USA

VAN HORN, Texas, July 20 (Reuters) - Jeff Bezos, the world's richest person, is set on Tuesday to blast off aboard his company Blue Origin's New Shepard launch vehicle for a suborbital flight as part of a history-making crew - another milestone in ushering in a new era of private space travel.

The American billionaire is due to fly from a desert site in West Texas on an 11-minute voyage to the edge of space, nine days after Briton Richard Branson was aboard his competing space tourism company Virgin Galactic's successful inaugural suborbital flight from New Mexico.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana lawmakers Tuesday enter uncharted territory, holding their first-ever veto override session under the nearly 50-year-old state constitution, with uncertainty about whether they’ll have the votes to overturn bill rejections or what the rules of engagement are.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Pacific Gas & Electric reported to California utility regulators that its equipment may have been involved in the start of a fire burning in the Sierra Nevada that is threatening hundreds of homes.

PG&E said in a report Sunday to the California Public Utilities Commission that a repairman responding to a circuit outage on July 13 spotted blown fuses in a conductor atop a pole, a tree leaning into the conductor and fire at the base of the tree.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A police official who has run large departments in Maryland and Virginia has been selected as chief of the U.S. Capitol Police in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which pro-Trump rioters stormed the building in a violent rage, disrupting the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential win.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said his infrastructure and families agenda must be passed to sustain the economic momentum of his first six months in office, aiming to set the tone for a crucial week of congressional negotiations on the two bills.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The threat of thunderstorms and lightning has prompted officials in fire-ravaged Oregon to ask for help from outside the Pacific Northwest to prepare for additional blazes as many resources are already devoted to a massive fire in the state that has grown to a third the size of Rhode Island.

WASHINGTON, July 19 (Reuters) - Claude Joseph, who has nominally led Haiti as acting prime minister since the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, said in a Washington Post interview published on Monday he has agreed to step down, handing power to a challenger backed by the international community.

The announcement appears to end a power struggle in the Caribbean nation between Joseph and Ariel Henry, the 71-year old neurosurgeon who was appointed prime minister by Moise two days before the killing but had yet to be sworn in.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Monday transferred a detainee out of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility for the first time, sending a Moroccan man back home years after he was recommended for discharge.

The Moroccan prisoner, Abdullatif Nasser, who’s in his mid-50s, was cleared for repatriation by a review board in July 2016 but remained at Guantanamo for the duration of the Trump presidency.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Monday blamed China for a hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software that compromised tens of thousands of computers around the world earlier this year.

The administration and allied nations also disclosed a broad range of other cyberthreats from Beijing, including ransomware attacks from government-affiliated hackers that have targeted companies with demands for millions of dollars.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is set to host King Abdullah II of Jordan during one of the most difficult moments of the Jordanian leader’s 22-year rule and at a pivotal time in the Middle East for Biden.

Abdullah arrives Monday afternoon at the White House. Last week a Jordanian state security court sentenced two former officials to serve 15 years in prison over an alleged plot against the king uncovered earlier this year that involved Abdullah’s half-brother.