failure

May 27 (UPI) — The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday ordered SpaceX to investigate why a booster for its Starship rocket system failed during a test flight Friday, grounding the megarocket for a time.

The FAA declared the incident a “mishap” that involved the Super Heavy first-stage booster as it separated from the main ship and returned to the Gulf of Mexico after launch. The booster was supposed to perform a sustained burn to a controlled landing in the gulf, but a possible engine failure meant it fell back to Earth instead in a “hard splashdown,” SpaceX said in its launch report. The FAA said there were no reports of public injury or damage to public property from the mishap.

“The FAA will oversee the SpaceX-led investigation, be involved in every step in the process, and approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions,” the agency statement said.

“A mishap investigation is designed to enhance public safety, determine the root cause of the event, and identify corrective actions to avoid it from happening again,” the statement continued. “A return to flight of the Starship-Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not effect public safety.”

This means that another launch is less likely before the company’s planned initial public offering in June, TechCrunch reported.

The Starship system has two parts: the Super Heavy booster and the spacecraft itself, also called Starship. This was the first launch of the third version of the system, which is the first capable of deep-space flight. Plans call for Starship to carry Artemis 4 astronauts to the surface of the moon in a mission set for late 2028.

The Starship portion of the overall system did make it to space during this test launch, although it also lost one of its Raptor 3 vacuum engines there. Overall, this and other portions of the launch, including deployment of satellites and simulators, were considered a success.

May 24 (UPI) — The United States on Sunday blamed the collapse of a U.N. nuclear nonproliferation conference on what it called some countries’ inability to take Iran’s threat to global nonproliferation seriously.

The nearly monthlong Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons ended Friday without consensus on an outcome document, which reviews implementation of the Cold War-era pact and sets recommendations and commitments for its 191 state parities.

Conference President Do Hung Viet of Vietnam said Friday, following weeks of work and four versions of an outcome document, that he would not put it forward for adoption as “the conference is not in a position to achieve agreement on its substantive work.”

The failure came amid mounting global insecurity, including the war in Iran, the modernization and expansion of nuclear arsenals and other geopolitical tensions, which complicated efforts to reach consensus.

The U.S. State Department on Sunday faulted on other NPT member states.

“The inability of some NPT States Parties to take Iran’s threat to global nonproliferation seriously will be addressed by the United States in our continuing engagements,” State Department spokesperson Thomas Pigott said in a statement.

He said the failure to adopt a document was made worse by what he described as Iran’s continued noncompliance with NPT-required safeguards and “its escalating nuclear activities.”

Pigott did not specify in the statement which activities he was referring to. The United States attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, with President Donald Trump repeatedly claiming they were “obliterated.”

“For the NPT Review Conference to uphold its founding mandate, States Parties cannot turn a blind eye to Iran’s noncompliance, nor can violators be allowed to undermine the enforcement and accountability mechanisms at the core of the NPT,” he said.

Iran was quick to blame the United States, saying Washington’s “excessive demands” were at fault.

The United States was seeking to include language in the document concerning Iran, which accused the United States during the meeting of violating the treaty by attacking its nuclear facilities.

“The NPT Review Conference failed for the third consecutive time due to obstructionism by the United States and its allies,” Iran’s mission to the U.N. said in a social media statement.

Following the collapse of the conference, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his “disappointment.”

“The current international environment, marked by deep tensions and an elevated risk posed by nuclear weapons, demands urgent action,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.

“The secretary-general appeals to all states to make full use of all available avenues of dialogue, diplomacy and negotiation to reduce tensions, lower nuclear risks and, ultimately, eliminate the nuclear threat.”

It is the 11th meeting of the treaty states parties and the third in consecutive review conference to end without an agreement.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the failure of the conference to call for “urgently needed” concrete actions to avert a new nuclear arms race was due to the five nuclear-armed states’ use of “aggressive diplomatic intimidation tactics against non-nuclear weapons states.”

He also said U.S. leadership as “sorely lacking.”

“The foundations of the NPT, the cornerstone of global efforts to reduce and eliminate the world’s greatest danger, are cracking due to inattention, intransigence and ineptitude,” Kimball said in a statement.

Kylie Jenner is being sued by a second housekeeper who alleges she suffered cruel and unusual treatment while working for the beauty mogul.

Just a week after one woman on Jenner’s cleaning staff sued her, claiming her co-workers harassed and discriminated against her, another housekeeper has come out with allegations. The woman says the “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” star didn’t intervene while she suffered abuse from fellow staff, despite the housekeeper slipping the reality star a letter pleading for help.

Juana Delgado Soto filed a lawsuit against Kylie Jenner, Kylie Jenner Inc., staff supervisor Itzel Sibrian, Tri Star Services and La Maison Family Services on Wednesday alleging racial discrimination, harassment, failure to pay wages, failure to prevent or remedy harassment and discrimination, and more.

A representative for Jenner declined to comment Thursday, noting that the reality star had not yet seen the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, obtained by The Times, Soto began working for Jenner in May 2019. She alleges that meal and rest breaks were withheld from her for the first few years of her employment, but that the severity of the abuse and harassment ramped up in late 2023, when Sibrian became her direct supervisor. Soto says that, in 2024, she filed a complaint with Human Resources after Sibrian allegedly mocked and humiliated her for her accent, immigration status and race and called her stupid. Sibrian was temporarily removed because of the complaint and then reinstated, and according to the suit, she set out to retaliate against Soto for filing a complaint by reducing her hourly wage, assigning unreasonable workloads and changing her schedule.

In her lawsuit, Soto says that, as she prepared to leave work on her birthday, Sibrian threatened that she would be fired if she didn’t stay late and told her “no one cares about your birthday, Kylie is having a dinner.” Soto says she missed her own surprise party.

In late 2024, housekeeping supervisors Patsy and Elsy, who are referred to in the first lawsuit against Jenner as well, by their first names only, stepped into their leadership roles. Soto alleges that under Patsy and Elsy, she was denied adequate time off to grieve after the sudden death of her brother, and was told to “report to work immediately.” While she was working, she alleges, staff members “whispered that [Soto] was lying about her brother’s death and kept forcing her to pick up trash they purposely threw on the ground.” She further claims she was harassed when she requested time off to attend her brother’s funeral Mass.

In April 2025, the suit alleges that, after repeated failures by management to address Soto’s concerns, she wrote a long letter to Jenner detailing the harassment, discrimination and retaliation and placed it on Jenner’s massage bed immediately before her massage.

According to the suit, Soto wrote, “I need to express just how terribly I am mentally abused” and “I really apologize for letting you know about all these situations, I know you wouldn’t allow this to happen, if you were aware of it.”

Soto alleges that the following day she was threatened with termination and instructed never to contact Jenner again. “Defendants told her she was no longer allowed to look at Kylie, smile at Kylie and if she saw Kylie she would have to ‘disappear.’”

Soto further alleges that, after she left the letter for Jenner, her supervisors required her to leave the premises when Jenner was present, restricted her restroom access, forced her to clean the doghouse and prohibited her from drinking water at the residence, calling it “Kylie’s water.”

In August 2025, Soto sent a text message to her supervisors, writing, “I am sorry, I cannot do this anymore, every day you guys mistreat me, and I have bitten all my nails off, I cannot sleep at nights, and I always have anxiety because of the way you guys treat me. No matter what I did no one helped me.”

Soto is seeking an unspecified amount of punitive and compensatory damages.

“My client alleges multiple employment & labor law violations by Kylie Jenner and her affiliated companies, and I commend her for the courage to come forward and seek accountability, recognizing that taking the first step is often the most difficult,” Soto’s attorney Della Shaker told The Times. Shaker also represents Angelica Hernandez Vasquez, who filed a suit against Jenner on April 17.

Vasquez’s lawsuit says she was subjected to “severe and pervasive harassment” while employed by the makeup magnate from September 2024 to August 2025.

Vasquez, who states that she is a Salvadoran woman and practicing Catholic, alleges she was humiliated by fellow staff members and belittled because of her race, country of origin, religion and immigration status. Jenner was not personally accused of bullying behavior in the filing brought by Vasquez.

Tech firm suspended mass shooter’s ChatGPT account before attacks, but did not inform law enforcement.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has apologised over his company’s failure to warn authorities about the concerning online activities of a teen who went on to commit one of Canada’s worst mass shootings.

Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, went on a shooting spree in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, on February 10, killing eight people.

The victims included Rootselaar’s mother and half-brother, and five students at the remote community’s secondary school.

Rootselaar, who was born male but identified as female, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

OpenAI said after the attacks that Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account had been flagged internally the previous June for misuse “in furtherance of violent activities”, resulting in its suspension.

The San Francisco-based AI company said at the time that it had not informed authorities, as Rootselaar’s usage of the chatbot had not met the threshold of posing a credible or imminent threat of harm to others.

In a letter shared on Friday by the Tumbler RidgeLines news site and British Columbia Premier David Eby, Altman acknowledged that OpenAI should have alerted law enforcement to Rootselaar’s suspension.

“I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June. While I know words can never be enough, I believe an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and irreversible loss your community has suffered,” Altman wrote.

“I reaffirm the commitment I made to the Mayor and the Premier to find ways to prevent tragedies like this in the future,” Altman added.

“Going forward, our focus will continue to be on working with all levels of government to help ensure something like this never happens again.”

Altman’s statement of regret came after Eby said last month that the tech CEO had agreed to apologise to the Tumbler Ridge community over OpenAI’s failure to flag Rootselaar as a threat.

In his letter, Altman said Eby and Tumbler Ridge Mayor Darryl Krakowka had conveyed “the anger, sadness, and concern” being felt in the community in their discussions.

“We agreed a public apology was necessary, but that time was also needed to respect the community as you grieved. I share this letter with the understanding that everyone grieves in their own way and in their own time,” Altman wrote.

“I want to express my deepest condolences to the entire community. No one should ever have to endure a tragedy like this. I cannot imagine anything worse in this world than losing a child.”

European football’s governing body has already rejected one appeal by Barca about their quarterfinals against Atletico.

Barcelona have lodged another complaint with UEFA, after their protest about a handball incident in the first leg of their Champions League quarterfinal defeat to Atletico Madrid was rejected this week.

The Spanish club said in a statement on Thursday that several refereeing decisions across both legs of the tie, which Atletico won 3-2 on aggregate, “did not comply with the Laws of the Game, resulting from an incorrect application of the regulations and a lack of appropriate intervention by the VAR system in incidents of clear significance”.

The Catalan club, which finished both matches with 10 men after the dismissals of Pau Cubarsi and then Eric Garcia, believe they were on the wrong end of several contentious decisions, including two potential penalty situations that did not trigger VAR intervention.

“The accumulation of these errors had a direct impact on the course of the matches and on the final outcome of the tie, causing significant sporting and financial harm to the club,” the reigning Spanish champions added.

Barcelona said the club “reiterates the requests previously made to UEFA” and offer to “collaborate with the organisation with the aim of improving the refereeing system to ensure a more rigorous, fair and transparent application” of the regulations.

On Tuesday, UEFA had rejected as “inadmissible” the five-time Champions League winners’ initial complaint regarding a handball on a goal kick by Atletico defender Marc Pubill in the first leg, which his side won 2-0.