UNITED STATES
Sun spotted ‘eating’ planet
Astronomers might have seen a relatively nearby star munching on a planet or mini-planets. A NASA space telescope last year noticed that the star suddenly started looking a bit strange. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory spotted a 30-fold increase in iron on the edge of the star, which is only 10 million years old, along with pronounced dimming. Astronomers have been watching the baby star in the constellation Taurus for decades, and iron levels were not high in 2015, the last time the telescope looked at it. The star, called RW Aur A, is 450 light-years away. Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Hans Moritz Guenther said he has never seen anything quite like it, calling it “a lot stranger than we thought we’d be seeing... We’ve never seen any star that’s changed its iron abundance like that.” One potential simple explanation is that the star is eating a planet or mini-planets, Guenther said. He looked at other possible explanations, and of the two that make sense, he prefers the planet-munching one. Simulations show it can happen, but it has never been seen before, he said.
UNITED STATES
Bezos’ rocket flies high
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company on Wednesday shot a capsule higher into space than it has ever done before. The New Shepard rocket blasted off from West Texas on a test flight. Once the booster separated, the capsule’s escape motor fired, lifting the spacecraft to an altitude of 119km. It is part of a safety system intended to save lives once space tourists and others climb aboard for suborbital hops. The passenger was Mannequin Skywalker, an instrumented dummy that has flown before. The booster and capsule landed successfully. It was the ninth test flight and lasted 11 minutes. “Crew Capsule looks great even after it was pushed hard by the escape test. Astronauts would have had an exhilarating ride and safe landing,” Bezos said on Twitter.
UNITED STATES
Man stabs self after verdict
A central Illinois man on Wednesday stabbed himself in a courtroom shortly after a jury found him guilty in a sexual assault case, authorities say. The Pantagraph reported that 78-year-old Johnny Icard was sitting alone at a defense table in Bloomington where he had represented himself at trial. When the judge said he was revoking Icard’s bond, Icard said he had family affairs to attend to and was not expecting the verdict. He stabbed himself in the abdomen moments later. Icard used a folding knife with a 7.6cm blade, McLean County Sheriff Jon Sandage said. The jury that convicted him of predatory criminal sexual assault had already left the courtroom. Sandage said his office is investigating how Icard got the knife through metal detectors. Icard was taken to a hospital and is expected to recover.
UNITED STATES
Charge in child rape case
A Kansas City-area woman on Tuesday was charged with letting men rape her two-year-old daughter. Azzie Watson, 25, was charged with child abuse and endangerment. Court documents say that Watson’s boyfriend recorded Watson talking about repeatedly taking her daughter to a house where her daughter was raped about five times, WDAF-TV reported. She says on the recording that she watched. Court documents say that Watson told detectives that what she said in the recording was a lie because she was scared of her boyfriend. Watson also said she did not know how her daughter contracted a sexually transmitted disease.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in