• "Good Morning America" co-host Michael Strahan is going to space next month. Strahan, who turned 50 on Sunday, will join Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of astronaut Alan Shepard, on the Dec. 9 mission aboard the New Shepard, a spacecraft named after her father and the first American in space. Strahan, who played for 15 years in the National Football League with the New York Giants, reported on the first Blue Origin flight for "Good Morning America." "I want to go to space," Strahan told "GMA." "I think being there at the first launch, it really was mind-blowing." The flight by Blue Origin, the company headed by Jeff Bezos, will also carry four paying customers and will be the third by the New Shepard craft this year to shuttle humans to space. Blue Origin has not disclosed the ticket price for paying customers. The 10-minute flight, five minutes less than Alan Shepard's 1961 Mercury flight, will launch from West Texas carrying six people, two more than the previous two flights this year with humans aboard. Similar to previous jaunts, Strahan's flight is likely to include about three minutes of weightlessness and a view of the curvature of the Earth. Passengers are subjected to nearly 6 G's, or six times the force of Earth's gravity, as the capsule descends. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Star Trek star William Shatner flew to space on separate New Shepard flights this year.
• Kevin Spacey and his production companies were ordered to pay the studio behind "House of Cards" nearly $31 million because of losses brought on by his firing for sexual misconduct, according to an arbitration decision made final Monday. A document filed in Los Angeles Superior Court requesting a judge's approval of the ruling says that the arbitrators found that Spacey violated his contract's demands for professional behavior by "engaging certain conduct in connection with several crew members in each of the five seasons that he starred in and executive produced House of Cards." The document said MRC, the studio behind "House of Cards," had to fire Spacey, halt production of the show's sixth season, rewrite it to remove Spacey's central character, and shorten it from 13 to eight episodes to meet deadlines, resulting in tens of millions in losses. A representative for Spacey did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. His attorneys argued that the actor's actions were not a substantial factor in the show's losses. The 62-year-old Oscar winner's career came to an abrupt halt late in 2017 as the #MeToo movement gained momentum. Independent investigations found widespread sexual harassment of those who worked under him, leading to Spacey being fired or removed from several projects, most notably "House of Cards."
