The world’s biggest car company, Toyota Motor, reluctantly released an electric vehicle in May. Weeks later, it recalled 2,700 of them because there was a risk in their wheels — the most fundamental component — would fall off. If that’s the level of quality and safety traditional auto giants are willing to commit to, then investors and regulators should increase ...

  In 2033, a US spacecraft will return to Earth carrying the second cache of rocks ever collected from the surface of Mars. The first cache? It will have been collected by China two years earlier, in 2031, according to plans released by one of China’s top space scientists. Of course, there’s no guarantee that either mission will succeed. But ...

  Inflation almost seems passe. The worry of the moment is now economic growth. That’s not unreasonable, as the latest update shows US gross domestic product declined at an annualised rate of 1.6% in the first quarter. With the huge exceptions of the Covid-scarred first two quarters of 2020, this was the weakest US growth since the spring of 2009. ...