US astronauts to swap rocket rides again with Russian counterparts
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA astronauts will go back to riding Russian rockets under an agreement announced Friday, and Russian cosmonauts will catch lifts to the International Space Station with SpaceX beginning this fall.
The agreement ensures that the space station will always have at least one American and Russian on board to keep both sides of the orbiting outpost running smoothly, according to NASA and Russian officials. The swap had long been in the works and was finalized despite tensions over Moscow’s war in Ukraine, a sign of continuing Russia-U.S. cooperation in space.
U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio will launch to the space station from Kazakhstan with two Russians in September. That same month, Russian cosmonaut, Anna Kikina, will join two Americans and one Japanese aboard a SpaceX rocket flying from Florida. Another crew swap will occur in the spring.
No money will exchange hands under the agreement, according to NASA.
NASA astronauts routinely launched on Russian Soyuz rockets — for tens of millions of dollars apiece — until SpaceX started flying station crews from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in 2020. Russian cosmonauts rode to the space station on NASA’s shuttles back in the early 2000s. Before that, during the 1990s, astronauts and cosmonauts took turns flying on each other’s spacecraft to and from Russia’s Mir station.
Friday’s news came just hours after the chief of the Russian space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, was replaced by President Vladimir Putin, although the move did not appear to have any connection to the crew swap. Rogozin was expected to be given a new post.
NASA said the agreement will “ensure continued safe operations” of the space station and protect those living on board. Seven people are there now: three Americans and one Italian who flew up with SpaceX and three Russians who arrived in a Soyuz.
Trump deposition delayed:
Former President Donald Trump and two of his children had their questioning postponed Friday in a New York civil investigation into their business dealings, a delay that follows the death of Trump’s ex-wife Ivana.
The ex-president, son Donald Jr. and daughter Ivanka had been scheduled for depositions — a term for out-of-court questioning under oath — starting Friday. But New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office said it had agreed to postpone them because of Ivana Trump’s death, announced Thursday.
There are no new dates yet for the depositions.
Ivana Trump died at her Manhattan home at age 73. The medical examiner’s office on Friday ruled her death an accident, caused by blunt impact injuries to the torso.
Ga. election probe: The Georgia prosecutor investigating potential criminal interference in the 2020 presidential election is considering requesting that former President Donald Trump testify under oath to a grand jury, while several people already subpoenaed as part of the probe have received letters informing them that they’re at risk of being indicted.
A demand for Trump to testify would almost certainly
trigger an immediate court fight, including potentially over Trump’s constitutional protections against self-incrimination.
District Attorney Fani Willis has confirmed that the investigation’s scope includes a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. During that call, Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in the state.
Trump has denied wrongdoing.
Breyer’s return: Harvard said Friday that former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who retired from the Supreme Court June 30, is rejoining its law school faculty. Breyer is a graduate of the law school and first joined the Harvard faculty in 1967. He continued to teach at Harvard after he became a federal appeals court judge in 1980 until former President Bill Clinton nominated him to the
Supreme Court in 1994.
Harvard said in a statement that Breyer will “teach seminars and reading groups, continue to write books and produce scholarship, and participate in the intellectual life of the school and in the broader Harvard community.”
Breyer, 83, does not yet have any classes listed in Harvard’s online course catalog. However, the school said his appointment as Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process is effective immediately.
Xi visits Xinjiang: China’s leader, Xi Jinping, made his first visit to the western region of Xinjiang since he unleashed a campaign of mass detentions of Uyghurs there. His trip amounted to a proclamation of success in his yearslong effort to quell ethnic resistance, despite international condemnation.
Xi’s four-day visit, which ended Friday, focused on projecting that Xinjiang had become united and
stable under his leadership. After his last visit in 2014, Xi set in motion drastic policies — widespread arrests, surveillance, indoctrination and labor transfers — to press the region’s Uyghurs and other largely Muslim ethnic groups to identify as members of one Chinese nation loyal to the Communist Party.
“Every ethnic group in Xinjiang is an inseparable member of the great family of Chinese nationhood,” Xi said while visiting a heavily Uyghur neighborhood of Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang, Xinhua News Agency reported.
The visit comes two weeks after Xi made a rare trip to Hong Kong, his first since the huge, and at times violent, protests in 2019.
Sri Lanka interim president:
Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in Friday as interim president until Parliament elects a successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled
abroad and resigned after mass protests over the country’s economic collapse.
Lawmakers were to convene Saturday to begin choosing a new leader who would serve the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term, which ends in 2024.
Parliamentary Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardana promised a transparent political process that should be done within a week.
In a televised statement, Wickremesinghe said he would initiate steps to change the constitution to curb presidential powers and strengthen Parliament, restore law and order and take legal action against “insurgents.”
It was unclear to whom he was referring, although he said true protesters would not have gotten involved in clashes on Wednesday night near Parliament, where many soldiers reportedly were injured.
Wickremesinghe became acting president after Rajapaksa fled Wednesday.