US Space Command center moving from Colorado to Alabama

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The U.S. Air Force announced Wednesday that the new U.S. Space Command headquarters will be in Huntsville, Alabama, after the state was selected over five others competing for the project, including Colorado, where Space Command is provisionally located.

The role of Space Command is to conduct operations such as enabling satellite-based navigation and troop communication and providing warning of missile launches. That is different from the Space Force, which is a distinct military service like the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.

“I couldn’t be more pleased to learn that Alabama will be the new home to the United States Space Command,” Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement.

Huntsville’s nickname, Rocket City, is thanks largely to Wernher von Braun and his team of fellow Germanborn rocketeers who settled there in the 1950s. The city has long been home to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett, an appointee of President Donald Trump, announced the decision days before leaving office.

Colorado officials lambasted the move, saying military officials had recommended to Trump that Space Command remain at the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, but they were “overruled for politically motivated reasons.” They did not say what those alleged political reasons were. Trump won Alabama in the November election, and President-elect Joe Biden won Colorado.

“This move threatens jobs, could cause serious economic damage, and upend the lives of hundreds of military and civilian families that were counting on U.S Space Command staying at home in Colorado Springs as well as harm military readiness,” Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera said in a statement.

U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama said Barrett told him the decision was based “solely on merit and the interests of national security.”

Woman executed: A Kansas woman was executed for strangling an expectant mother in Missouri and cutting the baby from her womb, the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S. government has put to death a female inmate.

Lisa Montgomery, 52, was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. Wednesday after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. She was the 11th prisoner to receive a lethal injection there since July when President Donald Trump, an ardent supporter of capital punishment, resumed federal executions following 17 years without one.

It came after hours of legal wrangling before the Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution to move forward. Montgomery was the first of the final three federal inmates scheduled to die before next week’s inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who is expected to discontinue federal executions.

But a federal judge for the District of Columbia halted the scheduled executions later this week of Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs in a ruling Tuesday. Johnson, convicted of killing seven people related to his drug trafficking in Virginia, and Higgs, convicted of ordering the murders of three women in Maryland, both tested positive for COVID-19 last month.

More US-China tensions:

The U.S. government announced Wednesday that it will halt imports of cotton and tomatoes from the Uighur region of China in its most sweeping action yet to pressure the Communist Party over its campaign against ethnic minorities.

Officials said Customs and Border Protection will use its authority to block products suspected of being produced with forced labor to keep out cotton, tomatoes and related products from the Xinjiang region of northwest China.

Xinjiang is a major global supplier of cotton, so the order could have significant effects on international commerce. The Trump administration has already blocked imports from individual companies linked to forced labor in the region, and the U.S. has imposed sanctions on Communist Party officials with prominent roles in the campaign.

The U.S. imported about $9 billion worth of cotton goods from China overall last year, according to Brenda Smith, the executive assistant commissioner at Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade.

Only about $10 million in tomato products entered the U.S. from China last year, Smith said

Mafia trial: A trial with more than 320 defendants began Wednesday in southern Italy against the ’ndrangheta crime syndicate, arguably the world’s richest criminal organization that quietly amassed power as the Sicilian Mafia lost influence.

Expected to take at least a year, the trial is taking place in a specially constructed high-security bunker at an industrial park in Calabria.

Prosecutors hope the trial will deliver a harsh blow to the ’ndrangheta, the Calabria-based mob organization that has exploited tens of billions of dollars in cocaine revenues over decades to extend its criminal reach across Europe and into several continents.

Trump attorney booted: A conservative attorney who helped lead legal efforts to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in favor of President Donald Trump has been denied permission to represent former Trump campaign operative Carter Page in a defamation lawsuit in Delaware.

A Superior Court judge ruled Monday that L. Lin Wood’s actions in election-related lawsuits in Georgia and Wisconsin “exhibited a toxic stew of mendacity, prevarication, and surprising incompetence.”

“What has been shown in court decisions of our sister states satisfies me that it would be in appropriate and inadvisable to continue Mr. Wood’s permission to practice before this court,” Judge Craig Karsnitz wrote.

Delaware judges routinely allow attorneys who are not members of the state bar to participate in specific cases with permission of the court. Karsnitz granted Wood permission to participate in the Page lawsuit in August, but revoked it this week.

Wood did not immediately respond to email and phone messages Wednesday.

Thunberg stamp: Swedish teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg will appear on a postal stamp that will be issued Thursday in her native Sweden and is part of a series focusing on the environment.

The motives on the stamps “should reflect our time, where the environmental issue has been relevant and present for many years, not least through Greta Thunberg’s strong voice,” Sweden’s postal company Postnord said in a statement.

One with Thunberg in her trademark yellow raincoat with her braid blowing in the wind and standing atop a hill is part of a five-stamp series themed “Valuable Nature.” They cost $1.40 each.

Thunberg, 18, rose to prominence for weekly solo protests outside Sweden’s parliament in Stockholm that she started in August 2018.

ACHMAD IBRAHIM/AP Indonesia plane crash: Debris found in the water near the site of last weekend’s Sriwijaya Air passenger jet crash site is brought to shore by recovery teams Wednesday at a port in Jakarta, Indonesia. Divers were searching for the jet’s cockpit voice recorder amid mud and debris on the seabed between Indonesian islands. There were 62 people on board.