A Japanese company's spacecraft apparently crashed while attempting to land on the moon Wednesday, losing contact moments before touchdown and sending flight controllers scrambling to figure out what happened.

More than six hours after communication ceased, the Tokyo company ispace finally confirmed what everyone had suspected, saying there was "a high probability" that the lander had slammed into the moon.

An appeals court has upheld Apple's exclusive control over the distribution of iPhone apps, rejecting the latest attempt to force one of the world's most powerful companies to dismantle the digital walls protecting its most lucrative product.

The 92-page decision issued by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals largely affirmed the findings of a lower-court judge who presided over a 2021 trial that revolved around an antitrust lawsuit filed by Epic Games, the maker of the popular Fortnite video game.

Celebrities, professional athletes and other high-profile Twitter users are once again being verified by the social media platform and they don't know why their blue check marks reappeared — nor do they seem too happy about it.

Twitter removed the blue marks last week from accounts that don't pay a monthly fee. But the check marks mysteriously returned for many highly followed accounts over the weekend, leading some prominent users to disavow what's become a divisive symbol of Twitter owner Elon Musk's erratic changes to the platform.

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.