Richard Branson will fly into space on July 11, beating rival Jeff Bezos by 9 days
CBSN
Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of Virgin Galactic, will fly into space aboard his company's VSS Unity rocketplane on July 11 for an up-and-down test flight, beating Amazon-founder and rival Jeff Bezos into sub-orbital space by nine days.
The announcement from Virgin came just a few hours after Bezos announced that aviation pioneer Wally Funk will be joining him, his brother Mark and the yet-to-be named winner of an online auction for blastoff July 20 aboard his company's New Shepard spacecraft. Both Virgin Galactic and Bezos' Blue Origin are competing head-to-head in the emerging space tourism marketplace, both offering short rides just above the discernible atmosphere for a few minutes of weightlessness and spectacular views before returning to Earth.
The peace and tranquility of Muir Woods, just north of San Francisco – home to 500+ acres of old-growth redwoods – make it just about the last place you'd expect to find a fight brewing. "The fact that they're taking down whole groups of signs about climate change and our nation's history is disappointing, and embarrassing," said retired U.S. Park Ranger Lucy Scott In:

We share our planet with maybe 10 million species of plants, animals, birds, fish, fungi and bugs. And to help identify them, millions of people are using a free phone app. "Currently we have about six million people using the platform every month," said Scott Loarie, the executive director of iNaturalist, a nonprofit.

At ski resorts across the West this winter, viral images showed chairlifts idling over brown terrain in places normally renowned for their frosty appeal. Iconic mountain towns like Aspen, Colorado, and Park City, Utah, were seen with shockingly bare slopes, as the region endured a historic snow drought that experts warn could bring water shortages and wildfires in the months ahead. In:










