The Weekly Lift - May 23, 2024

This week's selection of headlines and articles*:

Geopolitics: Spain, Norway And Ireland Recognize A Palestinian State

The New York Times (US) reports, "Spain, Norway and Ireland said on Wednesday that they would recognize an independent Palestinian state, a rebuke to Israel that, though largely symbolic, reflected dwindling international patience with its military offensive in Gaza and its decades of occupation of Palestinian territories.

Scores of countries have recognized Palestinian statehood, but the closely coordinated announcements by the three nations carried added weight amid the growing toll of the war in Gaza, and because most Western European countries, and the United States, have resisted taking such a step out of solidarity with Israel.

The moves will likely have little immediate effect on conditions for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank or in Gaza, where health authorities say that more than 35,000 people have been killed in over seven months of Israeli bombardment and ground combat. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called the moves “a prize for terrorism” and said that it would “not stop us from reaching a victory over Hamas.”

The White House flatly rejected unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood, with National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson saying that President Biden “believes a Palestinian state should be realized through direct negotiations between the parties.”

But the announcements made clear the view in a growing number of capitals that Palestinian sovereignty cannot wait for a permanent peace deal with Israel, whose right-wing government largely opposes a Palestinian state.

“Palestinians have a fundamental, independent right to an independent state,” Jonas Gahr Store, the prime minister of Norway, said at a news conference in Oslo announcing the decision, which will go into effect on Tuesday.

Spain’s decision will take effect the same day, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said, adding that Spain had been forced to act because Mr. Netanyahu did not have a plan for long-term peace with the Palestinians.

“The two-state solution is in danger,” Mr. Sanchez said in remarks to Parliament, referring to a proposed framework for establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. “It’s time to move from words to action — to tell millions of innocent Palestinians who are suffering that we are with them, that there is hope,” he added.

Prime Minister Simon Harris of Ireland said at a news conference that he was confident that other countries would soon join them in recognizing Palestinian statehood.

Maya Sion-Tzidkiyahu, an expert on Israeli-European relations, said the announcements highlighted the erosion of the global support Israel saw immediately after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks that touched off the war in Gaza.

“It proves again to us, as Israelis, the extent to which we are ever more isolated,” said Ms. Sion-Tzidkiyahu, an analyst at Mitvim, an Israeli foreign policy research group.

More than 140 countries and the Holy See have recognized a Palestinian state, but most Western European countries and the United States have not. The longstanding U.S. position is that recognition should be achieved through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, and that while it supports a two-state solution, unilateral measures by third parties will not advance that goal.

Israel strongly opposes international recognition of a Palestinian state — Mr. Netanyahu has called the establishment of such a state an “existential danger” — and maintains that Israel needs to negotiate directly with Palestinian leaders on a permanent solution.

But serious negotiations on a two-state solution haven’t been held for over a decade. And some observers argue that by not recognizing a Palestinian state, the West has enabled a far-right Israeli agenda opposed to its existence. It “gives leverage to Israel to keep encroaching on the land and resources and the people of the other state,” Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian envoy to Britain, said in a recent interview.

Palestinian leaders based in the West Bank welcomed the announcements. “We believe it will help preserve the two-state solution and give Palestinians hope that they will have their own state side by side with Israel in peace and security,” Ziad Abu Amr, a senior Palestinian official, said in an interview.

Wednesday’s announcements were the latest blow to Israel on the international stage, and came days after the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Israel’s defense minister, along with leaders of Hamas, on war crimes charges stemming from the Oct. 7 attacks and the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Spain, Ireland and Norway have all strongly criticized Israel’s conduct of the war and have historically been strong supporters of the Palestinians. Ireland’s support for Palestinians has deep roots; in Spain, Mr. Sanchez has been a leading voice in Europe for the protection of Palestinian rights.

Norway has historically cast itself as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians. In 1993, it hosted the clandestine meetings that led to the Oslo Accords, the framework that came close to resolving the conflict, but ultimately failed.

Prime Minister Store said Norway had acted with Spain and Ireland in an effort to salvage the possibility of a two-state solution in the face of an Israeli government that has openly rejected it.

Offering Palestinians who favor democracy and a sovereign Palestine alongside Israel, Mr. Store said in an interview, is an attempt to break what he described as “a downward spiral, with militant groups like Hamas setting the agenda on the Palestinian side” and the Israeli government “establishing hundreds of thousands of settlers” on occupied land.

He also said that the move sent “a clear message against Hamas,” he said, which is acting with terror and refusing to recognize Israel and a two-state solution. “I wish to give credence and support to those parts of the Palestinian fabric who work for civilized principles of statehood,” Mr. Store said.

The announcements by Spain, Norway and Ireland and Wednesday do not, on their own, pose a major diplomatic problem for Israel, said Ms. Sion-Tzidkiyahu, the analyst. But the picture could change if more powerful states like Germany or France felt pressure to make similar declarations, she added.

“For now, we can live with it, because it does not have any real meaning,” she said. “It has no effect on the ground.”

International Relations: The United States And Kenya Finalize The Deployment Of A Multinational Force For Haiti

El Pais (Spain) reports, "Everything suggests that the deployment in Haiti of a multilateral force led by Kenya is a matter of days. The beginning of the mission to stabilize the Caribbean country - "on the verge of becoming a failed state" as described on Tuesday by the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken - will be one of the key issues in the meeting at the White House between the presidents of the United States, Joe Biden, and Kenya, William Ruto, this Thursday.

In the first state visit of an African leader to Washington since 2008, Biden also seeks to reaffirm the ties with Africa after a chain of sounding setbacks for the United States in other parts of the continent at the same time as the influence of Russia and China grows in the region. Ruto seeks help in Washington for the economic development of a country crushed by the foreign debt with Beijing and greater collaboration in defense.

A small delegation of Kenyan representatives has already been in Haiti since Monday. Its objective is to inspect the airport, recently reopened to commercial flights after months of closure due to the violence of the criminal gangs that control the country, and the base that is being built to house the members of the new police force. After them, the first group of the mission, of about 200 people, could land at the end of this week, according to the Kenyan media. The Haitian Transitional Council has announced on social networks that it will be underway before the end of May.

In total, the multinational force will have about 2,500 members. A thousand of them will be Kenyan agents, part of them already tanned in Somalia in the fight against the radical militia of Al Shabab. Jamaica, the Bahamas, Barbados, Benin, Chad and Bangladesh have also offered staff.

His mission will be to try to restore stability to a country in the hands of gangster gangs. United in the Vivre Ensemble coalition ("Living together", in Creole), they control 80% of Port-au-Prince and most of the territory of Haiti through extreme violence. A violence that reached especially bloody levels in February, when the gangs unleashed attacks on prisons, police stations and other institutions, and prevented the return of then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who resigned in April, from abroad.

About 362,000 people, half of them children, continue to be displaced by violence, which has claimed more than 2,500 deaths in the first three months of the year, according to UN figures. But progress such as the opening of the capital's airport, which this week has resumed its first commercial flights after an interruption of months, or the inauguration of a Transition Council of nine members last month open the way for a landing that already accumulates delay after delay.

In his appearance before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Blinken defended the need to assist the Caribbean country and help him "recover the democratic path." Without a support structure, he said, the Haitian national police will not be able to regain control of security. The United States does not participate with personnel in the new mission, but has promised 300 million dollars for its operation.

Others are more skeptical about the ability of a new international operation to achieve lasting peace in a country that has seen a long succession of foreign interventions - the last one, the UN Minustah mission, concluded in 2017 after a series of scandals about human rights violations and the spread of an outbreak of cholera - and that since the assassination of President Jovenel Mo?se in 2021 has plunged more and more into chaos.

Daniel Foote, a former US envoy to Haiti, very critical of international missions, believes that 2,500 members of the new force are insufficient to guarantee the security of the country in the face of gang violence. "People need someone to control the streets, so that they can get bread, that they can distribute essential goods," he said on Tuesday in a talk organized by the think tank Quincy Institute, in Washington.

Although at least some of the Kenyan police officers have received American training, he points out, most of them "are not an elite police force. They come from a country that suffers from its own problems and go to another country where they don't even speak the language."

The fact that the mission will be headed by Kenya has caused controversy in the African country and in others in the area, where the harsh intervention of that country's forces in Somalia against Al Shabab last decade is remembered. "There was no public consultation on the decision to lead this mission to Haiti, and I think many Kenyans are frustrated by that fact," Samar al Bulushi, an analyst at the Quincy Institute, said on Tuesday in the same talk.

"We collaborate with the Kenyans to establish the necessary processes and institutions that will encourage the best way to proceed with respect to the previous peace operations that have come there," Frances Brown, responsible for Africa in the White House National Security Council, said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Kenya aspires in the talks that will take place this week in the White House, the State Department and other high authorities, for the United States to make greater efforts to pay for the bulk of the costs of a clearly dangerous mission, and exceed the 300 million dollars promised. He also wants Washington to do more to control the flows of weapons that, departing from Florida, arrive in contraband to Haiti and provide the gangs with extremely dangerous weapons.

For Nairobi, leading the mission is important. "It represents the culmination of years of effort to strengthen security ties with Washington," adds Al Bulushi. And for the United States, being able to count on the leadership of Kenya is key. This country, one of its main allies in Africa, has been acquiring an increasing importance for Washington in a continent that Biden assured at the beginning of his mandate that he would fill with attention, but which, despite his promises, he has not visited during his presidency.

The importance of Kenya has been emphasized after other countries in the region, former allies, have turned their backs on it. In March, the military authorities of Niger declared the presence of American soldiers in their territory "illegal". Last weekend, the Pentagon closed an agreement to complete the withdrawal of its contingent of a thousand soldiers next September.

In April, he was also leaving Chad, where he had covered a mission to combat Islamic terrorism with Chadian and French forces, after the host country's air force declared that they did not have the appropriate papers.

The position of Kenya, relatively close to the Horn of Africa and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, is also of great relevance for the United States. "Strategically, the geographical location of Kenya in the Indian Ocean is of great interest to the United States, particularly at a time when trade along that ocean and across the Red Sea has been threatened in the context of the genocide in Gaza, with Houthi militias in Yemen trying to stop the flow of naval trade," says Al Bulushi.

And while the influence of the United States - and the entire West - seems to be diluted in the Sahel, that of China and Russia in sub-Saharan Africa increases. Beijing has been the main trading partner of those nations for fifteen years; Russia has reached security agreements with a number of African leaders, especially through the Wagner Group, the militia created by Evgeny Prigozhin.

"U.S. officials have not stopped observing that the great rival powers continue to try to establish their positions on the continent," writes Meron Elias, an analyst for East Africa at the NGO Crisis Group, specialized in conflict resolution.

To some extent, Washington also does not have many options to look for allies in the region, this expert considers. Relations with Ethiopia, previously the main partner of the United States in the region for security matters, are going through a stage of tension after a two-year civil war. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni has developed increasing autocratic temptations. The war in Gaza has distanced Washington and South Africa.

"Kenya will seek to ensure, in addition to economic support, the consolidation of its security alliances with the United States and the affirmation of its growing stature as a heavyweight in the continent's diplomacy," says Elias."

Justice: As Repression Rises In Venezuela, A Human Rights Group Keeps Investigating

The Washington Post (US) reports, "In the heart of Venezuela’s sprawling capital, a human rights group has fortified its office windows to withstand bullets and grenade blasts. It’s a stark reminder of the risks involved in monitoring and documenting abuses against tens of thousands of Venezuelans, which investigators report are often perpetrated by the country’s government.

Provea, short for the Venezuelan Education-Action Program on Human Rights, has in recent months been declared an “enemy of the people” by government officials, who have accused it of conspiring against the country.

Two weeks ago, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a multilateral body that seeks to safeguard human rights across the Americas, called on the Venezuelan government to allow Provea to continue its work without interference after the organization reported threats by state agents.

Marino Alvarado, Provea’s legal program coordinator, said as Venezuela’s July elections near, at least three local human rights activists have been arbitrarily arrested. After one of those arrests, officials in Venezuela also expelled United Nations human rights officers from the country.

Keeping tabs on those injustices can seem like a gargantuan task for what he called a “small but mighty” team of 14, which was recognized last week by the Washington Office on Latin America for its courage in investigating human rights violations, supporting victims and promoting democracy in Venezuela. Still, Alvarado added, “As the situation worsens in Venezuela, we only feel more committed to our job.”

“People need our help now more than ever,” Alvarado said. “So the government can outlaw us and threaten us all they want, but we will never stop advocating for Venezuela, its democracy and the rights of its people.” Venezuelan government officials did not respond to The Washington Post’s requests for comment.

Provea was founded in Caracas in 1988 as an independent watchdog of the country’s economic, social and cultural rights. That work has caused “several degrees of tensions” with the different administrations Provea has sought to hold accountable, said Alvarado, who has worked in the organization for 27 years.

But the situation has changed drastically over the past decade. Although Venezuela’s constitution says the government must investigate human rights violations, Alvarado said impunity often prevails. Provea and other groups now consider it their duty to track what officials won’t — work that Alvarado said has triggered retaliation in the form of arrests, threats, raids and smear campaigns.

Armed groups backed by President Nicolás Maduro — known as “colectivos” — have gone to Provea’s office to issue threats multiple times in recent years, Alvarado said. Paramilitary forces and the country’s intelligence services temporarily kidnapped one of Alvarado’s colleagues in 2014.

The next year, days after Provea first requested protection from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Alvarado and his 9-year-old child were returning home when they were approached by three armed men, who beat Alvarado and rummaged through his home for close to an hour.

Still, Alvarado said the magnitude of the attacks and risks have never“been as great as they are now,” Alvarado said. His organization has tracked cases of activists and ordinary citizens being imprisoned for speaking out against the government, he said.

Officials have arrested campaign staffers for opposition leader María Corina Machado and issued arrest warrants for journalists who have uncovered government corruption. On Tuesday, Foro Penal, a Caracas-based human rights organization, said Venezuela is holding 273 political prisoners.

The caseloads for Provea’s staffers have “grown exponentially,” Alvarado said.

Since Maduro took office in 2013, Provea has identified more than 43,000 people whose “right to personal integrity” has been violated — including 1,652 who were tortured and 7,309 who were subjected to “cruel, inhumane and degrading” treatment or punishment. The organization tallied more than 2,600 victims of human rights violations in 2023 — up 20 percent from the previous year. The inhumane treatment, the organization said, had led to at least 28 deaths inside the country’s penitentiary centers. Maduro and his administration have long denied perpetrating human rights violations and holding political prisoners.

But since 2019, the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela has released a slew of reports detailing gross violations of human rights — including extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and torture — ordered by Maduro and his inner circle to silence, discourage and quash opposition, according to investigators. The victims, according to the U.N. group, are often labor union members, journalists, activists, students and government opponents.

Venezuela is also the only country in Latin America with an open investigation in the International Criminal Court over possible crimes against humanity. On May 3, experts at the Organization of American States — a multilateral regional body in the Western Hemisphere — called on the ICC to issue arrest warrants for Venezuelan officials. Those officials, the experts said, have not only perpetrated human rights violations but also have established a system of impunity that leaves “the vast majority of victims of crimes against humanity without any recourse to justice.”

Human rights groups try to fill that gap by “doing the work that the government should be doing, all while they’re being persecuted by the government,” said Génesis Dávila, a human rights attorney and founder of Defiende Venezuela, which has represented victims in the ICC. But she said the human rights movement has only strengthened over the years — largely because of collaboration between groups.

“When we’re in a situation where there’s no political will to follow up on these cases, no functioning justice system and no investigation teams,” Dávila said, “the work of human rights organizations in recording what happens in Venezuela has become incredibly important.”

In a statement to The Post, a U.S. State Department spokesperson echoed Dávila, saying that the agency “commends Venezuelan human rights defenders and journalists for their essential work in support of a more democratic Venezuela despite the risks to themselves and their families. We continue to call for an end to the harassment, detention, and arrest of civil society actors.”

In Washington, similar accolades filled a room in the Hamilton Hotel last week as Alvarado and Lissette González, an investigator and monitoring coordinator for Provea, accepted the Washington Office on Latin America’s 2024 Human Rights Award for the organization’s work.

González said she knows the pain of victims’ families well: Her 63-year-old father, Rodolfo González, was arrested in 2014 after he marched in the student-led protests that swept Venezuela that year. He died by suicide while in custody the next year. He was never sentenced, nor was his death investigated, his daughter said.

Five years later, her father’s death led Lissette González, then a sociology professor, to switch careers and become a human rights advocate. She also wrote a book about her family’s experience.

Though her days are now filled with collecting testimony from victims’ families, she still holds out hope that things can change in Venezuela, González told more than 400 people gathered for the award ceremony.

“There’s resistance — hope for change is in the air,” she said."

Business: America Is In The Midst Of An Extraordinary Startup Boom

The Economist (UK) reports, "Pearls, it is said, represent purity. They may soon stand for something else: business dynamism. In Greenville, South Carolina, two locals have created earrings that look like jewels, but contain a cluster of electronics to track body temperature, heart rate and even the wearer’s menstrual cycle. Incora Health was set up in 2022.

It plans to start selling its earrings, currently in clinical trials, in a few months. “We’re first-time founders in a small city trying to change women’s health care, and that’s not lost on us,” says Theresa Gevaert, a co-founder. But the audacious young firm is part of a wave of startups that have been launched in America in the past few years. Many will fail. Some will succeed. Together they suggest change is afoot.

Although America has a deserved reputation as a country at the cutting edge of innovation, fuelled by entrepreneurial vim, in recent years some economists have worried this reputation no longer holds true. Startups have formed a smaller and smaller portion of the business landscape: in 1982 some 38% of American firms were less than five years old; by 2018, 29% were that young.

The share of Americans working for startups likewise fell. Silicon Valley sizzled with high-tech wizardry, but its giant companies hoarded the best researchers, leading to a slower spread of new ideas throughout the country. Researchers, including at the Federal Reserve, pointed to this decline in dynamism as a cause of America’s weaker productivity growth.

Suddenly, what was old appears to be new. An array of data indicate that Americans are rediscovering their go-getting spirit. The most striking evidence comes from applications to form businesses, a proxy for startup activity. These soared in mid-2020, when America was still in the grip of covid-19.

The initial surge was easy to dismiss: some of the new firms were scams, trying to profit from the government’s financial assistance for small businesses; others reflected the strangeness of the moment, with companies set up to import face masks or sell hand sanitiser.

But now, well after the pandemic has faded, the surge continues (see chart 1). Last year applications to form businesses reached 5.5m, a record. Although they have slowed a touch, the monthly average is still about 80% higher than in the decade before covid, compared with just a 20% rise in Europe. By definition, every startup job counts as new, whereas mature companies have more churn.

That difference has become even starker. In the four years before the pandemic, established firms added one net job for every four created by startups; in the four years since the pandemic, established firms have lost one job for every four created by startups (see chart 2).

Perhaps even more important than the numbers is the kind of ventures that are being created. In 2020 and 2021 many new businesses catered to the working-from-home revolution. These included online retailers, small trucking firms and landscapers. Since mid-2022, however, the baton has been passed to technology companies, according to Ryan Decker of the Fed and John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland.

A paper published in March by the Census Bureau found a particularly sharp increase last year in business applications involving artificial intelligence (ai). For researchers, this carries echoes of the 1990s, when computers and the internet took off. “It feels like a step-change increase across the economy in entrepreneurial potential,” says Kenan Fikri of Economic Innovation Group, a think-tank. “You never know which firm is going to be the next growth firm. So the more shots on goal you have, the better.”

What has fuelled the boom? The pandemic got things going, as millions lost their jobs and more shifted to remote work. “People realised that they do like being around their families, and it gave many a sense of freedom,” says Jeanette Brewster of Village Launch, a nonprofit in Greenville that supports black entrepreneurs.

Most of the new firms are tiny and destined to stay that way. Startups in Ms Brewster’s network include food trucks, handicraft makers and paralegals. Still, these can be important steps towards greater wealth. Researchers at the Brookings Institution, another think-tank, found that in 2019 just 5% of business-owning families were black and 4% Hispanic. By 2022 their shares had risen to 8% and 7%, respectively.

The strength of the economy has also helped. When the job market is tight, it is easier for a potential startup-founder to take risks, knowing that they can fall back on paid work if need be. The advent of new technologies, especially ai, also feeds into things. Entrepreneurs are creating ai-powered tools to interact with customers, prepare taxes, sift through court records and more.

“The causality isn’t necessarily running from startups to innovation. It runs both ways,” says Mr Haltiwanger. “Innovation attracts startups, particularly when there are rapid changes that have potentially large market opportunities.”

A striking feature of the boom is its spread. Traditionally, innovation has been focused in California’s Bay Area and urban dynamos such as Austin and New York. By contrast, the recent boom includes smaller cities around the country, from Boise to Raleigh.

Greenville is another example. Better known for its genteel pace and walkable downtown than a striving business culture, it is an unlikely candidate to be a cradle of entrepreneurship. In the past few years, though, its liveability has been a selling point, as remote work has taken off. Smallness can also be an advantage.

At the start of the pandemic, John Barnett, a serial app-creator, moved to the city, which is where his wife grew up. In 2022, within days of being sacked by Twitter, he got together with tech friends to build Supermoon, an app that uses ai to help small firms manage overcrowded inboxes and reply to customers.

In Silicon Valley, Mr Barnett says his team might have done formal research sessions in rooms with one-sided mirrors to watch users play with the app. In Greenville the process was more organic. He knew local firms were struggling to stay on top of their inboxes, so he asked them to try the tool out.

“It’s so easy just to connect with folks. It is like a testbed for research,” he says. Incora, the firm making health-tracking earrings, got its clinical trial off the ground because of buy-in from the University of South Carolina’s local medical school. “In bigger cities it would take much longer to establish these kinds of opportunities,” says Ms Gevaert.

Owing to the rise of remote work, even scrappy startups can tap into big talent pools. Mr Barnett’s team includes engineers in the Bay Area and London. Ms Gevaert says her firm “rented the brains” of product designers in Silicon Valley and strategy consultants in New York. Funding remains a challenge in America’s south-eastern states, where there is not much of a tradition of venture capital.

“We’re in our early adolescence in building up a vibrant startup ecosystem,” says John Osborne of Good Growth Capital, a vc firm in Charleston, South Carolina. Although fundraising by American vc firms plunged by 60% in 2023 to a six-year low, amid higher interest rates, many are still sitting on unused capital raised in earlier years, so the slowdown may not bite for a while yet.

The big unknown is if the startup boom will translate into productivity gains. In theory, the arrival of new companies should breathe vitality into the economy. Entrepreneurs tend to make use of new technologies and create novel business models, in the process keeping incumbents on their toes and propelling growth. There is not much yet in the economic numbers to indicate that this is happening. Labour productivity shot up last year, but that merely made up for a decline in 2022.

Maybe new startups will provide less of a boost to growth than their predecessors, since many reflect changes in where and how people work rather than a true increase in efficiency. A more promising possibility is that America is experiencing a repeat of the Solow paradox. In 1987 Robert Solow, an economist who won the Nobel prize that year, quipped you could “see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics”.

These days, you can see startups everywhere—even in Greenville—but not in the productivity data. Eventually, though, the Solow paradox was resolved. By the mid-1990s it was clear productivity had increased. Give the latest startups a few years to make their mark."

Diversity: America’s First Black Astronaut Candidate Finally Goes To Space 60 Years Later

The Los Angeles Times (US) reports, "America’s first Black astronaut candidate finally rocketed into space 60 years later, flying with Jeff Bezos’ rocket company on Sunday.

Ed Dwight was an Air Force pilot when President John F. Kennedy championed him as a candidate for NASA’s early astronaut corps. But he wasn’t picked for the 1963 class.

Dwight, now 90, went through a few minutes of weightlessness with five other passengers aboard the Blue Origin capsule as it skimmed space on a roughly 10-minute flight. He called it “a life-changing experience.” “I thought I really didn’t need this in my life,” Dwight said shortly after exiting the capsule. ”But now, I need it in my life .... I am ecstatic.”

The brief flight from West Texas made Dwight the new record-holder for oldest person in space — nearly two months older than “Star Trek” actor William Shatner was when he went up in 2021.

It was Blue Origin’s first crew launch in nearly two years. The company was grounded following a 2022 accident in which the booster came crashing down but the capsule full of experiments safely parachuted to the ground. Flights resumed last December, but with no one aboard. This was Blue Origin’s seventh time flying space tourists.

Dwight, a sculptor from Denver, was joined by four business entrepreneurs from the U.S. and France and a retired accountant. Their ticket prices were not disclosed; Dwight’s seat was sponsored in part by the nonprofit Space for Humanity.

Dwight was among the potential astronauts the Air Force recommended to NASA. But he wasn’t chosen for the 1963 class, which included eventual Gemini and Apollo astronauts, including Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. NASA didn’t select Black astronauts until 1978, and Guion Bluford became the first African American in space in 1983. Three years earlier, the Soviets launched the first Black astronaut, Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez, a Cuban of African descent.

After leaving the military in 1966, Dwight joined IBM and started a construction company, before earning a master’s degree in sculpture in the late 1970s. Thereafter, he dedicated himself to art. His sculptures focus on Black history and include memorials and monuments across the country. Several of his sculptures have flown into space."

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