NASA ROVER STREAKS TOWARD MARS LANDING

Cape Canaveral, Feb. 18: A NASA rover streaked toward a landing on Mars on Thursday in the riskiest step yet in an epic quest to bring back rocks that could answer whether life ever existed on the red planet.

Ground controllers at the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, settled in nervously for the descent of Perseverance to the surface of Mars, long a deathtrap for incoming spacecraft. It takes a nail-biting 11 1/2 minutes for a signal that would confirm success to reach Earth. The landing of the six-wheeled vehicle would mark the third visit to Mars in just over a week. Two spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates and China swung into orbit around the planet on successive days last week.

All three missions lifted off in July to take advantage of the close alignment of Earth and Mars, travelling some 300 million miles in nearly seven months.

Mexico City, Feb. 18: Police in northern Mexico arrested six people Wednesday for allegedly trafficking in fake Coronavirus vaccines. The federal Public Safety Department said the arrests were made in the northern border state of Nuevo León, though they did not say what kind of fake shots were involved or whether they had been offered for sale.

“You don't play around with health, and in these moments of pandemic, nobody should be profiteering,” said Public Safety Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez. Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell later said that the fakes were presented as Pfizer vaccines, which are only available in Mexico through government vaccinations teams. He said the suspects had offered the vaccines for sale for the equivalent of around $2,000 per dose. Analysts have long worried that criminal gangs in Mexico could seek to steal, hijack or counterfeit.