82 pounds of meth seized in southeast Kansas

NEODESHA, Kan. – Authorities arrest two men after finding more than 82 pounds of meth in their vehicle.

Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, September 29, 2021, authorities pulled a vehicle over for speeding. Police and the 2006 Chevy Silverado stopped at 400 Main Street in Neodesha, Kansas.

According to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Neodesha police established probable cause to search the vehicle. They found an excess of 82 pounds of methamphetamine. The KBI says the meth has an estimated street value of $3.7 million.

Police arrested the 19-year-old driver from Dallas, Texas for possession of methamphetamine with the intent to sell, possession of drug sale paraphernalia, and driving without a valid license.

They also arrested the passenger of the truck, a 19-year-old from Garland, Texas. They are requesting charges against him of possession of methamphetamine with the intent to sell, and possession of drug sale paraphernalia.

Authorities booked the two into the Wilson County, Kansas Jail.

The Wilson County Prosecutor’s Office has not yet filed official charges. Police are still investigating.

The Neodesha Police Department, Wilson County Sheriff’s Office and Kansas Bureau of Investigation are all involved in the case.

(KOAM’s policy is to not release names of suspects until official charges are filed. Some cases are unique and are treated as such.)

Blue Origin’s Bezos reaches space on 1st passenger flight

VAN HORN, Texas (AP) – Jeff Bezos blasted into space Tuesday on his rocket company’s first flight with people on board, becoming the second billionaire in just over a week to ride his own spacecraft.

The Amazon founder was accompanied by a hand-picked group: his brother, an 18-year-old from the Netherlands and an 82-year-old aviation pioneer from Texas – the youngest and oldest to ever fly in space.

Named after America’s first astronaut, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket soared from remote West Texas on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, a date chosen by Bezos for its historical significance. He held fast to it, even as Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson pushed up his own flight from New Mexico in the race for space tourist dollars and beat him to space by nine days.

Unlike Branson’s piloted rocket plane, Bezos’ capsule was completely automated and required no official staff on board for the anticipated 10-minute, up-and-down flight.

Blue Origin was shooting for an altitude of roughly 66 miles (106 kilometers), more than 10 miles (16 kilometers) higher than Branson’s July 11 ride. The 60-foot (18-meter) booster accelerated to Mach 3 or three times the speed of sound to get the capsule high enough, before separating and aiming for a vertical landing.

The passengers were expected to get three to four minutes of weightlessness to float around the spacious white capsule. Then the window-filled capsule was going to head to a parachute touchdown on the desert floor, with Bezos and his guests briefly experiencing nearly six times the force of gravity, or 6 G’s, on the way back.

Sharing Bezos’ dream-come-true adventure was Wally Funk, from the Dallas area, one of 13 female pilots who went through the same tests as NASA’s all-male astronaut corps in the early 1960s but never made it into space.

Joining them on the ultimate joyride was the company’s first paying customer, Oliver Daemen, a last-minute fill-in for the mystery winner of a $28 million auction who opted for a later flight. The Dutch teen’s father took part in the auction, and agreed on a lower undisclosed price last week when Blue Origin offered his son the vacated seat.

Blue Origin – founded by Bezos in 2000 in Kent, Washington, near Amazon’s Seattle headquarters – has yet to open ticket sales to the public or reveal the price. For now, it’s booking auction bidders. Two more passenger flights are planned by year’s end, said Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith.

The recycled rocket and capsule that carried up Tuesday’s passengers were used on the last two space demos, according to company officials.

Virgin Galactic already has more than 600 reservations at $250,000 apiece. Founded by Branson in 2004, the company has sent crew into space four times and plans two more test flights from New Mexico before launching customers next year.

Blue Origin’s approach was slower and more deliberate. After 15 successful unoccupied test flights to space since 2015, Bezos finally declared it was time to put people on board. The Federal Aviation Administration agreed last week, approving the commercial space license.

Bezos, 57, who also owns The Washington Post, claimed the first seat. The next went to his 50-year-old brother, Mark Bezos, an investor and volunteer firefighter, then Funk and Daemen. They spent two days together in training.

University of Chicago space historian Jordan Bimm said the passenger makeup is truly remarkable. Imagine if the head of NASA decided he wanted to launch in 1961 instead of Alan Shepard on the first U.S. spaceflight, he said in an email.

“That would have been unthinkable!” Bimm said. “”It shows just how much the idea of who and what space is for has changed in the last 60 years.”

Bezos stepped down earlier this month as Amazon’s CEO and just last week donated $200 million to renovate the National Air and Space Museum. Most of the $28 million from the auction has been distributed to space advocacy and education groups, with the rest benefiting Blue Origin’s Club for the Future, its own education effort.

Fewer than 600 people have reached the edge of space or beyond. Until Tuesday, the youngest was 25-year-old Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov and the oldest at 77 was Mercury-turned-shuttle astronaut John Glenn.

Both Bezos and Branson want to drastically increase those overall numbers, as does SpaceX’s Elon Musk, who’s skipping brief space hops and sending his private clients straight to orbit for tens of millions apiece, with the first flight coming up in September.

Despite appearances, Bezos and Branson insist they weren’t trying to outdo each other by strapping in themselves. Bezos noted this week that only one person can lay claim to being first in space: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who rocketed into orbit on April 12, 1961.

“This isn’t a competition, this is about building a road to space so that future generations can do incredible things in space,” he said on NBC’s ”Today.”

Blue Origin is working on a massive rocket, New Glenn, to put payloads and people into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The company also wants to put astronauts back on the moon with its proposed lunar lander Blue Moon; it’s challenging NASA’s sole contract award to SpaceX.

Kobach representing Texas sheriffs in immigration lawsuit

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kris Kobach is representing four Texas sheriffs and a law enforcement group in a federal lawsuit against President Joe Biden and his administration. It’s over a policy discouraging the deportation of some immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

Kobach is seeking the Republican nomination for Kansas attorney general in 2022 after failed bids for governor in 2018 and the U.S. Senate in 2020. He is a former Kansas secretary of state who built a national profile by advocating more restrictive immigration policies and advising former President Donald Trump.

He is listed as the general counsel for the Alliance for Free Citizens in a statement announcing the lawsuit’s filing Thursday, The Topeka Capital-Journal reports. Its website says the alliance is a nonprofit dedicated to “individual liberties, communities, families, and shared patriotic values.”

The lawsuit challenges a policy requiring Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to get a superior’s approval before attempting to deport anyone who hasn’t recently crossed the border or who isn’t deemed a criminal or national security threat. The group involved in the lawsuit represents ICE officers.

The lawsuit says the policies violates federal law and increases demands on local law enforcement.

ICE argues that it’s focusing limited resources on national security and public safety threats.