Avie Schneider

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is going into space on July 20 on a reusable rocket made by his space exploration company, Blue Origin. So is his younger brother Mark. And now, pledging $28 million, a mystery bidder has won an auction to join them on the suborbital ride.

The mission is estimated to last about 11 minutes. That works out to $2.545 million per minute. Or $42,424 per second.

Happy World Bee Day!

There's a day for just about everything, and the United Nations has designated May 20 as the day to celebrate the pollinators dwelling in hives, fields and gardens around the globe.

And there's good reason to pay attention to bees.

"There are 20,000 species of bees around the world and a lot of these bees are in decline," says Hien Ngo, a pollinator expert with the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization.

The battle between Israel and Hamas is taking a deep toll on people in the Gaza Strip, where families are being forced to live in a war zone. And in separate interviews with NPR, two people — one in Gaza, one in Israel — who spoke about the violence also discussed their desire to keep children safe.

One view came from Gaza, where a father of a young son says he is desperate for safety and security — conditions that seem hopelessly out of reach amid sustained airstrikes and artillery barrages conducted by Israel.

An attorney for Andrew Brown Jr.'s family is disputing a North Carolina district attorney's contention that Brown used his vehicle as a deadly weapon against the deputies who fatally shot him.

On Tuesday, District Attorney Andrew Womble announced he had decided not to file charges against the Pasquotank County deputies.

Children's immunizations dropped dramatically during the pandemic, and health officials are eager to get kids caught back up on their routine shots before they return to school.

Zoë Roth was internet famous before many of us knew what that was.

When she was 4, her dad took a picture of her standing in front of a burning house and a firetruck. She's looking back at the camera knowingly, leaving the viewer to suspect she had something to do with this disaster.

But in reality, the fire scene was part of a training exercise for firefighters in Mebane, N.C., near where Zoë and her father, Dave Roth, lived.

A law professor and former federal prosecutor argues that police in Brooklyn Center, Minn., didn't need to pursue Daunte Wright, who was killed by an officer who said she mistakenly shot him instead of using her Taser.

"They have his license plate. They know where he lives," says Georgetown law professor Paul Butler, author of the book Chokehold: Policing Black Men.

There has been a perception that Black Americans are more hesitant than whites to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. But roughly equal proportions of Black and white respondents in a recent poll said they plan to get vaccinated.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said Friday that he will not seek reelection for a fourth term that would begin next January. He has been investigating former President Donald Trump's finances, and the Supreme Court last month cleared the way for the prosecutor's office to receive Trump's tax returns and other financial records.

"Representing the People of New York during this pivotal era for our city and our justice system has been the privilege of a lifetime," the 66-year-old Vance said.

In the midst of a pandemic that is taxing medical workers like never before, a doctor in a Los Angeles hospital turned a camera toward his colleagues.

Dr. Scott Kobner is the chief emergency room resident at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. He's also an amateur photographer. His black-and-white photos show the suffering, anxiety and chaos unfolding in overrun COVID-19 units.

It was a couple months into the pandemic that Kobner started taking pictures of scenes from his own hospital.

Texas is slowly coming out of a historic deep freeze that left millions of residents without power and water for several days.

Just before voting Saturday to acquit former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, the Senate seemed to reverse course, with a decision not to call witnesses.

Del. Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat from the U.S. Virgin Islands who was one of the House impeachment managers, is defending the agreement between House managers and Trump's attorneys not to call witnesses after all.

Updated at 11:30 a.m. ET

The United States and Iran remain at odds over what comes next in their standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Iran's supreme leader said Sunday that all U.S. sanctions must be lifted before Tehran will return to its commitment under the 2015 nuclear deal. And, in an interview airing Sunday, President Biden said the United States won't lift sanctions first.

Days after a coup and the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and other elected leaders, the military in Myanmar is moving to strangle free speech by blocking access to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The Internet clampdown came as protests grew Saturday on the streets of Yangon, the country's commercial capital, where thousands turned out to demand the return of the legitimately elected government led by Suu Kyi.

Updated at 4:32 p.m. ET

The GameStop stock-market roller coaster continued Friday as the video game retailer's shares shot up, the online broker Robinhood struggled for cash and securities regulators issued a stern warning for anyone trying to game the market.

Catapulted by seemingly unrelenting enthusiasm on Reddit, GameStop stock soared nearly 68%.

Updated at 4:51 p.m. ET

What the deal with GameStop?

There's a good chance you have heard that question many times in the past few days.

The Biden administration says the federal government needs to do a better job of acknowledging the ways that communities of color are blocked from fair and equal access to housing.

"Today the average Black family has just one-tenth the wealth of the average white family, while the gap between white and Black in home ownership is now larger than it was in 1960," Susan Rice, head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said in a news briefing Tuesday.

New Zealand has kept its community spread of the coronavirus low by keeping tight border controls, but on Sunday the country of 5 million reported its first suspected community case since November. And officials say it might involve a more transmissible variant of the virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says letting the science speak on the pandemic got him "into a little bit of trouble" during the Trump administration.

Jaime Harrison is a former U.S. Senate candidate who lost to Republican Lindsey Graham in November, but not before shattering fundraising records. Now Harrison is the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, selected by President Biden.

Clues may come soon as to what caused the crash Saturday of an Indonesian airliner with 62 people on board. Authorities said Sunday that they know the location of the so-called black boxes of the Boeing 737-500 that went down in the Java Sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta, the nation's capital.

Israel and Morocco have agreed to normalize relations, the fourth such pact in recent months between Israel and Arab countries in the Middle East and Africa.

In announcing the latest agreement on Thursday, President Trump tweeted: "Another HISTORIC breakthrough today! Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!"

The Minneapolis City Council has voted to shift almost $8 million in police funding to expand other services, including violence prevention and mental health crisis response teams. But, in the face of a veto threat from the mayor, the council also voted to keep its police staffed at current levels, reversing earlier plans to cut officers from the force.

Updated at 8:07 p.m. ET

A company that started as a single air mattress for rent in a San Francisco apartment is now worth $100 billion.

Airbnb made its long-awaited stock market debut on Thursday and more than doubled its offering price.

From afar, it may have appeared as a peculiar time for a lodging company to go public, as the coronavirus continues to devastate the travel and hospitality industry. Wall Street, however, has a different story to tell.

Boeing's 737 Max is making a comeback after two crashes that killed a total of 346 people in late 2018 and early last year. Ireland's Ryanair, a major European carrier, has ordered 75 of the planes, which had been grounded since March 2019, the two companies announced on Thursday.

Here's a stunning stat: Women are leaving the workforce at four times the rate as men.

The burden of parenting and running a household while also working a job during the pandemic has created a pressure cooker environment in many households, and women are bearing the brunt of it.

Updated at 4:14 p.m. ET

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 509 points Monday following a report that large global banks were involved in transactions flagged as possible money laundering.

And hopes for another relief measure from Congress flagged as lawmakers focused on the fight over a Supreme Court nomination following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Updated at 1:16 p.m. ET

Apple has hit $2 trillion in market value, the first publicly traded U.S. company to do so.

The iPhone maker first crossed the $1 trillion milestone just two years ago.

This week, Apple and a handful of other tech giants propelled the S&P 500 index to a new record. Apple's stock is up nearly 60% this year.

The U.S. stock market has come a long way in a short time.

The S&P 500 index closed at a record high Tuesday, nearly six months after coronavirus lockdowns that shut down much of the economy sent the markets plunging.

The CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are set to testify before a House antitrust subcommittee Wednesday about whether their companies have too much power.

For Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, it will be his first appearance before Congress. He begins his prepared remarks with a personal story, as he often does in public appearances: