3 held for bomb attack that killed politician’s mother in Greece
Thessaloniki, July 10: Greek anti-terrorist police arrested three people Friday in connection with a series of firebomb attacks against conservative party politicians that left one person dead and injured another four, authorities said. The predawn bombings in the northern city of Thessaloniki on July 1 targeted the homes of members of Greece’s governing conservative New Democracy party. The 72-year-old mother of parliamentary candidate Afroditi Nestora was killed after a crude bomb made with camping gas canisters exploded under Nestora’s car, which was parked at the entrance of her apartment building. Nestora herself suffered burns and remains hospitalised, but briefly left hospital Thursday to attend her mother’s funeral. Her father and two residents of the building were also injured. (AP)
China joins SpaceX in reusable rocket race
Beijing, July 10: China on Friday achieved its first controlled recovery of an orbital-class reusable rocket booster after the maiden launch of its Long March-10B carrier rocket, marking a major milestone in the country’s reusable space technology. The achievement comes over a decade after US-based SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, became the first company to successfully recover an orbital-class rocket booster in December 2015. (PTI)
NASA astronaut Anil Menon set to travel to ISS on July 14
Washington, July 10: Anil Menon, a NASA astronaut of Indian descent, is set to embark on an eight-month mission to the International Space Station on July 14 from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Born in Minneapolis to Ukrainian and Indian immigrants, Menon is an emergency medicine physician and a US Space Force colonel. He is scheduled to travel to space aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft along with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina. (PTI)
Trump purges election panel in push to rewrite voting rules
Washington, July 10: President Donald Trump has ousted members of a bipartisan federal election commission that resisted his efforts to require would-be voters to document their US citizenship before registering. The White House on Friday confirmed the executive action against members of the Election Assistance Commission, which distributes federal grants to states, oversees the testing of voting systems and maintains the national voter registration forms. It’s the latest move in Trump’s effort to expand White House influence over how US elections are conducted and comes after a recent US Supreme Court ruling that gave the president new personnel authority to fire members of independent agency boards. (AP)
