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NASA's Oldest Active Astronaut Returns to Earth on 70th Birthday

After leaving the International Space Station (ISS), Soyuz MS-26 space capsule commander, Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin, holds a hard-boiled egg given to him for Easter outside the capsule after he, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonaut Ivan Vagner landed in a remote area near Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan April 20, 2025, in this still image taken from video. (Roscosmos/Handout via Reuters)
After leaving the International Space Station (ISS), Soyuz MS-26 space capsule commander, Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin, holds a hard-boiled egg given to him for Easter outside the capsule after he, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonaut Ivan Vagner landed in a remote area near Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan April 20, 2025, in this still image taken from video. (Roscosmos/Handout via Reuters)
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NASA's Oldest Active Astronaut Returns to Earth on 70th Birthday

After leaving the International Space Station (ISS), Soyuz MS-26 space capsule commander, Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin, holds a hard-boiled egg given to him for Easter outside the capsule after he, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonaut Ivan Vagner landed in a remote area near Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan April 20, 2025, in this still image taken from video. (Roscosmos/Handout via Reuters)
After leaving the International Space Station (ISS), Soyuz MS-26 space capsule commander, Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin, holds a hard-boiled egg given to him for Easter outside the capsule after he, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonaut Ivan Vagner landed in a remote area near Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan April 20, 2025, in this still image taken from video. (Roscosmos/Handout via Reuters)

Cake, gifts and a low-key family celebration may be how many senior citizens picture their 70th birthday.

But NASA's oldest serving astronaut Don Pettit became a septuagenarian while hurtling towards the Earth in a spacecraft to wrap up a seven-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

A Soyuz capsule carrying the American and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday, the day of Pettit's milestone birthday.

"Today at 0420 Moscow time (0120 GMT), the Soyuz MS-26 landing craft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan," Russia's space agency Roscosmos said.

Spending 220 days in space, Pettit and his crewmates Ovchinin and Vagner orbited the Earth 3,520 times and completed a journey of 93.3 million miles over the course of their mission.

It was the fourth spaceflight for Pettit, who has logged more than 18 months in orbit throughout his 29-year career.

The trio touched down in a remote area southeast of Kazakhstan after undocking from the space station just over three hours earlier.

NASA images of the landing showed the small capsule parachuting down to Earth with the sunrise as a backdrop.

The astronauts gave thumbs-up gestures as rescuers carried them from the spacecraft to an inflatable medical tent.

Despite looking a little worse for wear as he was pulled from the vessel, Pettit was "doing well and in the range of what is expected for him following return to Earth," NASA said in a statement.

He was then set to fly to the Kazakh city of Karaganda before boarding a NASA plane to the agency's Johnson Space Center in Texas.

The astronauts spent their time on the ISS researching areas such as water sanitization technology, plant growth in various conditions and fire behavior in microgravity, NASA said.

The trio's seven-month trip was just short of the nine months that NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams unexpectedly spent stuck on the orbital lab after the spacecraft they were testing suffered technical issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth.

Space is one of the final areas of US-Russia cooperation amid an almost complete breakdown in relations between Moscow and Washington over the Ukraine conflict.

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Giant Wind Turbine Rises in Germany amid Far-right Headwinds

Conventional wind turbines are seen behind houses in Schipkau, eastern Germany on May 13, 2026. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)
Conventional wind turbines are seen behind houses in Schipkau, eastern Germany on May 13, 2026. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)
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Giant Wind Turbine Rises in Germany amid Far-right Headwinds

Conventional wind turbines are seen behind houses in Schipkau, eastern Germany on May 13, 2026. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)
Conventional wind turbines are seen behind houses in Schipkau, eastern Germany on May 13, 2026. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)

A wind turbine billed as the world's tallest is rising in eastern Germany, winning praise as a beacon for a clean, green energy future and headwinds from the far-right AfD party.

The giant structure -- set to dwarf the Eiffel Tower at 365 meters (1,200 feet) once completed -- is going up in the former coal-mining region of Lusatia in Brandenburg state, said AFP.

Once its huge rotor blades start spinning in the steady high-altitude winds before the end of the year, it is expected to generate enough electricity to power 7,500 households.

"We're achieving the same performance levels as an offshore wind farm, which means double the output compared to standard wind turbines," Jochen Grossmann, founder of the Dresden-based developer Gicon, told AFP during a visit to the site in a forest near the town of Schipkau.

As workers braved a cold rain, the structure doubled in height within a matter of hours, as 350 tons of steel were hoisted into place by huge yellow construction cranes.

The project is financed to the tune of 20-30 million euros through a government agency that sponsors cutting-edge tech, and seen by promoters as a new milestone in Germany's decades-old energy transition.

Europe's top economy has shuttered its nuclear plants and is phasing out coal while subsidizing renewables, which last year generated almost 59 percent of electricity, about half of it through wind.

Grossmann sees such projects as the way forward if resource-poor Germany wants to meet its emissions targets and wean itself off fossil fuels from conflict-torn regions.

"For the time being, our only options are solar and wind power," he argued.

"Coal reserves are running out, and nuclear power has been phased out. We have only limited supplies of natural gas and oil.

"And at the moment, with the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and everything else, it's clear that we're also not independent when it comes to natural gas and oil."

- 'Windmills of shame' -

Not everyone shares Grossmann's enthusiasm.

The project is located in a stronghold region of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose climate-sceptic leaders have decried the smaller "windmills of shame" that already dot the Schipkau area and much of Germany.

The loss of coal mining jobs has only fue led local support for the AfD, which won nearly half the vote there in last year's parliamentary elections.

Birgit Bessin, an AfD member of the regional parliament, told AFP that turbines had effects on the local wildlife and suggested that nuclear energy would be a better alternative for emission-free power.

"When there are such fundamental impacts on residents, they should be consulted," she said, citing opposition from hunters and a local airfield.

The AfD also points to microplastics given off by wind turbines, although scientific studies have found no impact on human health.

- 'Get the public on board' -

While the AfD is adamantly opposed to wind power, Germany's year-old government under conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz has also been less enthusiastic about renewables than the previous ruling coalition that included the Greens party.

Economy Minister Katherina Reiche has promised a wave of new gas power plants to compensate for renewables' intermittency, arguing this will help bring down German energy costs, among the highest in the world.

The German economy has been flatlining for years, in part because of soaring energy prices in the wake of Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the US-Israeli conflict with Iran that started in late February.

Outside the fences guarding the Schipkau site, local citizens sometimes come to have a look, some voicing anger about the project, Gicon staff said.

Klaus Prietzel, Schipkau's independent mayor, has floated the idea of the town taking over the turbine in the future to lower residents' energy bills.

Local authorities already share some of the gains from the existing windfarm, paying each resident 80 euros ($92) a year, usually just before Christmas.

"Our idea was that every citizen living in the municipality of Schipkau who can see the wind turbines should also benefit from them," said the mayor.

The AfD's Bessin dismissed such payments as "bribery", but Prietzel argued they are a useful.

"Around four million euros have already been paid out as part of a so-called acceptance-promoting measure," he said. "You have to get the public on board."

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Vietnam Auctions Convicted Tycoon's Luxury Handbags for Over $500k

Vietnamese real estate developer Truong My Lan in court (AP file photo)
Vietnamese real estate developer Truong My Lan in court (AP file photo)
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Vietnam Auctions Convicted Tycoon's Luxury Handbags for Over $500k

Vietnamese real estate developer Truong My Lan in court (AP file photo)
Vietnamese real estate developer Truong My Lan in court (AP file photo)

A pair of luxury Hermes handbags that once belonged to a jailed Vietnamese property tycoon sold at auction for more than $500,000, state media reported, as the government seeks to recover funds linked to a $27 billion fraud.

Property developer Truong My Lan was convicted in 2024 of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), which prosecutors said she controlled, AFP reported.

She was initially sentenced to death in one of Vietnam's biggest corruption cases, but now faces life in prison after Hanoi abolished capital punishment for some crimes.

A confiscated Hermes bag with white gemstones sold Thursday at the Ho Chi Minh City Asset Auction Service Center for 11.6 billion Vietnamese dong ($440,000), state media reported. A second Hermes bag sold for 2.5 billion dong ($95,000).

The disgraced tycoon had asked a court to return the rare albino Birkin bags, saying she had purchased one in Italy and received the other as a gift.

They were "mementos" she wanted returned to her family, state media reported.

Tens of thousands of people who invested their savings in Saigon Commercial Bank lost money, shocking the communist nation and prompting rare protests from the victims.

Lan was ordered to compensate victims and has paid more than 12 trillion dong ($455 million) to bondholders so far, according to a statement on the government's website.

Three cars once belonging to Lan -- a Maybach, a BMW and a Lexus -- are set to be auctioned Friday.

Varieties

British Climber Summits Everest for Record 20th Time, 2 Die on Mountain

Climbers walk in a long queue as they head to summit Mount Everest in the Solukhumbu district, also known as the Everest region, Nepal, May 18, 2026. REUTERS/Purnima Shrestha
Climbers walk in a long queue as they head to summit Mount Everest in the Solukhumbu district, also known as the Everest region, Nepal, May 18, 2026. REUTERS/Purnima Shrestha
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British Climber Summits Everest for Record 20th Time, 2 Die on Mountain

Climbers walk in a long queue as they head to summit Mount Everest in the Solukhumbu district, also known as the Everest region, Nepal, May 18, 2026. REUTERS/Purnima Shrestha
Climbers walk in a long queue as they head to summit Mount Everest in the Solukhumbu district, also known as the Everest region, Nepal, May 18, 2026. REUTERS/Purnima Shrestha

A Briton improved his own Everest record on Friday and notched his 20th ascent to the world’s highest peak, as two Indian climbers died on the mountain, taking the season's toll to five, hiking officials said.

Kenton Cool, 52, climbed the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) peak before dawn and was descending to lower camps. He was expected to reach the base camp over the weekend, his expedition organizers said, according to Reuters.

An Indian climber died at Camp II and another at the Hillary Step, Nivesh Karki of their expedition organizing company Pioneer Adventure said. Both had climbed the summit on Thursday but ⁠died during descent, ⁠he said on Friday.

Hillary Step is located below the summit in the "death zone", so called because of the dangerously low level of natural oxygen.

Details of their deaths were not available.

"One body is at very high altitude and we are trying to bring the second body from camp II," Karki told Reuters.

Cool, the ⁠British climber, is “quietly rewriting the record books,” said four-time Everest climber and expedition organizer Lukas Furtenbach of the Austria-based Furtenbach Adventures company.

“More Everest summits than any non-Sherpa ever... and still making it look like just another walk in the hills. Absolute legend," Furtenbach told Reuters from the base camp. Cool climbed with one of Furtenbach's teams.

Cool, who first climbed Everest in 2004 and has since repeated the feat every year except some years when authorities closed the mountain due to various reasons, said scaling the height of Everest was ⁠not routine.

“It ⁠never gets any easier or any less frightening. It’s the tallest mountain in the world and with it comes an incredible sense of majesty,” Cool said in a statement.

“I rely on every bit of experience I have to move safely in this environment. Standing on the summit for the twentieth time is incredibly special.”

The record for the highest number of summits at Everest is held by a Nepali Sherpa, Kami Rita, at 32.

Everest has been climbed by more than 8,000 people, many of them multiple times, since it was first scaled by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953.