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In a bid to survive, airlines are desperately trying to convince a wary public that measures like mandatory face masks and hospital-grade air filters make sitting in a plane safer than many other indoor settings during the coronavirus pandemic. It isn’t working. Surveys indicate that instead of growing comfortable with air travel, more people are becoming skeptical about it. In the United States, airline bookings have stalled in the past month after slowly rising — a reaction to a new surge of reported virus infections. Globally, air travel is down more than 85% from a year ago, according to industry figures. The implications for the airline industry are grave. Several leading carriers already have filed for bankruptcy protection, and if the hoped-for recovery is delayed much longer, the list will…

A technology company aiming to send up high-altitude airships to monitor crops and bring broadband has chosen New Mexico for its U.S. production center, state Economic Development Secretary Alicia J. Keyes announced this week. The Switzerland-based Sceye picked the state as its U.S. base for stratospheric flights for earth observation and communication after spending more than $50 million in developing the stratospheric airship and building infrastructure, state officials said. Officials said the company founded by global humanitarian Mikkel Vestergaard will locate its manufacturing operation in the state and will create 140 high-paying manufacturing and engineering jobs. The move comes as Sceye works to develop a fleet of airships that could be parked for long periods of time about 65,000 feet (19,812 meters) in the air. Once in the sky, the…

North Carolina’s flagship university canceled in-person classes for undergraduates just a week into the fall semester Monday as college campuses around the U.S. scramble to deal with coronavirus clusters linked in some cases to student housing, off-campus parties and packed bars. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said it will switch to remote learning and make arrangements for students who want to leave campus housing. “We have emphasized that if we were faced with the need to change plans — take an off-ramp — we would not hesitate to do so, but we have not taken this decision lightly,” it said in a statement after reporting 130 confirmed infections among students and five among employees over the past week. UNC said the clusters were discovered in dorms, a…

Made In Italy Bohemian London artist Robert (Liam Neeson) and his estranged son Jack (Micheál Richardson) return to Italy and a now-dilapidated house they have inherited. As father and son get to work on repairing the house, they also start mending their previously strained relationship. FIVE FACTS: 1. Richardson is also Neeson’s real-life son. 2. In the film, Neeson’s character inherits the home from his late wife. In real life, Neeson’s wife and Richardson’s mother, Natasha Richardson, passed away after a head injury in 2009. 3. Micheál Richardson originally had the surname Neeson – but in 2018, changed it to Richardson in tribute to his deceased mother. 4. Made in Italy is British actor James D’Arcy’s directorial debut. 5. In recent years, Neeson has been most famous for starring in…

Before it was possible to buy “a Tesla” and probably since, Nikola Tesla has been chronically underappreciated. Wider recognition has been steadily climbing for the Croatian-born visionary whose electric innovations did much to make the 21st century world of wireless power transmission. But he’s still seen fleetingly in film. He pops up briefly in Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige” (as played by David Bowie!) and was portrayed by Nicholas Hoult in 2019’s “The Current War,” a muddled movie about Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. In the popular imagination, Edison still has the patent on American inventor genius. So writer-director Michael Almereyda’s “Tesla,” with Ethan Hawke as the Serb immigrant innovator, had an opening. But where many would have aimed for a traditional biopic given the less familiar outlines of Tesla’s life,…

MEANER THAN EVILYELLOWSTONE, SEASON 3 THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOMEBELOW DECK MEDITERRANEAN, SEASON 5 SIP AND SEE YOU LATERTHE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF POTOMAC, SEASON 5 THE PARENT TRAP90 DAY FIANCE: THE OTHER WAY, SEASON 2 HITTING ALL THE WRONG CENOTESTHE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW YORK CITY, SEASON 12 THAT’S NOT AMORETHE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS, SEASON 10 I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THAT YOU WERETHAT INTO BATHING SUITSSIESTA KEY, SEASON 3 I KILLED A MAN TODAYYELLOWSTONE, SEASON 3 EVERYTHING IS ABOUT TO CHANGEDARCEY & STACEY, SEASON 1 DAYBREAK YELLOWSTONE, SEASON 1…

As heat waves rose from the crackling grass next to a cotton field that stretched far into the distance, Rick Porter watched his young football players struggle through a preseason practice. Under every helmet was a masked player, breathing deep amid the dust and stifling heat topping 100 degrees fahrenheit (38 degrees celsius). August in Texas can be cruel and the coronavirus pandemic has thrown a new set of obstacles in the way. “Social distancing!” Porter yelled as the players headed for a water break. Nearby were hand-washing stations the coach built himself by drilling holes in long pieces of PVC pipe bought at a local hardware store. Still, Porter wonders if it will be enough to stave off an outbreak and whether his farming community 40 miles outside Austin…

Bergmeyer, a design firm in Boston, has erected higher cubicles, told employees to wear masks when not at their desks and set up one-way aisles in the office that force people to walk the long way around to get to the kitchen or the bathroom. “The one-way paths take me a little out of the way, but it was easy to get used to,” said Stephanie Jones, an interior designer with the company. “It actually gives me the opportunity to see more people and say a quick hello when I might have just walked directly to my desk before.” Around the U.S., office workers sent home when the coronavirus took hold in March are returning to the world of cubicles and conference rooms and facing certain adjustments: masks, staggered shifts,…

Apple is the first U.S. company to boast a market value of $2 trillion, just two years after it became the first to reach $1 trillion. Apple shares have gained nearly 60% this year as the company overcame the shutdown of factories in China that produce the iPhone and the closure of its retail sales amid the coronavirus pandemic. The company’s hugely loyal customer base trusts its products so much that they continued to buy iPhones and other devices online while stuck at home. Apple recently reported blowout earnings for the April-June quarter, An upcoming four-for-one stock split that will make Apple’s shares more affordable to more investors also sparked a rally after it was announced three weeks ago. Apple has been at the vanguard of a group of Big…

After months of tensions between Fortnite maker Epic and Apple, the Cupertino company ultimately dealt its killer blow: removing the billion-dollar game from the App Store, with Google following suit hours later. In one of the most high-profile cases in the history of the App Store, we consider what the future holds for developers who can’t play by the rules. GAME OVER, FORTNITE Though certainly not the first application to fall foul of Apple’s strict developer guidelines, the developer of Fortnite made it clear: it was tired of paying Apple 30% of its revenue. In early August, developer Epic Games introduced a new direct payment option inside of its iOS and Android apps, so gamers could purchase V-Bucks away from the App Store and Play Store. This, of course, is…

Zita Robinson, who’s 77 and diabetic, has been careful around her granddaughter since the coronavirus pandemic took hold. A door connects Robinson’s apartment in Phoenix to the main house where 8-year-old Traris “Trary” Robinson-Newman and her mother live, but it mostly stays shut. Their only physical contact is if Trary walks in with her back toward Grandma. Then Robinson will kiss her own hand and lightly touch Trary’s back — “like I’m sending her a kiss with my hand.” “It’s very hard,” Robinson said. “We live together, but we live apart.” Not hugging Grandma is hard for Trary, too: “It’s like I can’t see her anymore.” The separation Trary and her grandmother experience in their home is becoming a bigger issue as children go back to school. Many public schools…

Twice As Tall Burna Boy The legendary Diddy serves as executive producer on Nigerian star Burna Boy’s new studio album – and it’s not hard to see how what one of hip-hop’s elder statesmen saw in it. Twice as Tall refines and evolves the Afro-fusion sound for which Burna Boy has attracted wide acclaim. FIVE FACTS: 1. Burna Boy’s real name is Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu Rex. 2. He was born in the southern Nigerian city of Port Harcourt on July 2, 1991. 3. Ogulu’s family already had a notable musical connection, as his grandfather Benson Idonije once managed the pioneering Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti. 4. Twice as Tall is Burna Boy’s fifth studio album after L.I.F.E. (2013), On a Spaceship (2015), Outside (2018) and African Giant (2019). 5. The new…

New LED video wall technology used in making last year’s “The Lion King” and “The Mandalorian” series could become more widespread as Hollywood production ramps back up during the pandemic. Instead of shooting on location with a full cast and crew and navigating stringent social distancing requirements, it allows filmmakers on a studio lot to spread out individual scenes captured virtually using a variety of techniques. Unlike a traditional “green screen,” the actor can see the background and cinematographers can match perspectives and camera parallax to look like a location shoot. “The Lion King” visual effects supervisor Robert Legato calls the video wall and move toward virtual production a “game changer” that’s being embraced by necessity during the pandemic. “It is something that was going to happen anyway. It just…

Americans turned to Walmart’s online business as well as its stores for supplies and home goods as the virus surged in new regions, resulting in soaring sales for the fiscal second quarter. Walmart’s online sales nearly doubled in the fiscal second quarter, helped by an expansion of its online delivery services. Sales at U.S. locations opened at least a year jumped 9.3%, the company reported this week. The nation’s largest retailer topped almost all expectations by wide margins and company shares, which hit an all-time high, jumped another 6% before the opening bell only to retreat into negative territory. Consumers had already begun to rely on Walmart and other essential retailers like Target and Amazon as lifelines for necessities during the start of the pandemic, sending Walmart’s online sales up…

John Ross worries about his children returning to their classrooms this fall with coronavirus cases rising in Kentucky, but he feels he doesn’t have much of a choice: His family’s limited internet access makes it nearly impossible for the kids to keep up with schoolwork from home. “They’re going to have their education,”the father of three in rural Lee County said as he recalled his children’s struggles to do their work this spring over a spotty cellphone connection. Lee County, a community of around 7,000 people deep in the Appalachian Mountains, is one of many rural school districts around the country where the decision over whether to bring students back into classrooms is particularly fraught. As in other places, parents and officials are concerned about the virus, but dramatically limited…

Google warned that the Australian government’s plan to make digital giants pay for news content threatens users’ free services in Australia and could result in their data being given to media organizations. The U.S.-based company’s warning, contained in what it called an “open letter to Australians,” comes a week before public consultations close on draft laws that would make both Google and Facebook pay for news siphoned from commercial media companies. “A proposed law ... would force us to provide you with a dramatically worse Google Search and YouTube, could lead to your data being handed over to big news businesses, and would put the free services you use at risk in Australia,” Google Australia and New Zealand managing director Mel Silva wrote. Google owns YouTube, a video-sharing platform. Both…

A Delaware judge has approved a $60 million settlement in a shareholder lawsuit challenging electric car maker Tesla Inc.’s $2 billion acquisition of solar-panel installer SolarCity in 2016. The judge approved the settlement in a brief telephone hearing this week. He also approved $16.8 million in legal fees and expenses requested by the plaintiffs’ attorneys. That amounts to roughly 28% of the “derivative settlement,” which was made on behalf of the company and will be funded by insurers. The settlement resolves claims against directors who were on Tesla’s board in 2016 but does not include CEO and co-founder Elon Musk. A trial with Musk as the lone defendant is set for March 2021, having been postponed from this March because of the coronavirus outbreak. The lawsuit alleges that Tesla directors…

With her baby brother in her arms, Kara Apuzzo tried to follow along in an online class as he squirmed or slept. Other times, the 18-year-old rushed to get ready for work at a front-line job at Target as her virtual high school lessons were still wrapping up. Last school year was further complicated by computer issues that kept her from logging in and online tools that bedeviled even her teachers. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Apuzzo, who lives in New Haven, Connecticut, knew she wanted to go to college right after high school. Now, she’s not so sure. “Right now, I don’t know where I want to go with my life,” she said. “I feel so behind when it comes to what do college kids actually do. ... It’s scary,…

As parents nationwide prepare to help their children with more distance learning, a small but quickly growing number are deciding to take matters entirely into their own hands and begin homeschooling. Some are worried their districts are unable to offer a strong virtual learning program. For others who may have been considering homeschooling, concerns for their family’s health amid the coronavirus and the on-again, off-again planning for in-person instruction are leading them to part ways with school systems. Mindy Kroesche, a freelance writer and editor from Lincoln, Nebraska, had been leaning toward homeschooling her 12-year-old son, who has autism and ADHD diagnoses that made middle school a challenge. But she always felt her 10-year-old daughter was “built for school.” Now with the pandemic raging, she is pulling them both out…

Imagine taking a little pill that could make you strong and vibrant, one that basically unlocks your yearning potential. No, not that pill. Get your mind out of the gutter. The pill in Netflix’s “Project Power” gives you a superpower — invisibility, bulletproof, elastic body, fiery skin. But there are two catches: The effect lasts for just 5 minutes. And instant death is a possible side effect. Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dominique Fishback star in this utterly satisfying, stylish R-rated crime thriller that gets extra credit for adding a dash of social critique along with its dazzling special effects. The pills here are glowing gelcaps that you twist to activate and swallow. It’s creators say their product — called Power — can change the world and lots of ruthless…

Angel Dougherty went to the mall last month — not to shop, but to watch a drive-in drag show in the parking lot. “This year has been so anxiety filled and chaotic, I figured this experience would be something to lighten the mood,” says Dougherty, who paid to see the stars of TV’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race” dance in front of hundreds of parked cars at a shopping center in Paramus, New Jersey. After being closed for months due to the coronavirus pandemic, malls are bringing all types of drive-in entertainment to their massive parking lots, hoping to lure people back to their properties. A mall in upstate New York, for example, is hosting a drive-in wrestling match. Others around the country are bringing movies or magic shows that can be…

Target reported recorded-setting sales growth online and at established stores over the past three months, more evidence that big box retailers have become essential points of supply during the pandemic. Online sales surged 195% and same-store sales spiked 10.9%, second-quarter growth that is unprecedented in the company’s 58-year history. Walmart, Home Depot and now Target have reported eye-popping sales over the past three months as Americans limit their supply runs to fewer stores and do more cooking and do-it-yourself projects at home. The shift in behavior is reshaping the retail landscape at the expense of mall-based retailers and other stores forced to close this year. Many were struggling before the pandemic because of what Americans buy and where they buy it. The pandemic has put those retailers in further in…

A widely used coronavirus test is under scrutiny this week after federal health officials warned that it could deliver inaccurate results if laboratory technicians don’t follow the the latest updates from the manufacturer. The Food and Drug Administration’s warning over Thermo Fisher’s TaqPath test underscores the complexity of COVID-19 tests and how easily they can be skewed by faulty processing and equipment. The FDA action follows a report last month by Connecticut public health officials that the test resulted in at least 90 people receiving false positive results for the coronavirus. WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE TEST? Thermo Fisher’s test is one of the standard tools used to screen for COVID-19, run on large, automated machines found in many U.S. hospitals and laboratories. The FDA flagged two separate issues that could…