BENGALURU: India launched its first space docking mission on Monday, on an Indian-made rocket, in an attempt to become the fourth country to achieve the advanced technological feat.
The mission, called Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Andhra Pradesh state at 1630 GMT aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) “workhorse” PSLV rocket. After around 15 minutes, the mission director called the launch successful after the spacecraft reached an altitude of around 470 km.
The mission is seen as pivotal for future space endeavours, including satellite servicing and the operation of the country’s planned space station.
In-space docking technology is crucial when multiple rocket launches are required to achieve shared mission objectives.
The Indian mission involves deploying two small spacecraft, each weighing about 220 kilograms, into a 470-km circular orbit. It will also demonstrate the transfer of electric power between the docked spacecraft, a capability vital for applications such as in-space robotics, composite spacecraft control and payload operations following undocking.
Each satellite carries advanced payloads, including an imaging system and a radiation-monitoring device designed to measure electron and proton radiation levels in space, providing critical data for future human spaceflight missions.
ISRO Chairman S. Somanath said the actual testing of the docking technology could take place in about a week’s time and indicated a nominal date of around Jan. 7.
“The rocket has placed the satellites in the right orbit,” he said. A successful demonstration would place India alongside the United States, Russia and China as the only countries to have developed and tested this capability. In a first for India, the rocket and the satellites were integrated and tested at a private company called Ananth Technologies, rather than at a government body.
“Display of this technology is not just about being able to join a rare group of countries who own it, it also opens up the market for ISRO to be the launch partner for various global missions that need docking facilities or assembly in space,” said astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhary of Ashoka University.
The fourth stage of the PSLV, which usually turns into space debris, has been converted into an active un-crewed space laboratory. The last stage of the rocket has been repurposed to become an orbital laboratory and will be used for various experiments.
“The PSLV Orbital Experiment Module (POEM) is a practical solution deployed by ISRO that allows Indian start-ups, academic institutions, and research organizations to test their space technologies without the need to launch entire satellites. By making this platform accessible, we are reducing entry barriers and enabling a wider range of entities to contribute to the space sector,” said Pawan Goenka, chairman of India’s space regulatory body.
India launches its first space docking mission
https://arab.news/cgptc
India launches its first space docking mission
- The mission lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s PSLV rocket
- The mission is seen as pivotal for future space endeavours, including satellite servicing and India’s planned space station
India shuts over half of Kashmir tourist spots in security review
- Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors have increased since the attack on holiday-makers
- India’s Jammu and Kashmir territory has decided to shut 48 of the 87 tourist destinations in Kashmir
SRINAGAR, India: More than half of the tourist destinations in India’s insurgency-torn Kashmir region have been closed to the public from Tuesday, according to a government order reviewed by Reuters, in a bid to tighten security after last week’s attack on holiday-makers.
The assailants segregated men, asked their names and targeted Hindus before shooting them at close range in the Pahalgam area, killing 26 people, officials and survivors said.
India has identified two of the three attackers as “terrorists” from Pakistan waging a violent revolt in Muslim-majority Kashmir. Pakistan has denied any role and called for a neutral probe.
Hindu-majority India accuses Islamic Pakistan of funding and encouraging militancy in Kashmir, the Himalayan region both nations claim in full but rule in part. Islamabad says it only provides moral and diplomatic support to a Kashmiri demand for self-determination.
Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors have increased since the attack, along with calls in India for action against Pakistan.
Delhi and Islamabad have taken a raft of measures against each other since the Kashmir attack. India has suspended the Indus Waters Treaty – an important river-sharing pact. Pakistan has closed its airspace to Indian airlines.
The government of India’s Jammu and Kashmir territory has decided to shut 48 of the 87 tourist destinations in Kashmir and enhanced security at the remaining ones, according to a government document reviewed by Reuters.
No time period was given. Government officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Nestled in the Himalayas with lofty peaks, picturesque valleys and grand Mughal-era gardens, Kashmir has been emerging as India’s tourism hotspot as violence there has waned in recent years.
But the Pahalgam attack has left panic-stricken tourists seeking an early exit at the start of the busy summer season.
Firing has also increased along the 740-km de facto border separating the Indian and Pakistani areas of Kashmir.
On Tuesday, for the fifth consecutive day, the Indian army said it had responded to “unprovoked” small arms fire from multiple Pakistan army posts around midnight.
It gave no further details and reported no casualties. The Pakistani military did not respond to a request for comment.
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told Reuters on Monday that a military incursion by India was imminent and it had reinforced its forces in preparation.
China blames US tariffs for halting Boeing plane deliveries
- Beijing spokesperson: The levies had ‘disrupted the international air transport market’
- Boeing’s CEO confirmed last week that China had stopped accepting new aircraft due to the trade war
BEIJING: China on Tuesday blamed US tariffs for Beijing’s decision to stop accepting new aircraft from aviation giant Boeing, saying the levies had “disrupted the international air transport market.”
“The United States’ wielding of tariffs has severely impacted the stability of the global industrial chain and supply chain,” China’s commerce ministry said in a statement.
“Relevant Chinese airlines and Boeing in the United States have suffered greatly,” a spokesperson said.
New US tariffs have reached 145 percent on many Chinese products, while Beijing has responded with fresh 125 percent duties on imports from the United States.
And Boeing’s CEO confirmed last week that China had stopped accepting new aircraft due to the trade war.
In a televised interview with CNBC, Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg said Chinese customers had “stopped taking delivery of aircraft due to the tariff environment,” adding that if the halt continued, the aviation giant would soon market the jets to other carriers.
Boeing had planned to deliver around 50 aircraft to China in 2025, said Ortberg, adding that the company wouldn’t “wait too long” to send the jets to other customers.
US President Donald Trump also criticized Beijing for backing out of the deal, saying Boeing should “default China for not taking the beautifully finished planes.”
Beijing’s commerce ministry on Tuesday hit back, saying “many companies have been unable to carry out normal trade and investment activities” due to Trump’s tariffs.
“China is willing to continue to support the normal business cooperation between the two countries’ enterprises,” its spokesperson said.
Beijing “hopes that the United States can listen to the voices of enterprises and create a stable and predictable environment for their normal trade and investment activities,” they added.
5-year-old girl and her parents among the dead in a car attack at a Filipino festival in Vancouver
- The family left behind a 16-year-old son who stayed home to finish his homework
- Mourners including Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney remembered the dead at vigils before Monday’s national election
VANCOUVER: As members of the Le family headed out the door to enjoy music, food and camaraderie at a Filipino heritage festival in Vancouver, British Columbia, their 16-year-old son decided to instead stay home to finish homework.
Then news began arriving of a car plowing through the crowd.
The teen’s father, Richard Le, his stepmother Linh Hoang and his 5-year-old sister Katie Le, were among 11 people killed, said Richard Le’s brother, Toan Le, in the world’s latest vehicle ramming attack.
The teenage boy is in a state of shock, Le said. His sister Katie Le was nearing graduation from kindergarten and was described as a vibrant and joyful child in a GoFundMe page posted by Toan Le.
The black Audi SUV sped down a closed, food-truck-lined street Saturday evening and struck people attending the Lapu Lapu Day festival, which celebrates Datu Lapu-Lapu, an Indigenous chieftain who stood up to Spanish explorers in the 16th century.
Thirty-two people were hurt. Seven were in critical condition and three were in serious condition at hospitals Monday, Vancouver police spokesperson Steve Addison said.
Those killed include nine females and two males ranging in age from 5 to 65, according to Addison. All of them lived in the Vancouver metropolitan area, he said.
Mourners including Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney remembered the dead at vigils before Monday’s national election.
The crash came just two days before another vehicle smashed through a building in a town outside of Springfield, Illinois, during an after-school program, killing four children and injuring several others, police said.
A ‘significant history’ of interactions with police
Kai-Ji Adam Lo, 30, was charged with eight counts of second-degree murder in a video appearance before a judge Sunday, said Damienne Darby, spokeswoman for British Columbia prosecutors. Lo has not yet entered a plea.
A woman who answered the phone Monday at the home of Lo’s mother, Lisa Lo, said that the mother was too distraught to speak to a reporter.
Investigators said more charges were possible. They said Lo had a history of mental health issues. Interim Police Chief Steve Rai said there was no indication of a motive but that the suspect has “a significant history of interactions with police and health care professionals related to mental health.”
Lo had contact with police the day before the vehicle attack in a neighboring jurisdiction, Addison said Monday.
“That contact was not criminal in nature and it did not rise to the level where a mental health intervention was required,” Addison said.
The Associated Press could not immediately reach an attorney representing Lo. Online records showed that Vancouver Provincial Court issued a publication ban barring the release of details about the legal case against Lo. Such bans are common in Canada to protect the rights of the accused to a fair trial as well as the privacy of crime victims.
Lo’s brother, 31-year-old Alexander Lo, was the victim of a homicide at his home last year. Kai-ji Lo started an online fundraising effort, since deleted, seeking donations to bury his brother.
He said he was “burdened with remorse for not spending more time with him,” according to an archived version of the webpage. Their mother had taken out significant loans to build Alexander a home, leaving her financially strained.
Screaming and bodies hitting a vehicle
Noel Johansen was searching for dessert at the festival with his wife Jenifer Darbellay, an artist, and their two children, ages 7 and 15, when the attack happened. They lived only about a block and a half away and were visiting for the third time.
“It hit us before we knew. I was falling in slow motion trying to save my head from smashing in the pavement,” Johansen said. “It’s like a giant tidal wave.”
Darbellay, 50, was killed, while the rest of the family survived. Johansen described her as selfless, creative and empathetic.
Johansen said the day before she was killed, the couple was talking about politics and the many situations in which people seek revenge toward the person who hurt them.
He said she told him: “That’s the whole problem. We need to forgive the perpetrators of the crimes that are committed against us.”
Johansen said that he’s trying to honor that philosophy.
Hours before the attack, Makayla Bailey saw her friend Kira Salim, a teacher and school counselor, for the first time in a while and Salim had apologized for not being out and about more.
“I told them, ‘It’s OK it’s been crappy out, the weather sucks, summer’s coming so I’m sure we’ll see each other a lot more,’” Bailey said, recalling in an interview Salim’s drag king performances that audiences loved.
“I didn’t think it would be the last conversation we would ever have,” said Bailey.
Salim was among those killed in the attack, according to the New Westminster School District, where Salim worked.
Investigators were collecting evidence at the scene Monday and had executed a search warrant at a Vancouver property, Addison said. Investigators were also going through bystander video from the scene.
Officials will review the situation, and it may change how they approach such events, Addison said.
“This was intended to be a safe, fun, family-friendly community block party for people to celebrate their community and culture,” Addison said. “The actions of one person stole that away from them.”
Spain and Portugal scramble to restore electricity after a still-unexplained power outage
- Many city residents, including in Spain’s capital of Madrid, went to sleep Monday in total darkness
- By 5 a.m. on Tuesday, the Spanish electricity operator, Red Eléctrica, said that more than 92 percent of energy demand had been restored
BARCELONA: Officials in Spain and Portugal were racing to restore electricity early Tuesday after a huge power outage that grounded flights, paralyzed metro systems, disrupted mobile communications and shut down ATMs.
Before dawn, power was gradually returning to several regions across Spain and Portugal as the nations reeled from the still-unexplained widespread blackout that had turned airports and train stations into campgrounds for stranded travelers.
By 5 a.m., the Spanish electricity operator, Red Eléctrica, said that more than 92 percent of energy demand had been restored. Monday night, many city residents, including in Spain’s capital of Madrid, went to sleep in total darkness.
The normally illuminated cathedral spires of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia Basilica became indistinguishable from the night sky. Streets remained deserted even in neighborhoods where lights flickered back on, as people stayed home after a day of chaos.
“We have a long night ahead,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said when he addressed the European nation late Monday. “We are working with the goal of having power restored to the entire country.”
In Madrid, cheers erupted from balconies where the electricity had returned.
But more than 16 hours after the outage first hit, people all over the Iberian Peninsula were still struggling to call their loved ones, hampered by the loss of mobile phone service.
Stranded overnight at train stations and airports
As metro service stopped, train stations cleared out and shops and offices closed, and thousands of people spilled onto the streets of Madrid. Some resorted to hitchhiking. Others walked hours just to get home.
Spanish national TV broadcast images of commuters clambering out of stalled trains in unlit tunnels.
Emergency workers in Spain said they rescued some 35,000 passengers stranded along railways and underground. By 11 p.m., there were still 11 trains backed up by the power loss awaiting evacuation, Sánchez said.
Uncertainty about when power might return fueled frustration and anxiety in major cities.
“We feel unsafe, unsure, we don’t know what to do,” said Curt Muriel, a French tourist with her husband and two kids who fled the darkened subway and managed to hail a rare cab to Madrid’s city center from the airport.
The blackout turned sports centers, train stations and airports into makeshift refuges late Monday.
“We were in the north of Portugal and did get any notifications until we got here because of Internet outage,” said Ian Cannons, a British tourist trying to get home who was forced to spend the night in Lisbon’s airport. “We can’t book any hotels. Nothing.”
The Barcelona municipality distributed 1,200 cots to indoor recreation centers to host residents with no way to get home and international travelers left in limbo. All over Barcelona and Madrid, people were sleeping on train station benches and floors.
Cash and radios in high demand
As Internet and mobile phone services blinkered offline across Spain and Portugal, battery-powered radios flew off the shelves. Those fortunate enough to find service shared whatever news updates they could with strangers on the street.
Lines snaked out of the few supermarkets running on backup generators in Barcelona and Lisbon as people stocked up on dried goods, water and battery-powered flashlights and candles. Clerks counted euros by hand, since many cash registers had stopped working.
Hector Emperador, picking his kids up from school in Barcelona, said he resorted to raiding his sons’ piggybank to ensure he had cash on hand after ATMs and some online-banking services shut down. “The coronavirus pandemic will be nothing compared to this,” he said.
Few gas stations were operating, sending the drivers who dared navigate without traffic lights scrambling for fuel. Residents with electric door keys found themselves locked out of their homes.
The many inconveniences became a threat to survival for those with medical needs like refrigeration for insulin or power for dialysis machines and oxygen concentrators. Some hospitals — but not all — stayed open with the help of generators.
Cause Unknown
Officials did not say what caused the blackout, the second such serious European power outage in as many months after a fire at Heathrow Airport shut down Britain’s busiest travel hub on March 20.
They said there was little precedent for this kind of widespread electric failure across all of the Iberian Peninsula, with a combined population of some 60 million. Across the Mediterranean Sea, Spain’s Canary Islands, Balearic Islands and the territories of Ceuta and Melilla were spared.
“We have never had a complete collapse of the system,” Prime Minister Sánchez said, explaining how Spain’s power grid lost 15 gigawatts, the equivalent of 60 percent of its national demand, in just five seconds.
In his televised address late Monday, Sánchez said that authorities were still investigating what happened. Portugal’s National Cybersecurity Center threw cold water on feverish speculation about foul play, saying there was no sign that the outage resulted from a cyberattack.
Speaking to reporters in Brussels, Teresa Ribera, an executive vice president of the European Commission, also ruled out sabotage. Nonetheless, the outage “is one of the most serious episodes recorded in Europe in recent times,” she said.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals win an election upended by Trump
The Liberals are projected to win more of Parliament’s 343 seats than the Conservatives, though it wasn’t clear yet if they would win an outright majority, which would allow them to pass legislation without needing help.
The Liberals looked headed for a crushing defeat until the American president started attacking Canada’s economy and threatening its sovereignty, suggesting it should become the 51st state. Trump’s actions infuriated Canadians and stoked a surge in nationalism that helped the Liberals flip the election narrative and win a fourth-straight term in power.
The opposition Conservative Party’s leader, Pierre Poilievre, hoped to make the election a referendum on former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose popularity declined toward the end of his decade in power as food and housing prices rose.
But Trump attacked, Trudeau resigned and Carney, a two-time central banker, became the Liberal Party’s leader and prime minister.
Trump was even trolling Canada on election day, suggesting on social media that he was in fact on the ballot and repeating that Canada should become the 51st state — an assertion that Canadians find deeply insulting. He also erroneously claimed that the US subsidizes Canada, writing, “It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!”
Poilievre, who has been criticized for not taking a firmer stance against Trump, responded with a post of his own.
“President Trump, stay out of our election. The only people who will decide the future of Canada are Canadians at the ballot box,” he posted hours before polls closed. “Canada will always be proud, sovereign and independent and we will NEVER be the 51st state.”
Until Trump won a second term and began threatening Canada’s economy and sovereignty, the Liberals looked headed for defeat. But Trump’s truculence has infuriated many Canadians, leading many to cancel US vacations, refuse to buy American goods and possibly even vote early. A record 7.3 million Canadians cast ballots before election day.
Trump’s attacks also put Poilievre and the opposition Conservative Party on the defensive and led to a surge in nationalism that helped the Liberals flip the election narrative.
“The Americans want to break us so they can own us,” Carney said recently, laying out what he saw as the election’s stakes. “Those aren’t just words. That’s what’s at risk.”
Election day came as the country grappled with the fallout from a deadly weekend attack at a Vancouver street fair that led to the suspension of campaigning for several hours. Police ruled out terrorism and said the suspect is a local man with a history of mental health issues.
Trump became the main issue
Poilievre and his wife walked hand-in-hand to vote in their district in the nation’s capital, Ottawa. “Get out to vote for a change,” he implored voters.
Sisters Laiqa and Mahira Shoaib said they did just that, with Laiqa, a 27-year-old health care worker, voting for the progressive New Democratic Party, and Mahira, a 25-year-old bank worker, backing the Conservatives.
The sisters, who immigrated from Pakistan a decade ago, said the economy has worsened and job opportunities have dried up under Liberal rule.
After the sisters voted at a community center in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, Mahira Shoaib said she thinks Poilievre is best equipped to improve Canada’s finances.
“He is business-minded, and that’s what we need right now,” she said.
After Trump became the election’s central issue, Poilievre’s similarities to the bombastic American president might have cost him.
Reid Warren, a Toronto resident, said he voted Liberal because Poilievre “sounds like mini-Trump to me.” And he said Trump’s tariffs are a worry.
“Canadians coming together from, you know, all the shade being thrown from the States is great, but it’s definitely created some turmoil, that’s for sure,” he said.
“He appeals to the same sense of grievance,” Canadian historian Robert Bothwell said of the Conservative leader. “It’s like Trump standing there saying, ‘I am your retribution.’”
“The Liberals ought to pay him,” Bothwell added, referring to the American president. “Trump talking is not good for the Conservatives.”
Foreign policy hadn’t dominated a Canadian election as much since 1988 when, ironically, free trade with the United States was the prevailing issue.
Big challenges await the Liberals
Carney and the Liberals cleared a big hurdle in winning a fourth-straight term, but they have daunting tasks ahead.
In addition to the sweeping US tariffs on Canadian goods, Canada has been dealing with a cost-of-living crisis for some time. And more than 75 percent of its exports go to the US, so Trump’s tariffs threat and his desire to get North American automakers to move Canada’s production south could severely damage the Canadian economy.
