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 | | | Defying gravity 🚀 | | Jeff Bezos had his 'best day ever' aboard a historic flight to space. And Harvey Weinstein was extradited to Los Angeles. It's Tuesday's news. | | |
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| Jeff Bezos completed a successful flight to space alongside a historic crew. Super Bowl champions the Tampa Bay Buccaneers visited the White House. And Harvey Weinstein was extradited to California for a new trial. |
| 👋 It's Laura. Like the rocket that launched this morning, Tuesday's news is technically out of this world! |
| But first, it's a big fish story. 🐡 To the shock of locals, a 3½-foot, 100-pound, Opah, a tropical deep-ocean fish, was found washed up on an Oregon beach. Check this thing out. |
| The Short List is a snappy USA TODAY news roundup. Subscribe to the newsletter here or text messages here. |
'Best day ever' |
| Another rich guy shot off to space Tuesday morning – and this one brought along some seriously historic company. Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin rocket crew blasted off from the west Texas desert, reaching space and returning to Earth with a smooth parachute landing minutes later. On board were Bezos' brother Mark, longtime women-in-space advocate Mary Wallace "Wally" Funk, and Oliver Daemen. Funk, 82, is now the oldest person ever in space. Daemen, 18, is the youngest. The New Shepard has large windows to enjoy the view, and the crew was also treated to three or four minutes of weightlessness. "Best day ever," Jeff Bezos said after touchdown. Just over a week ago, space competitor Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic crew hurtled historically to the edge of space. Bezos and his team said they breached it. |
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Super Bowl champs in the White House |
| Tom Brady's got jokes at the White House. The Super Bowl MVP surprised the crowd at the White House on Tuesday when he cracked a joke about the 2020 election with President Joe Biden while celebrating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Super Bowl 55 win. "Not a lot of people think that we could've won, in fact, I think about 40% of people still don't think we won," Brady said. "I understand that," Biden replied to a laughing crowd. It was the first ceremony Brady has attended at the White House since 2005. He had turned down three other invitations when he won Super Bowls while playing for the New England Patriots. Brady led Tampa Bay to a 31-9 win over the Kansas City Chiefs. |
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 | | US President Joe Biden holds a jersey alongside Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians (C) and quarterback Tom Brady (2nd R) during a ceremony honoring the Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL football team for their Super Bowl LV Championship on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, July 20, 2021. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) | | SAUL LOEB, AFP via Getty Images | |
What everyone's talking about |
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'Nothing in this world is 100%' – including COVID-19 vaccines |
| Supporters like you make this reporting possible. Here's how to subscribe. |
| Everyone wants vaccines to be perfect – and the COVID-19 ones nearly are. Only a tiny fraction of those who are vaccinated end up seriously ill from an infection. But still, some fully vaccinated people will get sick, some will pass on the virus and a very small number will die despite their shots. "It's not 100%. But nothing in this world is 100%," epidemiologist Carlos del Rio said. At a time when the infection rate has doubled, many remain unvaccinated and the delta variant is vastly more contagious than the original, it's important to recognize vaccines aren't flawless. |
| 📊 Of the more than 159 million fully vaccinated Americans, 5,492 have been hospitalized, and 791 have died related to COVID-19, according to the CDC. |
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 | | Meta Konte, a North Providence High School student, watches as pharmacy technician Victoria Connolly administers Konte's first COVID-19 vaccine shot on May 13 in Rhode Island. | | Kris Craig/The Providence Journal | |
Massive Bootleg Fire burns in Oregon |
| A massive wildfire in Oregon that's grown to one-third the size of Rhode Island has prompted fire officials to call for outside help to prepare for additional blazes across the parched state. The Bootleg Fire, now some 568 square miles in size, is burning 300 miles southeast of Portland. The worry is that dry conditions, a drought and the recent record-breaking heat wave in the region have created tinderbox conditions, so resources are being recruited from Arkansas, Nevada and Alaska. At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point and another 5,000 threatened. In all, 83 large wildfires are burning across 13 states, most of them in Western states. Almost 20,000 firefighters were battling the blazes, which encompass nearly 1.3 million acres of land. |
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 | | Firefighters Garret Suza, right, and Cameron Taylor, with the Chiloquin Forest Service, search for hot spots on the North East side of the Bootleg Fire, Wednesday, July 14, 2021, near Sprague River. | | Nathan Howard, AP | |
Real quick |
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Weinstein extradited to Los Angeles |
| Bringing an end to his long effort to avoid or delay extradition to face more sex-crime charges, movie mogul-turned-convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein was on his way to Los Angeles on Tuesday. Weinstein, 69, faces 11 felony counts of sexual assault, including forcible rape, against five women in encounters dating back to 2004. Weinstein's lawyers said he sought to delay the extradition to continue medical treatment for various ailments. He has been serving a 23-year sentence in Buffalo, New York, after being convicted of two sex crimes in Manhattan in 2020, including first-degree sexual assault and third-degree rape. |
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 | | Harvey Weinstein departs a Manhattan courthouse during his sex-crimes trial in New York on Feb. 5, 2020. | | John Minchillo, AP | |
A break from the news |
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