Foreign News
Nasa ‘Earthrise’ astronaut dies at 90 in plane crash
Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, who snapped one of the most famous photographs taken in outer space, has died at the age of 90.
Officials say a small plane he was flying crashed into the water north of Seattle, Washington.
Anders’ son Greg confirmed that his father was flying the small plane, and that his body was recovered on Friday afternoon. “The family is devastated. He was a great pilot. He will be missed,” a statement from the family reads.
Anders – who was a lunar module pilot on the Apollo 8 mission – took the iconic Earthrise photograph, one of the most memorable and inspirational images of Earth from space.
Taken on Christmas Eve during the 1968 mission, the first crewed space flight to leave Earth and reach the Moon, the picture shows the planet rising above the horizon from the barren lunar surface.
Anders later described it as his most significant contribution to the space programme.
The image is widely credited with motivating the global environmental movement and leading to the creation of Earth Day, an annual event to promote activism and awareness of caring for the planet.
Speaking of the moment, Anders said: “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing that we discovered was the Earth.”
Officials said on Friday that Anders crashed his plane around 11:40PDT (1940BST).
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the 90-year-old was flying a Beechcraft A A 45 – also known as a T-34. The agency said that the plane crashed about 80ft (25m) from the coast of Jones Island.
Anders also served as the backup pilot to the Apollo 11 mission, the name of the effort that led to the first Moon landing on July 24, 1969.
Following Anders’ retirement from the space programme in 1969, the former astronaut largely worked in the aerospace industry for several decades. He also served as US Ambassador to Norway for a year in the 1970s.
But he is best remembered for the Apollo 8 mission and the iconic photograph he took from space.
“In 1968, during Apollo 8, Bill Anders offered to humanity among the deepest of gifts an astronaut can give. He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves,” Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
Mark Kelly, a former astronaut who now serves as a US Senator for the state of Arizona, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that Anders “inspired me and generations of astronauts and explorers. My thoughts are with his family and friends”.
[BBC]
A car has crashed into a crowd of rugby league supporters in the eastern Australian city of Newcastle, injuring 10 people, including three children.
New South Wales police said on Saturday that two of the injured – a five-year-old girl and a 67-year-old man – were in a critical condition and the other eight were in stable condition in hospital.
Police said they had arrested the 18-year-old man driving the vehicle and were investigating what happened. They said the crash was not believed to be related to “terrorism”.
The crowd had gathered to farewell the local rugby league side, the Newcastle Knights, ahead of their grand final against the Sydney Roosters on Sunday.
Newcastle Lord Mayor Gavin Morris said the driver, a rugby league fan, had lost control of his vehicle and had been taken into custody.
“He was revving the car, he was excited, he was a supporter, he was there for the joy of the moment,” Morris told the national broadcaster ABC.
“Somehow he lost control of the car … and he’s gone into the crowd,” he added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “My thoughts are with everyone injured or involved in the horrible incident this morning in Newcastle.”
“Rugby league brings people together, and this should have been a weekend of excitement and pride for Newcastle fans,” he wrote in a social media post.
[Aljazeera]
Polls have opened in Latvia for an election taking place against the backdrop of perceived security threats from Russia and a nationwide cost-of-living squeeze.
Saturday’s vote is the first electoral test for Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs after coming to power in May this year when his predecessor resigned due to a backlash from stray drone incursions from Ukraine.
Kulbergs, whose right-wing United List party is currently polling at about 20 percent, is expected to hold onto his position, but the decline of two allies in his current coalition means he is set for a complicated negotiation over the makeup of any future government.
Polls opened at 05:00 GMT and will close at 17:00 GMT. The results are not expected to change Latvia’s pro-European and pro-Ukrainian course.
About 1.5 million people are eligible to vote in the country’s 11th parliamentary election since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Latvian politics are highly fragmented, with parties rarely seeing above 20 percent vote share and coalitions being the norm.
This year, 14 electoral lists are contesting the election, but polls indicate only seven are likely to enter parliament, with the rest expected to fail to meet the minimum 5 percent vote threshold.
Rising living costs, low wages, strains on the healthcare system and long-term population decline have all featured prominently in campaign debates.
Most parties in Latvia are pro-Ukraine; however, the populist Sovereign Power party – which says it wants Ukraine to win but argues money spent supporting Kyiv would be better spent at home – looks likely to become the country’s second-biggest party, with more than 9 percent of the vote. Most other parties have ruled out forming a coalition with Sovereign Power.
Latvia First, a pro-Ukraine and populist nationalist party currently polling at about 9 percent, could be a potential coalition partner for PM Kulbergs.
The Progressives, a pro-European social democratic party, are polling at 6 percent.
Ethnic Russians make up roughly one in four Latvian citizens, but their vote, which has traditionally been cast along identity-based lines, looks set to be made according to economic and social issues.
Latvia is the poorest of the Baltic states, and it has sharply increased its defence spending since Russia invaded Ukraine, now allocating nearly 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to defence.
[Aljazeera]
A flight from the United Arab Emirates to Israel was diverted to Saudi Arabia after issuing a distress signal, in what appeared to be a hijacking attempt, on Wednesday.
The Flydubai flight FZ1073 was diverted as it flew from Dubai to Tel Aviv through Jordanian airspace, prompting Israel to deploy warplanes, the Reuters news agency reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said one of the pilots had stabbed the other and then tried to crash the plane. He added that Israel was preparing for other “potential threats” after the incident.
There has been no official confirmation of a hijacking attempt, however.
Flydubai said an altercation had occurred on the flight deck and that all passengers were safe and accounted for. The plane was secured by on-duty crew travelling onboard, it added.
At Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk airport, where the plane landed, officials said both the plane’s captain and the first officer had been hospitalised after sustaining injuries. Both were taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk carried by the Saudi state-run Alekhbariya television.
The UAE has become a popular vacation destination for Israeli tourists since the countries normalised ties in 2020. Here’s what we know about what happened.
Footage taken onboard the plane appears to show the captain of the aircraft lying on the ground with several stab wounds, and a passenger with a bloody wound to the head.
In another video, passengers weep and cry out in distress as the aircraft shakes.
Yasmin Abukasis, the mother of one of the passengers onboard, said her daughter Miriam thought she was going to die. “The plane started to lose control,” she told journalists at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, before other pilots onboard took control of the aircraft.
Flight tracking data indicated the plane descended over 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds around two and a half hours after leaving Dubai. Flightradar24 said on X that an initial general emergency signal designated by code 7700 was issued at around 05:31 UTC and was later changed to another emergency signal with code 7500 declaring “unlawful interference”.
Passenger Dalia Shpigel told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that some people seated towards the front of the plane broke into the cockpit after the plane began to descend and they realised something was wrong.
“An hour before landing, we felt that there was no control over the plane, that it was starting to jump,” she said. “The guys saw that the plane had begun to dive and broke into the cockpit.”
Netanyahu said he later spoke to one of the Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit and overpowered one of the pilots who was reportedly trying to sabotage the aircraft’s systems.
“I salute these heroes who demonstrated extraordinary resourcefulness and courage,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “They saved many lives and prevented a major disaster.”
Timeline of events
03:05 – Flight FZ1073 takes off from Dubai05:21 – Altitude fluctuations begin05:22 – Aircraft drops more than 14,000 ft in under 30 seconds05:31 – Signal from aircraft changes to 7700 (general emergency)05:38 – Signal changes to 7500 (unlawful interference)06:45 – Aircraft lands at Tabuk Regional Airport
[Aljazeera]
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