Man Released in Arson Probe into Nantes Cathedral Fire

FILE PHOTO: French firefighters battle a blaze at the Cathedral of Saint Pierre and Saint Paul in Nantes, France, July 18, 2020. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
FILE PHOTO: French firefighters battle a blaze at the Cathedral of Saint Pierre and Saint Paul in Nantes, France, July 18, 2020. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
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Man Released in Arson Probe into Nantes Cathedral Fire

FILE PHOTO: French firefighters battle a blaze at the Cathedral of Saint Pierre and Saint Paul in Nantes, France, July 18, 2020. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
FILE PHOTO: French firefighters battle a blaze at the Cathedral of Saint Pierre and Saint Paul in Nantes, France, July 18, 2020. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

French investigators on Sunday released a man who worked as a volunteer at the gothic cathedral of Nantes which was badly damaged by fire hours after he closed it up for the night.

Prosecutors launched an arson investigation after the Saturday morning blaze which they said appeared to have broken out in three different parts of the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in Nantes, western France.

The questioning on Sunday had sought to "clarify elements of the schedule" of the volunteer, who had been in charge of closing up the cathedral on Friday evening, Nantes prosecutor Pierre Sennes told AFP.

He had held as part of "normal procedure" and it would have been "premature" to suggest the man was a suspect in the case, the prosecutor said earlier.

Later Sunday, however, Sennes confirmed that the man had been released "without charge".

Before his release, Quentin Chabert, a lawyer for the volunteer, told reporters that for the moment "there is nothing that directly links my client to the fire".

The cathedral's rector, Hubert Champenois, said the man was a Rwandan asylum-seeker in France for several years.

The man volunteered as an altar server and would have been the last to leave the cathedral on Friday, he said.

Champenois said he had known the 39-year-old for four or five years, adding: "I trust him like I trust all the helpers".

The blaze, which came just 15 months after a devastating fire tore through the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, destroyed the Nantes congregation's famed organ, which dated from 1621 and had survived the French revolution and World War II bombardment.

Also lost were priceless artifacts and paintings, including a work by 19th century artist Hippolyte Flandrin and stained glass windows which contained remnants of 16th century glass.

About 100 firefighters managed to save the main structure of the cathedral, which was constructed over more than 450 years starting in 1434.

Sennes said experts from a police unit specialized in fire investigations were at the scene Sunday, awaiting authorization from firefighters to examine the platform which had held the grand organ.



China's New Crew Arrives at Space Station in Sign of Growing Influence in Space Field

A Long March rocket with a Shenzhou-19 spacecraft atop takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwestern China in the early hours of Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A Long March rocket with a Shenzhou-19 spacecraft atop takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwestern China in the early hours of Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
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China's New Crew Arrives at Space Station in Sign of Growing Influence in Space Field

A Long March rocket with a Shenzhou-19 spacecraft atop takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwestern China in the early hours of Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A Long March rocket with a Shenzhou-19 spacecraft atop takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwestern China in the early hours of Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A Chinese space ship carrying a three-person crew docked with its orbiting space station Tuesday as the country seeks to expand its exploration of outer space in competition with the United States, even as it looks for cooperation from other nations.
The team of two men and one woman will replace the astronauts who have lived on the Tiangong space station for the last six months, conducting a variety of experiments and maintaining the structure, The Associated Press reported.
They are expected to stay until April or May of next year. The new mission commander, Cai Xuzhe, went to space in the Shenzhou-14 mission in 2022, while theother two, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, are first-time space travelers. Song and Wang were born in the 1990s and are graduates of the third wave of Chinese astronaut recruitment, having undergone a rigorous testing and training process taking years.
Early Wednesday morning, China declared the launch and entry into outerspace a “complete success.”
The Shenzhou-19 spaceship carrying the trio blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 4:27 a.m. local time atop a Long March-2F rocket, the backbone of China’s crewed space missions.
“The crew condition is good and the launch has been successful,” the state broadcaster China Central Television announced.
China built its own space station after being excluded from the International Space Station, mainly because of US concerns over the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese Communist Party’s military arm’s overall control over the space program. China’s moon program is part of a growing rivalry with the US and others, including Japan and India.
The new team will replace the astronauts who have lived on the Tiangong space station for the last six months and will overlap with them for a couple of days or more. They are expected to stay until April or May of next year.
The new mission commander, Cai Xuzhe, went to space in the Shenzhou-14 mission in 2022, while the other two, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, are first-time space travelers, born in the 1990s.
Song was an air force pilot and Wang an engineer with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. Wang will be the crew’s payload specialist and the third Chinese woman aboard a crewed mission.
Besides putting a space station into orbit, the Chinese space agency has landed an explorer on Mars. It aims to put a person on the moon before 2030, which would make China the second nation after the United States to do so. It also plans to build a research station on the moon and has already transferred rock and soil samples from the moon in a first for any nation in decades, and placed a rover on the little-explored far side of the moon in a global first.
The US still leads in space exploration and plans to land astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, though NASA pushed the target date back to 2026 earlier this year.
The new Chinese crew will perform spacewalks and install new equipment to protect the station from space debris, some of which was created by China.
According to NASA, large pieces of debris have been created by “satellite explosions and collisions.” China’s firing of a rocket to destroy a redundant weather satellite in 2007 and the “accidental collision of American and Russian communications satellites in 2009 greatly increased the amount of large debris in orbit,” it said.
China’s space authorities say they have measures in place in case their astronauts have to return to Earth earlier.
China launched its first crewed mission in 2003, becoming only the third nation to do so after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The space program is a source of enormous national pride and a hallmark of China’s technological advances over the past two decades.