William Shatner has officially become the planet’s oldest space traveler.
The Star Trek actor, famous for playing starship Enterprise Captain James T. Kirk, blasted off into space at 10:50 a.m. Eastern time, aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, along with microbiologist Glen de Vries, Planet Labs founder Chris Boshuizen and Blue Origin’s Audrey Powers.
The mission, officially designated NS-18, took off a little later than originally predicted, and made Shatner, who turned 90 in March, the oldest human being to venture to space — or at least, just over the edge of it in a sub-orbital flight.
The flight was delayed for nearly an hour but went off apparently flawlessly, lasting ten minutes from liftoff to the touchdown of the capsule in the West Texas desert. All four astronauts hugged Blue Origin boss Jeff Bezos after their safe landing.
New Shepherd‘s capsule ascended to just past the Karman Line, which is the officially recognized point where Earth’s atmosphere ends and what is considered to be space begins. The imaginary line is located 62 miles, or 330,000 feet, above the Earth’s surface.
Shatner was the third crew member to board the capsule with his fellow crew members, each of whom rang a ceremonial bell on a tower platform before boarding.
Shatner’s feat surpassed a record set by 82-year-old astronaut Wally Funk, who blasted off on the New Shepard in July.
Coachella is no longer requiring COVID-19 vaccination to attend its 2022 festival.
Organizers announced in an Instagram Story Tuesday that festival-goers will be allowed entry with either proof of full vaccination or a negative test result obtained within 72 hours of their arrival.
“After seeing first-hand the low transmission data and successful implementation of safety protocols at our other festivals this past month, we feel confident we can update our health policy,” the post reads.
Previously, Coachella organizer Goldenvoice and its parent company, AEG Presents, announced that all of the festivals and concerts it produces would require proof of full vaccination starting October 1.
Coachella 2022 is set to take place April 15-17 and April 22-24. The festival hasn’t been held since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which canceled both the 2020 and 2021 events.
Coldplay had a special guest at their album launch party Tuesday night in London: Ed Sheeran.
Billboard reports that Chris Martin and company celebrated the impending release of their album Music of the Spheres at London’s O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, where Ed, as it happens, recently did a special show marking the 10th anniversary of his debut album + (Plus) with a special concert.
Ed popped up to sing Coldplay’s 2005 hit “Fix You” with the band at Tuesday’s concert, and then Coldplay returned the favor by performing Ed’s hit “Shape of You.” You can watch fan-recorded footage of the performances on Twitter.
What’s the connection between the two acts, other than the fact that they’re both British superstars? As Billboard notes, both Ed and Coldplay recently topped the charts thanks to K-pop supergroup BTS. In Ed’s case, he co-wrote the BTS number-one hit “Permission to Dance,” while Coldplay scored their second U.S. number-one hit by duetting with BTS on the song “My Universe.”
Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres arrives this Friday. Ed’s new album, = (Equals), is out October 29.
After literally years of speculation, we finally know when Adele will gift us with a new album: November 19. The album is called 30, as long suspected.
“I was certainly nowhere near when I’d hoped to be when I first started it nearly three years ago,” Adele writes of the album. “Quite the opposite, really. I rely on routine and consistency to feel safe…and yet there I was knowingly — willingly, even, throwing myself into a maze of absolute mess and inner turmoil!”
Adele goes on to say that she’s learned “a lot of blistering truths about my self along the way,” and that she’s also “never felt more peaceful in my life”. As a result, she notes, “I’m ready to finally put this album out.”
Adele says that the album was her “ride or die during the most turbulent period of my life,” and compared it the type of friend who’s always there for you to cheer you up, hold your hand, pick you up and get you out of the house and give you the best advice.
She also compares 30 to “that friend who…checked in on my even though I’d stop checking in with them because I’d become so consumed by my own grief.” She concludes, “I’ve painstakingly rebuilt my house and my heart since them and this album narrates it. Home is where the heart is.”
The first single from 30, “Easy on Me,” arrives on Friday.
Adele is now 33, but as she recently told British Vogue, she was 30 when her “whole life fell apart” due to her divorce.
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Wednesday will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, even as the agency has suspended all federal executions and President Biden has vowed to eliminate capital punishment.
A federal appeals court last year upheld Tsarnaev’s conviction for the 2013 attack that killed three and injured more than 200, but it tossed out the jury-recommended execution on the grounds that procedural errors during the sentencing phase compromised his right to a fair and impartial hearing.
The Biden administration calls the case “one of the most important terrorism prosecutions in our nation’s history” and plans to argue before the justices that any discrepancies during the process would not have led the jury to select a different sentence and that an execution must go forward.
“It’s one thing to say that you’re opposed to capital punishment, it’s another for the United States Attorney’s Office to tell the good people in Boston that you’re no longer going to see the death penalty against the Boston Marathon bomber. And, so they didn’t,” said Jeffrey Wall, the former Trump administration acting solicitor general who first led the appeal to reinstate Tsarnaev’s sentence, on why the new administration is continuing to seek death.
The White House would not directly answer when asked by ABC News whether President Joe Biden supports his Justice Department’s case and a federal execution of Tsarnaev.
A Biden administration official pointed to a June statement by White House press secretary Jen Psaki that noted Biden’s “deep concerns” about capital punishment and belief that “the Department should return to its prior practice, and not carry out executions.”
Attorneys for Tsarnaev said their client deserves a new sentencing hearing after an appeals court concluded that the trial judge improperly denied admission of key mitigating evidence and inadequately screened prospective jurors for bias.
The defense said the alleged involvement of Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan, in a 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, is critical evidence to suggest he — not Dzhokhar — was the mastermind of the marathon attack and had previously exerted influence over younger accomplices.
“In 2011, on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Tamerlan robbed and murdered a close friend and two others as an act of jihad,” Tsarnaev’s attorneys write in their brief to the high court. “For Dzhokhar — a teenager well-liked by teachers and peers, with no history of violence — the bombings were the culmination of Tamerlan’s months-long effort to draw him into extremist violence.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died shortly after the attack when he was run over by his brother as the two fled from police following a gunfight.
“If you accept the Eighth Amendment principle that somebody pretty much has a right to bring in almost anything that’s mitigating … if you don’t allow the defendant to bring in this evidence, you’ve basically deprived him of the only defense against the death penalty he was offering,” said Irving Gornstein, director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. “I think that will give [the justices] some pause. Now, enough pause? Probably not. But some pause.”
The defense also said the trial judge failed to expose evidence of bias among potential jurors by not asking specifics about pretrial media exposure, including what they had read, heard or seen about Tsarnaev or the Boston Marathon bombing.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argues that neither error — even if undisputed — would have swayed a jury against death.
“The record definitively demonstrates that respondent was eager to commit his crimes, was untroubled at having ended two lives and devastated many others, and remained proud of his actions even after he had run Tamerlan over and was hiding out alone,” the government writes in its brief. “The jury that watched a video of respondent place and detonate a shrapnel bomb just behind a group of children would not have changed its sentencing recommendation based on Tamerlan’s supposed involvement in unrelated crimes two years earlier.”
The administration’s pursuit of death for Tsarnaev contrasts with President Biden’s 2020 campaign promise that he would “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.”
No legislation has been put forward, but in July, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a temporary halt to further executions of federal inmates, noting a number of defendants who were later exonerated as well as statistics showing possible discriminatory impact on minorities.
The Supreme Court could reinstate Tsarnaev’s death sentence, or it could hand Tsarnaev a chance at a new sentencing hearing, clarifying rules for jury selection and mitigating evidence in death-penalty cases.
Stockholm’s Avicii Arena, previously named Ericsson Globe, announced it will host the For a Better Day concert, an event inspired by the late DJ.
The concert is set to take place on December 1 and will host a variety of primarily Swedish acts, including performances from dance duo Galantis and singer-songwriter Miriam Bryant, along with “tributes to Avicii’s musical heritage as well as collaborations and surprise guests,” according to Billboard.
The For a Better Day concert will also include input from mental health experts in an effort to raise awareness of mental health in young people.
The event, which is gearing up to become an annual shindig, is being organized by the Avicii Arena and the Tim Bergling Foundation, a suicide prevention and mental health awareness organization founded by Avicii’s parents, Klas Bergling and Anki Lidénin, and named after their son following his suicide in 2018.
“I hope we succeed in creating a feeling that we really do this together, because it is only together that we can make a difference,” Bergling said. “Young people are our future and we must be afraid for them. It is unacceptable that they are getting worse and that suicide rates are rising in that group – and it is our duty to do what we can to break that trend.”
Tickets for the show go on sale Wednesday on the Avicii Arena website.
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, or worried about a friend or loved one, help is available. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 [TALK] for free confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even if it feels like it, you are not alone.
(WASHINGTON) — Voting rights activists from Mi Familia Vota said after years of being ignored, they are seeing significant investments from politicians trying to reach out to the Latino community. As the largest non-white ethnic group in the United States continues to grow, Latinos have become a focal point for Republicans and Democrats alike.
But Héctor Sánchez Barba, the executive director and CEO of the Latino-focused civic engagement organization Mi Familia Vota, said that Latino voters must be prepared to identify which efforts are performative and what political promises will be kept.
“Nobody has a free ride with the Latino vote,” Sánchez Barba told ABC News. “The important part is this is not a transactional element, just for the Latino vote. It [must be] a serious holistic engagement on Latino priorities.”
The percentage of Latinos who were eligible to vote and did so rose to a historic high of 53.7% in 2020, increasing from 47.3% in 2016, according to CUNY’s Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies.
This research also shows that the number of Latino votes in the 2020 election also increased by 29.8%: from the 12.7 million votes cast in 2016 to approximately 16.5 million in 2020.
Now, the fight for their votes is on ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
President Joe Biden won the majority of Latino voters across the country, but former President Donald Trump scored more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.
Latino turnout in Texas rose from 1,938,000 in 2016 to 2,972,000 in 2020, the CUNY research shows. That’s a 31.1% increase.
Republicans are now targeting Democratic Latino strongholds throughout the state — like the Rio Grande Valley — which seemingly faltered in 2020. Biden won in most counties, but by less than Hillary Clinton had won them in 2016. Zapata, Starr and Val Verde counties, which previously voted for Democrats, flipped to Trump in 2020.
Democratic representatives from across the state — Colin Allred, Vicente Gonzalez, Filemon Vela, Henry Cuellar, and Lizzie Fletcher — are being threatened by GOP challengers, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
McAllen, a Latino-majority border city in the valley, voted for its first GOP mayor in 24 years.
And in order to flip more seats and hold onto newly acquired seats, Republicans are creating Hispanic community centers across the country. The next one is slated to open in San Antonio, GOP Communications Director Danielle Alvarez told ABC News.
“We just opened in Doral, which is in South Florida,” said Alvarez. “[We were] talking about having “pastelitos” and “cafecito” and having photos of the South Florida community up, and instead of campaign pull-out tables, doing domino tables. Just making it personal.”
They’ve said they have also implemented this strategy with other ethnic groups, like Asian Pacific Americans and Black voters.
She added, “It provides us the ability to not just share our message and our agenda, but for them to have a conversation back and share their values and what they’re hoping to accomplish.”
From there, the RNC can train them to do the on-the-ground organizing for the Republican efforts.
“Most people kind of hear Democrats’ wishful thinking that Texas is going to be purple,” Alvarez said. “We would make the argument that Texas is red and it’s become even more red, since the previous election.”
Alvarez said that the RNC has a strong data operation that can analyze voters and what is important to them. The party’s 2012’s “Growth And Opportunity Report” continues to be an important source of information for the GOP strategy, Alvarez said. The report highlighted the party’s need to campaign among Latino, Black, Asian, and LGBTQ Americans and “demonstrate we care about them, too,” the report states.
Republicans said they hope to combine what they’ve learned to ensure that the new Hispanic-targeted centers hit home with voters.
“We’re lucky that we don’t often have to paint people with broad brushes — we can get down to what moves in individual voter,” said Alvarez.
Overall, Latinos voted less for Democrats in 2020 than they did in 2016, but the demographic still chose Biden over Trump with 58% of the vote.
Despite this, the Democratic National Committee is attempting to quell any Republican progress, reaching back into its playbook that has long won them the “Latino vote.”
Democrats’ I Will Vote initiative has invested $25,000,000 in voter education, voter protection and targeted voter registration and aims to make voting more accessible. With this, they hope to drive new voters — hopefully Democrats — to the polls.
“You’ll see Democrats going out into communities across the country and specifically showing how these bills are going to be impacting their lives: creating jobs, lowering costs for families and cutting taxes for them as well,” said Lucas Acosta, the senior spokesperson and coalitions director at Democratic National Committee.
In 2020, Latinos overall were concerned with their safety, their health amid COVID-19, and the economy, according to Pew Research.
Eight in 10 registered Latino voters rated the economy as their biggest priority at the time — as the pandemic surged on and the unemployment reached a peak of 14.8% in April 2020, the Congressional Research Service reports. It was the highest rate observed since data collection began in 1948.
Latinos comprise 18.7% of the U.S. population, but represent 28.1% of the population in poverty, according to the U.S. Census.
Acosta said Democrats will focus their door-to-door, on-the-ground community-based outreach on Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which promised to “deliver immediate relief for hard-hit Latino families and small businesses, build a bridge towards economic recovery, and reduce poverty in Latino communities by almost 40 percent,” the plan’s fact sheet read.
“Our responsibility is to make sure that voters know who was in the room fighting for that,” Acosta said.
For Latino-targeted voting groups like Mi Familia Vota, they said the focus remains on protecting voters by campaigning against misinformation targeting this sought-after demographic and legislative efforts that make it harder for Latinos to vote.
Republicans across the country have enacted a wave of new voting laws. In September, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a sweeping voting bill into law that restricts counties’ ability to expand options for voting and makes the election process harder for Texans. The law would limit how and when voters can cast ballots by banning overnight early voting hours as well as drive-thru voting.
Voting groups also said ads targeting the Latino community spread false claims about politicians and their platforms. Specifically, they say these misinformation campaigns instilled fear and betrayed the trust of voters. A recent Nielson report showed that Latino consumers are more likely to receive and share fake news on social media when compared to the rest of the population.
“Those policies that they’re promoting are gonna make it way harder for us to go to the polls and have the basic right to vote,” Sánchez Barba said. “And this is not something new. This is something historical, so we’re keeping the Republicans accountable at a very high level.”
Sánchez Barba also called out anti-immigrant language from the right. He said the party has a lot of work to repair a reputation of hate against people of color and Latino folks.
“A lot of these politicians and these parties only show up very last minute when they need the Latino vote,” Sánchez Barba said. “The Latino community doesn’t forget.”
(VAN HORN, Texas) — Actor William Shatner and his three crewmates on Blue Origin’s New Shepard are just hours away from their suborbital space flight.
The eleven-minute mission for Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company was initially set for Tuesday but was delayed one day due to forecasted winds in West Texas.
Shatner is joining Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations and a former NASA flight controller and engineer; Chris Boshuizen, the co-founder of satellite company Planet Labs and a former space mission architect for NASA; and Glen de Vries, the co-founder of Medidata Solutions, a life science company.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Oct 13, 9:58 am
Bezos chauffeurs astronauts to launch tower
The countdown clock was paused for approximately 30 minutes as Blue Origin teams assessed launch conditions on the ground, but the astronauts are en route to the launch pad.
PHOTO: In this still image taken from a Blue Origin video, the New Shepard rocket sits on the launch pad prior to lift off on Oct. 13, 2021, from the West Texas region, 25 miles, north of Van Horn.
Jose Romero/Blue Origin/AFP via Getty ImagesJose Romero/Blue Origin/AFP via Getty Images
In this still image taken from a Blue Origin video, the New Shepard rocket sits on the lau…
Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos, who went to space himself in July, chauffeured the four astronauts to the launch tower as workers cheered.
Oct 13, 9:16 am
NASA wishes Shatner ‘all the best’ on his flight to space
NASA sent a good luck tweet to William Shatner Wednesday morning ahead of the actor’s trip to the edge of space.
Oct 13, 9:10 am
Astronauts will experience 3 to 4 minutes of weightlessness
During the 11-minute flight, the astronauts will experience about three to four minutes of weightlessness.
They’ll also travel above the Karman Line, the internationally recognized boundary separating Earth’s atmosphere from space.
Oct 13, 7:31 am
Shatner set to become the oldest person to go to space
Star Trek star William Shatner, 90, is poised to become the oldest person ever to go to space.
He’ll beat the record set by 82-year-old Wally Funk during July’s inaugural New Shepard launch.
Kim Kardashian will be the only one with the keys to her and Kanye West‘s mansion in Hidden Hills, which is valued at $60 million.
TMZ reports that Kardashian filed paperwork on Tuesday to obtain sole ownership of the property, effectively dispelling rumors that she and Ye have reconciled following her Saturday Night Live hosting debut. It’s reported that the two agreed on a buyout price and that their negotiation was “extremely cordial.”
According to the legal documents, Kardashian and her four children have resided in the sprawling California estate since February, when the former couple first filed for divorce.
Kardashian and the Donda rapper first purchased the home in 2014 for a cool $20 million before extensively renovating it. When the remodeling was complete, the pair then purchased the neighboring 1.5 acre property in 2019 for an additional $3 million — bringing their estate’s total lot size to eight acres.
The news comes shortly after Kanye listed his 7,000-acre ranch in Wyoming for sale, which he retreated to when rumors first surfaced that he and Kim were having marital problems. Ye is asking for $11 million for that property.
Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber may have composed the CATS Broadway musical, but that doesn’t mean he enjoyed the movie version of it. There is one thing, however, that he does like about it — and it has everything to do with cat lover Taylor Swift.
Speaking with Variety, the 73-year-old British composer said being able to write the song “Beautiful Ghosts” with Taylor was the one good thing to come from the critically panned movie.
“It was one of the few enjoyable experiences [on the film],” Lloyd Webber admitted. “It was probably the enjoyable experience.”
The composer recalled what it was like to create the Golden Globe and Grammy-nominated song, revealing, “We sat around the piano, I played her a melody… It was a joy. She’s a real pro. Talk about being a pro.”
He also said Taylor was familiar with the source material, the T.S. Eliot poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. That led to the two exchanging a few inside jokes and bonding over their mutual appreciation of the British poet.
“One of the things I was quite intrigued by, she got to the essence of what T.S. Eliot was about,” Lloyd Webber continued. “It wasn’t just a lyric thrown together at all. I did enjoy working with her very, very, very much.”
Lloyd Webber has been vocal about his dislike of the CATS movie and criticized the film when speaking previously to The Sunday Times of London. “The problem with the film was that [director] Tom Hooper decided that he didn’t want anybody involved in it who was involved in the original show,” he bemoaned. “The whole thing was ridiculous.”
CATSsdebuted to negative reviews in December 2019. The movie currently has a 20 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
