Tuesday, July 20 top stories
It is Tuesday, July 20. Here are today’s top stories.
Jeff Bezos successfully completed a 10-minute trip to space, rocketing 62 miles above West Texas on an automated rocket made by his company, Blue Origin. Bezos went up with his brother Mark, a 18-year-old paying customer named Oliver Daemen, and an aviator named Wally Funk.
It is Blue Origin’s first trip with humans on it, so Bezos, the world’s richest man, was taking a risk by going up. He is the second billionaire to go up in space in a rocket from his own spaceflight company —
The “first billionaire in space” designation belongs to Richard Branson and his company, Virgin Galactic, who went 50 miles above Earth nine days ago.
After Bezos returned to Earth in a parachuted capsule, he announced he is donating $100 million each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef José Andrés. Bezos also thanked all Amazon customers, saying they helped to pay for all of this.
The rocket booster had a successful self-landing. Bezos said Blue Origin is now nearing $100M in private sales for people to be able to have a seat to go up in space. It is not known how much a ticket costs, but it’s likely out of reach unless you are a multi-millionaire. Bezos said he hopes that over time, the cost of space travel will come down so space travel is accessible to everyone.
Axios reported that Tom Barrack, a real estate investor, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, and the chairman of Trump’s 2017 inaugural fund, was arrested today and charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates. The Department of Justice said Barrack tried to influence the Trump campaign to advance the interests of the UAE in 2016.
The CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the Delta variant is accounting for 83% of Covid-19 cases in the U.S. This is a large increase from 50% on July 3. Walensky said the number of deaths due to the coronavirus has nearly doubled since last week with an average of 239 deaths a day. She said their data shows that vaccines can neutralize the circulating variants in the U.S. and provide protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death.
Today Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of lying during a testimony in May in which Fauci said the National Institutes of Health (NIH) did not fund “gain-of-function” research at a Wuhan, China lab. Gain-of-function is a term that describes any efforts by scientists to increase the transmissibility of a virus. The senator was suspicious of Fauci and accused him of covering up his relationship with Wuhan.
Paul told Fauci that it is a crime to lie to Congress and asked him if he would like to retract his testimony. Fauci said he did not lie, said he resented that Paul implied that he is responsible for deaths, and said that if anyone is lying here — it is the senator — and pointed at him.
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Axios reported that a White House official and an aide for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tested positive for Covid-19 after attending the same event last week. Both individuals were not identified but are said to be vaccinated. They are mildly symptomatic.
Axios explained that the Pelosi aide helped to usher a delegation of Democratic Texas lawmakers around the Capitol last week — this is the group of lawmakers who fled the state last week to avoid voting on a bill that would impose new voting restrictions. Six of these Democrats tested positive for Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated.
Axios said this illustrates “how Americans inoculated against the coronavirus can still contract, and potentially, unknowingly transmit the virus — even at the highest levels of the nation’s government.”
At least 40 million Americans are now experiencing poor air quality and observing hazy skies, which is a result of massive wildfires in the Western U.S. I noticed it myself yesterday afternoon in the Detroit area — the sky was grayer than usual and the sun had a strange-looking orange hue.
A NOAA satellite showed that wildfire smoke has been spreading across North America from July 15 to 19.
ABC News said there are at least 80 large wildfires burning in 13 states, mostly in the West. The largest is the Bootleg Fire in Oregon, which has spread to over 388,000 acres.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/jeff-bezos-space-flight-07-20-21/index.html
https://www.axios.com/thomas-barrack-trump-uae-arrest-doj-beb45720-b4b4-41f0-b29e-a649423310eb.html
https://www.axios.com/delta-variant-83-covid-cases-cdc-0323c203-3f27-49e5-a064-180c0471e709.html