CAPE CANAVERAL: Four astronauts from four countries rocketed toward the International Space Station on Saturday.
They should reach the orbiting lab in their SpaceX capsule Sunday, replacing four astronauts living up there since March.
A NASA astronaut was joined on the predawn liftoff from Kennedy Space Center by fliers from Denmark, Japan and Russia.
It was the first US launch where every spacecraft seat was occupied by a different country — until now, NASA had always included two or three of its own on its SpaceX taxi flights. A fluke in timing led to the assignments, officials said.
NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, a Marine pilot serving as commander, said her crew’s makeup demonstrates “what we can do when we work together in harmony.” With her on the six-month mission are the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.
“To explore space, we need to do it together,” the European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said minutes before liftoff. “Space is really global, and international cooperation is key.”
The astronauts’ paths to space couldn’t be more different.
Moghbeli’s parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution. Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan. The first-time space traveler hopes to show Iranian girls that they, too, can aim high. “Belief in yourself is something really powerful,” she said before the flight.
Mogensen worked on oil rigs off the West African coast after getting an engineering degree. He told people puzzled by his job choice that “in the future we would need drillers in space” like Bruce Willis’ character in the killer asteroid film “Armageddon.” He’s convinced the rig experience led to his selection as Denmark’s first astronaut.
Furukawa spent a decade as a surgeon before making Japan’s astronaut cut. Like Mogensen, he’s visited the station before.
Borisov, a space rookie, turned to engineering after studying business. He runs a freediving school in Moscow and judges the sport, in which divers shun oxygen tanks and hold their breath underwater.
One of the perks of an international crew, they noted, is the food. Among the delicacies soaring: Persian herbed stew, Danish chocolate and Japanese mackerel.
Liftoff was delayed a day because of extra data reviews for the capsule’s life-support system.
Another NASA astronaut will launch to the station from Kazakhstan in mid-September under a barter agreement, along with two Russians.
SpaceX has now launched eight crews for NASA. Boeing was hired at the same time nearly a decade ago, but has yet to fly astronauts. Its crew capsule is grounded until 2024 by parachute and other issues.
New crew for the space station launches with 4 astronauts from 4 countries
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New crew for the space station launches with 4 astronauts from 4 countries
- Astronauts to reach the orbiting lab Sunday for a half-year stay, replacing four astronauts living up there since March
- A NASA astronaut was joined on the predawn liftoff from Kennedy Space Center by fliers from Denmark, Japan and Russia
Death toll rises to 17 in Indonesia quarry collapse as search continues
By Saturday afternoon, rescuers had retrieved 16 bodies
CIREBON, Indonesia: The death toll from the collapse of a stone quarry in Indonesia’s West Java province has risen to at least 17, with eight people still missing, officials said Saturday.
The victims were trapped in the rubble when the Gunung Kuda quarry in Cirebon district collapsed on Friday. A dozen survivors were found by rescuers.
By Saturday afternoon, rescuers had retrieved 16 bodies, while one of the survivors died in the hospital, said local police chief Sumarni. She said rescuers are searching for eight people still believed to be trapped
“The search operation has been hampered by bad weather, unstable soil and rugged terrain,” said Sumarni who goes by a single name like many Indonesians.
She said the cause of the collapse is still under investigation, and police have been questioning six people, including the owner of the quarry.
Local television reports showed emergency personnel, along with police, soldiers and volunteers, digging desperately in the quarry in a steep limestone cliff, supported by five excavators, early Saturday.
West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi said in a video statement on Instagram that he visited the quarry before he was elected in February and considered it dangerous.
“It did not meet the safety standard elements for its workers,” Mulyadi said, adding that at that time, “I didn’t have any capacity to stop it.”
On Friday, Mulyadi said that he had ordered the quarry shut, as well as four other similar sites in West Java.
Illegal or informal resource extraction operations are common in Indonesia, providing a tenuous livelihood to those who labor in conditions with a high risk of injury or death.
Landslides, flooding and tunnel collapses are just some of the hazards associated with them. Much of the processing of sand, rocks or gold ore also involves the use of highly toxic mercury and cyanide by workers using little or no protection.
Last year, a landslide triggered by torrential rains struck an unauthorized gold mining operation on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, killing at least 15 people.
Indonesian NGOs demand Israel be held accountable over atrocities in Gaza
- No health facility operational in northern Gaza as of Friday
- Palestinians receiving inadequate aid after prolonged blockade
JAKARTA: Indonesian civil society organizations are urging the international community to hold Israel accountable for its attacks on Gaza, as Tel Aviv’s latest military onslaught on the besieged enclave pushed the territory’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse.
All hospitals in northern Gaza were out of service as of Friday, according to Jakarta-based NGO Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, which funds the Indonesia Hospital located in the Gazan city of Beit Lahiya.
Al-Awda Hospital — the only remaining facility providing health services in north Gaza — evacuated its patients on Thursday following orders from the Israeli military, which launched a wave of new attacks earlier this month across the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of people and forcing most public facilities in the area to close.
“Even after various condemnations and warnings, Israel the colonizer continues to commit crimes across the Gaza Strip,” said Dr. Hadiki Habib, chairman of MER-C’s executive committee.
“MER-C’s stance is in line with the Indonesian constitution, in which we do not recognize colonization in any shape or form … Israel’s colonization and crimes against humanity (in Gaza) must be held accountable at the international level.”
Indonesia is a staunch supporter of Palestine, and sees Palestinian statehood as being mandated by its own constitution, which calls for the abolition of colonialism.
The Indonesia Hospital was one of the first targets hit when Israel began its assault on Gaza, in which it regularly targets medical facilities.
Attacks on health centers, medical personnel and patients constitute war crimes under the 1949 Geneva Convention.
Israel’s latest offensive comes after a two-month blockade on the enclave after Tel Aviv unilaterally broke a ceasefire with the Palestinian group Hamas in March.
It is a continuation of Israel’s onslaught of Gaza that began in October 2023 and has killed more than 54,300 Palestinians and wounded more than 124,000. The deadly attacks have also put 2 million more at risk of starvation after Israeli forces destroyed most of the region’s infrastructure and buildings and blocked humanitarian aid.
Aid only recently began to enter the besieged territory, although only in limited quantities.
“The suffering of the people is massive due to starvation, and there is limited aid because of the blockade,” Habib said. “A humanitarian crisis must not be used as a transactional tool. Stop this war and open the food blockade in Gaza. We will continue to voice this demand.”
Various scholars and human rights organizations have said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, including Amnesty International and the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention.
“Zionist Israel’s crimes in Gaza must be held accountable. They must be put on trial and punished for genocide. There is no longer doubt that their crimes constitute genocide,” Muhammad Anshorullah, who heads the executive committee of the Jakarta-based Aqsa Working Group, told Arab News on Saturday. “Netanyahu’s regime must be arrested, tried and punished, just like how the Allied powers arrested, tried and punished Nazi elites through the Nuremberg Trials. There is nothing more urgent globally aside from stopping the genocide in Gaza.”
A small plane crashes into the terrace of a house in Germany. 2 people are dead
- The plane hit the terrace of the building and a fire broke out
BERLIN: A small plane crashed into the terrace of a residential building in western Germany on Saturday and two people were killed, police said.
The crash happened in Korschenbroich, near the city of Mönchengladbach and not far from the Dutch border.
The plane hit the terrace of the building and a fire broke out. Police said two people died and one of them was probably the plane’s pilot, German news agency dpa reported.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the other person had been on the plane or on the ground.
Officials had no immediate information on the cause of the crash.
Georgia’s foreign-agents act ‘a serious setback’: EU officials
- Georgia’s law is inspired by US legislation which makes it mandatory for any person or organization representing a foreign country, group or party to declare its activities to authorities
BRUSSELS: A new law in Georgia that from Saturday requires NGOs and media outlets to register as “foreign agents” if they receive funding from abroad is a “serious setback,” for the country, two top EU officials said.
Alongside other laws on broadcasting and grants, “these repressive measures threaten the very survival of Georgia’s democratic foundations and the future of its citizens in a free and open society,” EU diplomatic chief Kaja Kallas and EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos said in a joint statement.
They stressed that the law, which they dubbed a tool “by the Georgian authorities to suppress dissent (and) restrict freedoms,” jeopardized the country’s ambitions of one day joining the European Union.
“Georgia’s Foreign Agents Registration Act marks a serious setback for the country’s democracy,” they said.
Georgia’s law is inspired by US legislation which makes it mandatory for any person or organization representing a foreign country, group or party to declare its activities to authorities.
But NGOs believe it will be used by Georgia’s illiberal and Euroskeptic government to further repression of civil society and the opposition.
The Black Sea nation has been rocked by daily demonstrations since late last year, with protesters decrying what they see as an increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russia government.
Tensions escalated in November when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that Georgia would postpone EU membership talks until 2028.
“The EU is ready to consider the return of Georgia to the EU accession path if the authorities take credible steps to reverse democratic backsliding,” Kallas and Kos said in their statement.
France’s prison population reaches all-time high
- Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who has called the overcrowding crisis “unacceptable,” has suggested building new facilities to accommodate the growing prison population
PARIS: France’s prison population hit a record high on May 1, with 83,681 inmates held in facilities that have a capacity of just 62,570, justice ministry data showed on Saturday.
Over the past year, France’s prison population grew by 6,000 inmates, taking the occupancy rate to 133.7 percent.
The record overcrowding has even seen 23 out of France’s 186 detention facilities operating at more than twice their capacity.
Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who has called the overcrowding crisis “unacceptable,” has suggested building new facilities to accommodate the growing prison population.
The hard-line minister announced in mid-May a plan to build a high-security prison in French Guiana — an overseas territory situated north of Brazil — for the most “dangerous” criminals, including drug kingpins.
Prison overcrowding is “bad for absolutely everyone,” said Darmanin in late April, citing the “appalling conditions” for prisoners and “the insecurity and violence” faced by prison officers.
A series of coordinated attacks on French prisons in April saw assailants torching cars, spraying the entrance of one prison with automatic gunfire, and leaving mysterious inscriptions.
The assaults embarrassed the right-leaning government, whose tough-talking ministers — Darmanin and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau — have vowed to step up the fight against narcotics.
And in late April, lawmakers approved a major new bill to combat drug-related crime, with some of France’s most dangerous drug traffickers facing detention in high-security prison units in the coming months.
France ranks among the worst countries in Europe for prison overcrowding, placing third behind Cyprus and Romania, according to a Council of Europe study published in June 2024.
