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(NEW YORK) — The NASA astronauts who flew Boeing’s Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS) and will now remain there until next year say they don’t feel let down by the mission.

Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams. who performed the first crewed test flight of Starliner, have been in space since early June. When they launched, they were only supposed to be on the ISS for about a week.

NASA and Boeing officials decided to send Starliner back to Earth earlier this month after several issues and keep Wilmore and Williams onboard until February. They will be sent home on a SpaceX Crew-9 Dragon spacecraft.

When asked if they felt let down by the way the mission turned out, Wilmore said they didn’t.

“Let down? Absolutely not,” Wilmore said during a press conference on Friday. “It’s never entered my mind. It’s a fair question I can tell you, I thought a lot about this press conference … and what I wanted to say and convey.”

He added, “NASA do a great job of making a lot of things look easy. …. That’s just the way it goes. sometimes because we are pushing the edges of the envelope in everything that we do.”

Williams said she and Wilmore are very knowledgeable about Starliner so the problems with the spacecraft were “obvious” to both of them, but she was happy to see it return to Earth.

“I was so happy it got home with no problems,” she said, “We saw it fly away, and then we all got up. The whole crew got up at three in the morning, and we had it up on our iPads, watching it land.”

Starliner landed at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in the early hours of Sept. 7.

Despite Starliner’s issues, NASA officials said Wilmore and Williams would have been safe onboard Starliner if they returned with the spacecraft.

“If we’d have had a crew on board the spacecraft, we would have followed the same back away sequence from the space station, the same de-orbit burn and executed the same entry and so it would have been a safe, successful landing with the crew on board,” Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said at a post-landing press conference.

Stich told reporters last month that NASA will send Dragon to the ISS in September, with only two of the four astronauts assigned to it.

The spacecraft would carry extra spacesuits for Wilmore and Williams. However, the two would remain on the ISS until February 2025, when Crew-9 is set to return to Earth.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo.) — A Colorado teenager who was shot in the face while looking for a place to take homecoming photos said he knew he was bleeding and told deputies he screamed “I was going to die,” according to an affidavit.

The teenager is hospitalized with serious injuries, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. Medical professionals told the sheriff’s office they believed there was a fragment of a bullet in the teen’s head, according to the affidavit.

Officers responded to a report of two trespassers on a property on Tuesday to find one of two teens shot in the face. The homeowner had also called her boyfriend to report the trespassers, according to the sheriff’s office.

A 17-year-old and his friend left a Colorado high school around 3:30 p.m. and went looking for a place to take homecoming pictures this weekend, the affidavit said.

The teens drove around and saw a house with a lake and a dock. They stopped to try to contact the homeowner to get permission to take photos near the lake, according to an affidavit.

The boys parked in front of the gate, walked up the driveway to the house and knocked on the door, but received no answer, the affidavit said.

They then walked down the driveway and returned to the car, which was parked on the roadway near the property. One of the boys then took out his school binder and was writing a note to leave for the homeowner when they saw a truck pull up and block their car, the affidavit said.

The driver then got out of the truck and walked toward the front of the car, pulled a handgun from his holster and pointed it toward the boys. They then heard the handgun go off and saw the windshield glass shatter, the affidavit said.

The boys told authorities they heard the truck driver say ‘oh s—, my gun went off,” according to the affidavit.

The boy in the passenger seat then got out of the car, took off his shirt and ran around to the driver’s side and began to help his friend, applying pressure to his wounds, according to the affidavit.

The driver then tried to assist in rendering aid, but the boy pushed him away and asked why he shot his friend, the affidavit said.

The victim told the sheriff’s office he did not think the man “intentionally shot him,” and he didn’t see the gun but heard the shot. After the gun went off, the shooter tried to help the boy, according to the affidavit.

The victim was “bleeding heavily from his face and had blood running down his arm” when officers responded to the scene, according to an affidavit. The 17-year-old’s friend was holding a white t-shirt up to his face to put pressure on the wound, the affidavit said.

An apparent bullet hole in the windshield of the car was centered where the driver’s seat was located.

When an officer tried to ask the man — 38-year-old Brent Metz — if he had shot a gun, he did not answer the question and said he wanted to speak to his lawyer, the affidavit said.

Metz told authorities the gun was in the truck for safety purposes and he was placed in handcuffs, according to the affidavit.

Metz was then arrested and transported to the sheriff’s office, where he was booked into jail for first degree assault, felony managing, illegal discharge of a firearm and reckless endangerment, according to the sheriff’s office.

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(LAURINBURG, N.C.) — A Waffle House employee was fatally shot in North Carolina by a customer who became “agitated and verbally abusive” toward employees after placing his order, according to the Laurinburg Police Department.

Officers responded to a report of shots fired shortly after midnight Friday at a Waffle House in Laurinburg, where they found 18-year-old Burlie Dawson Locklear suffering from a gunshot wound, police said.

Locklear was transported to Scotland Memorial Hospital where he later died.

An investigation revealed the suspect came to the Waffle House and ordered food, but while it was being prepared he became “more agitated and verbally abusive toward the employees,” according to police.

He walked away from the restaurant after being given his food, but turned while walking to his car and fired two shots toward the Waffle House, striking Locklear, police said.

The suspect then fled the scene, police said.

Police described the suspect is a 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-10 Black male with light skin, long dreads, facial hair including a beard and mustache. He was last seen wearing a dark blue hoodie, blue jeans and white shoes.

The suspect was operating a dark gray vehicle, possibly a 2014 Chevrolet, according to police.

The investigation into this incident is active and police are asking anyone with information to contact them.

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(WASHINGTON) — Housing costs are top of mind for voters across the country, as rising prices force many renters and potential home buyers to empty their pockets.

Nearly half of all renter households were cost-burdened by their rent in 2023 — meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on housing costs, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

And housing costs? They’ve outpaced inflation since the 1960s, rising 2.4 times faster, according to an analysis of housing data published by property advice site Clever Real Estate in March.

The study found that if home prices only kept pace with inflation, the median home could cost about $177,000 instead of the roughly $431,000 it actually costs.

Housing policy was mentioned during Tuesday’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, as Harris touted her newly released policy proposals several times.

“We know that we have a shortage of homes and housing, and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people,” she said.

When it comes to housing and rent, here’s a look at the policies Harris and Trump have signaled support for if elected in November.

Harris’ proposals

Harris is calling for the construction of 3 million new housing units to address the supply shortage, she said, by proposing a tax incentive for companies who build units to be sold to first-time homebuyers.

The vice president’s proposal also includes a $40 billion fund to support local governments in “innovative methods” of building affordable housing that have proven to be successful, referencing the construction of housing units in Wake County, North Carolina.

She supports the Stop Predatory Investing Act, which is aimed at removing tax benefits for major corporate or Wall Street investors who acquire large numbers of single-family rental homes and mark up prices.

Harris also backs the passage of the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act, which would prohibit the use of algorithmic systems to artificially inflate the price or reduce the supply of leased or rented residential dwelling units.

Additionally, Harris plans to provide $25,000 in down payment support for first-time home buyers, with expanded support for first-generation home owners.

Trump’s proposals

Trump has promised to eliminate certain regulations on the construction of new homes, which he says will help with the cost.

The former president did not say which specific regulations he hopes to eliminate. During his term as president, he signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, which lowered the corporate tax rate and created Opportunity Zones, in which people can invest in low-income areas and temporarily defer tax on eligible gains.

Trump also plans to open up portions of federal land for large-scale housing construction.

“These zones will be ultra-low tax and ultra-low regulation,” he said in a Q&A at The Economic Club of New York on Sept. 5.

Trump claimed that undocumented immigrants are behind the rise in housing costs in his policy proposals and speeches, adding that he would ban mortgages for undocumented people. Researchers and officials have attributed rising housing costs to high interest rates, the housing shortage, rent gouging and an increase in construction costs and supply chain constraints to the rising costs.

Trump’s Agenda47, which outlines his plans if he’s elected in November, also notes that he intends to “promote homeownership through Tax Incentives and support for first-time buyers.”

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