Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government won’t lower its immigration targets despite growing criticism that drastic population growth worsens

Superproducer Mark Ronson has revealed he had to drop some 'great songs' from the Barbie soundtrack because they 'feel tonally right'

SpaceX has successfully launched Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket, for the first ever time. The spacecraft took off from Texas early on Saturday local time. It marked SpaceX’s second attempt to launch the spacecraft, after a previous test in April saw the rocket exploded soon after launch. The booster that carried the spacecraft up towards orbit exploded after it detached from the main spacecraft. SpaceX said that it had known there was a chance that the booster would be destroyed in the launch. But the main part of the ship successfully carried on towards the edge of space. Eventually, SpaceX hopes that Starship will fly to the Moon and help with missions to Mars. But first it must undergo a series of uncrewed tests to ensure it is safe. Elon Musk - SpaceX‘s founder, chief executive and chief engineer - also sees Starship as eventually replacing the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket as the centerpiece of its launch business that already lofts most of the world’s satellites and other commercial payloads into space. NASA, SpaceX‘s primary customer, has a considerable stake in the success of Starship, which the US space agency is counting on to play a central role in its human spaceflight program, Artemis, successor to the Apollo missions of more than a half century ago that put astronauts on the moon for the first time. Starship’s towering first-stage booster, propelled by 33 Raptor engines, puts the rocket system’s full height at some 400 feet (122 meters) and produces thrust twice as powerful as the Saturn V rocket that sent the Apollo astronauts to the moon. SpaceX is aiming to at least exceed Starship-Super Heavy’s performance during its April 20 test flight, when the two-stage spacecraft blew itself to bits less than four minutes into a planned 90-minute flight. That flight went awry from the start. SpaceX has acknowledged that some of the Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines malfunctioned on ascent, and that the lower-stage booster rocket failed to separate as designed from the upper-stage Starship before the flight was terminated. The company’s engineering culture, considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industry’s more established players, is built on a flight-testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure, then fine-tunes improvements through frequent repetition. A failure at any point in the test flight would be a major concern for NASA, which is counting on SpaceX‘s rapid rocket development ethos to swiftly get humans to the moon in the U.S. competition with China’s lunar ambitions. Judging the success or failure of the outcome may be less than clear-cut, depending on how far the spacecraft gets this time. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who has made the China rivalry a key need for speed, compared Starship’s test campaign with the success of SpaceX‘s past rocket development efforts. “How did they develop the Falcon 9? They went through many tests, sometimes it blew up,” Nelson told Reuters on Tuesday. “They’d find out what went wrong, they’d correct it then go back.” The combined spacecraft in April reached a peak altitude of roughly 25 miles (40 km), only about halfway to space at its target altitude of 90 miles (150 km), before bursting into flames. Musk has said that an internal fire during Starship’s ascent damaged its engines and computers, causing it to stray off course, and that an automatic-destruct command was activated some 40 seconds later than it should have to blow up the rocket. The launch pad itself was shattered by the force of the blastoff, which also sparked a 3.5-acre (1.4-hectare) brush fire. No one was injured. SpaceX has since reinforced the launch pad with a massive water-cooled steel plate, one of dozens of corrective actions that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration required before granting a launch license on Wednesday for the second test flight. Additional reporting by agencies Read More SpaceX launches ‘zero fuel’ engine into space SpaceX is launching the world’s biggest rocket – follow live SpaceX to launch world’s biggest rocket again after first attempt ended in explosion The world’s most powerful rocket should launch imminently, Elon Musk says Why Apple is working hard to break into its own iPhones OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman ousted as CEO

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X is shutting down Circles months after some users flagged glitches with the privacy-focused tool that lets users send posts to a select audience. The Elon Musk-owned company that was earlier called Twitter said on Thursday that Circles will be disabled by 31 October. “After this date, you will not be able to create new posts that are limited to your Circle, nor will you be able to add people to your Circle,” X wrote in a post. “You will, however, be able to remove people from your Circle, by unfollowing them,” the company said. Once unfollowed, users previously part of one’s Circle “can no longer see your past Circle Posts,” it said. The feature – similar to Instagram’s Close Friends stories – was officially launched in August 2022 when the platform was called Twitter, and before the Tesla billionaire took over the company. “Twitter Circle is a way to send Tweets to select people, and share your thoughts with a smaller crowd,” the company had said after the feature’s launch. “You choose who’s in your Twitter Circle, and only the individuals you’ve added can reply to and interact with the Tweets you share in the circle,” it had then said. Then in April, a software glitch exposed the private posts of some users to other followers and strangers not part of their Circle, sparking widespread privacy concern. Users began noticing their private Circle posts began appearing on the algorithmically generated “For You” timeline, meaning these posts were being noticed by people outside the intended audience. In some cases, users noticed their Circle posts were even reaching people who don’t even follow them. In emails sent to affected users, X said a “security incident” was behind the public display of their Circle tweets, adding that the issue was “immediately fixed” so these posts were no longer visible outside of the user’s Circle. “We’ve conducted a thorough investigation to understand how this occurred and have addressed this issue,” the company said. “We understand the risks that an incident like this can introduce and we deeply regret this happened,” it said at the time. The software bug added to the number of issues that plagued Twitter following Mr Musk’s takeover of the company and the multibillionaire laying off nearly two-thirds of its workforce. The glitch was likely due to the platform’s recommendation algorithm likely failing to filter out Circle posts before sharing them with others on the site, former Twitter engineer Theo Browne told TechCrunch at the time. Now, in a new update, X said in a post that it is “deprecating Circles as of Oct 31st, 2023”, without delving into why the company is shutting down the feature. Read More Two dead and dozens injured after bus carrying high school band crashes on I-84 in New York Tourist calls police after being charged £500 for chilli crab in Singapore Scientists discover world’s oldest human-built structure, built by an extinct species ChatGPT can now generate images and create illustrated books Man drives off bridge ‘following Google Maps’ Solar panel breakthrough could supercharge ‘miracle material’ production

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American Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says Washington would not stand for any “coercion and bullying” of its allies and partners by China, while assuring Beijing that the United States remains committed to maintaining the status quo on Taiwan and would prefer dialogue over conflict

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