(NEW YORK) — Those who wish to spend a few minutes at the edge of Earth’s atmosphere will now have the chance — if they have $450,000 to spare.
Virgin Galactic, the private space tourism firm headed by billionaire Richard Branson, announced Thursday evening that it was officially reopening ticket sales.
The announcement comes on the heels of a successful test flight last month in which Branson and a crew flew to the edge of space in a mission dubbed Unity 22.
“Leveraging the surge in consumer interest following the Unity 22 flight, we are excited to announce the reopening of sales effective today, beginning with our Spacefarer community,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement Thursday as the company announced second quarter earnings. “As we endeavor to bring the wonder of space to a broad global population, we are delighted to open the door to an entirely new industry and consumer experience.”
“Spacefarer community” refers to customers who already have put down a refundable deposit to be first in line to purchase tickets. The company said it intends to offer three consumer offerings for the private astronaut market: a single seat, a multi-seat package for couples or friends and a full-flight buyout. When the firm initially announced it was selling tickets to space a few years ago, the announced price was $250,000.
Branson’s July 11 suborbital flight took heat from critics for stretching the definition of space as the crew did not go above the Karman line (62 miles above Earth) that is defined by many agencies — but not all — as the boundary between the planet’s atmosphere and space.
Still, video from the trip showed Branson and his crew enjoying a few minutes of micro-gravity and the entire crew was presented astronaut wings during a news conference after their landing.
Branson’s role in much-viewed test flight was as a mission specialist, tasked with testing the customer experience.
“I think, like most kids, I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid and honestly nothing can prepare you for the view of Earth from space,” Branson said after landing. “It’s just magical. I’m just taking it all in. It’s just unreal.”
Just nine days after Branson’s spaceflight, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took a similar jaunt via a ride from his private space-faring company Blue Origin. Many saw the back-to-back billionaire spaceflights as ushering in a new era in space tourism that has been propelled by a budding commercial space industry dominated by the ultra-rich.
(WASHINGTON) — Spirit Airlines customers should expect hundreds more cancellations in the coming days as the airline works to rebuild its network.
CEO Ted Christie said weather issues coupled with staffing shortages led to mass flight cancellations at the airline this week.
“How we got here really starts with a very challenging, operating month in the month of July,” Christie said in an interview with ABC News. “Weather delays and logistics delays throughout the air transportation system built throughout the course of the month and ate away at all the redundancy that we had in our system.”
By the end of July, Spirit was forced to cancel flights for lack of crew availability, leading to a crew disruption throughout the airline’s network.
“They were in the wrong places at the wrong time,” Christie said. “And we needed to start to build that puzzle back together again. And, unfortunately, that takes our group a lot of time to do.”
The carrier has canceled more than 1,700 flights this week alone. Christie said he expects the cancellations to continue into early next week.
“We are starting to turn the tide here and get our operation back moving again,” Christie said. “There will still be cancellations over the next few days, but we can start to build back to a full operation.”
Amid the breakdown at the airline, passengers were left stranded at airports across the country.
Maria Martinez was stuck in Tampa, Florida, for three days, trying to get home to Detroit.
“We boarded the plane, they de-boarded us out of the plane and then they told us it was canceled,” Martinez told Detroit ABC affiliate WXYZ.
“It’s been a terrible week for us, for our guests,” Christie said. “We offer our apology to all of our guests that have been impacted here, and to our team members who are working really hard it’s been a rough week for sure.”
Despite this, Christie said he believes they have “taken care of” their guests and have provided adequate accommodations and vouchers.
“We believe we’ve taken care of our guests at this point, and we think we’re caught up there. We’ve either gotten them reaccommodated on Spirit or another airline or we’ve put them into a hotel or gotten them where they needed to be.”
Christie acknowledged Spirit’s reputation has taken a hit due of the issues. He hopes his airline will learn from it.
“While we strive for perfection in everything we do, in the times that we don’t we are humble enough that we look inside and figure out ways to get better and Spirit has been getting better over the last five years or so, and while this has been a terrible last few days we have to do the same thing here.”
Christie said Spirit will be working over the next few days to not only rebuild its network, but its trust with passengers.
“We have to do everything in our power to earn back their confidence, their business,” he said. “And that starts with building the airline back, making it as reliable as we want it to be.”
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. employers added a higher-than-expected 943,000 jobs last month, the Department of Labor said Friday, and the unemployment rate declined by a fraction of a percentage point to 5.4%.
A recent surge in virus cases in the U.S., propelled largely by the spread of the highly contagious delta variant, casts a shadow over the data collected in the earlier part of the month.
While the latest figures indicate the economic recovery is gaining steam, the unemployment rate still remains well above the pre-pandemic figure of 3.5% seen in February 2020.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — United Airlines announced Friday that all U.S.-based employees will be required to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and upload their vaccination card to a company site by this fall.
It is the first major U.S. carrier to mandate vaccines for all employees. Delta Air Lines announced earlier this year that it is requiring all new employees to be inoculated.
United joins a growing list of companies that have mandated vaccines for employees in some capacity: Uber, DoorDash, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Walmart and many more.
The airline’s deadline for employees to upload their vaccine card is five weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced it has fully approved a COVID-19 vaccine or five weeks after Sept. 20, whichever comes first.
“For those employees who are already vaccinated — and for those employees who get vaccinated and upload their records to Flying Together before September 20th — we’ll offer an additional day of pay,” United CEO Scott Kirby and United President Brett Hart wrote in a memo to employees.
The executives added, “We know some of you will disagree with this decision to require the vaccine for all United employees. But, we have no greater responsibility to you and your colleagues than to ensure your safety when you’re at work, and the facts are crystal clear: everyone is safer when everyone is vaccinated.”
United’s decision comes as fears mount about the highly-contagious delta variant.
“Over the last 16 months, Scott has sent dozens of condolences letters to the family members of United employees who have died from COVID-19,” the executives wrote. “We’re determined to do everything we can to try to keep another United family from receiving that letter.”
Last year, major U.S. airline CEOs pointed to low infection rates among their employees in an attempt to prove that air travel is safe.
“At United, but also at our large competitors, our flight attendants have lower COVID infection rates than the general population, which is one of multiple data points that speaks to the safety on board airplanes,” Kirby said during a Politico event in September.
At the time, the largest flight attendant union in the U.S. that represents United flight attendants among other airlines — the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO — said they saw a little over 1,000 flight attendants across the industry contract the novel coronavirus. That represented less than 1% of the roughly 120,000 flight attendants that were employed at the end of last year, and was lower than the reported general infection rate of 2%.
(NEW YORK) — Some major cruise lines will now require pre-boarding testing and masks to be worn in certain indoor areas — even for vaccinated guests.
“We have seen a number of ships report some isolated cases of COVID,” said Cruise Critic Editor-in-Chief Colleen McDaniel. “And what we’ve seen is these have been mostly among vaccinated passengers, and certainly the delta variant seems to be having an effect on that.”
Despite at least 95% of guests and crew being vaccinated, Carnival Vista, which departed out of Galveston, Texas, reported a “small number of positive cases” this week — prompting the cruise line to change their policy.
The positive cases are in isolation, but the new mask-wearing rule will begin immediately on the Vista.
Carnival’s policy will go into effect after Aug. 7 through Oct. 31 for other sailings.
“These new requirements are being implemented to protect our guests and crew while on board, and to continue to provide confidence to our homeports and destinations that we are doing our part to support their efforts to protect public health and safety,” Carnival Cruise Line President Christine Duffy said in a statement. “We expect these requirements will be temporary and appreciate the cooperation of our guests.”
Holland America and Princess Cruises, which are both owned by Carnival Corporation, announced the same new cruising requirements.
In addition to masking, all fully vaccinated guests will be required to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within three days of their embarkation.
“I think the requirements are going to continue to shift based on how we’re seeing the delta variant affect our day-to-day lives, both at home and also as we travel,” McDaniel said. “I think this is going to stick while we figure out how the delta variant is going to affect us, day to day.”
But some experts don’t believe the new rules will deter future passengers.
“What we have found is that cruise passengers want to cruise and that they want to cruise safely,” Cruise Critic Managing Editor Chris Faust told ABC News. “So no matter what they’re doing, they’re going to be following the cruise line protocols in order so that they can stay safe and feel like they’re having a great vacation.”
Dr. Anne Rimoin, an epidemiology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, recommended people determine what their risk threshold is before deciding to take a cruise in light of the growing number of cases.
“You have to think very carefully,” she said. “Do you have someone in your household, who isn’t vaccinated, that is at risk? Do I have small children that could become infected if I get infected?”
She said to keep in mind how contagious the delta variant is, and that it is easier to get COVID now than it has ever been.
“Vaccinated or not, you have to think about your risk, you have to think about where you are, who you’re around and mask accordingly,” she explained.
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans welcomed their first child, William Holmes Evans, on July 10, in Redwood City, California, according to birth records obtained by ABC News.
The birth comes as Holmes is awaiting criminal trial for 12 counts of fraud, beginning Aug. 31 in San Jose, California. If convicted, Holmes could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for each count of fraud. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The charges stem from allegations that Holmes, a Stanford dropout who became a media darling, engaged in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud investors about her blood-testing company, and a separate scheme to defraud doctors and patients, according to the indictment.
During a pretrial hearing in June, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila stated there would be a quiet room for Holmes to tend to the newborn during breaks in the trial.
Holmes, 37, first informed the court of her pregnancy in March 2021, according to court filings. The news delayed the trial, previously scheduled for July 13, for a fourth time. The date had been moved three times due to the pandemic.
During a Zoom hearing following the filing, the prosecution voiced their frustration, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Leach saying it was “frustrating and disappointing to learn about this now.”
“Right or wrong, that is going to have a bearing on the jury’s perception of her,” Caroline Polisi, a federal white-collar criminal defense attorney, told ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis in “The Dropout: Elizabeth Holmes on Trial” podcast. “Those types of things actually play a really large role in trials, even though they’re not supposed to.”
“Not only is that going to help her in her trial, but it will really help her in the event that she is convicted,” Polisi added. “The fact that she is a young, new mother is going to play into any potential sentence.”
However, defense attorney Jose Baez, famous for defending Casey Anthony, thinks it could backfire.
“I really think that could backfire because once a juror feels that one side is trying to manipulate them over another, they’re not going to like it,” he said.
Polisi and Baez, who are not associated with the trial, are among the top legal experts who will be appearing in “The Dropout: Elizabeth Holmes on Trial,” an upcoming series of new episodes to ABC News’ No. 1 hit podcast, “The Dropout.” Each week, the podcast will take listeners inside the courtroom and track the trial with real-time reporting on the most important developments.
The new episodes will feature conversations between Jarvis and Holmes’ former colleagues and acquaintances, Theranos patients, top legal experts and others who will provide insight into the trial and Holmes.
The podcast will also bring listeners up to speed on the twists and turns since Holmes was first charged.
“The Dropout: Elizabeth Holmes on Trial” debuts with two episodes on Aug. 31 and is available for free on major listening platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, Audacy and the ABC News app.
New episodes post Tuesdays throughout the trial with bonus episodes as news warrants. It is written by Rebecca Jarvis, Victoria Thompson and Taylor Dunn. Jarvis and Dunn are producers, and Thompson is executive producer.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — Amazon has pushed back the date for tech and corporate employees to return to office to 2022, as COVID-19 cases fueled by the highly transmissible delta variant continue to rise.
The company, which previously planned for employees to return the week of Sept. 7, has postponed reopening its doors to workers until at least Jan. 3, the company confirmed to ABC News.
The tech giant said it will continue to follow local government guidance in planning to reopen work spaces.
It’s not clear whether Amazon will require employees to be vaccinated to return to the office, but the company did tell ABC News it will require employees to wear masks in the office unless they can verify they’re fully vaccinated.
The move comes as other large companies, including several tech rivals, have made similar announcements on delaying return to in-person work and mandating staffers get vaccinated.
Microsoft announced earlier this week that return-to-office plans would be delayed to October, and employees will be required to be fully vaccinated to enter U.S. offices and work sites, The Associated Press reported.
Google, Facebook, Uber and a number of hospitals have announced similar requirements.
(ATLANTA) — When the pandemic hit the U.S. in March 2020, Schantayln Sherman, a single mother of a daughter with special needs, faced a series of medical and financial setbacks that left her unable to pay her rent.
As she received rental assistance, Sherman said she tried to look for more affordable housing but that it was the “hardest thing” because stock is low, demand is high, waitlists are long and restrictions in terms of credit scores and income levels are limiting.
“I have been looking to find more affordable housing, and, unfortunately, here in Atlanta, or if I even moved to another city in Georgia, it’s just not there right now. The rent is expensive everywhere,” she told ABC News.
According to affordable housing advocates and experts, Sherman’s experience is part of a national crisis that predates the pandemic: a shortage of affordable housing for low-income communities.
According to a July report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, rent is “out of reach” for most low-wage workers in every U.S. state — a crisis that disproportionately harms people of color. A full-time worker has to earn at least $20.40 per hour to afford renting a modest one-bedroom home or $24.90 per hour for a modest two-bedroom home, according to the report.
Henry Louis Taylor Jr., a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo, said the housing shortage also is a root cause of poverty.
“If poor people were paying 15 to 20% of their income on housing, poverty, as we know it, would have disappeared,” he said. “You can’t attack these issues without government intervention aimed at reducing the costs of housing and raising its quality.”
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge wrote in the NLIHC report that the findings highlight “the urgent need for our government to expand affordable housing.”
She also outlined how the Biden administration’s budget and “Build Back Better” agenda, which includes funds for rental assistance and investments in building or modernizing affordable housing units that “would serve as a critical down payment toward his plan to put housing assistance in reach for every household in need.”
‘A landlord’s market’
Taylor said that the private sector has always failed to provide a sufficient stock of quality housing options for low-income communities and the government hasn’t done enough to correct that market failure.
Jonathan Cappelli, an affordable housing advocate and director of the Neighborhood Development Collaborative in Colorado, echoed Taylor’s sentiment, describing the environment as “a landlord’s market.”
Cappelli told ABC News that rental assistance funds are meant for tenants and landlords who are experiencing financial hardships during the pandemic, but in states like Colorado the majority of the funds have not been distributed.
And as landlords struggle to recover, many are likely to raise rents that are already surging, Cappelli said.
“Those rents are just going to keep on climbing up, and it will continue to serve just higher and higher incomes and create more and more scarcity for low and moderate income households,” he added.
Hannah Adams, a staff attorney at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, said much of the current rental housing stock is “incredibly substandard, and really much of it is unlivable” — and landlords have no incentive to improve it.
“When you have people lined up down the street for one available affordable housing unit, there’s really no competition in the market,” she explained.
Adams represents low-income renters experiencing housing instability or health-threatening living conditions in the New Orleans area and beyond, where COVID-19 cases are surging. She said she’s been flooded with calls from tenants during the pandemic over deteriorating living conditions.
The shortage “forces the lowest-income, most vulnerable tenants into really substandard housing conditions, which can exacerbate the health impacts of the pandemic,” she added.
Mass evictions loom
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order on Tuesday barring evictions for 60 days in counties with “substantial and high levels” of community transmission, but that relief is temporary and housing insecurity continues to haunt millions.
More than 15 million people already live in households currently behind on their rent payments, putting them at risk of eviction, according to a report released last week by the nonprofit think tank Aspen Institute.
Sherman is one of them.
Amid the pandemic, her 18-year-old daughter Jasmine, who is nonverbal, in a wheelchair and requires around-the-clock care, lost access to her therapy sessions and had to stay home. And as Sherman struggled to find affordable caregivers, she suffered an injury that required surgery and eventually took unpaid, family and medical job-protected leave from her job as a clinical administrator to care for herself and her daughter.
Although she was initially able to receive rental assistance, Sherman received an eviction notice last week after a payment for the month of July was not received by her property manager.
“I was very shocked and it was really heartbreaking when I received that notice,” she said. “Sometimes things happen to people out of their control. And, you know, I was seeking assistance … it just didn’t come fast enough.”
Sherman told ABC News on Wednesday that her property manager agreed to cancel the eviction filing while payment is processing, but her ongoing housing insecurity is leading to “a lot of anxiety and stress.”
“You don’t know from day to day what’s going to happen,” she said, adding that she has been looking for more affordable housing every day but feels “stuck” because prices are so high.
“I’m trying to move out of Atlanta, to move somewhere where maybe, possibly, you know, the rent can be a little bit more affordable. But every time I look everywhere, the prices are expensive,” she said, adding that her dream of becoming a homeowner for now seems “out of reach.”
“I’m hoping you know, that I will be in a place where I can have my own dream home, but right now it’s just very difficult, and it’s just not looking good right now. So I’m going to have to continue to rent.”
(IRVINE, Calif.) — The president of Blizzard Entertainment is departing the company after accusations that a “frat boy” workplace culture fostered gender discrimination and sexual harassment.
In a letter to staff posted on its website, the chief operating officer of Blizzard’s parent company, Activision Blizzard, announced Tuesday that J. Allen Brack was leaving “to pursue new opportunities.”
COO Daniel Alegre also said that Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra have been appointed as the new “co-leaders of Blizzard.”
The leadership shakeup at the maker of popular video games including “Overwatch” and “World of Warcraft” comes after a lawsuit that alleges rampant discrimination and sexual harassment at the company.
California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed the suit late last month, which accuses the company of fostering a sexist culture and paying women less than men for similar work. Moreover, it states that women were promoted at slower rates than men and fired or forced to quit at higher frequencies than men.
The agency also said that women were subject to constant sexual harassment and the company failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the conduct even when it was known.
The complaint states the company “fostered a pervasive ‘frat boy’ workplace culture” that is “a breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women.” It also mentioned a “particularly tragic example,” stating that “a female employee committed suicide during a business trip with a male supervisor.”
“Numerous complaints” were made to human resources, according to the lawsuit, but the company did not address them and female employees who went to HR were subject to retaliation.
Blizzard Entertainment did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for further comment on the allegations raised in the lawsuit, but Activision Blizzard’s CEO Bobby Kotick sent a letter to staff shortly after it was filed promising sweeping workplace reforms and announcing the law firm WilmerHale had been tapped to conduct a review of policies and procedures.
His full letter was shared with investors on the company’s website.
“This has been a difficult and upsetting week,” Kotick said in the July 27 letter to employees. “I want to recognize and thank all those who have come forward in the past and in recent days. I so appreciate your courage.”
In a statement to IGN, the company said the “DFEH includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past.”
Kotick promised the company was taking “swift action to be the compassionate, caring company you came to work for and to ensure a safe environment.”
“There is no place anywhere at our Company for discrimination, harassment, or unequal treatment of any kind,” Kotick wrote. “We will do everything possible to make sure that together, we improve and build the kind of inclusive workplace that is essential to foster creativity and inspiration.”
He also acknowledged that initial responses to concerns “were, quite frankly, tone deaf.” He encouraged employees to contact WilmerHale’s team to voice any concerns.
The overhaul at the video game giant comes years after much of the entertainment sector was hit with a #MeToo revolution that toppled prominent male executives across multiple industries.
Some critics have said the tech sector’s gender equity efforts still lag behind.
Kevin Kish, the director of California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, called for all employers to ensure equal pay and take steps to prevent discrimination and harassment in a statement announcing the Blizzard suit.
“This is especially important for employers in male-dominated industries, such as technology and gaming,” Kish added.
(WASHINGTON) — Thousands of Spirit Airlines passengers are still facing canceled flights on Wednesday as the airline’s operational meltdown stretches into a third day.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Spirit cancelled 418 flights, or 60% of its daily operations.
So far this week, Spirit has had to cancel around half of its flights each day: 42% of its Monday flights and 61% of its Tuesday flights.
“What’s this been like for you?” ABC News’ Correspondent Victor Oquendo asked a traveler who has been trying to get to Washington, D.C., from Miami.
“Nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nothing,” Natasha Baptiste responded.
Other Spirit customers told ABC News that they were stranded and forced to spend the night at Spirit bases such as Fort-Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport in Florida.
The airline initially said cancelations would slow down by Tuesday, but a spokesperson explained that the cancelations were the result of a “perfect storm,” blaming weather, staffing shortages and crews reaching the hour limits in which they are legally able to fly.
In its latest statement issued on Wednesday, Spirit vowed that the cancelations will finally start dropping on Thursday.
“We’ve dealt with overlapping operational challenges including weather, system outages and staffing shortages that caused widespread irregularities in our operation and impacted crew scheduling,” Spirit said in a statement. “These issues were exacerbated by the fact that we are in peak summer travel season with very high industry load factors and more limited options for Guest re-accommodations.”
After being hit with an IT issue Tuesday that affected crew scheduling, the airline said they have “implemented a more thorough reboot of the network” which allows them to get crews where they need to be to restore normal operations.
The airline will now provide double pay to flight attendants who pick up extra shifts.
The low-cost carrier said that they’ve taken an “in-depth” look at the challenges they are currently facing and have “identified opportunities for improvement.”
“We continue to work around the clock to get our Guests where they need to be,” Spirit insisted.
Spirit recommends customers affected by the cancelations use its online chat feature for assistance.
The cancelations come as air travel continues to break pandemic records.
Transportation Security Administration officers screened more than 2.2 million people at U.S. airports nationwide Sunday — the highest checkpoint volume since the start of the pandemic.
ABC News’ Sam Sweeney and Amanda Maile contributed to this report.
