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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

Rep. Omar says she wasn’t equating US,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Ilhan Omar tried edging away Thursday from a bitter fight with Jewish Democratic lawmakers who’d accused her of likening the U.S. and Israel to Hamas and Afghanistan’s Taliban, saying her remarks were “in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries.” A three-sentence statement by the Minnesota Democrat also said her comments were “not a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and Israel,” and seemed to dial back a more confrontational…

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Meet the Indispensable Bagel Rollers of NYC

Pasquale Fuentes arrives at Shelsky’s Brooklyn Bagels around 4 p.m. and gets to work making dough, cutting it into slabs, and rolling it into ropes. On most days, he heads home around nine, but some nights he’ll spend another few hours rolling bagels in another shop. “There aren’t a lot of bagel rollers with experience,” says Fuentes of the many calls he receives from bagel-shop owners. If it weren’t for folks like him, New Yorkers would have to start……

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Why Prehistoric Barrows Are Back in Funerary...

Toby Angel first became aware of barrows in 2014, thousands of years after the Neolithic burial mounds had fallen out of regular use. Now Angel builds them, for customers who have chosen—when the time comes—to be laid to a prehistoric kind of rest. Barrows—which, when Googled, leads first to a page about an old fantasy video game—are, in this context, burial mounds that were commonplace throughout the British Isles during the early Neolithic period, between 4000 and 3000 B.C…….

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Cascade Falls in Duck Creek Village, Utah

Southwestern Utah is known for the spectacular colors of its scenery and is home to several national parks and monuments. The orange-and-white Claron Formation (formerly known as the Wasatch Formation), in particular, is responsible for both Bryce Canyon National Park and Cedar Breaks National Monument. By comparison, the Pink Cliffs formed by the Claron above the Virgin River Rim almost seem dull. Except for one thing: Cascade Falls. At one point water springs out of the Pink Cliffs and drops……

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Mantua Cathedral (Cattedrale di San Pietro) in...

This church is the seat of the Mantua bishop and was originally constructed during the Early, Christian era, but it was burnt in 894. The only artifact that remains from that period is the bell tower basement. There is some belief that the basement was originally a Roman tower constructed on an Etruscan foundation. A Roman statue head is present above the windows of the bell tower. The current church was constructed during the 14th-century in Romanesque style. The structure was……

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Pizza Pacaya in San Vicente Pacaya, Guatemala

About 25 miles south of Guatemala’s capital, rising 2,800 feet over sea level, the Pacaya volcano overlooks the nearby villages of San Vicente Pacaya and Amatitlán. On clear days, from the mountain top, tourists can even spot Guatemala City and the neighboring volcanoes of Agua, Fuego, and Acatenango. Since 1965, when it became active once again, the Pacaya, whose slow-flowing lava rivers are, by volcano standards, less dangerous, has become a magnet for tourists. And, in 2019, the Pacaya……

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Money Minx aims to build a ‘Personal...

New regulations are making it easier to invest in alternative assets via crowdfunding, and the recent explosion of crypto and NFTs means that investors are more diversified than ever.  Keeping up with such a variety of investments may prove difficult to those who want to handle managing their investment portfolios on their own. Money Minx, a new San Diego-based startup co-founded by husband and wife team Hussein and Jessica Yahfoufi, wants to help with that. Put simply, Money Minx……

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The Latest: India asks China to facilitate...

NEW DELHI — India is asking China to facilitate essential two-way travel between the countries and grant visas to Indian nationals working and studying there. India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi says people from China, including the Chinese nationals, have been able to travel to India despite the absence of direct air connectivity. However, he says “for Indian nationals, travel to China has not been possible since last November as the Chinese side has suspended existing visas.” The…

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Could all your digital photos be stored...

On Earth right now, there are about 10 trillion gigabytes of digital data, and every day, humans produce emails, photos, tweets, and other digital files that add up to another 2.5 million gigabytes of data. Much of this data is stored in enormous facilities known as exabyte data centers (an exabyte is 1 billion gigabytes), which can be the size of several football fields and cost around $1 billion to build and maintain. Many scientists believe that an alternative……

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Promenade du Peyrou in Montpellier, France

On the outskirts of the Ecusson neighborhood of Montpellier, the Promenade du Peyrou is a favorite among the people of Montpellier and visitors to the city. It is home to Montpellier‘s own Arc de Triomphe, also known as the Porte du Peyrou. The promenade is laid out to contain the marble arch, along with several other large works. The Porte du Peyrou is a monument to King Louis XIV of France. It was designed in 1690 by the French……

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What do these 4 IPOs tell us...

We’re digging into the final IPO prices set by fintech unicorn Marqeta and enterprise productivity unicorn Monday.com this morning. Briefly, it’s good news. A small programming note: The Exchange is off next week. I am taking some time to do nothing other than eat, read books and lose at lawn games. Regular service will resume the week after. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.  Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday…….

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Fintech startup TreasurySpring raises $10M for platform...

Fixed-term-funds (FTFs) have historically been a bank-to-bank market. FTF products allow for investing into some of the safest assets including, UK Government bonds, US Government bonds and highly-rated corporations. They allow holders of large amounts of cash (such as charities, private funds, family offices etc) to reduce and diversify their risk, but also increasing returns. TreasurySpring is a fintech startup that is aiming to opening up access to this area of financial markets, by creating a Fixed-Term Fund platform…….

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Fintech giant Klarna raises $639M at a...

Just over three months after its last funding round, European fintech giant Klarna is announcing today that it has raised another $639 million at a staggering post-money valuation of $45.6 billion. Rumors swirled in recent weeks that Klarna had raised more money at a valuation north of $40 billion. But the Swedish buy now, pay later behemoth and upstart bank declined to comment until now. SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 led the latest round, which also included participation from existing……

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Olander Banks Sr. and Margaret Lomax Banks...

From ice sales and real estate to taxi cabs and trucking, Olander Banks was a man of many trades and a true entrepreneur. He eventually found his calling in the auto parts business and opened a highly popular store in Alexandria, Virginia. Banks married his childhood sweetheart, Margaret or “Margaree” as she was known to loved ones in 1941. They purchased the property on which the house and park now exist in 1957, and in 1961, they began construction on……

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The Italian Village Where the Houses Have...

Lodovico Alessandri remembers the first time he saw the town of Aliano, in 1994. He was “nauseated,” he says, by what seemed to him “a completely broken country,” a decaying hilltop town in a rural area in the instep of Italy’s boot. Fifty-nine years before, the Piedmontese intellectual and artist Carlo Levi had had a similar reaction: “Everything was unpleasant to me,” he wrote. In 1935, Levi was arrested when he reached the region, Basilicata (called Lucania, at the……

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