
Russia launches long-delayed lab module to space station
CBSN
A heavy-lift Proton rocket roared to life and blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday, sending a long-delayed 44,000-pound laboratory module into orbit for an eight-day flight to the International Space Station.
The towering Proton, the most powerful rocket in the Russian inventory, took off at 10:58 a.m. EDT (7:58 p.m. local time), quickly climbing away from the sprawling cosmodrome atop a long jet of flaming exhaust. Nine minutes and 40 seconds later, the unpiloted Nauka module, also known as the multi-purpose laboratory module, or MLM, separated from the Proton's upper stage, deployed its solar arrays and set off after the space station.
Felix Baumgartner, the daredevil who made a record-breaking parachute jump from the stratosphere in 2012, died Thursday in a paragliding accident in Italy, a local mayor confirmed. Firefighters who responded to the scene said they found a paraglider that had crashed into the side of a swimming pool in the city of Porto Sant Elpidio, on central Italy's eastern coast.

Baghdad — A fire at a newly opened mall in eastern Iraq's Wasit province killed more than 60 people, including women and children, Iraqi officials said Thursday. The nation's Interior Ministry said in a statement that 61 people died, most of them from suffocation, in the blaze that broke out late Wednesday in the city of al-Kut.

Moscow — An American who spied on Ukrainian troops to help Moscow's military offensive in the country has been granted Russian citizenship, Moscow-installed authorities said Tuesday. Daniel Martindale spent two years in Ukraine after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, transmitting coordinates of military facilities to Russia's secret services, according to reports in Russian state media.