CHINA
Space mission to launch
The crew for the nation’s next crewed flight to its space station would include its youngest astronaut to undertake a space mission, as well as four lab mice, authorities said yesterday. The Tiangong space station is crewed by teams of three astronauts that are exchanged every six months. The Shenzhou-21 mission is to blast off today at 11:44pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China Manned Space Agency spokesman Zhang Jingbo (張靜波) said. Flight engineer Wu Fei (武飛), who has just turned 32, is set to become the youngest Chinese astronaut to undertake a space mission, authorities said. “I feel incomparably lucky,” Wu told reporters. “Being able to integrate my personal dreams into the glorious journey of China’s space program is the greatest fortune this era has bestowed upon me.” He would be commanded by veteran space pilot Zhang Lu (張陸), 48, who took part in the Shenzhou-15 mission more than two years ago. Payload specialist Zhang Hongzhang (張洪章), 39, makes up the third member of the crew. Also along for the ride are four mice — two male and two female — which would be the subjects of the nation’s first in-orbit experiments on rodents, Zhang Jingbo said. Zhang Lu said he was confident his team would “report back to our motherland and its people with complete success.”
Photo: Reuters
PAKISTAN
Peace talks to restart
Islamabad and Kabul would restart peace talks in Istanbul, Turkey, three sources familiar with the matter said yesterday, a day after Islamabad said the discussions had ended in failure. Two of the sources said the nations had agreed to recommence talks at the request of host nation Turkey. Negotiation teams from both countries are in Istanbul, two of the sources said.
TURKEY
Building collapses
A seven-story apartment building in Gebze collapsed early on Wednesday, trapping a family of five under the rubble and killing four of them. State-run TRT news channel identified those who died as members of the Bilir family: father Levent, 43, mother Emine, 37, daughter Hayrunnisa, 14, and son Muhammed Emir, 12. Rescue personnel saved the eldest sibling, 18-year-old Dilara Bilir, and recovered the bodies of the younger children by Wednesday evening, but the search for the parents continued. Deputy Minister of the Interior Mehmet Aktas yesterday told reporters that the bodies of the parents were recovered overnight. While state-run Anadolu Agency said that the cause of the collapse was unknown, Gebze Mayor Zinnur Buyukgoz suggested to local media that the cause might be related to nearby metro construction.
FRANCE
Louvre suspect arrested
A third suspect has been arrested in connection with a robbery at the Louvre in Paris, TV station BFM reported yesterday. The arrest happened in the Paris region late on Wednesday, BFM said, adding that the man is suspected of being at the crime scene when the heist took place. Four hooded thieves stole jewels from the Louvre’s Apollo gallery, home to the French Crown Jewels, during opening hours on the morning of Oct. 19. Two men arrested last weekend on suspicion of breaking into the museum through an upstairs window and stealing the precious pieces have “partially admitted” their involvement in the heist, the Paris prosecutor said on Wednesday. The jewels remain missing.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
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
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
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