Syrian Actress Antoinette Najeeb Passes Away

A photo posted on Twitter of Actress Antoinette Najeeb
A photo posted on Twitter of Actress Antoinette Najeeb
TT

Syrian Actress Antoinette Najeeb Passes Away

A photo posted on Twitter of Actress Antoinette Najeeb
A photo posted on Twitter of Actress Antoinette Najeeb

Renowned Syrian Actress Antoinette Najeeb passed away on Wednesday, at the age of 92, after a long career and a rich contribution to dozens of series, plays and films.

The Artists Syndicate of Damascus announced her death, while actors and social media influencers shared the news with expressions of condolences.

Najeeb was born in 1930 in the city of Daraa in southern Syria. She is one of the oldest Syrian actresses and was married to late artist, Youssef Choueiri.

She began her career in the late 1960s. Her first appearance was in a movie called, “Naked without Sin”, which was released in 1967.

She later became famous for her leading roles in Syrian drama. She contributed to the success of series that resonated with all the Arab world, such as “Sah Al Nom”, starring the Syrian actor Duraid Laham in the early 1970s.

She also excelled in the role of mother Naima in “Al-Fusul al-Arbaa” (The four seasons) at the end of the 1990s, which left a great mark among the Syrian and Arab audience.

During her long career, Najeeb contributed to numerous works in television, cinema and theater.

Over the past weeks, she suffered several illnesses, after which she was taken to the intensive care unit. Her health deteriorated after undergoing periodic dialysis sessions.



China Says its Astronauts Complete Record-breaking Spacewalk

File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
TT

China Says its Astronauts Complete Record-breaking Spacewalk

File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS

Two Chinese astronauts this week completed a world-record spacewalk of more than nine hours, according to a statement from China's Manned Space Agency, marking another milestone for Beijing's rapidly expanding space program.

The spacewalk, carried out by Cai Xuzhe and Song Lingdong outside the Tiangong space station in low-Earth orbit on Tuesday, was at least four minutes longer than the last record set by NASA astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms in 2001, according to Reuters.

The two astronauts of China's Shenzhou-19 mission donned their Feitian spacesuits to carry out an array of tasks on the station's exterior, including the installation of space-debris protection devices, China's space agency said.

"They successfully completed all the planned tasks and felt very excited about it," Wu Hao, a staffer from the China Astronaut Research and Training Center, told China Central Television, a state broadcaster.

The former Soviet Union in 1965 became the first nation to carry out a spacewalk. Since then, Russia and the United States have conducted hundreds of such missions, primarily outside the International Space Station for tasks ranging from solar panel installations to materials research.

The first spacewalk by a Chinese astronaut occurred in 2008.

China's spacewalking milestone this week comes amid a flurry of other recent cosmic achievements that have boosted Beijing's competitive footing with the United States.

China landed its first rover on Mars in 2021 and earlier this year became the first country to retrieve rock samples from the moon's treacherous far side in its Chang'e-6 mission.

Beijing is targeting 2030 to land its first astronauts on the moon to become the second country after the US to put humans there. Beijing has courted roughly a dozen countries for its International Lunar Research Station program, an effort to build a moon base on the moon's south pole.

That program rivals NASA's Artemis program, which aims to return US astronauts to the moon for the first time since the final Apollo mission of 1972.