Each time SpaceX’s Starship system leaps off the launchpad, it unleashes an unmistakable roar over South Texas that heralds the most powerful rocket ever built. Its 33 engines boost the spacecraft, which could eventually carry NASA astronauts to the moon’s surface, on a supersonic journey headed for space. But the first two test flights ended in explosions in 2023. SpaceX doesn’t regard ...
German authorities have been tracking down the former members of the Red Army Faction (RAF), a now-defunct Cold War-era militant group, who have been on the run for nearly 30 years. Dubbed the “RAF pensioners” by German media and among Europe’s most wanted people, the female member of a fugitive trio was arrested last month in a Berlin neighborhood where she had been living an ...
Iceland’s world-famous Blue Lagoon and the nearby town of Grindavik are under evacuation following a volcanic eruption in the country’s Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland’s public broadcaster RÚV reported Saturday. Lava appeared to be flowing rapidly towards north of Grindavík, just as it did during the eruption on February 8, RÚV said citing the Icelandic Met Office. “The fissure is about three ...
Scientist Dr. Randal Voss gets the occasional reminder that he’s working with a kind of superstar. When he does outreach events with his laboratory, he encounters people who are keen to meet his research subjects: aquatic salamanders called axolotls. The amphibians’ fans tell Voss that they know the animals from the internet, or from caricatures or stuffed animals, exclaiming, “‘They’re ...
A Hong Kong court on Saturday sentenced 12 people to between 54 and 82 months in prison over the storming of the city’s legislature council building during a pro-democracy protest in 2019, the city’s public broadcaster RTHK said. RTHK said the defendants were convicted of rioting on July 1, 2019, when a large group of protesters smashed through glass doors ...
Former President Jair Bolsonaro presented top Brazilian military leaders with a plan to stage a coup after he lost the 2022 election, newly released court documents have alleged. The country’s Supreme Court released the testimonies from former army commander Marco Antonio Freire Gomes and former air force commander Carlos de Almeida Baptista Jr. to the Brazilian Federal Police on Friday. Bolsonaro ...
Polls in the world’s largest democracy India will open on April 19, the country’s election commissioner announced on Saturday, setting the stage for a nationwide election expected to see Prime Minister Narendra Modi clinch a rare third consecutive term. An estimated 960 million people in a country of 1.4 billion are eligible to vote in the widely anticipated polls that ...
Russia says it killed large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers with a so-called “vacuum bomb”, a powerful munition that sucks in oxygen from the surroundings to sustain an explosion. The deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces told Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu during a meeting that up to 300 soldiers were killed “as a result of ...
As deadly fighting between Israel and Hamas continues, so too does a dire humanitarian crisis in the area. At least 1,200 people have been killed in Israel and, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, more than 31,000 people have been killed in Gaza after Hamas launched unprecedented attacks on Israel October 7. Subsequent airstrikes have overwhelmed local hospitals and internally displaced an estimated ...
Populist firebrand Geert Wilders has conceded that he will not become the next prime minister of the Netherlands because his potential coalition backers have refused to back him. Wilders’ far-right Freedom party (PVV) sent shockwaves through Europe after coming first in Dutch parliamentary elections late last year, securing 23.5% of the vote and 37 seats out of 150 available in ...