained Russian invader. In April, President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed the first capture of a Russian position purely by robots and drones and added that since January, unmanned machines had conducted 22,000 missions.
Survival is the mother of invention, under the orange glow of computer processor fans and subtle overhead lighting. The unit here has learned from Russian prisoners of war that their enemy calls these robots – each carrying a huge payload of explosive on a four-wheel chassis – “silent death.” They can only hear their approach when they are 10 meters away – well within their blast radius.
The first robot stumbles on aluminum debris, its wheels furiously trying to get traction and move around the obstacle. Eventually, it navigates around the crater in its path, and from the observation drone above, the white heat of a small mushroom cloud flares up – the thermal footprint of the first blast. A second follows. The opening salvo of the assault is intended to distract the Russians and permit four other robots to get behind enemy lines.
The calculations here are simple: over 164 assaults, the “NC13” unit of the Third Assault Brigade has calculated they would have needed 2,300 troops for the same effect as their robot attackers. They would expect to have lost half their unit – dead or wounded – in the attacks, meaning the unmanned, doddering bombs on the screen in front of them are a technological advance that has saved a thousand Ukrainians.
“I couldn’t even imagine such a thing, back then”, said Bar, the unit’s deputy commander, of his time in brutal urban combat in Donbas. “But I realize that if such equipment had been available at the time… more of my comrades would have survived.”
For Mykola “Makar” Zinkevych, the unit’s commander, the new world is lacking. “Back then, war was somehow more, shall we say, masculine. It was your skills that mattered there – how well you’d trained, how disciplined you were, and so on. Now, technology decides everything. There is no going back.” It is simply a case of who can adapt and evolve faster in the world of unmanned, remote killing.
New warfare, new heroes
The Ukrainian approach is born of a manpower crisis, where a smaller population has been ravaged by a devastating toll from four years of Russian invasion. But Kyiv’s early embrace of drones, and the mass-industrialization of their accuracy and power, has begun to exact a defining toll on Moscow.
Ukraine’s policy now is to kill or injure 35,000 Russians a month, something they have achieved this year, the goal being to force the Kremlin into uncomfortable and unpopular recruitment from the urban center and the middle classes. An estimate from the British spy agency GCHQ released Wednesday put the total Russian death toll at 500,000, citing new information.
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Technology is giving an advantage to Ukraine against a bigger enemy. CNN
For nearly three decades, Raquel Molina — an immigrant from El Salvador who has a valid Social Security number and permission to work in the United States — swabbed the toilets, wiped down the seats, and vacuumed the aisles of airplanes at Boston’s Logan International Airport.
But last summer, Ms. Molina, 65, was abruptly fired from her $19.75-per-hour cleaning job, alongside dozens of other immigrants who have long legally worked at Logan. Her supervisor told her she no longer had clearance to enter secure areas at the airport. The Trump administration had decided that only U.S. citizens, green card holders, and others with more permanent forms of residency should be granted access, according to a lawsuit that a labor union filed in federal court.
“I didn’t understand what was going on,” said Ms. Molina, who has been living legally in the United States under Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian program that shelters people from troubled countries until they can safely return home. “I had worked hard at my job. This news put me in a state of shock.”
Her firing reflected a broader and methodically planned piece of President Trump’s hard-line strategy to make the United States less welcoming to those from other countries.
For more than a year, administration officials have sought to pull every bureaucratic lever possible to cut off immigrants — both documented and undocumented — from jobs, medical care, financial services, tax credits, and even from enrolling their children in day care. The goal has been to compel immigrants to leave the country, and, in the long run, to eliminate incentives that draw many people to the United States in the first place.
The initiative underscores the president’s ability to reshape immigration policy through executive orders and the vast power of federal regulations while sidestepping Congress. And it shows how the administration has pursued more creative — and lower-profile — tactics after Mr. Trump’s militarized deportation raids into major cities prompted political backlash earlier this year.
The changes range from structural shifts in the immigration system to small-scale, regulatory tweaks taking away jobs or services from just a few thousand people like Ms. Molina. In her case, the administration no longer considered T.P.S. a form of “authorized residency,” said Justin Long, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, meaning Ms. Molina could not be “given official government credentials and granted unescorted access to secure airport areas.”
The administration’s strategy, along with the threat of arrest and imprisonment, has helped drive many immigrants underground, intimidating them from filing taxes, visiting doctors and even traveling. So far, more than 116,000 people without permanent legal status have voluntarily left the United States, including some through a government self-deportation program, according to internal Department of Homeland Security figures reviewed by The New York Times. Many others are believed to have departed without telling the government.
“It has been immensely effective,” said Daniel Delgado, a former senior Department of Homeland Security official who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations and left government last year. “It’s truly widespread and far-reaching across all sides of the government. There are so many regulations that impact immigrant communities.”
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A man and child exited the Annandale Immigration Court earlier this month in Annandale, Va. The Trump administration is pressuring immigrants to leave the country voluntarily by squeezing them financially. Credit…Salwan Georges for The New York Times
New Glenn, a giant rocket built and operated by Jeff Bezos’s aerospace firm Blue Origin, exploded in a massive fireball on its launchpad in Florida on Thursday. The catastrophe risks derailing the company’s planned NASA-backed missions to launch lunar rovers and participate in the space agency’s Artemis III and Artemis IV crewed flights aimed at putting astronauts back on the moon.
“All personnel are accounted for and safe,” Bezos wrote in a post on X after the explosion. “It’s too early to know the root cause, but we’re already working to find it. Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”
In a separate post on X, Blue Origin said, “We experienced an anomaly during today’s hotfire test. All personnel have been accounted for. We will provide updates as we learn more.” The company also warned that debris from the explosion may wash ashore in the coming days and advised the public not to touch it and to report anything they find.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded to the explosion with an X post of his own. He wished Blue Origin a speedy recovery from the accident, which obliterated the rocket and severely damaged New Glenn’s launchpad
Through SpaceX and Blue Origin, Musk and Bezos have been vying for off-world economic dominance, with each pursuing projects to ring Earth with many thousands of communications satellites and orbital artificial intelligence data centers. But the highest-visibility arena for this rivalry is the moon; SpaceX and Blue Origin are both on deck to provide critical support for NASA’s Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface and build a moon base.
The explosion has dire implications for Blue Origin’s lunar prospects: The destroyed launchpad is the company’s sole facility for sending New Glenn into space. And it will likely require months of extensive repairs, delaying and complicating Blue Origin’s contributions to NASA’s lunar ambitions. The space agency plans to land astronauts on the lunar surface by 2028 via the Artemis IV mission and considers itself to be in a race with China, which is seeking to send astronauts to the moon by 2030.
Prior to Thursday’s explosion, the rocket had been scheduled to launch a batch of 48 satellites for another Bezos project: Amazon’s Leo constellation, which is an emerging competitor with SpaceX’s Starlink Internet network. The satellites were not onboard the rocket when it exploded.
The explosion occurred around 9 P.M. EDT during a routine preflight “static fire” test of the seven engines on New Glenn’s first stage, with the 322-foot-tall rocket secured to its launchpad at Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Video of the incident shows the engines apparently igniting, followed by flames shooting up the rocket’s exterior. Then comes the eruption of a giant, bright fireball that destroys the rocket and its launchpad.
The U.S. Space Force Eastern Range, which coordinates all launches from Florida, said in a statement that “the Eastern Range remains fully mission capable and continues to support operations at all other launch complexes.”
NASA “will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and get back to launching rockets,” said the agency’s administrator, Jared Isaacman, in an X post. “We will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available.”
Blue Origin and SpaceX are each developing a human landing system (HLS) for future Artemis missions. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 and SpaceX’s Starship HLS are both core components of the space agency’s Artemis III mission, slated for next year. Placed in low-Earth orbit via their company’s respective rockets, the two HLS spacecraft would be targets for Artemis III astronauts arriving separately in an Orion crew capsule, who would attempt docking and other maneuvers.
Given the catastrophic destruction of its rocket and its only New Glenn launchpad, the likelihood of Blue Origin being ready for Artemis III now appears perilously low. Meanwhile, SpaceX is proceeding with development of its fully reusable Starship vehicle, with its latest flight—the program’s 12th, and the first for Starship’s “V3” design—being largely successful, setting up a 13th test flight that will send the giant rocket into Earth orbit. But Starship still must demonstrate multiple unproved capabilities that are crucial to NASA’s plans—such as the in-space refueling, via multiple launches, that’s required for sending the vehicle out of low-Earth orbit to the moon.
Blue Origin’s mishap will inevitably affect the company’s capabilities for other NASA missions, too. New Glenn had been scheduled to fly a smaller uncrewed spacecraft, the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, to the lunar surface later this year. And on Tuesday, NASA had announced additional contracts with Blue Origin for a pair of New Glenn launches to send lunar terrain vehicles to the moon as soon as 2028. The vehicles would be driven by astronauts during future Artemis missions.
It also compounds New Glenn’s rocky path to reliable use. Next week’s launch would have been only New Glenn’s fourth, after its third flight on April 19 placed a satellite for the company AST SpaceMobile in an orbit that was lower than planned because of a malfunction of the rocket’s second stage. The $23-million satellite burned up in Earth’s atmosphere as a result.
The explosion is “a major setback for Blue Origin at a particularly important moment for the company” that “highlights a broader challenge for the United States,” says Kathleen Curlee, an aerospace analyst at Georgetown University. “Policymakers increasingly want a resilient space ecosystem with multiple providers capable of supporting national security missions, civil exploration, and commercial activity,” she says. “Delays to Blue Origin’s progress make that objective harder to achieve—and reinforce how difficult it remains to build alternatives to SpaceX’s current lead in launch capability.”
SpaceX filed for an initial public offering a week ago, and Elon Musk is already creating confusion.
Days before the reusable rocket maker is scheduled to start pitching its story to investors, Musk took to social network X, which is owned by SpaceX, late Wednesday to explain details of the company’s recent partnership with competing AI startup Anthropic. His comment included a potentially material aspect about their deal that wasn’t included in SpaceX’s 300-plus page IPO filing.
Earlier this month, SpaceX said it was leasing unused compute capacity at its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee, to Anthropic. Last week’s prospectus said that Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX ”$1.25 billion per month through May 2029, with capacity ramping in May and June 2026 at a reduced fee.” The filing also said, “The agreement may be terminated by either party upon 90 days’ notice.”
In his X post Wednesday night, Musk wrote, “SpaceX has not committed to leasing Colossus for years,” and called the pact a “180 day lease with 90 day notice mutual cancellation thereafter.” The prospectus, however, said nothing about the deal potentially ending in a matter of months.
Whether Anthropic is slated to pay SpaceX $15 billion a year for the next three years or will be spending substantially less over a much shorter period represents a major consideration for prospective investors. SpaceX’s total revenue in 2025 was just $18.7 billion, and selling compute capacity out of its data center adds an entirely new revenue stream, while putting SpaceX in competition with so-called neocloud providers such as Nebius and CoreWeave.
Some investors are already leery of buying into the largest IPO on record and backing a company that’s valued at over $1 trillion while burning billions of dollars a quarter. Musk’s post raises further questions about the company’s financial disclosures.
“The odd thing is that either Musk is correct and the S-1 is materially misleading, or the S-1 is correct and Elon is up to his old hijinx,” Eric Talley, a professor at Columbia Law School and expert on corporate governance, wrote in an email. “But more than that, it’s confusing to investors who are trying (best they can) to put a valuation on SpaceX.”
Anthropic declined to comment for this story, and representatives from SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Anthropic disclosure isn’t the only one in SpaceX’s filing that analysts have highlighted as less than thorough.
Franco Granda, an analyst at PitchBook, catalogued an array of omissions in a report following the publishing of the prospectus.
“Critical disclosures are missing,” Granda wrote. He pointed to “subscriber churn” as well as “unit economics” for the Falcon 9, SpaceX’s partially reusable rocket, and “AI segment granularity,” writing that the company didn’t break out subscriptions to chatbot Grok or to X or provide details on the “utilization rate on 1.0 GW of deployed compute.”
Economics of AI
The AI part of SpaceX is particularly challenging for investors to value.
Musk founded xAI in 2023 to try to take on OpenAI in the booming generative AI market. While xAI remains a niche player in the market, Musk valued the business at $250 billion in February, when he merged it with SpaceX in a deal that gave the combined entity a valuation of $1.25 trillion.
During the first quarter of this year, SpaceX’s capital expenditures totaled $10.1 billion, more than doubling from a year earlier, with $7.7 billion of that tied to xAI, according to the prospectus. The AI unit, now known as SpaceXAI, recorded a $2.5 billion operating loss in the quarter.
In opting to lease its compute capacity to Anthropic, SpaceX was acknowledging that its own AI models and services haven’t inspired great demand and that the company isn’t in a position to take advantage of its costly infrastructure.
Musk said in his post Wednesday night on X that SpaceX wanted to be able to cut the deal short in case it needs the capacity.
“We won’t leave them hanging and will provide a reasonable off-ramp,” Musk wrote, referring to Anthropic. “But if compute gets super tight, I said we might need it back at some point,”
Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood, a SpaceX bull, touted Musk’s move to monetize compute infrastructure, which cost xAI billions of dollars to build.
“Thanks to its deal with Anthropic, XAI, now SpaceXAI, is pivoting from massive losses at Colossus to significant profitability as a neocloud,” Wood wrote after the deal was announced on May 9. She estimated at the time that the move would bring in $5 billion to $6 billion in annual revenue.
That was before the IPO filing laid out an even bigger number, and well before Musk chimed in this week, effectively acknowledging that the prospectus has shortcomings.
Ann Lipton, a law professor at the University of Colorado, said that as SpaceX amends its S-1 ahead of the offering, it should “file the tweet with an explanation.” She said by email that Musk’s post does appear to contradict the filing, but that the differences may be “reconcilable.”
“Usually this is handled by filing an update separately with the [Securities and Exchange Commission],” she wrote.
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Elon Musk at SpaceX in Brownsville, Texas, May 27, 2025. Marvin Joseph | The Washington Post | Getty Images
The San Antonio Spurs went into Oklahoma City and knocked off the defending champs on their home court in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals on Saturday.
They’ll play the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals, which begin on Wednesday, a rematch of the 1999 Finals – the last time the Knicks had a chance to win the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy.
The Spurs outlasted the reigning champions, Oklahoma City Thunder, 111-103 in a tense deciding game.
“Back in October, we knew we had a chance to be pretty good,” said head coach Mitch Johnson after the game to the NBC broadcast. He praised his team for “giving themselves to each other, to the program, and everything that we’ve done. Oklahoma City’s a helluva organization, and what a series.”
He alluded to the youth of his team, in their first playoff run since 2019, when he said it wasn’t experience that got them to the Finals.
“There’s been a lot being talked about, just words like competitiveness, resolve, togetherness, execution. … I don’t give a damn about the word experience,” he said.
Led by Victor Wembanyama, who finished with 22 points and seven rebounds, the Spurs clinched a spot in the Finals for the first time since 2014.
It was the kind of dramatic Game 7 that a classic series deserved – one that saw both teams eke out close wins and run away with blowouts as the Spurs and Thunder established their matchup as the premier rivalry in the NBA right now. The physical, rollicking deciding game in OKC on Saturday showed that it might be the rivalry to watch in the league for years to come.
The Spurs came out of the gates hot, quickly taking a 14-point lead, leaving the raucous Continental Coliseum crowd stunned.
But the Thunder stormed back to briefly take the lead just before halftime behind reigning two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous Alexander’s 13 points in the second quarter.
However, OKC’s momentum did not last as San Antonio surged right back to a double-digit lead behind a 16-2 run in the third quarter led by Julian Champagnie’s six three-pointers.
Like all game long, the Thunder could never be counted out.
SGA clawed the team back into the game, only trailing by three points entering the final quarter.
But San Antonio had an answer for every Thunder response down the stretch, securing the victory.
It has been quite the turnaround for the Spurs, a team that drafted Wembanyama first overall in 2023 and finished 13th in the Western Conference last season.
The 22-year-old Wembanyama was emotional, bursting into tears as the final horn blew and again choking back emotions after being named the Most Valuable Player of the WCF.
The French center said the emotions came from “realizing some part” of his childhood dreams will come true.
“Even though we still have one more, this feeling is – I can’t explain it,” Wembanyama told the NBC broadcast while holding the Earvin “Magic” Johnson Trophy. “It’s so powerful.”
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Victor Wembanyama celebrates after defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder to win Game 7 on Saturday night. Christian Petersen/Getty Images
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