Today is Friday, January 17, 2025.
It is the 17th day of the year.
348 days remain.
WHAT’S ON TAP
An 11-year-old hero saves her father in HIT LIST.
JENNIFER LOPEZ cleans out her closet for wildfire victims and JEN SHAH gets a new release date. More in SHOWBIZ.
“Wicked” hits a box office milestone. Details in CASTING CALL.
PRINCE WILLIAM has a pint in ROYALS.
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SPACE RACE 2024: The billionaire battle to build independent space companies got a fresh infusion of competition early Thursday morning with the launch of the JEFF BEZOS-owned BLUE ORIGIN’s New Glenn rocket.
The rocket successfully launched from Cape Canaveral at 1:03 am Central Thursday and reached orbit less than 13 minutes later, completing the first mission’s primary objective. Taking a page from SPACEX’s reusable rocket technology, the lower stage attempted a controlled landing on a platform in the ocean, but didn’t achieve that goal.
Once the New Glenn program gets a few more launches under its belt, it is contracted to launch a pair of NASA satellites bound for Mars that would study the Red Planet’s atmosphere, as early as this Spring. [via Space.com]
MEANWHILE, AT SPACEX: The seventh Starship mission successfully launched Thursday afternoon, and for the second time the massive booster rocket was snatched out of the air by a crane dubbed “Mechazilla” with “chopstick”-style arms.
However, the second stage that made it to orbit lost connection with mission control on Earth about 8-and-a-half minutes into the flight. One unconfirmed video posted to X reportedly shows the second stage breaking up over the Caribbean.
AMID IT ALL: Following the successful launch of New Glenn, Bezos tagged Musk in an X post wishing the SpaceX team good luck, to which Musk replied, “Much appreciated!”
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Rats are getting into the evidence room at police precincts and getting high on drugs.
“We’ve got 400,000 pounds of marijuana in storage that the rats are enjoying,” Houston Mayor John Whitmire told KHOU.
Things have gotten so bad that the Houston D.A. has given police permission to destroy drug evidence from cleared cases from before 2015.
This isn’t a new issue, officers in New Orleans found rodents eating their drug evidence last year. [via KHOU]
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CONAN O’BRIEN will receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, an award bestowed by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
O’Brien will formally accept the prize at an event on March 23, which will later air on Netflix on a date to be determined.
The prize “recognizes individuals who have had an impact on American society in ways similar to the distinguished 19th-century novelist and essayist Samuel Clemens, colloquially known as Mark Twain,” the Kennedy Center says.
Previous recipients include TINA FEY, JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUSS, and BILL COSBY, but the Kennedy Center later rescinded the award. [via Kennedy Center]
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JENNIFER LOPEZ wants to do “everything she can to help the victims” of the L.A. wildfires.
An insider tells Page Six that the actress recently went through her closet and “donated countless items” to help “those in need replace some of the items they lost.”
She also gave away “dozens of packages from her JLo Beauty skincare line.”
All of the donations went to The A List LA Fire Relief campaign. [via Page Six]
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“Wicked” has crossed the $700 million mark at the global box office.
Domestically it sits at just over $460.6 million.
It is only the sixth 2024 release to have passed that milestone, following “Dune: Part Two” ($714.4 million); “Despicable Me 4” ($969.1 million); “Moana 2” ($991.3 million); “Deadpool & Wolverine” ($1.338 billion); and Inside Out 2 ($1.699 billion). [via Screenrant]
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UP NEXT: A long anticipated lawsuit is filed, a special note from BRAD PITT, PRINCE WILLIAM’s cider of choice, plus a disastrous midair collision on this date in history.
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