PASADENA (United States): Nasa’s Mars 2020 rover will head off for the Red Planet next year. But like Voyager, Galileo and Cassini before it, the mission’s epic journey began in a “clean room” in California. One of two ultra-sterile labs used for spacecraft assembly at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
SANTIAGO: Thousands of protesters clashed with police Friday in Santiago in a fresh round of anti-government demonstrations that erupted more than two months ago in Chile. The rally took place in the Plaza Italia, which has since October 18 becomes the epicentre of massive citizen protests against President Sebastian Pinera’s
PARIS: The head of a hardline French trade union on Friday vowed to press on with a crippling strike that has cast a shadow over Christmas celebrations, with the stoppages entering a fourth week and becoming the longest-lasting such action since the 1980s. The strike against pension reforms championed by
GAZA CITY (Palestinian Territories): Hundreds of Palestinians took part in protests along the Gaza-Israel border Friday, the last of the Hamas-backed demonstrations until March. Amid heavy rain and wind, the rallies had the lowest turnout in months, with tensions far lower than in previous weeks and no live fire by
BEIRUT: Civilians on Friday packed a road leading out of a flash point town in north-west Syria, where two weeks of heightened regime and Russian bombardment has displaced 235,000 people. Pick-up trucks carrying mattresses, clothes and house-hold appliances ferried entire families out of southern Idlib province, most heading towards safer
MOSCOW: Russia’s defence minister told President Vladimir Putin on Friday the first Avangard hypersonic missiles had been put into service, in a move hailed as a major coup for Moscow. Analysts say Russia is the first country to put into combat service intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with hypersonic weapons that
JAKARTA: Hundreds of Muslims in Indonesia held a protest Friday against China’s treatment of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang in front of China’s embassy in Jakarta. The rally was organised by hardline Islamic group the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) but was attended by members of other Muslim communities under heavy security.
BANGKOK: A Thai Navy Seal who aided with the rescue of a youth football team trapped in a flooded cave last year has died from an infection he contracted during the dramatic recovery mission. Petty Officer Beirut Pakbara fell ill with a blood infection while working to retrieve the 12
MOGADISHU: A massive car bomb exploded in a busy area of the Somali capital Mogadishu yesterday, leaving at least 76 people dead and scores injured, an ambulance official said. The blast occurred in a busy area of the city where traffic is heavy because of a security checkpoint and a
FRANKFURT AM MAIN: German police on Thursday stopped an inebriated 27-year old man who was caught riding an electric scooter on a motorway. Police in the western city of Cologne said they received numerous calls at around 2.20am reporting a man driving an e-scooter on the hard shoulder of the