عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

Japan Space Probe Skims Asteroid in Test for Planetary Defense

Japan's Hayabusa2 probe (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)
Japan's Hayabusa2 probe (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)
TT
TT

Japan Space Probe Skims Asteroid in Test for Planetary Defense

Japan's Hayabusa2 probe (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)
Japan's Hayabusa2 probe (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)

A Japanese space probe performed a flyby of a near-Earth asteroid on Sunday, in a test mission for technology that could help protect the planet from space rocks.

The fridge-sized Hayabusa2 was due to fly within 800 meters (0.5 miles) of asteroid Torifune, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) scientists said earlier, a trial run to see whether such a probe could deflect a potentially dangerous space rock away from Earth.

The mission comes after NASA deliberately smashed a spacecraft into the 160-metre-wide Dimorphos asteroid in 2022, successfully altering its orbit around a larger space rock.

Moving at a speed of more than 18,000 kilometers (11,185 miles) per hour, Hayabusa2 was not intended to collide with Torifune.

Instead, scientists wanted to assess whether they could precisely control the trajectory of the probe, should it ever need to perform a deflection.

"At 6:35 pm (0935 GMT)... Hayabusa2 conducted a flyby of Torifune and the spacecraft is working normally," a JAXA spokeswoman told AFP, declining to give her name.

Online footage supplied by JAXA showed scientists applauding in a control room.

"I was nervous, I felt on edge the whole time... But I'm really glad we were able to see it through to the end," one of the scientists told the JAXA broadcast.

If it is confirmed that the space probe indeed came within 800 meters of Torifune, the mission would be one of closest flybys of a near-Earth asteroid ever.

"It's as difficult as trying to shoot through a one-yen coin somewhere within the area stretching from Okinawa to Hokkaido," Yuya Mimasu of JAXA said earlier, referring to Japan's southernmost and northernmost islands.

Cameras on board Hayabusa2 are also recording data from the asteroid's surface including geographical features, its texture and temperature -- vital information for a potential planetary defense mission.

"Is the surface consisting of bare rock, or cover(ed) by boulder fields or sand beaches? Only images taken by a spacecraft can reveal this information," Patrick Michel, project scientist at the European Space Agency, told AFP prior to the flyby.

"If we want to deflect an asteroid by an impact, the response is not the same if the asteroid is behaving like a sponge or if it behaves like a very solid material," he said.

The space probe's mission is not based on any actual threat to Earth from an asteroid.

Launched in 2014, Hayabusa2 has already thrilled scientists by landing on and gathering material from the asteroid Ryugu, some 300 million kilometers (185 million miles) from our planet.

Six years later, it returned to Earth precious samples from Ryugu -- "dragon palace" in Japanese -- providing scientists with clues about what the solar system was like at its birth some 4.6 billion years ago.

After the Torifune mission, the space probe is expected to attempt in 2031 a "rendezvous" -- a maneuver where it flies alongside or touches down on a space rock to gather detailed data -- with another asteroid, called 1998KY26.

Even after the success of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), Sunday's ambitious flyby is hugely worthwhile, European Space Agency scientist Michel said.

"Given the diversity of near-Earth asteroids in terms of size, shape, surface and internal properties, each new image makes us better prepared."

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

Anissa Helou’s New Book of Recipes from Lebanon Spotlights Villages Scarred by War

Anissa Helou, 74, one of the Middle East's most acclaimed cooks and food writers, holds her new book during a ceremony at the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Anissa Helou, 74, one of the Middle East's most acclaimed cooks and food writers, holds her new book during a ceremony at the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
TT
TT

Anissa Helou’s New Book of Recipes from Lebanon Spotlights Villages Scarred by War

Anissa Helou, 74, one of the Middle East's most acclaimed cooks and food writers, holds her new book during a ceremony at the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Anissa Helou, 74, one of the Middle East's most acclaimed cooks and food writers, holds her new book during a ceremony at the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Before becoming one of the Middle East’s most acclaimed cooks and food writers, Anissa Helou had no intention of either path. She entered the world of cooking and writing almost by accident when she was in her late 30s.

Now 74, Helou has a wide following in the region and elsewhere and has released nearly a dozen books since the 1990s about food in the Middle East and beyond. Last month she received Britain’s prestigious Guild of Food Writers Lifetime Achievement Award.

The daughter of a Lebanese mother and a Syrian father, Helou was born into a Christian family and grew up watching her mother, grandmother and paternal aunt cooking. It opened her eyes to the food traditions of the two countries, both widely known in the region for their varied and flavorful cuisine.

“I was always fascinated by the kitchen, by their movements (and) by how they put things together, by the chopping,” Helou said about her mentors. “I love being in the kitchen with them and of course I loved eating.”

Helou’s latest book, “Lebanon: Cooking the Foods of My Homeland,” was officially released in late June in Beirut in a ceremony at Lebanon's Tourism Ministry attended by scores of people including food critics and restaurant owners.

The book, which comes as the country has been battered by two wars in the past three years between Israel and Hezbollah, includes a section about food in some of the southern Lebanese villages that have suffered the worst destruction, The Associated Press reported.

During her repeated visits there, most recently in October 2023, she found residents had their own regional variations of traditional cuisine. They include mujadara, a dish mainly consisting of lentils that is often cooked with rice, but in southern Lebanon is more likely to be made with bulgur.

“I discovered more, like, variations and added dishes, rather than something that was a complete revelation,” Helou said.

She has picked walnuts from a tree growing along the giant wall separating southern Lebanon from northern Israel and met residents who have lost their homes and businesses in the Hezbollah-Israel conflict.

Helou recalled Moussa Ibrahim from the southern village of Dibbine, which has been the site of intense clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters.

Fighting there in 2024 caused Ibrahim to lose his business producing mouneh: vegetables, fruits, grains and dairy preserved with traditional Lebanese techniques including sun-drying, salting, pickling or submerging in olive oil.

Representing the Middle East and Muslims through recipes Helou, who has traveled the world to sample food, said she loves Korean and Japanese in addition to Middle Eastern cuisine.

“Lebanese, Iranian and Moroccan are among the greatest cuisines,” Helou said earlier this month in her late mother's apartment in the Mount Lebanon town of Ballouneh.

“Lebanese cuisine is kind of a little bit more sophisticated, a lot fresher, more vibrant” compared with some other Middle East food, Helou said as she prepared a traditional Lebanese lamb confit called awarma.

Asked for the home of the region’s best food, Helou did not hesitate to move outside Lebanon and name Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.

Famed for its centuries-old covered market, which was badly damaged during Syria’s civil war beginning in March 2011, Aleppo is known for varied and elaborate cuisine with influences from Persia, North Africa and Armenia.

“I think that Aleppo is undoubtedly the gastronomic capital of the Middle East, regardless of me being Syrian,” she said.

Global anti-Islamic sentiments rose dramatically after ISIS took large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a so-called caliphate in 2014, launching deadly attacks in the region and the world.

Helou responded with a book of about 300 recipes of dishes from Muslim countries.

“I was thinking, one way of presenting Islam and Muslim people positively could be through their foods,” she said.

Starting late in the world of cooking Helou, who left Lebanon at the age of 21, holds citizenship in Lebanon, Syria and the United Kingdom and has spent much of her time in Britain and Italy. She still regularly visits Lebanon, cooking and asking people how they make specific dishes.

Helou refused to cook for years while she was a young woman and told her partner at the time not to expect her to make meals.

“I didn’t want to be domesticated. I was like a feminist and so I didn’t cook for a very long time,” she said.

One day a friend prepared a meal at their home and Helou saw the happiness it gave her partner, prompting her to think she should start cooking.

Her decision to become a food writer came in 1992 when a discussion with a group of Lebanese living abroad gave Helou the idea of filling a gap in Lebanese cookbooks with a collection of her mother's recipes. As it happened, there was a publisher looking for someone to write such a book.

“That’s how I started, by sheer coincidence,” Helou said.

Varieties

Experts Urge Caution as Demand Grows for AC in Heatwave-Hit UK

Air conditioning units are pictured during hot day in Magdeburg, Germany, 26 June 2026. The German Weather Service forecasted strong to extreme heat stress in large parts of the country. (EPA)
Air conditioning units are pictured during hot day in Magdeburg, Germany, 26 June 2026. The German Weather Service forecasted strong to extreme heat stress in large parts of the country. (EPA)
TT
TT

Experts Urge Caution as Demand Grows for AC in Heatwave-Hit UK

Air conditioning units are pictured during hot day in Magdeburg, Germany, 26 June 2026. The German Weather Service forecasted strong to extreme heat stress in large parts of the country. (EPA)
Air conditioning units are pictured during hot day in Magdeburg, Germany, 26 June 2026. The German Weather Service forecasted strong to extreme heat stress in large parts of the country. (EPA)

Londoner Zainab Hussain once saw air conditioning as a luxury in Britain. Now, the 35-year-old "can't see how we'll survive without it".

She and her husband are among a small but growing proportion of British households embracing AC to deal with increasingly hot summers.

But the trend has attracted criticism, particularly from sustainability experts who argue it should not be the "default answer".

"It's seen as a quick fix and it's not actually, because it can cause a lot of damage," Rajat Gupta, professor of sustainable architecture and climate change at Oxford Brookes University, told AFP.

He noted AC increases electricity demand, energy bills and carbon emissions, while worsening the so-called urban heat island effect by releasing hot air onto city streets.

However, after sweltering at night through the second heatwave of 2026 last month, the Hussain family were undeterred, opting to add AC upstairs at their semi-detached home in the south London suburb Selsdon.

"We realized that our summers were just getting more and more unbearable, so it was something that we definitely needed to have for the downstairs area," Hussain explained.

"But after last week's heatwave, we realized that actually upstairs was really unbearable as well," she added, as workers fitted the new appliance.

- Wanted 'now' -

Only around 5 percent of British homes have AC while half overheat during the summer months, according to a 2025 report by the non-partisan Centre for British Progress think tank.

Urging more AC adoption, it cited the growing risks from heat-related deaths -- which number in the low thousands each summer -- and lost productivity.

Such calls have increased as UK temperature records tumble.

For the second successive year, England last month experienced its warmest June since records began in 1884.

Meanwhile all of Britain's five warmest summers have occurred in the 21st century, with last year the hottest.

Scientists say human-induced climate change is making such weather more frequent and intense.

For AC installer Joe Springett, who has worked in the industry nearly two decades, the rising mercury has triggered a gradual shift in his business away from offices and retailers.

"I'm getting busier and busier domestically, where people want it in their houses," the 35-year-old told AFP while fitting Hussain's new unit.

"It happens every year. As soon as the [hot] weather comes, bang! The phone's ringing ... everyone wants it now."

After the latest heatwave, Springett was booked up for several weeks and has been struggling to find stock.

Those without the outside space or budget -- appliances can cost several thousand pounds, including installation -- are instead ordering more basic, portable units.

Retailers' websites are now showing such items as sold-out.

Home improvement store B&Q told AFP it has seen twice as many searches for portable AC units this year compared to 2025.

- 'Only when necessary' -

Gupta is dismayed at the "panic buying", arguing "the most sustainable approach is to look at improving buildings to stay cool naturally".

He advocates retrofitting buildings with exterior and interior shading, better ventilation and other "green-ing" measures, alongside improved heat-resilience design for new-builds.

AC should be reserved for the most vulnerable, such as those in care home and hospital settings.

"In homes, it hasn't become widespread yet, and it's better to keep it that way," Gupta said. "Use it only when necessary and where necessary."

In the UK, AC running costs can vary widely depending on numerous factors, including the type and efficiency of the system and how often it is used.

But some estimates suggest more powerful units can add hundreds of pounds to monthly bills.

John Calautit, a sustainability lecturer at University College London (UCL), is another AC sceptic.

He noted most British buildings are designed to retain warmth and "cannot cope" with heatwave conditions.

"We need to look at more simple solutions such as adding shading ... reflective materials and then moving on to natural ventilation," he told AFP.

"If those solutions do not work, then we can start looking at mechanical cooling systems."

Back in south London, Springett argues Britons have "got to move with the times, the climate" and adopt AC.

For Hussain's family, whose home has south-facing windows exposed to direct sunlight throughout the day, it seemed the only option.

"We spend so much more time at home now, especially with remote working, it's not just about it being comfortable. We need to be able to function in the house."

Varieties

Antique Silver Collection Found in Edinburgh Attic Sells for £60,000

An Edwardian silver jewellery box, crafted in Chester in 1908 was part of the collection. (AP)
An Edwardian silver jewellery box, crafted in Chester in 1908 was part of the collection. (AP)
TT
TT

Antique Silver Collection Found in Edinburgh Attic Sells for £60,000

An Edwardian silver jewellery box, crafted in Chester in 1908 was part of the collection. (AP)
An Edwardian silver jewellery box, crafted in Chester in 1908 was part of the collection. (AP)

A collection of antique silver found by chance in a family's attic in Edinburgh has sold for nearly £60,000 at auction.

More than 100 silver items, dating from the early 1700s to the early 1900s, had been expected to fetch up to £23,000 when they were offered for sale at Elmwood's auctioneers in London, according to BBC.

Members of the selling family, who do not want to be named, found the items inside dusty chests, having been packed away for nearly a century.

The objects, which sold for a total of £59,761, vary from a Victorian travelling shaving brush by pioneering silversmith Frances Douglas to an Imperial Russian tankard and an Edwardian jewellery box.

The most expensive part of the collection was Lot 15 – a set of fine Danish vintage cutlery, which sold for £5,200.

The collection was discovered carefully packed inside several dust-covered wooden chests and wrapped in old newspapers and linen.

Other items included tea services, candlesticks, salvers and presentation pieces.

A spokesman for the family said: “We are thrilled with the outcome and completely overwhelmed by the response to the collection.”

He added: “What began as an unexpected discovery while clearing the family home has turned into an extraordinary journey. It's wonderful to know these pieces, which lay hidden for so many decades, have found new homes with people who will appreciate their history and craftsmanship.”

Joe Kendrick, head of sale at Elmwood's auctioneers, said: “We knew this was a special collection from the moment we first examined the pieces from the chests, but today's result exceeded even our expectations.”

He added: “Achieving £59,761 against a pre-sale estimate of £23,000 demonstrates the enduring appeal of fresh-to-market collections with exceptional provenance.”

Bidders responded not only to the quality and rarity of the silver, but also to the remarkable story behind its discovery after almost a century hidden away in an Edinburgh attic.

Kendrick said it has been a privilege to bring these pieces back into the public eye and to see them begin a new chapter with collectors around the world.