Sir Richard hails ‘space tourism’ test
BOLLYWOOD STAR Salman Khan has been convicted of poaching rare deer in a wildlife preserve two decades ago and sentenced to five years in prison.
The actor contends he did not shoot the two blackbuck deer in the western India preserve in 1998 and was acquitted in related cases.
He was in court for the ruling in the western city of Jodhpur on Thursday. He is expected to be taken to a local prison while it could take days for his lawyers to appeal against the conviction and seek bail.
Four other stars also accused in the case – Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre, Tabu and Neelam – were acquitted by Chief Judicial Magistrate Dev Kumar Khatri.
They were in the jeep that Salman Khan was believed to be driving during the hunt.
Khan had been sentenced to prison terms of between one and five years in related cases before being acquitted by appeals courts for lack of evidence.
The blackbuck is an endangered species protected under the Indian Wildlife Act.
In 2014, the Mumbai High Court acquitted him in a drinkdriving hit-and-run case. The judges found prosecutors failed to prove charges of culpable homicide. SIR RICHARD Branson has hailed a successful first powered test flight of Virgin Galactic’s new space tourism rocket.
Virgin Galactic tweeted that the spaceship named was carried aloft by its mother ship and released over California’s Mojave Desert early yesterday.
The company says the spacecraft achieved supersonic speed before the pilots shut down the engine and it glided back to Mojave Air & Space Port.
It was Virgin Galactic’s first powered flight since the 2014 crash of its original spaceship that killed Michael Alsbury, one of its two pilots. Human error was blamed.
was previously flown on test flights in which it remained attached to the mother ship and others in which it was released to glide without lighting the rocket.
Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard tweeted that “Space feels tantalisingly close now”.