CHINA
Court rules against collector
A court has ordered a Dutch art collector to hand over a Buddha statue in the latest twist in a three-year-old legal battle with villagers who say it was stolen from a temple. Residents of Yangchun, a village in Fujian Province, have said the statue is a 1,000-year-old relic that holds the mummified remains of a monk and disappeared in 1995. The collector said he bought the object in Hong Kong in 1996, but denied it was the stolen statue. The Sanming Intermediate People’s Court on Friday ordered the collector, Oscar van Overeem, to return the statue within 30 days.
AUSTRALIA
Bushfire threatens township
Residents of a coastal township on World Heritage-listed Fraser Island were yesterday told to evacuate as a bushfire approached. Since it was sparked by an illegal campfire seven weeks ago, the blaze has blackened half the island off the country’s northeastern coast. Residents of Happy Valley had a small reprieve after the blaze weakened yesterday afternoon, Queensland State Emergency Services Commissioner Greg Leach told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “We now don’t anticipate that that fire will run into the Happy Valley settlement today, but we’ll continue to work hard,” Leach said. “We will continue to have aircraft on the fire from first light tomorrow to try and knock that fire down as best we can.”
JAPAN
Asteroid samples return
A Japanese capsule carrying the first samples of asteroid subsurface shot across the night atmosphere early yesterday before landing in the remote Australian Outback, completing a mission to provide clues to the origin of the solar system and life on Earth. The spacecraft Hayabusa2 released the small capsule on Saturday and sent it toward Earth to deliver samples from a distant asteroid. At about 10km above ground, a parachute was opened to slow its fall and beacon signals were transmitted to indicate its location in the sparsely populated area of Woomera. About two hours after the re-entry, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said its helicopter search team found the capsule in the planned landing area.
CHINA
Lunar probe on way home
A probe that landed on the moon transferred rocks to an orbiter yesterday in preparation for returning samples of the lunar surface to Earth for the first time in almost 45 years, the China National Space Administration announced. The upper stage of the Chang’e 5 lander on Friday blasted off from the lunar surface. The ascent stage docked with a robot spacecraft orbiting the moon at 5:42am yesterday, state media reported, citing the agency. Samples were transferred to the orbiter 30 minutes later. A capsule carrying the rock samples is due to land in the Inner Mongolia region in the middle of this month.
GERMANY
Protesters urge disarmament
Hundreds of peace protesters on Saturday formed a human chain outside parliament, urging disarmament and an end to weapons exports. About 300 people formed the chain stretching from the parliament building to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office, the DPA news agency reported. The demonstration, organized under the motto “Peace, not armaments,” came as the government prepares to approve its budget proposals for the next two years, which include hefty defense spending.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
IMPASSE: US President Donald Trump pressed to end the filibuster in a sign that he is unlikely to compromise despite Democrat offers for a delayed healthcare vote The US government shutdown stretched into its 40th day yesterday even as senators stayed in Washington for a grueling weekend session hoping to find an end to the funding fight that has disrupted flights nationwide, threatened food assistance for millions of Americans and left federal workers without pay. The US Senate has so far shown few signs of progress over a weekend that could be crucial for the shutdown fight. Republican leaders are hoping to hold votes on a new package of bills that would reopen the government into January while also approving full-year funding for several parts of government, but
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
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