Jeff Bezos blasted into space aboard a Blue Origin rocket on Tuesday, in a historic flight for the space tourism industry he helped to create.
The billionaire Amazon founder and his brother were on board the first human flight of the company’s New Shepard rocket — the first flight into space to take place without a pilot or crew.
Mr Bezos, dressed in a blue flight suit and cowboy hat, waved to a cheering crowd at the company's west Texas launch facility before boarding the rocket.
The gleaming white rocket took off shortly after 1pm GMT, reaching a speed of more than three times the speed of sound as it climbed to an altitude of more than 107 kilometres.
After it separated from the main booster, which landed autonomously back at the launch pad, the four crew members experienced several minutes of weightlessness before the capsule touched down gently under parachutes.
"That was incredible," Mr Bezos said as the crew members discussed the flight after landing.
Video footage showed the billionaire with a beaming smile, waving to the support crew from the window of the capsule.
Mr Bezos may have been beaten into space by fellow billionaire Richard Branson, who flew to the edge of space on board his own rocket plane earlier this month, but Blue Origin still managed to make history on Tuesday’s flight.
Also on board was Dutch student Oliver Daemen, 18, who became the youngest person ever to fly to space after being picked for the last remaining seat.
Mr Daemen received the lucky slot after the winner of a $28 million auction stepped aside because of a scheduling conflict.
The son of a hedge fund manager, Mr Daemen was Blue Origin’s first paying customer.
Blue Origin did not disclose the price of his ticket, but company chief executive Bob Smith said: “This marks the beginning of commercial operations for New Shepard, and Oliver represents a new generation of people who will help us build a road to space.”
Blue Origin also helped aviation pioneer Wally Funk, 82, become the oldest person to go to space.
Ms Funk, who was part of a trailblazing, privately-backed effort to put a woman in space in the 1960s but never got to go, had been personally asked to join the flight by Mr Bezos.
"Today is just the first of many flights to come on New Shepard," Blue Origin's sales director Ariane Cornell said on the live-stream, adding that ticket sales were now open.
Mr Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000, years before his fellow billionaires Elon Musk and Mr Branson founded their rival space companies, has long dreamt of going to space.
The launch is the culmination of more than two decades of rocket science, much of which was done in secret.
The New Shepard rocket is designed to take its passengers on an 11-minute, suborbital flight past the Karman line – an internationally recognised boundary for space that is 100 kilometres above the Earth.
Unlike Virgin Galactic’s space plane, which was dropped from a larger carrier aircraft before igniting its rocket engine and climbing to the edge of space, Blue Origin’s rocket takes off from a launch pad like a conventional rocket launch.
Mr Bezos and Blue Origin believe that its space tourism experience is better than the ones offered by its competitors.
The company was criticised after it published a cynical Twitter post comparing the two rockets in the build-up to Mr Branson’s flight.
Proving the safety of space tourism is a vital early step on the way to creating an industry that Swiss investment bank UBS estimates will be worth $3 billion a year by 2030.
"One of the main goals of the New Shepard mission is to demonstrate that going to suborbital space is perfectly safe for the average person," said Teal Group space industry analyst Marco Caceres.
Mr Musk's SpaceX is planning an even more ambitious mission in September, using its Crew Dragon capsule to send an all-civilian crew on an orbital flight around the Earth in a mission lasting several days.
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Angela Bassett, Tina Fey
Directed by: Pete Doctor
Rating: 4 stars
Strait of Hormuz
Fujairah is a crucial hub for fuel storage and is just outside the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route linking Middle East oil producers to markets in Asia, Europe, North America and beyond.
The strait is 33 km wide at its narrowest point, but the shipping lane is just three km wide in either direction. Almost a fifth of oil consumed across the world passes through the strait.
Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strait, a move that would risk inviting geopolitical and economic turmoil.
Last month, Iran issued a new warning that it would block the strait, if it was prevented from using the waterway following a US decision to end exemptions from sanctions for major Iranian oil importers.
Classification of skills
A worker is categorised as skilled by the MOHRE based on nine levels given in the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) issued by the International Labour Organisation.
A skilled worker would be someone at a professional level (levels 1 – 5) which includes managers, professionals, technicians and associate professionals, clerical support workers, and service and sales workers.
The worker must also have an attested educational certificate higher than secondary or an equivalent certification, and earn a monthly salary of at least Dh4,000.
Results:
Women:
1. Rhiannan Iffland (AUS) 322.95 points
2. Lysanne Richard (CAN) 285.75
3. Ellie Smart (USA) 277.70
Men:
1. Gary Hunt (GBR) 431.55
2. Constantin Popovici (ROU) 424.65
3. Oleksiy Prygorov (UKR) 392.30
Tamkeen's offering
- Option 1: 70% in year 1, 50% in year 2, 30% in year 3
- Option 2: 50% across three years
- Option 3: 30% across five years
The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
ULTRA PROCESSED FOODS
- Carbonated drinks, sweet or savoury packaged snacks, confectionery, mass-produced packaged breads and buns
- margarines and spreads; cookies, biscuits, pastries, cakes, and cake mixes, breakfast cereals, cereal and energy bars;
- energy drinks, milk drinks, fruit yoghurts and fruit drinks, cocoa drinks, meat and chicken extracts and instant sauces
- infant formulas and follow-on milks, health and slimming products such as powdered or fortified meal and dish substitutes,
- many ready-to-heat products including pre-prepared pies and pasta and pizza dishes, poultry and fish nuggets and sticks, sausages, burgers, hot dogs, and other reconstituted meat products, powdered and packaged instant soups, noodles and desserts.
Desert Warrior
Starring: Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Rating: 3/5
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, (Leon banned).
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
Company%20profile
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EName%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EMaly%20Tech%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202023%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounder%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Mo%20Ibrahim%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Dubai%20International%20Financial%20Centre%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20FinTech%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunds%20raised%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%241.6%20million%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ECurrent%20number%20of%20staff%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2015%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EPre-seed%2C%20planning%20first%20seed%20round%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20GCC-based%20angel%20investors%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
THE SPECS
2020 Toyota Corolla Hybrid LE
Engine: 1.8 litre combined with 16-volt electric motors
Transmission: Automatic with manual shifting mode
Power: 121hp
Torque: 142Nm
Price: Dh95,900
Libya's Gold
UN Panel of Experts found regime secretly sold a fifth of the country's gold reserves.
The panel’s 2017 report followed a trail to West Africa where large sums of cash and gold were hidden by Abdullah Al Senussi, Qaddafi’s former intelligence chief, in 2011.
Cases filled with cash that was said to amount to $560m in 100 dollar notes, that was kept by a group of Libyans in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
A second stash was said to have been held in Accra, Ghana, inside boxes at the local offices of an international human rights organisation based in France.
Who's who in Yemen conflict
Houthis: Iran-backed rebels who occupy Sanaa and run unrecognised government
Yemeni government: Exiled government in Aden led by eight-member Presidential Leadership Council
Southern Transitional Council: Faction in Yemeni government that seeks autonomy for the south
Habrish 'rebels': Tribal-backed forces feuding with STC over control of oil in government territory
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Farage on Muslim Brotherhood
Nigel Farage told Reform's annual conference that the party will proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood if he becomes Prime Minister.
"We will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country," he said. "Quite why we've been so gutless about this – both Labour and Conservative – I don't know.
“All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same.”
It is 10 years since a ground-breaking report into the Muslim Brotherhood by Sir John Jenkins.
Among the former diplomat's findings was an assessment that “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” has “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
The prime minister at the time, David Cameron, who commissioned the report, said membership or association with the Muslim Brotherhood was a "possible indicator of extremism" but it would not be banned.
GOLF’S RAHMBO
- 5 wins in 22 months as pro
- Three wins in past 10 starts
- 45 pro starts worldwide: 5 wins, 17 top 5s
- Ranked 551th in world on debut, now No 4 (was No 2 earlier this year)
- 5th player in last 30 years to win 3 European Tour and 2 PGA Tour titles before age 24 (Woods, Garcia, McIlroy, Spieth)
