#private-funding

#private-funding

The demolition was hardly the most egregious action that Trump has taken as president, but it captured popular and media attention because it was such a clear metaphor: Trump had secretively demolished part of a building that belongs to the people of the United States, treating it as his own. That metaphor may become more potent yet. Recent events suggest that the gaping hole where the East Wing once was may lie there exposed, undeveloped, and contested for quite some time.

Lazuli's design features a 3.1-meter mirror, which would make it larger than NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (but smaller than the James Webb Space Telescope). It will also be equipped with a wide-field camera, a broadband integral-field spectrograph, and a coronagraph. Those instruments will be used to study everything from exoplanets to supernovae, but Schmidt Sciences also envisions Lazuli being used for "rapid response" purposes, such as quickly swiveling to gather data on objects spotted by other telescopes.

(Emma McIntyre / Getty Images for LA28) John Slusher shouldn't admit this. When the former Nike executive signed on to oversee LA28's commercial operations last year, he looked at the private organizing committee's lofty financial goals with some concern. Sales were "incredibly slow." There was momentum around the first Olympics in L.A. in more than 40 years, but not many results. Yet. Weeks after celebrating his one-year anniversary with the group responsible for organizing and delivering the 2028 Games, Slusher and his team delivered a $2-billion present.

Electric aviation startup Beta Technologies has priced shares for its initial public offering between $27 and $33, in hopes of raising as much as $825 million, according to a regulatory document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If the company attracts investors at the top of that range it will debut with a valuation of about $7.2 billion.