A Japanese company is about to attempt what no other private business has done: land on the moon.

Tokyo's ispace company put its own spacecraft into orbit around the moon a month ago. On Tuesday, flight controllers will direct the craft, named Hakuto, Japanese for white rabbit, to descend from 60 miles (100 kilometers) high and land.

SpaceX's new rocket, the biggest and most powerful ever built, blasted off Thursday on its first test flight, thundering into the South Texas sky in an attempt to orbit the world.

Elon Musk's company launched the nearly 400-foot (120-meter) Starship rocket from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. The plan called for the booster to peel away and plummet into the Gulf of Mexico shortly after liftoff, with the spacecraft hurtling ever higher toward the east in a bid to circle the world, before crashing into the Pacific near Hawaii.

Billionaire Elon Musk has told the BBC that running Twitter has been "quite painful" but that the social media company is now roughly breaking even after he acquired it late last year.

In an interview also streamed live late Tuesday on Twitter Spaces, Musk discussed his ownership of the online platform, including layoffs, misinformation and his work style.

Britain's privacy watchdog hit TikTok with a multimillion-dollar penalty Tuesday for misusing children's data and violating other protections for users' personal information.

The Information Commissioner's Office said it issued a fine of 12.7 million pounds ($15.9 million) to the short-video sharing app, which is wildly popular with young people.

Twitter has removed the verification check mark on the main account of The New York Times, one of CEO Elon Musk's most despised news organizations.

The removal comes as many of Twitter's high-profile users are bracing for the loss of the blue check marks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors on the social media platform.

Twitter says it has removed thousands of tweets showing a poster promoting a "trans day of vengeance" protest in support of transgender rights in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.

Ella Irwin, Twitter's head of Trust and Safety, said in a tweet Wednesday that the company automatically removed more than 5,000 tweets and retweets of a poster promoting the event.

William Shatner, Monica Lewinsky and other prolific Twitter commentators — some household names, others little-known journalists — could soon be losing the blue check marks that helped verify their identity on the social media platform.

They could get the marks back by paying up to $11 a month. But some longtime users, including 92-year-old Star Trek legend Shatner, have balked at buying the premium service championed by Twitter's billionaire owner and chief executive Elon Musk.

U.S. lawmakers have grilled TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew about data security and harmful content, with some pushing to ban the popular short-video app nationwide.

A Singaporean native, Chew told the lawmakers that TikTok prioritizes user safety and as he sought to avert a ban by downplaying the app's ties to China.

TikTok's CEO plans to tell Congress that the video-sharing app is committed to user safety, data protection and security, and keeping the platform free from Chinese government influence.

Shou Zi Chew is due to answer questions Thursday from U.S. lawmakers concerned about the social media platform's effects on its young user base and possible national security risks posed by the popular app, which was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs.

TikTok on Tuesday rolled out updated rules and standards for content and users as it faces increasing pressure from Western authorities over concerns that material on the popular Chinese-owned video-sharing app could be used to push false information.

The company released a reorganized set of community guidelines that include eight principles to guide content moderation decisions.