City of York Council data showed every part of the city where air quality is monitored showed nitrous oxide (NO2) emissions were below legal limits for the second year running.

Cllr Jenny Kent, the council’s Labour environment spokesperson, said the figures were something to celebrate and reflected a huge collective effort across the city to get emissions down.

Council public health lead Peter Roderick said meeting the targets was a significant step towards reducing the risk of respiratory, heart and brain conditions.

The comments follow monitoring data showed maximum yearly concentrations of NO2 were at their lowest level in York for 15 years.

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It also comes as the council has received funding from the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority to monitor air quality indoors in homes across York.

Council environmental protection lead Mike Southcombe said there was currently no information about indoor air quality which could be affected by appliances including gas cookers.

The official told a meeting on Tuesday, June 2 the project would monitor changes in air quality inside homes which have been retrofitted to improve energy efficiency.

Monitoring of air quality recorded the highest concentration of NO2 emissions near the Gillygate and Bootham junction, with a level of 29.9 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3).

National limits for average NO2 emissions across a year are 40µg/m3.

City of York Council’s Labour Environment Executive Member Cllr Jenny Kent at an air quality monitor in Holgate Road (Image: City of York Council)

The Gillygate and Bootham junction was followed by that of Holgate and Blossom Street where the second-highest maximum concentration of NO2 representative of long-term exposure in 2025 was recorded, 29µg/m3.

NO2 pollution fell year-on-year at every York monitoring station except at the Fishergate and Paragon Steet junction where it rose by 2.5 per cent.

York’s NO2 levels remained above the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines of 10µg/m3-a-year which is typical for much of the UK, according to the council.

Levels of particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) were at three-year highs but remained below the target mean of 10µg/m3.

Vehicles are the single-largest source of NO2 emissions which tend to be more localised when monitored.

PM10 and PM2.5 particles can come from elsewhere, with Tuesday’s council decision session hearing they could travel from as far away as continental Europe and North Africa.

Environment Executive Member Cllr Kent said York should celebrate its emissions figures ahead of national Clean Air Day on Thursday, June 18.

She added the electrification of the council’s vehicle fleet, encouraging bus use and smoke control measures set to come into force this year were helping to cut emissions.

Cllr Kent said: “Having walked past the Holgate Road monitor for almost 30 years alongside generations of neighbours and children on their way to school and work, I am especially pleased to see that it’s showing the largest improvement of 9.6 per cent NO2 reduction between 2024 and 2025, on top of the reductions the previous year.

“Every act each of us takes- choosing walking, cycling and catching the bus rather than using the car, switching to electric cars, heat pumps and solar and away from gas cookers and fossil fuels will ultimately cost less, make us healthier, and our air cleaner for everyone.”

Public Health Director Mr Roderick said air pollution was invisible but its effects were very real.

The official said: “We are now working towards even more ambitious standards to give every resident the best possible chance of a long and healthy life.

“Every step we take is an investment in the city’s future wellbeing.”

A handful of Republicans joined Democrats on Wednesday and bucked President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson to rein in the president’s power to further prosecute his war in Iran.

The House passed the War Powers Act resolution 215-208. The move came after four Republicans defected to the Democratic side.

Under U.S. law, the president must withdraw troops within 60 days of a military engagement unless Congress declares war or authorizes the use of military force. The president must also inform Congress within 48 of committing armed forces into action.

“They’ve known the right answer for a long time,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) told The Independent. “They just finally got up the courage to show.”

The vote came just as reporters questioned Trump in the Oval Office about the war in Iran. While Trump had announced a ceasefire weeks ago, he described the halt to hostilities as “shooting in a more moderate manner.” Amid the war, now well into its third month, Trump’s approval numbers have fallen precipitously as Americans see higher gas prices thanks to the Iranian regime blocking the Strait of Hormuz.

Previous attempts to rein in the president on Iran have failed because they mostly fell along party lines. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said that “we’re not at war right now” in Iran. Even as the White House sent troops to the region, Johnson said that the United States did not have “boots on the ground.”

Two weeks ago, the House was set to vote on a War Powers Act resolution to rein in the president on Iran. But Republicans dragged out a vote on a separate piece of legislation for a women’s history museum as it attempted to prevent the passage of the resolution.

But as time has progressed, some Republicans have become restless. During the last War Powers Act resolution, three Republicans broke with House GOP leadership: Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.), Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). On Wednesday, a fourth member joined them: Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio.

“It’s a big deal, overdue,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), an ally of Massie’s who previously pushed other War Powers Act resolutions, told The Independent.

Massie’s outspoken criticism of the war in Iran led to the White House engaging in a full-court press against him during his primary and Ed Gallrein beat him last month.

In addition, Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) flipped his vote after he had previously opposed War Powers Resolutions.

“I also think people should understand that this is, for me, a matter of separation of powers and the law,” he told The Independent. “We’re past 60 days now. If the president wants the authority to continue the operations, then I think he’s got to come to Congress and make the case.”

Republicans ultimately ran out of options to block the resolution. During the last War Powers vote, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) was out recovering from eye surgery and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.) was not present. But Leger Fernandez attended and voted in the affirmative on Wednesday.

By contrast, Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.) has gone missing and has missed almost 90 days of work. Kean has said he has been dealing with health complications, but refused to disclose them.

At the same time, some Republicans returned who were not previously available. Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) returned since she is no longer campaigning in Louisiana’s Senate primary after she made the runoff election. It would not be enough though.

In the same respect, Trump’s decision to endorse Letlow to replace Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) might facilitate the War Powers Act resolution’s passage in the Senate.

Before the Senate let out two weeks ago, Cassidy voted to allow the resolution to allow the resolution to proceed, which led to a 50-47 “yes” vote.

The vote is just the latest sign of Republicans becoming restless with a White House increasingly less focused on the cost of living and more dedicated toward the president’s personal vendettas, erecting Trump’s desired ballroom and tidying up various locations throughout Washington.

But some Republicans have become exasperated with it. Shortly after the vote, a handful of Republicans including Fitzpatrick, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Max Miller (R-Ohio) voted with Democrats on a discharge petition to put in place sanctions on Russia and send more aid to Ukraine.

In addition, many Republicans in the Senate balked at the Trump administraiton’s announcement of an “anti-weaponization” fund through the Justice Department, through which allies of the president could be financially compensated if they claim the Biden or Obama administration unfairly targeted them.

Other Republicans criticized Trump’s nomination of Bill Pulte, who currently leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to become interim director of National Intelligence.

The letter, addressed to ministerial ethics watchdog Sir Laurie Magnus, says: “Despite publicly claiming last month that Mandelson ‘should not have been appointed’ as the Labour government’s ambassador to the United States, these newly released messages confirm that Alexander privately welcomed the appointment, congratulating Mandelson by saying ‘good news for you, for the government and for the country’.

A defendant stands in the dock. An expert describes them as a “psychopath”. In an instant, one word threatens to eclipse their history, circumstances and the crime itself.

In Ireland, England and Wales, judges are not supposed to add years to a sentence because someone has been described as a psychopath. But the label can still enter criminal justice through expert reports, risk assessments, parole, mental disorder cases and preventive detention.

In the US, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) – an assessment tool used for diagnosing psychopathic traits – has been used in death penalty cases, parole hearings, preventive detention and pre-sentence evaluation. These cases usually concern future risk, with evidence most often introduced by the prosecution or state. Research from the US has shown a marked increase in the use of PCL-R over time.

The “psychopath” label has been applied in a number of cases involving adolescent offenders, and occasionally raised by the defence, alongside brain-imaging evidence, to argue for reduced culpability or impaired control.

In the 1980s case of American serial killer Brian Dugan, psychopathy and brain-imaging evidence were used to argue that he could not control his “killer impulses”. He was ultimately sentenced to death in 2009, but the testimony transformed it from a “slam dunk for the prosecution into a much tougher case”.

In Scotland, where an order for lifelong restriction (an indeterminate, lifelong sentence for serious violent or sexual offenders assessed as posing a continuing risk) is considered, the High Court can commission a risk assessment report. Psychopathy may be assessed in the report, but should not determine the sentence by itself. In one recent sentencing statement, the court noted that the offender scored just above the UK cutoff for psychopathy, but imposed the order only after considering the full risk assessment.

Proper use of the PCL-R to assess defendants for psychopathy requires specialist training, interviews and file review. Even then, scoring and interpretation are not mechanical: they depend on professional judgment, typically forensic psychologists or psychiatrists.

In my recent research, I argue that psychopathy can be legally relevant, but not as confidently as it is sometimes presented. If judges and policymakers treat psychopathy as a hard scientific fact rather than an evolving construct, the result can be unfair labelling, distorted sentencing and overconfident predictions.

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Psychopathy: some experts now say it doesn’t exist – here’s why we may be looking at it all wrong

What is psychopathy?

Psychopathy is a cluster of traits, not a standalone clinical diagnosis. Unlike antisocial personality disorder, it doesn’t appear in either the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual (the DSM) or the World Health Organization’s equivalent (the ICD), although the concepts overlap considerably. Traits include callousness, lack of empathy, shallow emotions, manipulativeness, deceitfulness, impulsivity and antisocial behaviour.

Psychopathy tends to matter most in legal settings focused on a defendant’s future behaviour: sentencing, mental disorder cases, parole and preventive detention. But it is not a legal category. It is a clinical and research construct entering law through expert evidence and assessment tools like the PCL-R. That matters because law asks different questions from science. Courts ask about culpability, fairness and risk, while researchers debate what psychopathy is, how to measure it and how stable the concept is.

An assessment of psychopathy can seem more precise than it is. One reason is neuroscience. For years, brain imaging studies appeared to show that people with psychopathic traits had abnormalities in areas linked to emotional processing and impulse control. That fed the idea of a distinctive “psychopathic brain”.

But newer and larger studies have made that story harder to sustain. Findings are often inconsistent, weak or inconclusive. Apparent brain differences are not unique to psychopathy. Brain scans do not tell simple stories about cause and effect. A brain difference may shape behaviour – but behaviour, life experience and environment also shape the brain.

There is no agreed neural fingerprint that courts can safely treat as objective proof of psychopathy. And yet, psychopathy evidence is used to answer legal questions about culpability, future risk, treatability and detention. Psychopathy research is useful, but courts should be wary when experts present isolated findings as consensus.

Assessing psychopathy

Then there are the assessment tools. The best known is the PCL-R, developed by forensic psychologist Robert Hare and first published in revised form in 1991. It scores people across 20 items covering traits and behaviour, using interviews and file reviews. It is widely used as a gold-standard instrument, but easier to overstate than many realise.

The cutoff points used to classify someone as a psychopath are practical thresholds that vary across jurisdictions. The tool also gives significant weight to past criminal behaviour, so two people with similar traits can receive different scores depending on their history. In adversarial settings like a courtroom, experts instructed by different sides do not always agree. A psychopathy score is therefore not a self-explaining fact.

There is a deeper problem. The best current evidence suggests psychopathy is not all-or-nothing. People vary by degree across traits such as callousness, poor impulse control and manipulativeness. There is no clear line separating “the psychopath” from everyone else.

Law, however, prefers binaries: disordered or not, high-risk or not. When courts force a dimensional condition into a yes-or-no category, they risk creating false certainty.

A better approach is to stop asking: “Is this person a psychopath?” and ask more practical questions instead: “Which traits are elevated, how extreme are they, and how do they matter here?”

The legal system need not ignore psychopathy. It must, however, resist being overawed by it. Courts should not treat psychopathy as something that can be read off a brain scan or reduced to a single numeric score. They should demand clarity about the limits of the evidence and favour careful, trait-based evidence over sweeping labels that carry enormous stigma.

Used carefully, psychopathy research can help the law make better decisions. Used carelessly, it can turn a contested scientific construct into a shortcut for fear, blame and exclusion. In a courtroom, that is too much power to hand to one word.

Manchester City have made a bid to sign Nottingham Forest midfielder Elliot Anderson

Manchester City have had an opening bid for Elliot Anderson rejected by Nottingham Forest. Reports from the Athletic claim Forest immediately rejected the approach, but City’s bid to sign the England international is ongoing.

Forest transfer chiefs do not want to sell Anderson, but will look to get the best deal possible for the club if he is to leave the City Ground this summer.

The report claims Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis and City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak spoke at UEFA’s Champions League dinner in Budapest last Thursday.

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The meeting involved several senior figures in football, though there is no suggestion of a deal for Anderson being discussed by the two parties.

The midfielder, who is currently on international duty with England in Miami, is highly sought after by several Premier League clubs.

City’s arch-rivals Manchester United also have an interest in signing Anderson this summer, but the report claims Michael Carrick’s side will not pay the lofty price-tag set by Marinakis.

A move to City would be the first hint as to what the future holds for the club after Pep Guardiola announced he’d be leaving after ten years at the Etihad Stradium.

Enzo Maresca is expected to replace the legendary head coach, having worked under Guardiola as assistant manager in 2022-23.

Forest do not want to sell Anderson, but there’s a growing consensus that he’ll leave the City Ground, despite having three-years remaining on his contract.

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Anderson has flourished since his move from boyhood club Newcastle United, in £35m deal which saw goalkeeper Odysseas Vlachodimos head to St. James’ Park.

The ‘Geordie Maradona’ as he’s known to many, was valued at £15m as part of that transaction, but his value has sky rocketed since then.

He was one of the standout performers in the Premier League last season, making 50 appearances in all competitions.

More than 100 FBI personnel were drafted in to help with the operation

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A gunman who took ten school district employees hostage, claiming to have explosives strapped to himself, has been shot dead after a standoff in California.

Police stormed a building in Bakersfield overnight, bringing an end to a tense 16‑hour siege in which the suspect bound several of his captives, telling officers that both he and the hostages were rigged with explosives, according to the Mirror.

All ten victims, staff from the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, were found unharmed inside the premises, which also houses a Chase bank, Bakersfield Assistant Police Chief Jeremy Blakemore said.

“Throughout the night, their families questioned whether or not they would be seen again, but we are very grateful for the outcome,” Blakemore said during a news conference Wednesday (June 3)

Anthony Scott Searles-Harris, 41, was shot and killed around 4:20am, according to Sid Patel, special agent in charge in the FBI’s Sacramento office.

Officials disclosed that he was an Army veteran who was dishonourably discharged, and that he had a history of trouble with law enforcement and was a registered sex offender.

Searles-Harris told police he had a bomb after barricading himself within the second floor of the building, Blakemore said. Authorities were testing the devices that Searles-Harris said were explosives, but Patel said they do not appear to be a concern.

Officers were able to communicate with one of the hostage via her mobile phone until the battery died, Patel said. She was diabetic and didn’t have her medicine so officials knew she was at risk, he added.

“I’m sure there’ll be mental scars that they’re living with, and we’ll have our victim specialist to help them.” Authorities declined to discuss a motive in the standoff, though Police Chief Jeremy Blakemore said some of the demands Searles-Harris made involved asking for materials from an earlier case.

“He had concerns related to how his previous case had been handled and what the aftermath of that was, the sentencing and those kinds of things,” Blakemore said, without specifying details.

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Searles-Harris was on the state’s sex offender registry due to convictions in 2014 for sex crimes related to a child under 14 years of age, according to California Department of Justice and court records. He was released from prison in 2018.

The gunman had served about a year in the Army before being dishonourably discharged in 2007 for going AWOL., according to the FBI. Court records in Kern County, California, show Searles-Harris filed a petition to prevent domestic violence, and was involved in divorce proceedings that began in 2009 and note a young child, as well as a fight for guardianship years later in which he was listed as an objector.

During the press conference, Mr Blakemore confirmed he was aware of videos in which Searles‑Harris attacked the sheriff’s office and insisted he had been wrongly convicted of past sex offences. He said the footage was being reviewed, but there were no plans to reopen or investigate the claims of innocence.

“What unfolded was undoubtedly a terribly frightening and unsettling experience, and the composure our employees demonstrated throughout the 16-hour ordeal was extraordinary, John Mendiburu, the county schools superintendent, said in a statement.

The standoff took place early Tuesday afternoon after officers were called to reports of a bomb threat at the Chase Bank building, a four‑storey block with dark‑tinted windows in Bakersfield, a city of around 380,000 people roughly 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Police negotiators spent hours speaking with Searles‑Harris by phone, and he eventually released two hostages on Tuesday night. Nearby buildings, including City Hall and the police headquarters just a block away, were evacuated as roads were sealed off during the unfolding crisis.

More than 100 FBI personnel were drafted in, including two SWAT teams, bomb technicians and crisis negotiators. A specialist hostage rescue team was even flown in from its East Coast headquarters to support the operation, officials said

SpaceX is poised to raise up to $75 billion in its initial public offering this month, a move that would mark the largest-ever stock market debut and could propel Elon Musk to become the world’s first trillionaire.

The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., announced Wednesday it plans to sell 555.6 million shares at $135 a piece.

This offering would value SpaceX at $1.77 trillion, a market capitalization surpassed by only six S&P 500 companies, including Nvidia at $5.2 trillion.

Musk will not sell any shares, retaining 82.4% of SpaceX’s voting power. Forbes values his net worth at $825 billion, with his $542 billion SpaceX stake.

The estimated IPO proceeds would easily top the $26 billion raised by Saudi Aramco in 2019.

SpaceX filed to go public last month, unveiling $13 billion worth of losses since 2023, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including a $4.3 billion loss since the start of the year.

Since its inception in 2002, SpaceX has ascended to become the globe’s largest space enterprise, primarily through the deployment of thousands of Starlink internet satellites.

Its pioneering adoption of reusable rockets has fundamentally altered the economics of space travel, compelling rivals like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to accelerate their own advancements.

While SpaceX initially gained prominence for its rocket manufacturing and satellite launches, the majority of its $18.67 billion revenue last year stemmed from its Starlink satellite internet service.

Much of its projected future growth is now tied to artificial intelligence-related ventures, though its nascent xAI unit is currently operating at a loss, according to the recent filing.

Earlier this year, some of the major stock market indexes, including the Nasdaq where SpaceX will soon be available, changed their rules to allow high-value companies to join much quicker than normal after going public.

SpaceX stock is expected to be available on the Nasdaq beginning June 12, under the ticker “SPCX,” according to Reuters.

Megan Walsh (Beth Nixon) is one of the most rotten individuals that has ever traipsed the cobbles of Coronation Street.

A deeply manipulative paedophile who grooms, isolates and deeply corrupts the children she predates upon and is utterly unrepentant in her actions, as she’s shown with Will Driscoll (Lucas Hodgson-Wale) and his friend, former victim, Lee (Oscar Aldersley).

A cold, vicious enemy to anyone who dares cross her, she waged mental warfare against Sam Blakeman (Jude Riordan) when he discovered her true nature, sabotaging his academic success and relishing in turning his attempts to expose her against him.

Although he did eventually divulge what he knew, she’s damaged him so badly he’s been left with deep trauma and has become psychologically unwell.

Even when exposed, she was capable of ensuring that Will didn’t confirm the truth to anybody, continuing her sick grooming while attempting to plan her own escape to another country alone, despite promising that she’d take him with her and they’d be together.

It was an unlikely intervention from Tim Metcalfe (Joe Duttine) that saw Will finally listen to reason, when Tim used his own experience of sexual abuse to open his eyes to what Megan had truly done to him.

As he attempted to flee alongside her, Tim gave him the option of either absconding with Megan and remaining under her thrall, or finally reporting her to the police, Will chose the latter.

Will has suffered since making the report, with the true scope of the damage Megan has done becoming evident.

An attempt at kindness from Bethany Platt (Lucy Fallon), herself a former victim of grooming quickly went awry when Will mistook it for a predatory act.

Next, he encountered a deeply unwell Sam, who called him sick and wished him dead.

Unaware of how much Sam is struggling, Will absorbs the cruel words before overhearing his dad, Ben (Aaron McCusker), worrying that Megan has destroyed him for life.

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Climbing some scaffolding while chugging from a bottle of vodka, the timely intervention of Asha Alahan (Tanisha Gorey), Hope Dobbs (Isabella Flanagan) and grandma Maggie (Pauline McLynn) ensured he was brought down to safety, before Megan re-appeared, having been released on bail.

She slipped her new number into his pocket, which he later put into his phone. Troubled as he is, though, his new friendship with Hope returns a smile to his face.

Next week, he tells her that he’s considering giving up athletics, fearing the pursuit will always remind him of Megan, but she’s quick to reassure him that he needs to continue.

The way she sees it, quitting would only reinforce Megan’s control over his life and it’d be a massive shame to squander his abilities.

Heartened, Will agrees with Hope.

Later in the week, he tells Hope he’s received a message from his friend, Lee, who’s visiting from Hull and wants to meet up.

As he waits for Lee, though, he’s absolutely shaken to turn around and see Megan, realising that she’s set him up.

With him at her mercy, what does Megan want? Is Will in danger?

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX is about to become a public company – and the move could impact Americans’ retirement accounts, some experts have warned.

Last month, SpaceX unveiled plans to publicly sell its stock for the first time. The company’s initial public offering, expected June 12, is on track to be the largest in history at a projected $1.75 trillion and could put Musk on a path to becoming the world’s first trillionaire.

Earlier this year, some of the major stock market indexes, including the Nasdaq where SpaceX will soon be available, changed their rules to allow high-value companies to join much quicker than normal after going public.

That’s where Americans’ retirement accounts come in. Retirement account managers typically will invest in so-called index funds. Basically, those funds spread out money across a market such as the Nasdaq, so individual investors will have small amounts in lots of companies and not need to worry about trading stocks day-to-day. That means that millions of Americans could see portions of their 401Ks or other retirement accounts invested in the aerospace company founded by the world’s richest person.

In light of the SpaceX IPO’s accelerated timeline, that causes concern among some tech and finance experts.

SpaceX, which is currently valued at $1.25 trillion, lost about $4.9 billion in 2025, and another $4.3 billion in the first three months of 2026, according to The New York Times. Typically, when companies aren’t earning money it’s a bad sign for Wall Street and the stock will sell causing its price to go down.

A company’s stock prices also tend to be volatile immediately after a company goes public. The previous waiting periods, which were put in after the dot-com crash, helped protect investors against wild swings in a company or prove its profitability before being included in a small market such as the Nasdaq.

That could mean retirement account holders seeing losses if SpaceX faces either of these factors. While most individual investors would likely only have a small portion of their index fund invested in SpaceX, any loss would hurt their bottom line.

Corey McLaughlin, the editor of the Stansberry Digest, a daily investment research newsletter by the publishing firm Stansberry Research, warned that the effects will be felt widely.

“If you’re like us, you’re not planning to buy SpaceX shares in the [initial public offering]. But odds are, you’ll end up owning SpaceX anyway… if you own any index funds. And even if you don’t, you’ll have indirect exposure because of all the other people who do. Their behavior will move the entire stock market,” McLaughlin wrote in the company’s newsletter last week.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, also wrote to the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, expressing concern about SpaceX’s “unsustainable valuation” and the potential impact on union members’ pensions and investments. The union represents 1.8 million workers and is among the largest in the country.

“That is why we are going to the SEC—there is nowhere else to turn. This is not just another [initial public offering]—it’s the largest in U.S. history, and it’s being rushed to market with a valuation that defies financial logic,” Weingarten said in a statement last month.

However other financial experts have said average Americans don’t need to be particularly concerned. Scott Richie, an investing expert at Stoculator, told Newsweek this SpaceX development is “neither a big positive nor a big danger” for most retirement account holders.

“You’ll own a little SpaceX the same way you already own a little of hundreds of companies you’ve never thought about,” Richie said.

“A small slice of any single company, up or down, won’t make or break your retirement,” he added.

SpaceX stock is expected to be available on the Nasdaq beginning June 12, under the ticker “SPCX,” according to Reuters. The company, which was founded in 2002 by Musk, designs, builds and launches rockets and spacecraft. In 2020, it became the first private company to take humans to the International Space Station.

The Independent has contacted SpaceX for comment.