WASHINGTON: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin on Thursday launched six people to space, including the first from Egypt and Portugal, on the company’s sixth crewed flight.
Mission “N-22” saw the New Shepard suborbital rocket blast off around 8:58 am local time (1358 GMT) from Blue’s base in the west Texas desert.
The autonomous, re-usable vehicle sent its crew capsule soaring above the Karman line, the internationally recognized space boundary, 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level.

RABAT: A Moroccan court imposed 8-month prison sentences Thursday on 14 migrants for attempting, along with hundreds of others, to scale a border fence separating the north African country from the autonomous Spanish enclave of Melilla in June.
Nador’s Court of First Instance also ordered the defendants to pay 2,000-dirham ($194) fines each over the events of June 24.
The Moroccan Association for Human Rights, known as AMDH, said at least 27 migrants trying to enter Spain died that day, and numerous others — both migrants and police — were hurt.

GAZA: Israel on Thursday extended its closure of Gaza crossings, further restricting the movement of people, goods and aid, over what the army said were potential retaliatory attacks following Israel’s arrest of a Palestinian militant leader.
On Monday, Israel arrested Bassam Al-Saadi, a senior leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, during a West Bank raid in the city of Jenin, in which a 17-year-old member of the group was killed. It has since closed off all Gaza crossings and some surrounding roads, citing fears of retaliation.

LONDON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken thanked Qatar for its continued assistance with Iran and Afghanistan diplomacy on Thursday.

After a meeting with Qatari Foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani in Cambodia, Blinken said that the US values its partnership with Doha “tremendously.”

He continued: “Qatar is a major non-NATO ally. But alongside of that, really a partner in trying to deal with so many of the most urgent challenges that we face around the world.”

DUBAI: Two years ago, on Aug. 4, 2020, Ghassan Hasrouty walked into his office at the port of Beirut where he had worked a steady job for the past 38 years. He would not return home that day.

At 6:07 p.m. local time, hundreds of tons of hazardously stored ammonium nitrate ignited in Warehouse 12 where Hasrouty was working. He and several of his colleagues were killed instantly.

The third biggest non-nuclear explosion ever recorded in history devastated the port and a whole district of the Lebanese capital.