SPACE
Astronauts arrive at ISS
Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, carrying a European, a Russian and an American astronaut for a four-month mission. “Capture confirmed,” said a NASA commentator as the spacecraft docked at the ISS at 4:58pm, live NASA television images showed. The trio — Frenchman Thomas Pesquet, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and US astronaut Peggy Whitson — were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday.
UNITED STATES
Lewis records found
Officials in Nashville, Tennessee, have discovered never-before-published photographs and records detailing the early arrests of Representative John Lewis, a civil rights icon. Nashville Mayor Megan Barry on Saturday surprised Lewis with the records while he was receiving a literary award for March, a graphic novel about his life in the civil rights movement. Lewis, now 76 and a congressman from Georgia, said he was surprised and nearly cried upon seeing the records. He said he plans to place copies in his Washington office to inspire visitors. Lewis said he had been arrested 45 times for his activism, but his first arrest was in Nashville. City officials plan to display copies of the records in the Nashville Public Library.
MEXICO
Alleged assassin arrested
Authorities say federal forces have arrested an alleged leader of a band of assassins in Acapulco. The government has identified the man only as “Benito N” and it says he was responsible for a significant amount of the bloodshed in the city. A statement released late on Friday said his arrest was one of the state’s top security priorities. Local media says the suspect was the head of assassins for the Beltran Lleyva cartel. Killings are up 5 percent in Acapulco this year over a very bloody last year despite tightened security. Authorities say 790 homicides were recorded between January and last month.
UNITED STATES
Family upset by booing
The father of a California soldier killed in Afghanistan says he felt disrespected and hurt by passengers who booed him and his family when they were getting off a flight while headed to pick up his son’s remains. Stewart Perry, his wife and daughter were on an American Airlines flight on Monday from Sacramento to Philadelphia with a transfer in Phoenix, the Stockton Record reported on Saturday. Perry said the flight arrived in Phoenix 45 minutes late and the crew, fearing the family could miss their connecting flight, asked the rest of the passengers to remain seated to let a “special military family” deplane first. Perry said several passengers in first class booed, complaining that it was “baloney” and that they paid first-class fares. “It was just disgusting behavior from people in first class; it was terrible to see,’’ Perry said. He said his son, Sergeant John Perry, 30, died of injuries caused by an improvised explosive device on Nov. 12 at Bagram Airfield.
UNITED STATES
Call to scrap bar curtains
A group of Utah restaurants wants to scrap a law requiring so-called “Zion curtains” that wall off customers from bartenders preparing drinks. The Salt Lake Area Restaurant Association plans to hire a lobbyist to push the change during the legislative session that starts in January. Association president Tamara Gibo told the Salt Lake Tribune that the 2009 law affects new businesses more than others that were grandfathered in.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing