An entire wing of the White House, a building he calls “the most special, important building on the planet,” was going to be replaced to make way for a ballroom that President Trump wants to add to the building.
But when McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Assn., saw the first images of backhoes tearing into the East Wing, it still came as a bit of a shock.
“When the reality of things happen, they strike us a little bit differently than the theory of things happening, so it was a bit of a jarring moment,” McLaurin told the Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
McLaurin, who has led the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization for more than a decade, did not take a position on the changes. It’s not his job. “Ours is not to make happen, or to keep from happening — but to document what does happen, what happens in this great home that we call the White House,” he said.
But he said he sees a silver lining from the “jarring” images: They have piqued public interest in White House history.
“What has happened since then is so amazing in that in the past two weeks, more people have been talking about White House history, focused on White House history, learning what is an East Wing, what is the West Wing … what are these spaces in this building that we simply call the White House,” McLaurin said.
Trump demolishes the East Wing
The general public became aware of the demolition work on Oct. 20 after photos of construction equipment ripping into the building began to circulate online, prompting an outcry from Democrats, preservationists and others.
In a matter of days, the entire two-story East Wing — the traditional base of operations for first ladies and their staffs — was gone. The demolition included a covered walkway between the White House, the family movie theater and a garden dedicated to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
Trump had talked about building a ballroom for years and pushed ahead with his vision when he returned to office in January. His proposal calls for a 90,000-square-foot structure, almost twice the size of the 55,000-square-foot White House itself and able to accommodate 1,000 people. The plan also includes building a more modern East Wing, officials said.
The president ordered the demolition despite not yet having sign-off for the ballroom construction from the National Capital Planning Commission, one of several entities with a role in approving additions to federal buildings and property. The White House has yet to submit the ballroom plans for the commission’s review because it is closed during the government shutdown.
Trump appointed loyalists to the planning commission in July. On Tuesday he also fired the six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, a group of architectural experts that advises the federal government on historic preservation and public buildings. A new slate of members who are more aligned with Trump’s policies will be named, a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on personnel decisions. The Washington Post was first to report the firings.
East Wing art and furnishings preserved
It was the job of the White House curator and their staff to carefully remove, catalog and store the art, the official portraits of former first ladies, and furnishings from the East Wing, McLaurin said.
The White House Historical Assn. does not have a decision-making role in the construction. But it has been working with the White House to prepare for the changes.
“We had known since late summer that the staff of the East Wing had moved out. I actually made my last visit on the last day of tours on August the 28th,” McLaurin said.
Working with the curator and chief usher, the association used 3D scanning technology “so that every room, space, nook and cranny of the East Wing, whether it was molding or hinges or door knobs or whatever it was, was captured to the nth degree” to be digitally recreated as an exhibit or to teach the history of that space, McLaurin said.
A photographer also documented the building as it was being taken apart. It will be a while before any images are available, but McLaurin said items were found when flooring was pulled up and when wall coverings were pulled back that “no living person remembered were there. So those will be lessons in history.”
White House has grown over the years
Trump’s aides have responded to criticism of the demolition by arguing that other presidents have made changes to the White House too. Trump said the White House needs a bigger entertaining space.
McLaurin said the building continues to evolve from what it looked like when it was built in 1792.
“There is a need to modernize and to grow,” he said, noting that White House social secretaries for generations chafed at the space limitations for entertaining. “But how it’s done and how it’s accomplished and what results is really the vision of the president who undertakes that project.”
What the White House Historical Assn. does
Jacqueline Kennedy created the historical association in 1961 to help preserve the museum quality of the interior of the White House and educate the public. It receives no government funding and raises money mostly through private donations and sales of retail merchandise.
It is not the mission of the association to take a position on construction, McLaurin said. Its primary mandate is preserving the State Floor and some of the historic bedrooms upstairs in the private living quarters, and teaching the history of the White House, which is an accredited museum. The State Floor is made up of the Green, Blue and Red Rooms, the East Room and State Dining Room, the Cross Hall and Grand Foyer.
“Ours is not to support — or to not support,” McLaurin said. “Ours is to understand, to get the details.”
Since the demolition, McLaurin said he has seen attendance spike at a free educational center the association opened in September 2024 a block from the White House. “The People’s House: A White House Experience” is open seven days a week — including during the shutdown.
The educational center had its busiest days the weekend of Oct. 17-19, with about 1,500 daily visitors, up from a previous average of 900, he said.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket pictured Oct. 19 as it launched 28 Starlink satellites on mission 10-17 from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. On Wednesday, 29 additional Starlink satellites devices will liftoff around 12:16 p.m. EDT on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket into low-Earth orbit at the same complex. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI | License Photo
Oct. 29 (UPI) —SpaceX is set to launch Wednesday more than two dozen Starlink satellites in Elon Musk’s bid to expand global Internet access.
About 29 additional Starlink satellites devices will liftoff around 12:16 p.m. EDT on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket into low-Earth orbit via Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Space Launch Complex 40.
A live-streamed broadcast of Starlink 10-37 mission will begin minutes prior to the scheduled launch.
It will be the 15th flight for the Falcon 9 stage booster transporting the company’s scores of Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites.
Satellites are expected to be deployed roughly an hour into the SpaceX mission.
Meanwhile, the first stage booster will land following separation on Just Read the Instructions — a droneship which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
June Lockhart, the perennial TV mom who consoled her son Timmy and his faithful pet collie in “Lassie” and explained the unfolding galaxy to her children in the kitschy prime-time sci-fi show “Lost in Space,” has died.
Active in Hollywood well into her 90s, Lockhart died Thursday in Santa Monica of natural causes, with daughter June Elizabeth and granddaughter Christianna by her side, said her publicist, Harlan Boll.
She was 100.
Upbeat and bubbly, Lockhart happily accepted playing second-fiddle to children, animals and even a robot. In “Lassie,” she was most often seen teaching her son small life lessons extracted from his misadventures, often saved from peril by his faithful dog. In “Lost in Space,” she was a biochemist who seemed to spend most of her time prepping meals in the galley or tending to the children as the “Swiss Family Robinson”-like clan drifted randomly in space.
“Motherhood has been a pretty good dodge for me,” Lockhart told The Times, years after the shows went off the air. “I seem to have outlasted most of my colleagues because of it.”
Cast members of the TV show “Lost in Space” pose in costume in this 1965 publicity photo. Seated is Marta Kristen; standing, from left, is Mark Goddard, June Lockhart and Guy Williams.
(AP / CBS)
June Kathleen Lockhart was born on June 25, 1925, in New York City and grew up in a family steeped in the arts. Her father was a Broadway actor and her mother a singer. For years the family staged a seasonal production of “A Christmas Carol” in their home, inviting neighbors, friends and relatives to attend.
In 1938, the family went a step further and took their by now well-polished version of the Charles Dickens classic to film with a young Lockhart cast as Belinda Cratchit. The movie was all of one hour and nine minutes long.
Lockhart attended the Westlake School for Girls after the family moved to Los Angeles, where her father hoped to find a career as a film actor. But it was Lockhart who cracked Hollywood by landing modest but frequent roles on popular television shows such as “Wagon Train,” “Gunsmoke” and “Rawhide.”
In 1958, she was cast as Ruth Martin, the patient and good-natured mother on “Lassie,” a role that earned her an Emmy nomination. The show ran for 17 seasons, making it one of the longest-running prime-time shows on television. Lockhart left the series in 1964 to pursue other opportunities.
Lockhart realized the show had its limitations. “It was a fairy tale about people on a farm in which the dog solves all the problems in 22 minutes, just in time for the last commercial,” she told The Times.
The scripts were only slightly more challenging in “Lost in Space,” which followed the adventures of a family aboard a saucer-shaped spaceship headed to an Earth-like planet circling a faraway star. She left the show after three years and joined the cast of “Petticoat Junction” as a medical doctor who sets up practice in a worse-for-wear hotel in the middle of nowhere.
Earlier in life, Lockhart had been a regular on the news quiz show “Who Said That?” in which contestants were read a quote and asked to guess who said it. Lockhart had been absorbed by journalism and newsmakers since childhood, when she started a neighborhood newspaper. As an adult she subscribed to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, reading them from beginning to end.
To prep for the show, she began cutting out quotes from the newspapers and memorizing them. One of the panelists on the show, a White House reporter for United Press International, was so impressed with Lockhart‘s grasp of politics that he invited her to a White House briefing.
Lockhart went on to become an unofficial member of the White House press corps, attending briefings, traveling with the Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy entourages during their presidential showdown and hitting the campaign trail with Ronald Reagan.
June Lockhart in 1965.
(CBS via Getty Images)
During her years as an informal White House correspondent, she was called on only once to ask a question during a presidential briefing, asking President George W. Bush for the name of the veterinarian who cared for the first family’s dog, Barney. Bush chuckled and said it was top secret.
Though she never had another prime-time role as big as in “Lassie” or “Lost in Space,” her career was remarkably long. She was the kindergarten teacher on “Full House,” James Caan’s mother on “Las Vegas,” a mother once again on “The Drew Carey Show” and a hospice worker on “Grey’s Anatomy.” For years she hosted coverage of the Rose Parade on CBS.
Her final credit arrived in 2018, when she voiced a radio communications officer in the “Lost in Space” reboot on Netflix. Twice married and divorced, Lockhart is survived by daughters June Elizabeth and Anne, as well as four grandchildren, said longtime family friend, Lyle Gregory.
The technology is expected to boost capacity in environmental monitoring, urban planning and disaster management.
Published On 19 Oct 202519 Oct 2025
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Pakistan has sent its first-ever hyperspectral satellite into orbit, a “major milestone” it says will help advance national objectives from agriculture to urban planning.
The country’s space agency, SUPARCO, announced the “successful launch” of the H1 satellite from northwestern China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre on Sunday.
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Hyperspectral satellites can detect subtle chemical or material changes on the ground that traditional satellites cannot, making them especially useful for things like tracking crop quality, water resources or damage from natural disasters.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the technology is expected to “significantly enhance national capacities” in fields like precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, urban planning and disaster management.
It said its ability to pinpoint geohazard risks will also contribute to development initiatives such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which seeks to build infrastructure linking China’s northwestern Xinjiang province with Pakistan’s Gwadar Port.
— Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan (@ForeignOfficePk) October 19, 2025
“The data from the Hyperspectral Satellite is poised to revolutionise agricultural productivity, bolster climate resilience, and enable optimised management of the country’s vital natural resources,” SUPARCO chairman Muhammad Yousuf Khan was quoted as saying in Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper.
‘Pivotal step’
Pakistan also hailed H1’s deployment as a “pivotal step forward” in its space programme, as well as a reflection of its longstanding partnership with China in the “peaceful exploration of space”.
“The mission reflects the ever-growing strategic partnership and deep-rooted friendship between the two nations, who continue to cooperate in advancing peaceful space exploration and harnessing its benefits for socioeconomic development,” said the Foreign Ministry.
The mission is part of a recent push in Pakistan to grow its space programme, which has sent three satellites into orbit this year, according to SUPARCO.
The two other satellites – EO-1 and KS-1 – are “fully operational in orbit”, reported Pakistan’s The News International newspaper.
It may take about two months to calibrate the H1 satellite’s systems before it is fully operational this year, according to a SUPARCO spokesperson quoted in Pakistani media.
I am standing on what looks like a cramped, dark city street. A tavern is around a corner, a police department in front of me. And I’m lost.
That’s when I hear a whisper. “Psst.” I turn, and see a puppet peeping his head out of a secret opening of a door. Over here,” he says, and I find myself leaning in to listen to this furry, oval-faced creature in the shadows. He’ll help me, he says — that is if I can clear his name. See, another puppet has been murdered, and everyone right now is a suspect.
Campaign posters for puppet candidates for mayor inside Appleseed Avenue. “Election Day” is a tale of political espionage with puppet-on-puppet violence.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
I am playing a gamed called “Election Day” at Appleseed Avenue, a relatively new escape room in a multi-story strip mall in Newhall. The puppet world is in the midst of a crisis, torn over whether humans should be allowed to wander the fictional street of Appleseed Avenue. My role is that of a detective, and throughout this game of fatal political espionage, I encounter multiple puppet characters — electricians, would-be-mayors, gangsters, dead puppets.
Drama ensues, and that’s where we humans come in, helping the puppets crack the case before we’re banned from their world once and for all. One needn’t be up on the state of puppet politics to participate — and don’t worry, the domestic affairs of Appleseed Avenue are relatively divorced from those of our own. Only a penchant for silly absurdity, and a stomach for puppet-on-puppet violence, is required.
While the look of the puppets may be inspired by, say, “Sesame Street,” with characters that are all big mouths and large eyes, the tone of “Election Day” leans a bit more adult. Recommended for ages 13 and older, “Election Day” will feature puppets in perilous conditions. And if you’re playing as a medical examiner, be prepared to get a glimpse at a mini puppet morgue.
Guests will play as detectives or medical examiners in Appleseed Avenue’s “Election Day.”
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
“Sometimes people do think, ‘Oh, this is for little kids.’ Not quite,” says Patrick Fye, who created the experience with Matt Tye. “We call it PG-13.”
“We wanted that dichotomy,” says Tye. “Really silly puppet-y characters in a gritty world.”
Fye and Tye are veterans of the local escape room scene — Fye the creator of Evil Genius Escape Rooms and Tye the developer of Arcane Escape Rooms. “Election Day,” however, while a timed experience, isn’t a pure escape room. Think of it more as a story that unfolds and needs solving. We’re not trapped. In fact, one puzzle actually utilizes the waiting room, as “Election Day” toys with the idea of traversing the human world and a puppet universe.
Patrick Fye and Matthew Tye, founders of Appleseed Avenue, along with their lookalike puppets.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Puppets weren’t necessarily the driving idea behind their joint venture in Appleseed Avenue. Creating a so-called escape room that was more narrative based was the objective. They wanted a room, for instance, where puzzles felt natural rather than forced. “Election Day” isn’t a space, say, with complex cipher codes to untangle. I was reminded of old-fashioned adventure video games, where one is prompted to look at objects, combine them or go on scavenger hunts, like the one prompted by the puppet I met in an alley.
Puppets were simply a means to an end.
“How can we make something that feels like you’re actually in the story and has more video game-y elements, as opposed to, ‘I’m in an Egyptian tomb. Here’s a padlock,’ ” says Fye. “We were trying to figure out how to mix the diegetics with the overall design. We stumbled on crimes and puppets because we thought it was fun and funny.”
One problem: Neither had created puppets or puppeteered before. Enter online classes, where Tye learned how to craft arm-rod puppets.
“We thought it was the coolest idea we had,” Tye says. When we both look at something and go, ‘We don’t know how to do all of this yet,’ we don’t let that stop us.”
Appleseed Avenue is home to an escape room featuring puppets. It doubles as the street name in which the game, “Election Day,” takes place.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
“Election Day” does unfold like a live-in video game. At times, we’re interacting with a screen, as puppets will relay us messages and quests. Often, we’ll explore the space, as the two have created an elaborate set. Teams are split. Half work as detectives, and half as medical examiners. We can communicate via an inter-room conference system, or simply run back and forth.
But listening to everything the puppets say is paramount, as clues are often hidden in dialogue. Both say they have done too many escape rooms where the story felt too divorced from the actions they were being asked to complete.
“We even say at the beginning of the game, ‘The story really matters.’ You have to pay attention to it,” Fye says. “There’s a moment I’ll never forget. We were doing a Titanic room, and we were in the engine room shoveling coal. But isn’t the ship sinking? What is happening? A lot of times a story is just set dressing.”
Appleseed Avenue’s ‘Election Day’
The initial response to “Election Day” has been positive, so much so that the two are set to debut a second game in 2026, a sci-fi room titled “Shadow Puppet.” The latter will utilize the same Appleseed Avenue set, although additional spaces will be built out. They’re also looking at some more kid-friendly options. Planned for 2027 is a game titled “Puppet Town Day,” in which little ones will receive passports that prompt them to interact with the puppet characters.
Wanted posters for puppets. Many are a suspect in Appleseed Avenue’s “Election Day.”
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
For now, however, think of Appleseed Avenue as part of greater Los Angeles escape room trend. Whether it’s Hatch Escapes with its corporate time-jumping game “The Ladder” or Ministry of Peculiarities with its spooky haunted house, creators here are emphasizing story. Appleseed Avenue is no different, introducing us to a wacky cast of puppet characters.
It also achieves a rare feat: It makes murder feel ridiculous.
Says Tye: “When there’s a guy named Alby Dunfer who’s getting it from a blowdart from a hitman, it’s like, ‘OK, this is fun.’ ”
Oct. 13 (UPI) —SpaceX is planning the 11th flight test on Monday of its Starship, its two-stage, heavy-lift launch vehicle designed to one day take humans back to the moon and eventually to Mars.
The launch window will open at 6:15 p.m. CT at the company’s Starbase compound in Texas near the Gulf of Mexico and about 20 miles from Brownsville.
In August, the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX succeeded in its third attempt to launch the 10th Starship test mission after SpaceX officials scrubbed two prior launches.
Monday’s flight is expected to build on the “successful demonstrations” from its 10th test in August, according to officials, but with flight experiments “gathering data for the next generation Super Heavy booster, stress-testing Starship’s heatshield, and demonstrating maneuvers that will mimic the upper stage’s final approach for a future return to launch site.”
But on Monday, the company reiterated that the flight schedule was a “dynamic” process and “likely to change” as is the case with all other developmental testing.
To live in Los Angeles is to be a seeker. There are those who come to the city in search of the limelight and affluence. There are others who crave temperate weather and long for accessible beaches. The list goes on. Some of these desires are easily satisfied, while others are left unfulfilled or forgotten. But for those born and raised in this atypical metropolis, like Shirley Kurata, the search is never-ending.
The costume designer tells me the key to loving this city is to never stop venturing around. We sit in the shaded back patio of Virgil Normal, a 21st century lifestyle shop she owns with her husband, Charlie Staunton. She wears a vibrant pink getup — a vintage top and Issey Miyake pants — complete with small pleats and optimal for the unavoidable August heat wave. Her signature pair of black circular glasses sits perfectly on the bridge of her nose. It’s a style of eyewear she owns in several colors.
“I always tell people, L.A. is like going to a flea market. There’s some digging to do, but you’ll definitely find some gems,” says the stylist and costume designer, as she’s regularly on the lookout for up-and-coming creative hubs and eye-catching storefronts. “It won’t be handed to you. You have to dig.”
In one way or another, “digging” has marked Kurata’s creative livelihood. Whether she’s conjuring wardrobes for the big screen, like in the Oscar-winning “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” or styling musicians like Billie Eilish, Florence and the Machine and ASAP Rocky for photo shoots and music videos, the hunt for the perfect look keeps her on her toes.
Over the summer, Kurata spent a lot of time inside the Costco-size Western Costume Co., pulling looks for Vogue World, the magazine’s annual traveling runway extravaganza. This year, the fashion spectacle is centered around Hollywood and will take place at Paramount Pictures Studios in late October. She is one of the eight costume designers asked to present at the event — others include Colleen Atwood of “Edward Scissorhands,” Ruth E. Carter of “Black Panther” and Arianne Phillips of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Kurata will be styling background performers and taking inspiration from the invited costume designers.
Shirley wears vintage hat, Meals Clothing top, shirt and dress, We Love Colors tights, Opening Ceremony x Robert Clergerie shoes and l.a. Eyeworks sunglasses.
“[Vogue] wanted someone that is a stylist and costume designer who has worked both in fashion and film. Because a lot of costume designers work primarily in TV and film, they don’t do the fashion styling for editorial shoots,” says Kurata. “I’m coming on and working with what other costume designers have done.”
Since her start in the business, Kurata has gained acclaim for her ability to infuse daring prints and vibrant color into the narrative worlds she deals with. Her maximalist sense of experimentation took center stage in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and earned her an Academy Award nomination for costume design. From a bejeweled Elvis jumpsuit to a look made entirely of neon green tassels meant to resemble an amoeba, her vision was avant-garde, playful and undeniably multidimensional.
When Kurata isn’t on set or in the troves of a costume house, she’s likely tending to Virgil Normal. Housed in a former moped shop, the Virgil Village store offers a selection of novelty items and streetwear treasures, curated by both Kurata and Staunton. Though Staunton jokes that he’s constantly seeking her approval when sourcing inventory: “If it’s not cool enough for her, it doesn’t come in.”
The couple first met at the Rose Bowl Flea Market through mutual friends. At first sight, Staunton recalls being enthralled by her perpetually “cool” demeanor. Early in their relationship, he even floated the idea of starting a clothing line together, just to “knock off her closet.”
Shirley wears Leeann Huang t-shirt, skirt and shoes, We Love Colors tights and l.a. Eyeworks glasses here and in photos below.
“She’s like a peacock. It’s not like she’s trying to get attention. But she has her own vision and doesn’t really care what’s going on. She knows what’s cool,” says Staunton, who cites Kurata as the biggest “inspiration” for the store.
Inside the quaint red brick building, blue L.A. hats are embroidered to read “Larry David,” acrylic shelves are packed with Snoopy figurines (for display only), trays of l.a. Eyeworks frames fill the tables and each clothing tag is a different elaborate doodle illustrated by Staunton. He adds that everything in the store is meant to have a “rabbit hole” effect, where shoppers can give in to their curiosities.
“We wanted a place where like-minded people could come here and have it be a space to hang out. They don’t have to buy anything,” says Kurata. The attached patio is complete with a mural of a man floating in space, pipe in hand, and the coolers are still filled with chilled beers and sparkling waters from their most recent get-together. She tells me about how many times they’ve allowed musicians and artists to transform this peaceful outdoor space into a lively venue.
“Having that connection with a community of creatives in the city is essential. Having that sort of human interaction is really good for your soul, and for your creativity,” she shares. “Having this store has been one of the most fulfilling things that I’ve done, and it’s not like we’re not making a ton of money off it.”
From the cactus out front, which Kurata and Staunton planted themselves, to grabbing lunch at the taqueria down the street, she explains cultivating a space like this and being an active part of the neighborhood has made her into a more “enriched person.” Kurata, who is of Japanese descent, brings up the lesser known history of East Hollywood. In the early 1900s, the neighborhood, then called J-Flats, was where a sizable group of Japanese immigrants settled. It was once a bustling community with Japanese boarding houses that offered affordable rent and home-cooked meals. Today, only one of these properties is operating.
“Having that connection with a community of creatives in the city is essential. Having that sort of human interaction is really good for your soul, and for your creativity,”
For Kurata, being a part of this legacy means trimming the nearby overgrown vegetation to keep the sidewalks clear and running over to the locally owned convenience store when Virgil Normal needs supplies, instead of immediately turning to Amazon. She pours everything she learned from being raised in this city back into the store, and in turn, its surroundings.
Kurata was born and raised in Monterey Park, a region in the San Gabriel Valley with a primarily Asian population. The neighborhood is a small, homey stretch of land, known for its dining culture, hilly roads and suburban feeling (but not-so-suburban location). These days, she’ll often find herself in the area, as her mother and sister still live there. Together, they enjoy many of the surrounding dim sum-style restaurants.
Even from a young age, she was encouraged to treat the entire city as her stomping grounds. She attended elementary school in the Arts District, which she describes as quieter and “more industrial than it is today.” She also spent a lot of her childhood in Little Tokyo, shopping for Japanese magazines (where she found a lot of her early inspiration), playing in the arcade and grocery shopping with her family.
Shirley wears Leeann Huang lenticular dress and shoes, Mary Quant tights and l.a. Eyeworks sunglasses.
For high school, she decided to branch out even further, making the trek to an all-girls Catholic school in La Cañada Flintridge. “It was the first time where I felt like an outsider,” Kurata says, as she had only previously attended predominantly Asian schools. She laughs a little about being one of the rare “Japanese Catholics.”
“When you’re raised in something, you go along with it because your parents tell you, and it’s part of your education,” Kurata says. Her religious upbringing began to reach a point where she wasn’t connecting with it anymore. “Having that sort of awakening is good for you. I was able to look at myself, early in life, and realize that I don’t think this is for me.”
Her senior year, she discovered vintage stores. (She always knew that she had an affinity for clothing of the past, as she gravitated toward hand-me-down Barbies from the ’60s.) Her coming-of-age style consisted of layering skirts with other oversize pieces — and everything was baggy, “because it was the ’80s.” With this ignited passion for vintage and thrifting, Kurata began to mix items spanning across decades into one look.
“All the colors, the prints, the variety. It just seemed more fun. I would mix a ’60s dress with a jacket from the ’70s and maybe something from the ’40s,” says Kurata. It’s a practice that has remained a major part of her creative Rolodex.
Her lifelong interest in fashion led her to get a summer job at American Rag Cie on La Brea Avenue. At the time, the high-end store primarily sold a mix of well-curated timeless pieces, sourced from all over the world. It was the first time she encountered the full range of L.A.’s fashion scene. She worked alongside Christophe Loiron of Mister Freedom and other “rockabilly and edgier, slightly goth” kinds of people.
“Living abroad is such an important way of broadening your mind, being exposed to other cultures and even learning another language. It helps you grow as a person. It’s the best thing I ever did.”
“Time moved really slowly in that place. But just the creativity that I was around, from both the people who worked there and shopped there, was great exposure,” says Kurata, who recalls seeing faces like Winona Ryder and Johnny Depp browsing the selection and Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington trying on jeans.
Kurata continued her L.A. expedition to Cal State Long Beach, where she began her art degree. It wasn’t long before Studio Berçot, a now-closed fashion school in Paris known for its avant-garde curriculum, started calling her name.
“Living abroad is such an important way of broadening your mind, being exposed to other cultures and even learning another language. It helps you grow as a person,” says Kurata. “It’s the best thing I ever did.”
Her Parisian studies lasted around three years and it was the closest she had ever gotten to high fashion. Sometimes, she would be able to see runway shows by selling magazines inside the venue or volunteering to work backstage. Other times, she relied on well-intentioned shenanigans. She used to pass around and reuse an invitation within her group of friends. She once snuck in through a large, unattended hole in a fence. In one instance, she simply charged at the entrance when it began to rain. All things she did in the name of fashion.
“I would just do what I could to see as many shows as possible. All of the excitement is hard to explain. When I worked backstage, there’s this labor of love that’s put towards the show. It’s this contagious energy that you could feel when the models start coming,” says Kurata, who saw everything from Jean Paul Gaultier to John Galliano and Yves Saint Laurent. When she was backstage for a Vivienne Westwood show, she recollects seeing this “shorter model, and thinking, ‘Oh, she’s so tiny,’ and then realizing that it was Kate Moss who was still fairly new at that point.”
“We wanted a place where like-minded people could come here and have it be a space to hang out. Having this store has been one of the most fulfilling things that I’ve done.”
Staying in France was intriguing to a young Kurata, but the struggles of visas and paperwork deterred her. She instead returned to L.A., freshly inspired, and completed her bachelor’s degree in art (to her parents’ satisfaction). She didn’t plan to get into costume design, Kurata explains. But when it became clear that designing her own line would require moving to somewhere like New York or back to Europe, she realized, “Maybe fashion is not the world I want to get into; maybe it’s costumes.”
“I felt comfortable with that decision,” shares Kurata. “I do love film, so it was just a transition I made. It was still connected [to everything that I wanted to do].”
Without the aid of social media, she sent letters to costume designers, hoping to get mentored, and started working on low-budget jobs. She quickly fell in love with how much the job changed day-to-day. On occasion, there are 12-hour days that can be “miserable,” but her next job might be entirely different. One day she’s styling the seasonal campaigns for her longtime friends Kate and Laura Mulleavy, owners of Rodarte, and the next she could be styling for the cover of W Magazine, where a larger-than-life Jennifer Coolidge stomps through a miniature city in a neon polka-dot coat.
Whenever Kurata takes on a project, Staunton says she “just doesn’t stop.” Sometimes, he’ll wake up at 3 in the morning and she’s emailing people in Europe, attempting to hunt down a rare vintage piece. Her passion is the kind that simultaneously consumes and fuels her.
“There’s a lot of times [with her work] where I’m like, ‘That’s just straight out of Shirley’s closet.’ It’s not like she has to compromise. It’s something she would wear herself. She doesn’t have to follow trends,” explains Staunton. “People seek her out, because she has such a unique vision.”
“I always tell people, L.A. is like going to a flea market. There’s some digging to do, but you’ll definitely find some gems.”
Kurata thinks of herself as “someone who gets bored easily.” It’s a quality that’s reflected in her eclectic style, busy travel schedule, Virgil Normal’s constantly changing selection and even the common feeling she gets when she’s sick of all of her clothes. It’s a good thing being bored and being in Los Angeles don’t go hand in hand.
I ask Kurata a somewhat daunting question for a born-and-bred Angeleno.
“Do you think you could ever see yourself calling another place home?”
She lets out a deep sigh and tells me it’s not something she’s closed off to. Though, she takes a moment to reflect on how everyone came together to provide support during the Palisades and Eaton fires earlier this year. Or how good it feels when they have events at Virgil Normal, to be surrounded by a diverse group of creative minds “who don’t judge.” She even thinks about how she currently lives in a Franklin Hills house, a neighborhood she never thought she would be able to afford.
Time and time again, Kurata and this sprawling city-state have looked out for each other. From the way she speaks of different areas with such an intrinsic care, to showcasing her unique creative eye in Tinseltown, L.A. has made her into a permanent seeker. Whether she chooses to stay in Franklin Hills for the rest of her life or packs up everything tomorrow, she’ll always keep an eye out for hidden gems — just like at the flea market.
Blue Origin’s facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, seen November 2018. In June, Blue Origin lifted six space tourists on its 13th passenger flight.
Past flights included Star Trek celebrity William Shatner, Hall of Famer Michael Strahan and pop superstar Katy Perry. File Photo by Joe Marino/UPI | License Photo
Oct. 8 (UPI) — Space tourism company Blue Origin launched six people in Texas on its 15th mission in the growing orbital tourism industry.
Blue Origin’s mission NS-36, space flight saw liftoff at 8:40 a.m. CDT via its launch site in west Texas after a 9:30 a.m. launch window opened for its suborbital journey in the 36th flight for its reusable rocket-capsule New Shepard.
“Hugs all around,” an announcer said in a live-streamed broadcast as New Shepard landed in the Texas desert.
The six-person crews reached an orbital height of 346,791 feet in the capsule after its rocket detachment reached its apogee of roughly 346,426 feet.
We just completed our 36th flight of the New Shepard program. The crew onboard included: Jeff Elgin, Danna Karagussova, Clint Kelly III, Will Lewis, Aaron Newman, and Vitalii Ostrovsky. New Shepard has flown 86 humans (80 individuals) to space. Read more: https://t.co/I80eY0Ed88pic.twitter.com/fgQ46BYsZk— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) October 8, 2025
Passengers aboard experienced a weightless environment for a few minutes above Earth’s Karman line, some 62 miles above the planet that scientists recognized as the boundary to outer space.
The flight time hit Blue Origin estimates. The mission’s elapsed time 10 minutes 21 seconds, and the reusable capsule land around 8:50 a.m. CDT.
Aboard the voyage by the company created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos were Blue Origin veteran Clint Kelly III, a robotics researcher, who flew on Blue Origin’s August 2022 mission. In addition to an anonymous passenger, joining Kelly were franchise executive Jeff Elgin, media entrepreneur Danna Karagussova, software entrepreneur Aaron Newman and Ukrainian businessman Vitalii Ostrovsky.
But no live interviews were to be taken but videos will be posted later, according to company officials.
However, it’s unclear just how much it costs to book a seat on New Shepard but estimates suggest a minimum $150,000 deposit with its first space ticket that cost nearly $30 million.
Rumours across social media platforms that a huge comet is on a collision course with Earth have been circulating, with some users describing it as a major threat to humanity.
Others are debating how the comet – known as 3I/ATLAS and detected by NASA’s ATLAS telescope on July 1 – might be diverted from the Earth. Some have even gone so far as to highlight “news” of military movements and an international coordination to counter the comet before impact, prompting further alarm.
So is there any truth to these rumours and what do we know for sure?
When and how did rumours about the comet start?
Rumours began spreading after the New York Post published a story on September 29 under the headline: “‘Massive’ comet hurtling toward us is larger than previously thought, could be alien tech, scientist says: ‘It could change everything for us’.”
Users on X (formerly Twitter) circulated screenshots of the article to support their claims. One account, under the name Steven Greenstreet, wrote: “Scientists say a massive alien spaceship is hurtling towards Earth. Why aren’t more people talking about this?”
Scientists say a massive alien spaceship is hurtling towards Earth. Why aren’t more people talking about this?!?! 😱😱😱 pic.twitter.com/Q2NvVdcXa7
Another account called Dr Disclosure reposted the story, adding: “This is why all the generals are gathering!” – a reference to a September 30 meeting of US military leaders chaired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. That post racked up more than half a million views.
Meanwhile, an account under the name Richard Roeper shared his concerns: “A massive comet is reportedly hurtling toward Earth at 130,000 mph! Can we stop it? I’m told there are two missions in the works – one involving the specially selected “Messiah Crew,” and one utilizing two squads, known as the Freedom Team and the Independence Team. We got this.”
A massive comet is reportedly hurtling toward Earth at 130,000 mph! Can we stop it? I’m told there are two missions in the works–one involving the specially selected “Messiah Crew,” and one utilizing two squads, known as the Freedom Team and the Independence Team. We got this. pic.twitter.com/dsbgW0giLD
Speculation escalated, with some accounts suggesting the object was not a comet at all but in fact a spacecraft heading towards Earth.
An account under the name Lord Bebo shared statements falsely attributed to US physicist Michio Kaku, claiming the object was on the way “to conduct a reconnaissance mission, possibly with hostile intent”. The post, accompanied by an edited screenshot of a television interview with Kaku and the caption, “It might be an ALIEN probe sent to Earth” garnered more than 290,000 views and dozens of comments.
☄️ Comet stirs debate among astrophysicists & they call for urgent international attention on interstellar object 3I/ATLAS
Physicist Michio Kaku: its acceleration cannot be explained by conventional causes, and it’s approaching Earth CLOSER than expected
Similarly, another account called Astronomy Vibes suggested: “While most scientists agree it’s likely a strange comet, a few bold voices suggest it might be something more – maybe even an engineered probe from another civilization.” No evidence was provided.
🚨 Breaking Cosmic News! Scientists have spotted a 7-mile-wide interstellar visitor — the largest of its kind ever seen — racing through our solar system. Known as 3I/ATLAS, this giant comet isn’t from around here… it comes from deep interstellar space! 🌌
Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency, SANAD, investigated the claims about the comet known as 3I/ATLAS, an interstellar object, to determine whether it really poses any real threat to Earth or could even be a hostile probe.
The comet was in fact detected by NASA’s ATLAS telescope on July 1, 2025. NASA, which describes it as having “a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus”, confirmed that it poses no danger to Earth. It noted that the closest it has come to the Earth was about 270 million kilometres (167.8 million miles) on July 21.
The European Space Agency (ESA) also confirmed that the comet poses no threat to Earth or to any other planet, explaining that its closest distance was more than 2.5 times that between Earth and the Sun.
According to NASA, the comet will reach its closest approach to the Sun on October 30, 2025. At that point, it will be about 210 million km (130.5 million miles) from the sun, just inside the orbit of Mars.
This is a significant comet, however. According to the Hubble Space Telescope, it is travelling at about 210,000 kilometres per hour (130,500 miles per hour) – the fastest speed ever recorded for a “visitor” to our solar system.
🆕 Hubble has caught an interstellar interloper — comet 3I/ATLAS!
NASA said the comet presents a rare opportunity for scientists to study an interstellar “visitor” as it passes through the solar system.
“Hubble’s continuing observations allow astronomers to more accurately estimate the size of the comet’s nucleus,” the agency said in a statement. “Observations as of August 20, 2025, indicate that the upper limit on its diameter is 3.5 miles (5.6 km), though it could be as small as 1,444ft (440 metres) across.”
Comet 3I/ATLAS doesn’t pose a threat to Earth, but it does provide NASA scientists and spacecraft with a rare opportunity to study an interstellar comet as it passes through our solar system. ☄ https://t.co/B1MkBRZuT4pic.twitter.com/wAmBUEte8l
As for the quotes attributed to physicist Michio Kaku, SANAD found no evidence supporting them. The image circulating online was taken from an older interview with US outlet Nation News on February 20, 2025 – months before the discovery of 3I/ATLAS.
RUSSIA has been trying to jam British military satellites every week, according to the head of the UK Space Command.
Major General Paul Tedman accused Moscow of actively attempting to disrupt the UK’s space-based assets through constant stalking and manipulation tactics.
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Commander of UK Space Command, Major General Paul Tedman, has warned Russia is trying to jam British military satellites every weekCredit: Reuters
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The UK launched the Tyche military imaging satellite into orbit on a Space X rocket last yearCredit: Space x
Maj Gen Tedman told the BBC the disruptions are happening on a weekly basis.
He said: “We’re seeing our satellites being jammed by the Russians on a reasonably persistent basis.
“They’ve got payloads onboard that can see our satellites and are trying to collect information from them.
“They can jam, blind, manipulate or kinetically disrupt satellites.”
All six of the dedicated military satellites operated by the UK are equipped with counter-jamming technology, Tedman confirmed.
Britain continues to fall far behind other powerful nations in terms of their space surveillance systems.
The US, China and Russia each have more than a hundred in orbit.
Beijing and Moscow are both being viewed as potential threats, according to Gen Tedman.
He said both nations had tested anti-satellite weapons in recent years.
Both the UK and the US have warned that Russia is developing the capability to put nuclear weapons in space.
Russian ‘killer satellite’ detected launching mysterious probe near US aircraft
Speaking on the dangers of both countries, Gen Tedman said: “I would say the Chinese have by far the more sophisticated capability but the Russians have more will to use their counter-space systems.”
The UK government is now promising to invest more space missile defence – including plans to test sensors to detect laser threats in space.
Russia’s interference on an astral level comes after Germany’s Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius, also blasted Russia for shadowing satellites used by their military last month.
Berlin said a pair of Russian satellites were “pursuing” space capsules used by Germany’s armed forces.
Pistorius called for talks to draw up offensive capabilities in space as a deterrent – and revealed that Germany will spend $41billion on space defence by 2030.
IT was the Autumn equinox on Monday – which means the days are about to get a lot shorter.
Before you know it, it will be dark when you get home from work and when you get up in the morning.
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Plant crocus’s now to get gorgeous colour over WinterCredit: Getty
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Pansies and violas are available in garden centres and supermarkets now.Credit: Getty
And although that means less gardening time – there’s still loads you can get in the ground or your greenhouse.
In fact, Autumn is a great time to get planting – simply because the soil is still warm but the weather is cooler – which means roots can establish well before Winter.
Whether it’s for produce or colour before Christmas – or flowers after – I’ve put together a guide on what can go in the ground now.
FLOWERS
You can always tell from what’s on sale in your local garden centre or supermarket as to what will bring you colour in the run up before Christmas.
But staples like container grown Geums, Cyclamen, Astor, Japanese Anenome, and Chrysanthemums can be bought in flower and planted now.
Plus racks of bedding plants like pansies, viola and primroses are filling supermarket shelves.
I managed to find three packs of eight viola plugs from Asda for just a fiver last weekend – which means each of the 24 plugs are only 20p.
Plus the gorgeous colour combinations will fill your garden with rainbows of colour.
And a lot of the garden centres are offering Winter Bedding packs – which takes the decision of what to buy out of your hands – and provides you with a lovely rainbow of colours for your outside space.=
Seeds-wise – you can plant sweetpea, poppies, calendula, cornflower, nemesia, forget-me-nots, and lavender under cover.
BULBS
Daffodils, crocus, alliums and grape hyacinth bulbs are good to go in September and October – as well as the more unusual large Fritalliaries and Camassia – which look really like bluebells.
Gardener shares ‘genius’ bulb planting hack that will give your months of spring flowers & it takes seconds to do
But hold fire until November until you plant your tulip bulbs – they love the colder weather.
If you put them in too early, you’ll risk the change of Tulip Fire, which is a fungal disease that causes distorted leaves and spots – that look like scorch marks – on the tulips themselves.
A lot of online garden centres have big bulb sales on at the moment, so it’s worth shopping around.
Suttons Seeds are offering Sun Gardening readers an exclusive link to get 80 per cent off their bulb sales right now.
Butterhead and Lamb’s lettuce actually like the colder weather – so under a cloche or cold frame, or in a greenhouse – sow the seeds thinly, about 1.5cm deep. Sow every 2-3 weeks for a continuous supply.
Overwintering cauliflower seeds like ‘All The Year Round’ and ‘Autumn Giant’ can be planted now – under protection.
Plus onion seeds, winter greens, garlic, pak choi, spinach and kale.
There’s a lot of fruit you can grow in pots – including cherries, raspberries, strawberries and blueberries.
Then wait until November for bare root season
Also in Veronica’s Column this week…
Gardening news, top tips, Plant of the Week plus a chance to win a £200 Gardening Express voucher.
Fore more gardening content and competitions follow me @biros_and_bloom
NEWS! Did you know that 22 billion carrot seeds are sown each year in the UK, and we eat our way through 700,000 tonnes of carrots annually? This works out to be around 100 per person, and laid out end to end they would stretch 1.4 million miles – two and a half trips to the moon. And as British growers provide 97 per cent of the carrots consumers buy in the UK, there is almost no need to buy imported carrots. They’re also worth £290m to the UK Economy yet are one of the cheapest vegetables – with loads of nutritional benefits. The incredible stats have been released in time for British Carrot Day on Friday – which celebrates the UK carrot growing and encourages people to buy, get creative, eat, and cook with carrots. For more information visitwww.britishcarrots.co.uk
NEWS! A whopping leaf four metres long has been grown at the Eden Project, Cornwall. Lodoicea maldivica, more commonly known as coco de mer, is native to the islands of the Seychelles and is famous for producing the world’s largest and heaviest seed. The mature leaf has taken around ten years to develop to this stage. And over the next decade, it could reach a massive eight to ten metres. A coco de mer can live for up to 800 years, reaching up to 112 feet tall.
TOP TIP! September is the start of baby hedgehog (hoglet) season, and you may find that they need your help. Autumn Juvenile hedgehogs are old enough to be away from their mums, but often too small to hibernate successfully. Guidance from the British Hedgehog Preservation Society says that “if the hedgehog is a regular visitor to your garden, is only seen at night, appears active and you are prepared to feed it every night then it can be left in the wild. But if the hedgehog goes off its food, wobbles and staggers or starts coming out in the day, then it needs extra help as soon as possible. The best way to ensure wild hedgehogs are well-fed is to create organic wild spaces, leafy corners and log piles where they can forage for natural foods, like grubs and insects. To supplement their diet in the wild, you can offer hedgehogs a good quality meaty hedgehog food, meaty cat or dog food or dry biscuits for cats.
NEWS! If you fancy turning your hand to growing houseplants, Unwins have launched a brand new Houseplant Seed Collection, a curated range of eight varieties that have been specially selected and bred to flourish in UK and Irish homes. Including Asparagus Ferns, Sempervivum, Bird of Paradise and Dichondra Silver Surfer, the packs are available now in your local garden centre. Natasha Lane, Head of Seed, for Unwins, commented: “We’re very excited to be launching a collection of houseplant seeds for the first time. It now means that it’s easier than ever to create your very own indoor jungle. Whether you’re looking to enhance wellbeing, purify the air, or simply add style to your space, our houseplant seeds are ready to grow with you.”
WIN! One lucky reader can win a £200 Gardening Express voucher to spend online. To enter, visit www.thesun.co.uk/EXPRESSVOUCHER or write to Sun Gardening Express competition, PO Box 3190, Colchester, Essex, CO2 8GP. Include your name, age, email or phone. UK residents 18+ only. Entries close 11.59pm. October 11, 2025. T&Cs apply
PLANT OF THE WEEK! Japanese Anemone. Blooming now, they’re graceful and tall with long stalks and single or double flowers – great for brightening up shady corners, but prefer a bit of sun. Spread by rhizomes.
JOB OF THE WEEK! If you’ve got a pond it’s time to get it ready for winter – net it before leaves start to fall and trim back any overgrown pond plants. Put a tennis ball in to help prevent freezing.
Joan Higginbotham, who spent 12 days aboard the International Space Station and on a NASA Shuttle mission, now promotes STEM subjects in her role at the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex
An astronaut deploys a tried-and-tested technique to ensure that she never forgets an item when on holiday.
As one might suspect of a NASA astronaut with an electrical engineering degree and time aboard the International Space Station under her belt, Joan Higginbotham is, as she puts it, “very analytical”.
The Chicago-born 60-year-old has many accolades, including being one of only five African American women to have gone to space and forming part of the crew of the STS-116 mission aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.
She can also proudly claim to be one of the most methodical suitcase packers out there.
“Part of my DNA is being very analytical, shall we say. As I’m packing, I will make a checklist, which probably speaks to me being an astronaut, as everything we do is via a checklist. We go to the bathroom via a checklist. That is how I organise my packing, I do it by days, I look at the weather, look at whether what I’m wearing is weather appropriate. I will be very transparent. I have an Excel spreadsheet. It goes by day, I map out what I’m going to wear. My husband makes fun of me. I remind him I have never forgotten anything,” Joan explained during a trip to London.
Joan had a 10-year wait after joining the astronaut programme before she was assigned a mission and eventually got to space. During this time, she lost seven of her ASCAN classmates in the devastating 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident.
Three years later, she participated in the STS-116 mission aboard Space Shuttle Discovery, which saw her join a crew of seven as a “mission specialist” and spend 12 days in space helping to assemble and upgrade the International Space Station.
Joan’s career began in 1987 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, where, as a Payload Electrical Engineer, she helped to prepare and launch more than 53 Space Shuttle missions. Now she has returned to the Florida space centre as an ambassador, spreading her passion for STEM by meeting young space enthusiasts.
“We are promoting the KSC visitor complex, where visitors can come and do interesting things related to space,” Joan said of her trip to London.
“I like to tout a couple of things that I’ve tried. One is the Shuttle launch simulator; if I had gone on it first, I don’t know if I would’ve gone on the real Shuttle. (The real shuttle) has a lot of motion. There is a lot of shaking, rattling and rolling in the real thing, you will get that in the simulation as well. It is a very interesting ride.
“There is also a virtual reality interactive event where you go on a mission to the Moon with three other people, and you help mine moon rocks. It is kind of a competitive thing. I did not win. There is something called the Launch Complex 39, a 360-degree view of every active launch pad at the space centre.”
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex was ranked the top attraction in the United States and third globally by Tripadvisor in their 2025 Travelers’ Choice Awards. As well as rides and space simulations, one of its big selling points is the presence of retired astronauts such as Joan and Bruce Melnick, who are on hand to chat with members of the public.
The latest guest experience at the Centre is the reworked Kennedy Space Center Bus Tour, which now includes a stop at The Gantry at LC-39. Opened in July 2025, The Gantry at LC-39 offers 360-degree panoramic views of active launch pads and the surrounding wildlife refuge, a full-scale rocket engine that comes to life during a simulated static-fire test – complete with thunderous sound, dazzling lights, and mist.
Hands-on exhibits including a Rocket Build Interactive for designing and virtually launching rockets, and a cutting-edge Earth Information Center showcasing NASA’s planet-monitoring efforts through immersive visuals and interactive media are among the other new draws.
New for Christmas 2025 is a space-themed drone show. Guests can enjoy a brand-new nightly show during the Holidays in Space festive celebrations.
Time your visit right and you’ll be able to watch a live rocket launch from behind NASA’s gates, complete with live commentary from space experts. While weather and technical issues mean that seeing a blast-off is never a sure-fire thing, Kennedy Space Center is on pace for a record-breaking number of launches in 2025.
The crew of Artemis II will not land on the moon but will lay the groundwork for the first crewed missions to Mars.
Published On 23 Sep 202523 Sep 2025
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NASA may be headed back to the moon months sooner than originally planned, with the agency announcing that the first crewed flight in its Artemis programme could make the trip around the moon and back as early as February.
The space agency’s Artemis programme is the flagship effort by the United States to return humans to the moon, a multibillion-dollar series of missions that rivals a similar effort by China, which is aiming for a 2030 astronaut moon landing.
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In the first Artemis mission, an uncrewed spacecraft travelled around the moon and back in November 2022.
The goal of the Artemis II mission, a 10-day flight around the moon and back, is to “explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars”, according to NASA.
The crew of Artemis II will not land on the moon but will be the first to travel beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, the BBC reported.
The mission was originally planned for April, but it could be moved up to February.
“We together have a front row seat to history,” Lakiesha Hawkins, NASA’s acting deputy associate administrator, said in a news conference on Tuesday. “The launch window could open as early as the fifth of February, but we want to emphasise that safety is our top priority.”
Artemis II is meant to be a test for the agency’s more ambitious mission, Artemis III, currently planned for 2027, and will involve a moon lander variant of SpaceX’s Starship rocket. The goal for Artemis III is to land on the moon.
Artemis II involves NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and its Orion capsule. The Orion capsule will ride atop the giant, 98-metre-tall (322 feet) SLS rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the first time the spacecraft duo will fly with humans.
NASA’s most famous lunar excursion took place more than 50 years ago, when Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon in 1969 while acting as the commander of Apollo 11.
Sept. 23 (UPI) — U.S. defense, space and security will benefit from Boeing’s use of Palantir’s artificial intelligence-based Foundry platform to streamline its major production lines, officials said Tuesday.
Boeing and Palantir announced the collaborative effort on Tuesday and said it will improve the production of military aircraft, helicopters, satellites, spacecraft, missiles and weapons systems.
“Palantir is on the cutting edge when it comes to leveraging artificial intelligence to accelerate getting critical products, services and capabilities in the hands of military operators,” said Steve Parker, Boeing’s Defense, Space & Security chief executive officer, in a news release on Tuesday.
“This collaboration is a natural fit that brings together two great companies with a common mission: supporting uniformed personnel in protecting freedom around the world.”
Denver-based Palantir also will provide Boeing with AI expertise and capabilities on several classified efforts that support the needs of its military clients during their most sensitive missions.
The collaborative effort will enable Boeing and Palantir to deliver dominant military capabilities that enable the United States to more effectively deter conflicts and defend the nation, Palantir’s head of defense, Mike Gallagher said.
“This partnership will turbocharge production and innovation, allowing Boeing and Palantir to bring cutting-edge technology to current and next-generation defense programs,” Gallagher added.
“America’s enemies aren’t slowing down,” he said. “Neither can we.”
Palantir in August received an up-to $10 billion, 10-year contract to improve the U.S. Army’s military readiness with AI.
Federal home mortgage firm Fannie Mae in May also contracted with Palantir to create an AI-powered unit to prevent and stop mortgage fraud.
The firm specializes in software development to better use AI to make rapid decisions in real time.
1 of 2 | Russian fighter jets on Friday flew into Estonian airspace for 12 minutes (Russian MiG29 pictured Iran, 2006), a move the country called a “brazen intrusion.” File Photo by Mohammad Kheirkhah/UPI | License Photo
Sept. 19 (UPI) — Russian fighter jets on Friday flew into Estonian airspace for 12 minutes, a move the country called a “brazen intrusion.”
Estonia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Margus Tsahkna confirmed the “violation of Estonia’s airspace,” in a statement on X.
“Three Russian MiG-31s entered our airspace over the Gulf of Finland for 12 minutes. This is an unprecedented and brazen intrusion – clear proof of Russia’s growing aggression,” Tsahkna said in the post.
“Such actions cannot be tolerated and must be met with swift political and economic pressure.”
Tsahkna said Estonia would be summoning Russia’s top diplomat to demand an explanation.
The incursion by the Russian supersonic interceptor aircraft marks the fourth such violation of Estonian airspace so far this year.
“Russia has already violated Estonia’s airspace four times this year, which in itself is unacceptable. But today’s incursion, involving three fighter aircraft entering our airspace is unprecedentedly brazen,” Tsahkna said in a statement.
“Russia’s increasingly extensive testing of boundaries and growing aggressiveness must be met with a swift increase in political and economic pressure.”
The Russian military had not commented publicly on the report as of noon Friday.
International lawmakers quickly pledged support for Estonia.
“Russia is showing the full extent of its contempt for diplomacy and international law,”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on X.
“Europe stands with Estonia in the face of Russia’s latest violation of our airspace. We will respond to every provocation with determination while investing in a stronger Eastern flank. As threats escalate, so too will our pressure. I call on EU leaders to swiftly approve our 19th sanctions package.”
THERE’S been a lot of talk about bedding plants recently.
Rebranded as ‘Seasonal Interest’ they’ve annoyed some folk in the gardening industry because of environmental concerns.
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Sun gardening editor Veronica Lorraine and Roger Seabrook son of former Sun gardening Peter Seabrook at Floral Fantasia, at RHS Hyde Hall, Essex.Credit: Arthur Edwards / The Sun
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Sun gardening editor Peter Seabrook at Hyde Hall in EssexCredit: Arthur Edwards / The Sun
You’ll know them better as those lovely flowers in garden centres and supermarkets that bring an instant burst of colour to your outside space – like petunias, marigolds, begonias, nemesia, cosmos and lobelia.
Often you’ll buy them in plugs to plant straight into the soil before the frost sets in.
Naysayers reckon that because they’re not perennial, need a lot of watering and are bred in greenhouses – which use lots of energy – they’re bad for the environment.
But there’s one man in particular who couldn’t have loved them more – holding firm in the face of all the negative comments.
I was lucky enough to visit recently and was overwhelmed with the astonishing array of beautiful planting – showcasing swathes of stunning colours and species – which are crucially all affordable.
“‘We sell smiles’ is what Peter would have said,” Mike Smith, chair of the Floral Fantasia Working Group told me.
“His vision was to be ‘the centre of excellence for seasonal plants’ and although we’re not quite there yet – we’re definitely on our way.
Peter Seabrook’s guide to gardening: Sowing
“When I first came to Hyde Hall I was in awe of the gardens there, but appreciate they’re quite overwhelming to try and recreate in the average garden that is less than 15 metres square.
“We want to inspire people to have a go, show them something achievable – and this is where the Seasonal Interest comes in.
“They’re not grown in peat any more, they bring happiness to the consumer and they’re manageable.
“But also, it’s worth recognising that ornamental growers add over £1bn to the economy.
“Alan Titchmarsh agreed with Peter, and said after he died: ‘We all need to take up the baton from him to keep fighting our corner and explain what this means and how important horticulture is and it’s value to the British economy.’
“And that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re showing visitors to Hyde Hall the latest UK plants – and we’re celebrating Fleuroselect’s Year of the Begonia with over 150 varieties being trialled in beds and containers – they’re a stunning splash of colour.
“The public get to see all manner of cultivars that they’ve never seen before and everyone comes out smiling.”
Peter’s son Roger Seabrook told Sun Gardening: “‘Floral Fantasia at RHS Hyde Hall meant so much to Dad – he saw the garden as a way to show what could be achieved with seasonal planting and to inspire people to get growing, however small their space.
“He put a huge amount of energy into championing Floral Fantasia and rolled his sleeves up to spend long hours working in the garden himself.
“For this reason it’s a special place for our family and it’s just fantastic to see it looking so vibrant and colourful.
“I’m sure that Dad would have been delighted to see the progress made, a testament to all the hard work of those involved over the years.’
Tim Kerley, of Kerley Plants, Cambridge, which provides blooms for Floral Fantasia added: “They’re bright, cheery flowers that will put a smile on your face all summer long! Modern varieties are low maintenance and thrive in our varied climate.
“They’re great for your mind and pollinators -all for the price of a cup of coffee.”
Annual chrysanthemum’s are also considered bedding plants. And they’re a fantastic way of bringing colour to your garden in Autumn when everything is dying back a bit.
Lidl has one on sale for £1.99 from next Saturday and it’s going to be my cheap secret weapon to bring colour to my outside space.
Also in Veronica’s Column this week
News, top tips, plant of the week and a firepit competition
For more top tips and gardening content follow me @biros_and_bloom
NEWS! THE Cuprinol Shed of the Year results are in – and the winner is engineer Mike Robinson from South East London with his spectacular shed, ‘The Tiny Workshop. Designed to slot neatly into a garden with limited room, it wowed judges with its imaginative use of space. With off-the-shelf sheds too big for his plot, Mike built the shed using two sets of heavy-duty steel shelving, bolted together and clad with wood’ Two doors flap open at the bottom and top to provide flooring and handy rain protection, with a smart overhanging green roof to store garden tools and welcome nature to the garden. Mike wins this year’s top prize of an overnight nature getaway, £1,000 cash and £250 of Cuprinol product.
TOP TIP! Time to start thinking about feeding the birds in your garden a little bit more. And Alex Gill, founder of Awesome Wildlife Company, has some unusual advice. “By providing food and shelter now, we can give birds, hedgehogs, and insects the best possible chance of thriving through the winter, and in turn, we get to enjoy a garden full of life. “Both dried and fresh fruit works. Apples and pears are very popular with garden birds. If you do choose to put any spare fruit that you might have out, make sure it’s fresh as mouldy fruit isn’t good for birds. “Dried fruits, like Raisins, are also well loved by some bird’s species. Just remember to be careful and avoid if you have a dog, as raisins are toxic to dogs. He added: “During the colder months, birds benefit from high-energy foods, such as sunflower seeds, peanuts, mealworms, and suet. These kinds of foods help them build up their fat reserves so that they can survive the colder months.”
NEWS! THE CANNA UK National Giant Vegetables Championship will be taking place at the Malvern Autumn Show next weekend. It showcases some unbelievably large vegetables – which often break Guinness World records. Taking place at the Three Counties Showground, Malvern, you’ll also get the chance to see talks by Monty Don, Adam Frost, August Bernstein, and RHS Ambassador Manoj Malde. And there will be fabulous flowers, plants, bulbs, seeds, tools and equipment to marvel at.
NEWS! BBC TV presenter, keen gardener and National Garden Scheme Ambassador, Fiona Bruce will host a very special National Garden Scheme Ask the Experts event at the Royal Geographical Society, London on Tuesday 2nd December at 7pm. Answering a range of pre-submitted audience questions and covering all aspects of gardens and gardening will be a panel including Arit Anderson, Danny Clarke, Rachel de Thame, Joe Swift.
NEWS! There’s a beautiful new book called The Essential Guide to Bulbs, by Jenny Rose Carey, coming out next month. Published on October 16th by Timber Press, its a fabulous guide to growing bulbs all year round in gardens and containers. The pictures are gorgeous and it’s really informative too, it would make a lovely present for the Gardener in your life.
WIN! As the evenings draw in – warm up with an eco-friendly, low carbon Eco Fuego fire pit worth £179.99 and a wax refill worth £26.99. To enter visit www.thesun.co.uk/ECOFIREPIT or write to Sun Eco Firepit competition, PO Box 3190, Colchester, Essex, CO2 8GP. Include your name, age, email or phone. UK residents 18+ only. Entries close 11.59pm. October 4, 2025. T&Cs apply
PLANT OF THE WEEK! “Verbena Officinalis Bampton” Still flowering now – it’s an unusual looking bushy drought-resistant perennial with small purple flowers on the end of wiry branches. Prefers full sun, south facing borders.
TOP TIP! Raise your pots now to prevent waterlogging – you don’t have to pay for proper feet – you can use bottle caps, coasters, tiles, bricks, or even logs cut to size. There just needs to be drainage space under the pot.
Inside L.A. restaurant Jaragua, on a recent Friday night, Justin Alexio moved with a measured urgency from the backroom to the front of the restaurant without disturbing anyone’s dinner. The comic, producer and creator of the Los Angeles-based comedy show, Pupusas and Punchlines, Alexio escorted guests to their tables, switched on the microphones placed around the room, and pointed a camera to the center stage before the show was to begin.
The dining area inside the Salvadoran restaurant is rather quiet for a Friday night; there’s a soccer game playing on TV as a family of six places an order for dinner. As people in the audience spread their curtido, or pickled cabbage and carrots, on their pupusas, others await for their food with anticipation, while some choose to stick to drinks. The room is filled with distractions, but comedians are not fazed — it is a welcoming atmosphere, and they know that soon the sounds of laughter will fill the air.
“I feel like eating is such a large part of Latin culture and most cultures,” Alexio said. “I wanted a place where you can eat Latin food and listen to Latin jokes.”
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, independent comedy shows had almost become a thing of the past in L.A. Not to mention that finding gigs is a difficult task, especially for Latinx comedians; according to Alexio, most comedy rooms don’t want to book more than one Latinx comedian.
Pupusas and Punchlines offers a place where they can perform in front of a packed room and joke about the immigrant experience in the U.S. — and the absurdities of the American dream in 2025 — while sharing a delicious meal.
Pupusas and Punchlines producer and creator Justin Alexio performs on March 7, 2025.
(Drew Steres)
Alexio said he started the show in 2023, after he took a long break from stand-up comedy, to instead pursue acting full time. His résumé includes appearances on NBC’s comedy series “Superstore” and ABC’s late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“The future of entertainment has to be more real,” he said of his decision to return to the stage. “Stand-up is live.”
The L.A. stand-up scene is quite competitive — especially for Alexio, who is an Afro-Latino of Puerto Rican, Dominican and Ecuadorian descent. As an answer to the marginalization of Black and brown people in mainstream comedy, Alexio said he decided to produce his own show, with hopes to highlight other Latinx performers as well.
Since then, he has expanded “Pupusas and Punchlines” immensely — from performing only once a month at half-capacity to selling out 115 consecutive weekly shows.
Alexio attributed the show’s success to the high-quality comedians he’s booked, as well as the food and the feeling of community it has created. People have told him they’ve driven more than an hour just for the show, while others have attended on multiple occasions.
“They want to support me and the show, they want to support the restaurant, they want to support the Latin comics … The crowd feels like they want to help these comics rise,” he said.
Patrons laugh at Pupusas and Punchlines on May 16, 2025.
(Drew Steres)
The majority of the comics Alexio books are Latinx, but he also includes performers who belong to other underrepresented groups. He showcases upcoming comics while providing clips to help grow their social media presence. After performing on his show, he said, comics have noted an uptick of new followers on social media.
Onstage at Friday’s show, comics pulled humor from topics related to immigration, religion, salsa, sexuality and other typical first-generation immigrant dilemmas. Performers feel like they can discuss topics they usually can’t perform in front of a more general club audience.
“I think any ethnicity in an ethnic crowd always thrive,” said comic Gregory Santos. “Obviously you can be a white boy and do a really good job here. I feel like it’s just an extra layer of stuff that you can talk about.”
Daisy Roxx performs at Pupusas and Punchlines in March.
(Drew Steres)
Pupusas and Punchlines is one of the few shows that caters toward the Latinx community, said comedian Rell Battle, as he rattled off a list of shows that sadly don’t exist anymore.
“Ironically, in a majority Latin city, there aren’t [many] consistent Latin shows,” Battle said. He described Pupusas and Punchlines as a road show of sorts — scored by genuine laughter. The audience members feel more appreciative, compared to a run-of-the-mill comedy club in Hollywood that caters more to tourists.
“People that come out to shows in Hollywood will ask me to hold the camera and take a picture of them,” Battle joked.
The crowd at Pupusas and Punchlines is not one to dismiss or antagonize comics that are not Latinx. Yet audience members would gladly correct any comic who’d assume the restaurant was Mexican, or mispronounce the word “pupusas,” as Battle sheepishly recalled during his own set. At the end of the day, they usually bond with comics over what they share in common: the drive to make it in L.A.
“When the neighborhood shows up, those are the best shows,” said Santos, between sets at Jaragua. “It’s normal people, it’s everyday neighborhood L.A. people.”
For more information on upcoming events, visit Pupusas and Punchlines on Instagram.
Sept. 9 (UPI) — NASA invited the public on Tuesday to grab a boarding pass and be a part of the space agency’s test flight of its Artemis II mission set to launch four astronauts into orbit next year.
Officials at the U.S. space agency NASA said its public effort to involve civilians in the orbital venture around the moon and back in the Artemis test mission flight means individual spots for “Send Your Name with Artemis II” need to be claimed before January 21.
The Artemis II program is a “key test flight in our effort to return humans to the moon’s surface and build toward future missions to Mars,” according to Lori Glaze, NASA’s acting associate director for exploration systems development based in the nation’s capital.
NASA is prepping for its 10-day Artemis II 1 mission next year that will send a crew of four astronauts around the moon in the bid to prep for future crewed landings on Earth’s neighboring satellite and beyond.
Notably, Artemis II will carry the first woman and person of color to the lunar surface in what has been described by NASA as a so-called “Golden Age of innovation and exploration.”
America’s NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are set to lift off no later than April aboard the Orion spacecraft and its space launch system rocket as the first crewed flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign.
“And it’s also an opportunity to inspire people across the globe and to give them an opportunity to follow along as we lead the way in human exploration deeper into space,” Glaze said in a statement.
NASA’s “send your name” initiative for the Artemis space mission with allow a person to send an individual name on an SD card along with the four-person crew as they test their rocket for critical hardware systems required for deep space exploration.
And, on return to Earth, participants can download their personalized inscribed boarding pass as a collectable.
“Your name could be flying to the Moon!” Canada’s space agency posted Tuesday on X as it called out for virtual crew members to fly alongside CSA’s Hansen on Orion.
NASA officials — who’ve assigned both English and Spanish sign-up portals — have called it yet “another step” toward new U.S.-crewed moon surface missions on the way toward ultimately sending the first American astronauts to Mars for the first time.
On Monday, NASA (Florida’s Kennedy Space Center seen in April) said its annual public Lunabotic challenge is one of several student challenges related to Artemis, and that next year’s seeks mechanical robots with an ability to construct berms out of lunar regolith on the Moon’s surface. File Photo by Joe Marino/UPI | License Photo
Sept. 8 (UPI) — NASA on Monday announced its 2026 Lunabotics challenge that seeks a team or person to create a robot able to move about and build things on the moon’s surface.
The challenge comes as the space agency gears up for future lunar activity as part of its Artemis program.
NASA officials said its annual challenge — held since 2010 — is one of several student challenges associated with Artemis, and that next year’s event seeks mechanical robots with an ability to construct berms out of lunar regolith by using loose, fragmental material found on the moon’s surface.
“We are excited to continue the Lunabotics competition for universities as NASA develops new moon-to-Mars technologies for the Artemis program,” Robert Mueller, senior technologist at NASA, said in a statement.
Officials at America’s space agency said berms will be critical during lunar missions as blast protection during landings and launches. They added that, among other uses, berms also will play a role in shading for cryogenic propellant tank farms and radiation shielding around nuclear power plants.
“Excavating and moving regolith is a fundamental need to build infrastructure on the moon and Mars, and this competition creates 21st century skills in the future workforce,” said Mueller, also co-founder and chief judge of the Lunabotics competition.
NASA said the competition will provide hands-on experiences in computer coding, engineering, manufacturing, fabricating and other crucial tech skills.
Officials will notify selected teams to begin the challenge, the top 10 teams will be invited to bring their robot creations to the final competition in Florida in May at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s Artemis Arena.
The team scoring the most points will receive the Lunabotics Grand Prize and participate in an exhibition-style event at NASA Kennedy.
An in-person qualifying event will be held May 12-17 at the University of Central Florida’s Space Institute’s Lab in Orlando.
The NASA challenge launched Monday comes after last week’s announcement that a separate NASA competition is seeking a special space wheel in a design by an American inventor or team.
Meanwhile, interested participants can submit applications via NASA’s portal starting Monday and find other information in the challenge guidebook.
The spectrum purchase allows SpaceX to expand the cell network’s capacity by ‘more than 100 times’ and will help ‘end mobile dead zones’.
Published On 8 Sep 20258 Sep 2025
SpaceX will buy wireless spectrum licences from EchoStar for its Starlink satellite network for about $17bn, a major deal crucial to expanding Starlink’s nascent 5G connectivity business.
The Elon Musk-owned aerospace company announced the purchase on Monday.
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The companies also agreed to a deal that will enable EchoStar’s Boost Mobile subscribers to access Starlink direct-to-cell service to extend satellite service to areas without service.
The spectrum purchase allows SpaceX to start building and deploying upgraded, laser-connected satellites that the company said will expand the cell network’s capacity by “more than 100 times”.
Gwynne Shotwell, president and COO of SpaceX, said the deal will help the company “end mobile dead zones around the world … With exclusive spectrum, SpaceX will develop next-generation Starlink Direct to Cell satellites, which will have a step change in performance and enable us to enhance coverage for customers wherever they are in the world.”
The push comes amid fast-rising wireless usage. In 2024, Americans used a record 132 trillion megabytes of mobile data, up 35 percent over the prior all-time record, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) said on Monday.
SpaceX has launched more than 8,000 Starlink satellites since 2020, building a distributed network in low-Earth orbit which has seen demand from militaries, transportation firms and consumers in rural areas.
Roughly 600 of those satellites – which SpaceX calls “cell towers in space” – have been launched since January 2024 for the company’s direct-to-cell network, orbiting closer to Earth than the rest of the constellation.
Crucial to those larger satellites’ deployment is Starship, SpaceX’s giant next-generation rocket that has been under development for roughly a decade. Increasingly complex test launches have drawn the rocket closer to its first operational Starlink missions, expected early next year.
The deal comes months after the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) questioned EchoStar’s use of its mobile-satellite service spectrum and raised concerns about whether it was meeting its obligations to deploy 5G in the country.
EchoStar said it anticipates that the transaction with SpaceX and the AT&T deal will resolve the FCC’s inquiries.
An FCC spokesperson said the “deals that EchoStar reached with AT&T and Starlink hold the potential to supercharge competition, extend innovative new services to millions of Americans, and boost US leadership in next-gen connectivity”.
The company in August sold some nationwide wireless spectrum licences to AT&T for $23bn. AT&T agreed to acquire 50 MHz of nationwide mid-band and low-band spectrum.
US President Donald Trump previously prodded EchoStar and FCC Chair Brendan Carr to reach an amicable deal for the company’s wireless spectrum licences.
Underused airwaves
SpaceX will pay up to $8.5bn in cash and issue up to $8.5bn in stock. SpaceX has also agreed to cover roughly $2bn in interest payments on EchoStar’s debt obligations through late 2027.
After the sale, EchoStar will continue operating its satellite television service Dish TV, streaming TV platform Sling, internet service Hughesnet and its Boost Mobile brand.
SpaceX had aggressively pressed the FCC to reallocate underused airwaves for satellite-to-phone service after alleging EchoStar failed to meet certain obligations.
In a letter to the FCC in April, SpaceX said EchoStar’s spectrum in the 2 gigahertz band “remains ripe for sharing among next-generation satellite systems” and that the company has left “valuable mid-band spectrum chronically underused”.
The deal with EchoStar will allow SpaceX to operate Starlink direct-to-cell services on frequencies it owns, rather than relying solely on those leased from mobile carriers like T-Mobile.
In May, the FCC approved Verizon’s $20bn deal to acquire fibre-optic internet provider Frontier Communications. Verizon spent $5bn to acquire and clear key spectrum in 2021.
The news sent shares of EchoStar surging 14.7 percent as of 1pm in New York (17:00 GMT). Shares of US wireless carriers are trending downwards. AT&T is 1.6 percent lower and T-Mobile is down by 2.2 percent. Verizon as well is down 1.8 percent.
