NASA launches revolutionary space telescope to give glimpse of early universe

Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket, with NASA James Webb Space Telescope onboard, launches from European Spaceport, the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana December 25, 2021 in a still image from video. (REUTERS)
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Updated 26 December 2021
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NASA launches revolutionary space telescope to give glimpse of early universe

  • James Webb Space Telescope built to give world first glimpse of the universe as it existed when earliest galaxies formed
  • Coasting through space for two more weeks, Webb telescope will reach its destination in solar orbit 1 million miles from Earth

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, built to give the world its first glimpse of the universe as it existed when the earliest galaxies formed, was launched by rocket early Saturday from the northeastern coast of South America, opening a new era of astronomy.
The revolutionary $9 billion infrared telescope, described by NASA as the premiere space-science observatory of the next decade, was carried aloft inside the cargo bay of an Ariane 5 rocket that blasted off at about 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT) from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) launch base in French Guiana.
The flawless Christmas Day launch, with a countdown conducted in French, was carried live on a joint NASA-ESA webcast. The liftoff capped a project decades in the making, coming to fruition after years of repeated delays and cost over-runs.
“From a tropical rain forest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe,” a NASA commentator said as the two-stage launch vehicle, fitted with double solid-rocket boosters, roared off its launch pad into cloudy skies.
After a 27-minute, hypersonic ride into space, the 14,000-pound instrument was released from the upper stage of the French-built rocket about 865 miles above the Earth, and should gradually unfurl to nearly the size of a tennis court over the next 13 days as it sails onward on its own.
Live video captured by a camera mounted on the rocket’s upper stage showed the Webb gliding gently away after it was jettisoned, drawing cheers and applause from jubilant flight engineers in the mission control center.
Flight controllers confirmed moments later, as the Webb’s solar-energy array was deployed, that its power supply was working.
Coasting through space for two more weeks, the Webb telescope will reach its destination in solar orbit 1 million miles from Earth — about four times farther away than the moon. And Webb’s special orbital path will keep it in constant alignment with the Earth as the planet and telescope circle the sun in tandem.
By comparison, Webb’s 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, orbits the Earth from 340 miles away, passing in and out of the planet’s shadow every 90 minutes.
Named after the man who oversaw NASA through most of its formative decade of the 1960s, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than Hubble and is expected to transform scientists’ understanding of the universe and our place in it.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, striking a spiritual tone as he addressed the launch webcast by video link, quoted the Bible and hailed the new telescope as a “time machine” that will “capture the light from the very beginning of the creation.”

COSMOLOGICAL HISTORY LESSON
Webb mainly will view the cosmos in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to peer through clouds of gas and dust where stars are being born, while Hubble has operated primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.
The new telescope’s primary mirror — consisting of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-coated beryllium metal — also has a much bigger light-collecting area, enabling it to observe objects at greater distances, thus farther back into time, than Hubble or any other telescope.
That, astronomers say, will bring into view a glimpse of the cosmos never previously seen — dating to just 100 million years after the Big Bang, the theoretical flashpoint that set in motion the expansion of the observable universe an estimated 13.8 billion years ago.
Hubble’s view reached back to roughly 400 million years following the Big Bang, a period just after the very first galaxies — sprawling clusters of stars, gases and other interstellar matter — are believed to have taken shape.
While Hubble caught glimmers of “toddler” galaxies, Webb will reveal those objects in greater detail while also capturing even fainter, earlier “infant” galaxies, astrophysicist Eric Smith, NASA’s Webb program scientist, told Reuters hours before the launch.
Aside from examining the formation of the earliest stars and galaxies, astronomers are eager to study super-massive black holes believed to occupy the centers of distant galaxies.
Webb’s instruments also make it ideal to search for evidence of potentially life-supporting atmospheres around scores of newly documented exoplanets — celestial bodies orbiting distant stars — and to observe worlds much closer to home, such as Mars and Saturn’s icy moon Titan.
The telescope is an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies. Northrop Grumman Corp. was the primary contractor. The Arianespace launch vehicle is part of the European contribution.
“The world gave us this telescope, and we handed it back to the world today,” Gregory Robinson, Webb program director for NASA told reporters at a post-launch briefing.
Webb was developed at a cost of $8.8 billion, with operational expenses projected to bring its total price tag https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nasa-telescope/northrop-ceo-grill... to about $9.66 billion, far higher than planned when NASA was previously aiming for a 2011 launch.
Astronomical operation of the telescope, to be managed from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, is expected to begin in the summer of 2022, following about six months of alignment and calibration of Webb’s mirrors and instruments.
It is then that NASA expects to release the initial batch of images captured by Webb. Webb is designed to last up to 10 years.


Germany scraps funding for sea rescues of migrants

Updated 3 sec ago
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Germany scraps funding for sea rescues of migrants

“I don’t think it’s the foreign office’s job to finance this kind of sea rescue,” Wadephul said
“We need to be active where the need is greatest“

BERLIN: Germany is cutting financial support for charities that rescue migrants at risk of drowning in the Mediterranean, saying it will redirect resources to addressing conditions in source countries that spur people to leave.

For decades, migrants driven by war and poverty have made perilous crossings to reach Europe’s southern borders, with thousands estimated to die every year in their bid to reach a continent grown increasingly hostile to migration.

“Germany is committed to being humane and will help where people suffer but I don’t think it’s the foreign office’s job to finance this kind of sea rescue,” Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told a news conference.

“We need to be active where the need is greatest,” he added, mentioning the humanitarian emergency in war-shattered Sudan.

Under the previous left-leaning government, Germany began paying around 2 million euros ($2.34 million) annually to non-governmental organizations carrying out rescues of migrant-laden boats in trouble at sea.

For them, it has been a key source of funds: Germany’s Sea-Eye, which said rescue charities have saved 175,000 lives since 2015, received around 10 percent of its total income of around 3.2 million euros from the German government.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives won February’s national election after a campaign promising to curb irregular migration, which some voters in Europe’s largest economy see as being out of control.

Even though the overall numbers have been falling for several years, many Germans blame migration-related fears for the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the second largest party in parliament.

Many experts say that migration levels are mainly driven by economic and humanitarian emergencies in the source countries, with the official cold shoulder in destination countries having had little impact in deterring migrants.

Despite this, German officials suggest that sea rescues only incentivise people to risk the sometimes deadly crossings.

“The (government) support made possible extra missions and very concretely saved lives,” said Gorden Isler, Sea-Eye’s chairperson. “We might now have to stay in harbor despite emergencies.”

The opposition Greens, who controlled the foreign office when the subsidies were introduced, criticized the move.

“This will exacerbate the humanitarian crisis and deepen human suffering,” said joint floor leader Britta Hasselmann.

Mass shooting in gang-plagued Mexican state leaves 12 dead and more injured

Updated 26 June 2025
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Mass shooting in gang-plagued Mexican state leaves 12 dead and more injured

  • The attorney general’s office in Guanajuato said some 20 others were hospitalized
  • Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the victims included children

MEXICO CITY: At least 12 people were killed, including a teenager, and more wounded in a Tuesday night shooting in the central Mexican city of Irapuato, authorities said on Wednesday.

The attorney general’s office in Guanajuato, the violence-plagued state where Irapuato is located, said some 20 others were hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier on Wednesday that the victims included children, although the attorney general’s office later confirmed only one casualty was a minor, aged 17.

“It is very unfortunate what happened. An investigation is under way,” Sheinbaum said.

Local media reported the shooting happened during an evening party celebrating a Catholic holiday, the Nativity of John the Baptist.

A video circulating on social media showed people dancing in the patio of a housing complex while a band played in the background, before gunfire erupted. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the video.

Guanajuato has been for many years one of the most violent regions in the country.

On Tuesday, five other people were killed in other parts of the state, according to the attorney general’s office.


29 pupils taking high school exams killed in Central Africa crush

Updated 26 June 2025
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29 pupils taking high school exams killed in Central Africa crush

  • In the ensuing panic, supervisors and students tried to flee, some jumping from the first floor of the school
  • “I would like to express my solidarity and compassion to the parents of the deceased candidates, to the educational staff, to the students,” Touadera said

BANGUI: Twenty-nine students taking their high school exams in the Central African Republic died in a stampede sparked by an exploding power transformer, the health ministry told AFP Thursday.

Just over 5,300 students were sitting the second day of the baccalaureate exams at the time of the explosion early Wednesday afternoon in Bangui, the capital of the deeply poor nation.

In the ensuing panic, supervisors and students tried to flee, some jumping from the first floor of the school.

The injured were transported by ambulance, on the back of pickup trucks or by motorbike taxi, AFP journalists saw.

“I would like to express my solidarity and compassion to the parents of the deceased candidates, to the educational staff, to the students,” President Faustin Archange Touadera said in a video published on his party’s Facebook page.

Touadera, who is attending a summit of the Gavi vaccine alliance in Brussels, also announced three days of national mourning.

According to a document circulating on social media and authenticated by the health ministry, 29 deaths were registered by hospitals in the city.

“The hospital was overwhelmed by people to the point of obstructing caregivers and ambulances, a health ministry source stated.

UN peacekeepers, police and other security were seen around the Barthelemy Boganda high school and hospitals.

Education Minister Aurelien-Simplice Kongbelet-Zingas said in a statement Wednesday that “measures will be taken quickly to shed light on the circumstances of this incident.”

The minister added that a further statement would follow regarding selection of a date for the students to resume their exams program.

The Republican Bloc for the Defense of the Constitution (BRDC), a coalition of opposition parties, condemned what it termed “the irresponsibility of the authorities in place, who have failed in their duty to ensure the safety of students and school infrastructure.”

The CAR is among the poorest countries in the world and, since independence from France in 1960, has endured a succession of coups, authoritarian rulers and civil wars.

The latest civil war started more than a decade ago. The government has secured the main cities and violence has subsided in recent years.

But fighting occasionally erupts in remote regions between rebels and the national army, which is backed by Wagner mercenaries and Rwandan troops.

Municipal, legislative, and presidential elections are scheduled for August and December of this year but UN experts are calling for urgent institutional reform of the electoral authority before the polls and for “transparent internal governance,” as tensions between the government and the opposition intensify.


Kremlin says no date yet for next round of Ukraine peace talks

Updated 26 June 2025
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Kremlin says no date yet for next round of Ukraine peace talks

  • Peskov said Russia was in favor of continued US efforts to mediate
  • They have made no progress toward a ceasefire

MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Thursday there was no progress yet toward setting a date for the next round of peace talks with Ukraine, Interfax news agency reported.

Another agency, TASS, quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Russia was in favor of continued US efforts to mediate.

Resuming negotiations after a gap of more than three years, Russia and Ukraine held face-to-face talks in Istanbul on May 16 and June 2 that led to a series of prisoner exchanges and the return of the bodies of dead soldiers.

But they have made no progress toward a ceasefire which Ukraine, with Western backing, has been pressing for.


16 dead, thousands of businesses destroyed after Kenya protests

Updated 26 June 2025
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16 dead, thousands of businesses destroyed after Kenya protests

  • The marches had been called to mark one year since anti-tax demonstrations
  • “What unfolded yesterday was not a protest. It was terrorism disguised as dissent,” Kipchumba Murkomen, interior cabinet secretary, said

NAIROBI: At least 16 people died in protests across Kenya on Wednesday, Amnesty International said Thursday, as businesses and residents were left to clean up the devastation in the capital and beyond.

The marches had been called to mark one year since anti-tax demonstrations that peaked when a huge crowd stormed parliament and dozens were killed by security forces.

The anniversary marches began peacefully Wednesday but descended into chaos as young men held running battles with police, lit fires, and ripped up pavements to use as projectiles.

“What unfolded yesterday was not a protest. It was terrorism disguised as dissent,” Kipchumba Murkomen, interior cabinet secretary, said in a televised speech.

“We condemn the criminal anarchists who in the name of peaceful demonstrations unleashed a wave of violence, looting, sexual assault and destruction upon our people,” he added.

In Nairobi’s business district, the epicenter of the unrest, AFP journalists found entire shopping centers and thousands of businesses destroyed, many still smoldering.

At least two banks had been broken into, while businesses ranging from supermarkets to small electronics and clothing stores were reduced to ashes or ransacked by looters.

“When we came we found the whole premise burnt down,” said Raphael Omondi, 36, owner of a print shop, adding that he had lost machines worth $150,000.

“There were guys stealing, and after stealing they set the whole premises on fire... If this is what protest is, it is not worth it.”

“They looted everything... I do not know where to start,” said Maureen Chepkemoi, 32, owner of a perfume store.

“To protest is not bad but why are you coming to protest inside my shop? It is wicked,” she added.

Several business owners told AFP that looting had started in the afternoon after the government ordered TV and radio stations to stop broadcasting live images of the protests.

Amnesty International’s Kenya director Irungu Houghton said the death toll had risen to 16.

Rights group Vocal Africa, which was documenting the deaths and helping affected families at a Nairobi morgue, said at least four bodies had been brought there so far.

“All of them had signs of gunshots, so we suspect they all died of gunshot wounds,” its head Hussein Khalid told AFP.

“We condemn this excessive use of force,” he said. “We believe that the police could have handled themselves with restraint.”

“You come out to protest police killings, and they kill even more.”

A coalition of rights groups had earlier said at least 400 people were wounded, with 83 in serious condition in hospital. It recorded protests in 23 counties around Kenya.

Emergency responders reported multiple gunshot wounds, and there were unconfirmed local media reports that police had opened fire on protesters, particularly in towns outside the capital.

There is deep resentment against President William Ruto, who came to power in 2022 promising rapid economic progress.

Many are disillusioned by continued economic stagnation, corruption and high taxes, as well as police brutality after a teacher was killed in custody earlier this month.