UNITED STATES
Voter ID law upheld
A federal judge on Thursday upheld provisions of new Arizona laws that would require counties to verify the status of registered voters who have not provided proof of citizenship and cross-check voter registration information with government databases. District Judge Susan Bolton said that Arizona legislators did not discriminate when they adopted the laws and the state does have an interest in preventing voter fraud and limiting voting to those individuals eligible to vote. “Considering the evidence as a whole, the court concludes that Arizona’s interests in preventing non-citizens from voting and promoting public confidence in Arizona’s elections outweighs the limited burden voters might encounter when required to provide” documentary proof of citizenship, she wrote.
UNITED STATES
Moon lander goes to sleep
An uncrewed lander that became the first private spaceship on the moon sent its final image on Thursday before its power banks depleted, the company that built it said. Houston-based Intuitive Machines posted a picture that was captured by Odysseus on Thursday last week, the day it touched down near the moon’s south pole, but the image was only received on Thursday. The company shared earlier that a wonky landing had left the vessel’s antennas misaligned and unable to transmit at an optimal rate. The photograph “showcases the crescent Earth in the backdrop, a subtle reminder of humanity’s presence in the universe,” the firm said. “Goodnight, Odie. We hope to hear from you again,” the company added. The onset of the long lunar night means it will be two or three weeks before flight controllers can attempt to awaken the vessel.
UNITED STATES
Tourist drives off cliff
A tourist driving on Sunday in the early-morning dark on the southern tip of Hawaii’s Big Island accidentally drove his rented Jeep off a cliff, but swam to shore until firefighters pulled him up with a rope and helicopter. The man was treated for facial injuries and slight hypothermia after rescue, the Hawaii County Fire Department said in a news release. Police said the 27-year-old was visiting from Canada. Firefighters, police and the Coast Guard responded to the cliffs of South Point in Naalehu at about 3:45am on Sunday to a report of a swimmer in distress in the ocean, the release said. He swam about 100m to shore at the bottom of a cliff, which the fire department estimated to be 15m to 18m.
CANADA
Former PM Mulroney dies
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who forged close ties with two US presidents through a sweeping free-trade agreement, died on Thursday. He was 84. The country’s 18th prime minister died peacefully and surrounded by family, his daughter, Caroline Mulroney, wrote on X. The family said last summer that the former leader was improving after a heart procedure that followed treatment for prostate cancer earlier in the year. Leader of the Progressive Conservative party from 1983 to 1993, Mulroney served almost a decade as prime minister after he was first elected in 1984. His government was re-elected in 1988. “He had the courage to do big things,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. “He shaped our past, but he shapes our present and he will impact our future as well. He was an extraordinary statesman and he will be deeply, deeply missed.” He is survived by his wife, Mila, and four children: Caroline, Ben, Mark and Nicolas.
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
In Earth’s upper atmosphere, a fast-moving band of air called the jet stream blows with winds of more than 442kph, but they are not the strongest in our solar system. The comparable high-altitude winds on Neptune reach about 2,000kph. However, those are a mere breeze compared with the jet stream on a planet called WASP-127b. Astronomers have detected winds howling at about 33,000kph on the large gaseous planet in our Milky Way galaxy approximately 520 light-years from Earth in a tight orbit around a star similar to our sun. The supersonic jet-stream winds circling WASP-127b at its equator are the fastest of their kind
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