SAN FRANCISCO — Major social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and X have failed to protect LGBTQ+ users from hate and harassment, in part, because they intentionally rolled back previous safety practices, the advocacy group GLAAD said Tuesday in its annual Social Media Safety Index. The report said that recent “unprecedented hate speech policy…
TOKYO — Japanese technology company SoftBank Group posted its first profit in four years Tuesday, as it raked in gains from its investment portfolios. SoftBank warned of major uncertainties ahead because of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, tensions between the U.S. and China, and other global conflicts. Tokyo-based Softbank’s profit for the fiscal year through…
WASHINGTON — Jupiter’s dazzling auroras are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth, new images from the James Webb Space Telescope reveal. The solar system’s largest planet displays striking dancing lights when high-energy particles from space collide with atoms of gas in the atmosphere near its magnetic poles, similar to how the northern…
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has fired the nation’s top copyright official, Shira Perlmutter, days after abruptly terminating the head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the U.S. Copyright Office. The office said in a statement Sunday that Perlmutter received an email from the White House a day earlier with the notification that “your…
LOS ANGELES — Players swiping their way through more than 18,700 levels of Candy Crush Saga might be surprised to learn they’re solving puzzles designed with an assist from artificial intelligence. The app that helped make gamers out of anyone with a smartphone uses AI to help developers create levels to serve a captive audience…
WASHINGTON — For many experts, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ’s promise for “pulling back the curtain” to find autism’s causes in a few months is jarring — and unrealistic. That’s because it appears to ignore decades of science linking about 200 genes that play a role — and the quest to understand differences…
Google will pay $1.4 billion to Texas to settle claims the company collected users’ data without permission, the state’s attorney general announced Friday. Attorney General Ken Paxton described the settlement as sending a message to tech companies that he will not allow them to make money off of “selling away our rights and freedoms.” “In…
Stacey Wales gripped the lectern, choking back tears as she asked the judge to give the man who shot and killed her brother the maximum possible sentence for manslaughter. What appeared next stunned those in the Phoenix courtroom last week: An AI-generated video with a likeness of her brother, Christopher Pelkey, told the shooter he…
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A half-ton Soviet spacecraft that never made it to Venus 53 years ago is expected to fall back to Earth this weekend. Built to land on the solar system’s hottest planet, the titanium-covered spacecraft may survive its fiery, uncontrolled plunge through Earth’s atmosphere, predicted to occur on Saturday. But experts said…
Chimpanzees drum with regular rhythm when they beat on tree trunks, a new study shows. Chimpanzees and humans last shared a common ancestor around 6 million years ago. Scientists suspect this ancient ancestor must have been a drummer — using beats to communicate. “Our ability to produce rhythm — and to use it in our…
