Comment on 5 stories to read if you’re captivated by trains and want to ride one in 2025

After a long day of stops and starts that stretched well into the evening, and on what appeared to be the company's fifth attempt Friday, Blue Origin successfully ignited the seven main engines on its massive New Glenn rocket. The test firing as fog built over the Florida coast marks the final major step in the rocket company's campaign to bring the New Glenn rocket—a privately developed, super-heavy lift vehicle—to launch readiness.

President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the issue. The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by Jan.

A court filing in the Google monopoly case reveals Apple's lack of appetite for building a search engine or entering the search text ad market.

The oil companies’ retrenchment is bad news for efforts to mitigate climate change. Major European energy companies doubled down on oil and gas in 2024 to focus on near-term profits, slowing down—and at times reversing—climate commitments in a shift that they are likely to stick with in 2025.

Massive data centers power large language models but produce fine particles linked to asthma, cancers, and premature deaths. The data centers powering the AI industry are fueling higher levels of dangerous air pollution, according to new research. In a paper titled The Unpaid Toll: Quantifying the Public Health Impact of AI, scientists say this pollution could lead to up to 1,300 premature deaths each year by 2030.

SAN FRANCISCO — The parents of a former OpenAI researcher known for recently blowing the whistle on the company’s business practices are questioning the circumstances of their son’s death last month. In an interview this week, Suchir Balaji’s mother and father expressed confusion and shock over his sudden passing, expressing doubt their son could have died by suicide, as determined by the county medical examiner. The family hired an expert to perform an independent autopsy but has yet to release the report’s findings. “We’re demanding a thorough investigation — that’s our call,” said Balaji’s mother, Poornima Ramarao. San Francisco police found Balaji dead in his Lower Haight apartment on Nov.