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SpaceX-Polaris Crew Exits Capsule for First Private Spacewalk

Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
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SpaceX-Polaris Crew Exits Capsule for First Private Spacewalk

Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, commander Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, crew members of Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, attend a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

A crew of four aboard a SpaceX capsule embarked on the world's first private spacewalk on Thursday, as an astronaut eased out of the Crew Dragon spacecraft on a tether into the vacuum of space, hundreds of miles from Earth.

Billionaire Jared Isaacman, 41, exited first about 6:52 a.m. ET (1052 GMT). After he returned a few minutes later, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, 30, was scheduled to take her turn in space, all their maneuvers streaming live on the company's website, Reuters reported.

"Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world," Isaacman said after emerging from the spacecraft, the planet glittering in half shadow below him.

Before the spacewalk began, the capsule was completely depressurized, with the whole crew relying on their slim, SpaceX-developed spacesuits for oxygen, provided via an umbilical connection to Crew Dragon.

The spacewalk was scheduled to last only about 30 minutes, but the procedures to prepare for it and to finish it safely last about two hours. It was meant to test the new spacesuit designs and procedures for the capsule, among other things.

Isaacman, Gillis, Scott Poteet, 50, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon, 38, had been orbiting Earth aboard Crew Dragon since Tuesday's pre-dawn launch from Florida of the Polaris Dawn mission. Menon and Poteet remained inside the spacecraft during the spacewalk.

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It is the Elon Musk-led company's latest and riskiest bid to push the boundaries of commercial spaceflight.

Isaacman, a pilot and the billionaire founder of electronic payments company Shift4 (FOUR.N), opens new tab, is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021.

He has declined to say how much he is paying, but the missions are likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, based on Crew Dragon's price of roughly $55 million a seat for other flights.

-FARTHEST SINCE APOLLO

Throughout Wednesday, the craft circled Earth at least six times in an oval orbit as shallow as 190 km (118 miles) and stretching out as far as 1,400 km (870 miles), the farthest in space that humans have traveled since the last US Apollo mission in 1972.

The gumdrop-shaped spacecraft then began to lower its orbit into a peak 700-km (435-mile) position and adjust cabin pressure to ready for the spacewalk, formally called Extravehicular Activity (EVA), the Polaris program said on social media on Wednesday.

"The crew also spent a few hours demonstrating the suit’s pressurized mobility, verifying positions and accessibility in microgravity along with preparing the cabin for the EVA," it said.

Only government astronauts with several years of training have done spacewalks in the past.

There have been roughly 270 on the International Space Station (ISS) since it was set up in 2000, and 16 by Chinese astronauts on Beijing's Tiangong space station.

The Polaris crew has spent 2-1/2 years training with SpaceX mission simulations and "experiential learning" in challenging, uncomfortable environments, said Poteet.

A record 19 astronauts are now in orbit, after Russia's Soyuz MS-26 mission ferried two cosmonauts and a US astronaut to the International Space Station on Wednesday, taking its headcount to 12.

Three Chinese astronauts are aboard the Tiangong space station.

The first US spacewalk in 1965, aboard a Gemini capsule, used a similar procedure to the one planned for Polaris Dawn: the capsule was depressurized, the hatch opened, and a spacesuited astronaut ventured outside on a tether.

Since 2001, Crew Dragon, the only US vehicle capable of reliably putting humans in orbit and returning them to Earth, has flown more than a dozen astronaut missions, mainly for NASA.

The agency seeded development of the capsule under a program meant to establish commercial, privately-built US vehicles capable of ferrying astronauts with the ISS.

Also developed under that program was Boeing's Starliner capsule, but it is farther behind.

Starliner launched its first astronauts to the ISS in June in a troubled test mission that ended this month with the capsule returning empty, leaving its crew on the space station for a Crew Dragon capsule to fetch next year.

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France and England Battle Multiple Wildfires as Record Heat Grips Europe

An aerial view shows smoke rising from fire-damaged houses, south of Stourbridge town center in central England on August 14, 2026. (Photo by Darren Staples / AFP)
An aerial view shows smoke rising from fire-damaged houses, south of Stourbridge town center in central England on August 14, 2026. (Photo by Darren Staples / AFP)
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France and England Battle Multiple Wildfires as Record Heat Grips Europe

An aerial view shows smoke rising from fire-damaged houses, south of Stourbridge town center in central England on August 14, 2026. (Photo by Darren Staples / AFP)
An aerial view shows smoke rising from fire-damaged houses, south of Stourbridge town center in central England on August 14, 2026. (Photo by Darren Staples / AFP)

Firefighters across France and in central England struggled against multiple fires Friday as a new wave of record-breaking heat baked a swath of Europe, their task further complicated by exceptionally parched landscapes.

With France experiencing its driest year ever, a new fire raced through woodlands overnight in the Landes region on the southwest coast. The blaze forced more than 500 people to evacuate their homes in the town of Luglon as hundreds of firefighters deployed to the area, the regional administration said Friday.

It’s one of several fires scorching forests around France this week, including in normally cooler and wetter regions in the north and Brittany. A historic fire devoured forests near Bordeaux last month and pushed a quarter of a million people from their homes.

Meanwhile, efforts to contain a wildfire in Germany were complicated by unexploded World War II munitions, and shifting winds in Croatia spread flames deeper into a coastal suburb and forced more than 1,000 people to flee.

After the UK recorded its hottest day of the year on Thursday, wildfires raced across the West Midlands and saw several houses burned to the ground. They have been “one of the most significant” incidents the region’s fire service has ever dealt with, chief fire officer Simon Tuhill said.

Some 1,017 wildfires have been recorded in England and Wales this year, according to data from the National Fire Chiefs Council.

The fires came on the hottest day of the year, when temperatures reached 38.1 degrees Celsius (100.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in west London.

In France, temperatures Thursday approached 41 C (106 F) in several areas, from Aquitaine in the southwest to the Rhone River valley in the east, according to the national weather service. They were forecast to reach similar levels Friday before dropping over the weekend.

 

Flames engulf trees as a wildfire burns in Luglon, France, August 14, 2026. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq

The historic temperatures are linked to human-caused climate change, and are hitting countries more designed for long cold seasons and ill-equipped for this sort of heat, with limited air conditioning.

Firefighters battle forest fire in Germany All 1,800 residents of the village of Gey in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state were evacuated after a wildfire in the nearby Hürtgen forest threatened to reach their homes. Nearly 300 hectares (1.16 square miles) of forest were ablaze on Friday morning, The Associated Press quoted local authorities as saying.

Unexploded ordnance from World War II in the forest hampered firefighting efforts, German news agency dpa reported. Explosions could be heard as the munitions detonated during the fire, forcing firefighters to stay out of the area for safety.

The fire advanced to within 300 meters (1,000 feet) of Gey, which sits on the edge of the forest near the Belgian border. Overnight a shift in wind direction raised the risk that the flames could reach Gey by morning, prompting officials to order the initial evacuation.

The cause of the blaze remains unknown, and authorities have not ruled out further evacuations in the area.

Hundreds of personnel have been deployed to battle the fire, with the German army sending tanks and firefighting helicopters providing air support.

In Croatia, 14 people were hospitalized, of whom seven remained in life-threatening condition early Friday from a fire that raged overnight by the coastal town of Omis and forced more than 1,000 people to evacuate their homes.

The fire erupted late Thursday in an Omis suburb and quickly spread because of strong wind. Public broadcaster HRT said the blaze came close to the town’s center, and parts of Omis were left without electricity while many cars were burned.

Croatian media published photos from a crowded sports hall in Omis where people crammed on beds and on the floor. Witnesses told HRT that people were jumping into the sea after boats also caught fire.

Firefighters put out the blaze by Friday morning as other crews in planes headed further south toward the Peljesac peninsula where another wildfire broke out overnight.

Meanwhile, in northern Greece, more than 300 vacationers and residents were evacuated by sea Thursday after a wildfire swept through a pine forest and threatened seaside homes, authorities said.

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Report: Engine Fragments Caused Ryanair Flight to Lose Pressure

This undated photo provided by the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, shows the shattered window on a Ryanair plane that was broken by a stray engine part shortly after takeoff, causing a man's head to be sucked into the hole. (National Transportation Safety Board via AP)
This undated photo provided by the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, shows the shattered window on a Ryanair plane that was broken by a stray engine part shortly after takeoff, causing a man's head to be sucked into the hole. (National Transportation Safety Board via AP)
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Report: Engine Fragments Caused Ryanair Flight to Lose Pressure

This undated photo provided by the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, shows the shattered window on a Ryanair plane that was broken by a stray engine part shortly after takeoff, causing a man's head to be sucked into the hole. (National Transportation Safety Board via AP)
This undated photo provided by the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, shows the shattered window on a Ryanair plane that was broken by a stray engine part shortly after takeoff, causing a man's head to be sucked into the hole. (National Transportation Safety Board via AP)

Engine fragments struck a window of a Ryanair plane last month resulting in a man nearly being sucked out of the aircraft mid-flight, according to a preliminary report published Thursday by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

A tourist on a flight from Thessaloniki in Greece to Memmingen in Germany on July 16 had his head lodged in a cabin window that had broken off as a result of the breach, and had to be pulled back inside by other passengers.

NTSB said in a preliminary investigation report that the jet's right engine experienced a "fan-blade-out failure" during ascent, meaning a blade in the engine fan broke off.

"Engine fragments breached the fuselage and the cabin depressurized," the report said.

A flight attendant saw that a passenger "was partially lodged in a damaged cabin window, and that the entire window was missing," it continued.

The passenger sustained serious injuries, according to the report.

FILE - The Ryanair desk is seen, Aug. 10, 2018, at the Barajas airport in Madrid, Spain. (AP Photo/Paul White, File)

Investigators said they found bird remains inside the engine, but did not draw any conclusions on why the fan blade broke.

Recounting the incident, a passenger told Radio Thessaloniki that "there was a noise, like a tire bursting."

"We immediately realized there had been a decompression. There were screams... for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door," AFP quoted the woman as saying.

Engine fragments also damaged other parts of the fuselage and the right horizontal stabilizer, the NTSB said.

The full NTSB investigation, which can take up to two years, is under way and a final report remains pending.

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In South Korea, Some Savor Last Season of Legal Dog Meat

Dog meat placed on a scale during Malbok, the last of Korea's traditional hottest days of summer, at a restaurant selling dog meat and black goat meat stews in Seongnam, South Korea, August 14, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
Dog meat placed on a scale during Malbok, the last of Korea's traditional hottest days of summer, at a restaurant selling dog meat and black goat meat stews in Seongnam, South Korea, August 14, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
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In South Korea, Some Savor Last Season of Legal Dog Meat

Dog meat placed on a scale during Malbok, the last of Korea's traditional hottest days of summer, at a restaurant selling dog meat and black goat meat stews in Seongnam, South Korea, August 14, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
Dog meat placed on a scale during Malbok, the last of Korea's traditional hottest days of summer, at a restaurant selling dog meat and black goat meat stews in Seongnam, South Korea, August 14, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

For decades, the three days of summer considered the hottest of the year were among the busiest for South Korea's dog meat restaurants, as diners sought traditional stamina-boosting foods to endure the heat.

The third "boknal", or hot day, of 2026 on Friday carried an added sense of finality. It was the last before a nationwide ban on the breeding, slaughter and sale of dogs for meat takes full effect in February 2027.

At the Moran Market in Seongnam, once the country's best-known hubs for dog meat, lunchtime crowds filled alleyways lined with restaurants.

Yet many businesses have shifted to black goat stew and other alternatives, while the few customers still ordering "bosintang", or dog meat stew, were overwhelmingly elderly.

"It's really desolate now," said Kim Yong-book, head of the Moran Market Merchants' Association, who has worked in the area, which is near Seoul, for more ⁠than 40 years.

What ⁠was once a bustling trade hub has become "a town of old people," he said.

The ban caps a long decline in dog meat consumption as rising pet ownership and changing attitudes toward animal welfare transform public opinion.

In a survey released just before the law passed in 2024, more than 90% of 2,000 respondents said they had no intention of eating dog meat in future, while more than 80% supported a ban. Nearly 95% said they had not eaten dog meat during the previous year.

Government data showed more than 5,600 businesses were affected by the legislation, while officials said most dog farms had already closed ahead ⁠of next year's deadline.

The campaign to end the dog meat trade gathered momentum under ousted former President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife, former first lady Kim Keon Hee, an outspoken animal welfare advocate who publicly backed a ban.

Parliament passed legislation in January 2024 banning the breeding, slaughter, distribution and sale of dogs for human consumption.

The law provided a three-year grace period and will be fully enforced from February 2027, with violators facing prison terms and fines. Authorities have also promised support for affected farmers, distributors and restaurant owners.

For restaurant owner Lee Kang-chun, a former merchants' association chairman who has spent 37 years in the trade, the change evokes mixed emotions.

Lee said he believed it was right to end dog meat consumption considering South Korea's global image and shifting social attitudes. Yet he struggled to hide his sadness when discussing customers, many in their 70s, 80s and 90s, who travel long distances for a meal that they believe restores strength.

"When I ⁠see elderly people come ⁠all this way and leave because there's no dog meat left, it nearly brings me to tears," Reuters quoted him as saying. The market is one of the last places near Seoul still serving dog meat.

Despite soaring supply costs and minimal profits, he continues serving the dish largely for loyal regulars.

He said authorities should do more to help elderly vendors transition to new businesses.

Many restaurants in Moran Market have switched to black goat stew, marketed as another traditional health food, but owners say the shift has been difficult and does not fully make up for lost dog meat sales.

Among those having dog meat stew on Friday was Yoo Jin-sam, who said he had eaten the dish since his early twenties.

"I'm very disappointed," Yoo said. "People keep looking for it because they believe it's good for their health, and now they're getting rid of it."

Yoo, 69, said he accepted the government's decision, but would miss dog meat.

"I love dogs very much," Yoo said. "But it's still unfortunate. If there were a way, I'd like to be able to eat it again."

Another customer, Kim Jin-suk, 71, said he had few regrets about dog meat going off the menu: "I can just eat something else."