Bezos, brother going to space in his rocket’s first manned launch
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced Monday that he and brother Mark will be joining whoever wins the auction to be on his Blue Origin company’s New Shepard rocket ship when it makes its first human space flight on July 20.
“To see the earth from space, that changes you,” Bezos said in a video Monday. “It changes your relationship with this planet, it changes your relationship with humanity. It’s one earth.”
New Shepard has run 15 unmanned flights so far, preparing for crewed launches with an eventual goal of space tourism.
One of the seats on the July 20 flight is currently being auctioned off, with nearly 6,000 bids from 143 countries and the highest bid currently at $2.8 million. The winning bid amount will be donated to Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future, whose mission is “to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM and to help invent the future of life in space.”
The 30-minute flight, which will launch from Van Horn, Texas, will give passengers about three minutes of zero gravity before returning home.
“I want to go on this flight because it’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life,” Bezos said. “It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.”
—New York Daily News
Ex-college athlete sentenced in Minneapolis police station fire
MINNEAPOLIS — A U.S. District Court judge sentenced the last of the four men who have pleaded guilty to burning a Minneapolis police station last summer to two years and five months in federal prison and to help pay $12 million in restitution for the damage.
In court Monday morning, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz called Bryce Michael Williams a "good person who made a terrible mistake," which is why he rendered a prison term lower than prescribed by federal sentencing guidelines for the 27-year-old father and former college basketball player. But Schiltz rejected Williams' request for only probation, describing him as a leader — "not a follower" — in the violent mob that torched the south Minneapolis police station during riots the engulfed the city after the murder of George Floyd.
Williams was one of more than a thousand people who gathered outside the precinct on May 28, 2020. As the crowd chanted "burn it down!" dozens tore down a fence around the police headquarters. Williams entered the building and lit a Molotov cocktail, which Davon De-Andre Turner used to ignite a fire. Williams then threw a box on top of a fire near the entrance of the precinct.
He published videos of himself and others rioting to his TikTok account, which rapidly gained more than 150,000 followers.
In court Monday, Williams said he felt ashamed of his behavior during the riots, and he'll never forget "the pain and agony" he caused. Since he's been charged, he's held down steady jobs, including working security, stopped drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana and focused on his faith and being a good father, he said.
"Please have mercy on me while you sentence me," he asked the judge.
—Star Tribune
Trump, Bill O'Reilly plan to start 'conversation' tour in Florida
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — One of then-President Donald Trump’s last big rallies before the coronavirus pandemic was at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, in November 2019.
He’s coming back, just over two years later. The former president is teaming up with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly for a series of four conversations in December.
The first date, a public relations firm announced Monday, is Dec. 11 at the Sunrise arena. Like all big arena shows, the tickets go on sale six months in advance.
O’Reilly has written several popular books about historical events, and the event planners described him as “historian/journalist.” He was once Fox’s top star, and the cable news host with the highest ratings. His tenure came to an end in April 2017, weeks after The New York Times disclosed a series of sexual harassment allegations against him.
Trump, who has denied pre-presidential sexual harassment allegations made against him, defended O’Reilly at the time. “I don’t think Bill did anything wrong,” he said. “I think he’s a person I know well — he is a good person.”
Since leaving the presidency, many of Trump’s public pronouncements have continued his false claims that widespread voter fraud is the reason he lost and President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. On Saturday, Trump spoke to the North Carolina Republican Party convention, and hinted he might run again in 2024.
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Ticks on a 'quest' for blood at California's beaches
Millions of people enjoy hanging out at California beaches in the warmer months. So do ticks carrying Lyme disease.
That's one finding from four years of field work in California's San Francisco Bay Area and nearby wine country involving the collection of some 3,000 Western black-legged ticks.
The abundance of the blood-sucking arachnids surprised some tick biologists and experts, in part because it is unclear what animals may be spreading them around.
How these ticks survive, feed and breed in coastal areas remains somewhat of a mystery, said Dan Salkeld, an ecologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, who led the study. The ticks' favorite mammalian host, the western gray squirrel, does not frequent seaside grass-scapes.
While the research is not yet published, it could be important in evaluating whether Lyme disease — a potentially debilitating tick-borne infection — is on the upswing in the California Bay Area and statewide.
Still, California has a far lower incidence of disease-carrying ticks than other parts of the country, particularly the East Coast, where up to half of all ticks can be carriers.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that roughly 476,000 people contract the disease every year. Most of the cases occur in the Northeast, Middle Atlantic states and Upper Midwest.
—Los Angeles Times
