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Namibia Heightens Poaching Alert After 28 Rhinos Killed

Namibia's Etosha Park has been particularly hard hit by the new wave of killings. AFP
Namibia's Etosha Park has been particularly hard hit by the new wave of killings. AFP
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Namibia Heightens Poaching Alert After 28 Rhinos Killed

Namibia's Etosha Park has been particularly hard hit by the new wave of killings. AFP
Namibia's Etosha Park has been particularly hard hit by the new wave of killings. AFP

Namibian authorities have stepped up an anti-poaching alert after announcing that 28 rhinoceros had been killed by poachers since the start of the year, including 19 at the country's largest animal reserve.

The southern African country's environment ministry said earlier this week that an "urgent high-level meeting" with security officials had been called to plan measures to combat the "barbaric" poaching wave.

The ministry also appealed for public help "in this difficult fight" against a phenomenon surging again across southern Africa. No arrests have been made so far, the ministry added.

Namibia's Etosha Park has been particularly hard hit by the new wave of killings.

Of the 19 rhinos slaughtered in the park, 10 were found during a campaign in March to dehorn rhinos to reduce the risk of them becoming poaching targets, the ministry said.

The horns are used in traditional medicine in Asian markets after the animal is killed.

"This is our flagship park and has a high concentration of rhino conservation and other high value species making it a major attraction of tourists," the ministry said in a statement.

Authorities said 87 rhinoceros were killed across Namibia in 2022, up from 45 the previous year. Figures for 2023 have not yet been revealed.

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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
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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.