Mission Control, Moscow: US space tourist Charles Simonyi returned safely to Earth yesterday, touching down with a Russian-US crew in the steppe of Central Asia after paying for a two-week round trip into space.
The Russian-made Soyuz capsule undocked from the International Space Station, re-entered Earth's atmosphere and landed just over three hours later in Kazakhstan at 12.31pm GMT (3.21pm UAE time).
Controllers who supervised the landing from Mission Control outside the Russian capital Moscow clapped along with the space travellers' relatives as they saw the announcement "It has landed!" appear in red capital letters on a giant screen.
Live television pictures from the landing site 133 kilometres north-east of the Kazakh city of Jezkazgan showed recovery teams and doctors rushing to the capsule.
Ground crews first pulled out Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin who looked tired and kept his eyes closed.
They then pulled out Simonyi who smiled while doctors wiped his face.
"I feel terrific, it was a fantastic trip, it is good to be back," Simonyi said before biting into an apple as he sat in a special reclining chair.
The world's fifth space tourist paid around $25 million (Dh91.8 million) for a fortnight in space and pre-flight training. He had been at the $100-billion (Dh367.2 billion) space station, in orbit 350 kilometres above Earth, since April 9.
Tyurin and the other crew member, Nasa astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, had spent a total of seven months in orbit.
New Delhi: The arrest of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parliamentarian Babubhai Katara on the charge of running a human trafficking racket has opened a can of worms with one of his aides yesterday naming two more MPs in the scam.
Sunder Lal Yadav, a travel agent who was arrested yesterday morning along with Rajendra Kumar Gampa and a female accomplice Kiran, told the court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kamini Lau that Mohammad Tahir Khan and Ramswaroop Koli were also involved in the racket.
Another BJP man
Khan is the Bahujan Samaj Party representative from Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh, while Koli of the BJP represents Bayana in Rajasthan.
The court remanded Yadav to three-day police custody while Gampa was sent to five-day police custody. Kiran was remanded to judicial custody till May 4.
While Gampa, a part-time office assistant of Katara, was held on charges of forging documents and passports, Yadav was charged with arranging the visas, police said.
Katara, MP from Dahod in Gujarat, was arrested at the airport here on Wednesday just before he was to board a Toronto flight with Paramjeet Kaur and 15-year-old Amarjit Singh. The two were travelling on the passports of the MP's wife and son.
Police alleged that Katara had helped other women immigrate illegally in the past.
Kiran was allegedly involved in giving "training" to such women.
Mumbai: Indian teachers sprinkled cow urine on low-caste students to purify them and drive away evil, reports said yesterday, in a country where millions of people remain oppressed at the bottom of the ancient Hindu caste system.
Upper-caste headteacher Sharad Kaithade ordered the ritual after taking over from a lower-caste predecessor at a school in a remote village in the western state of Maharashtra earlier this month, the Times of India reported.
He told an upper-caste colleague to spray cow urine in a cleansing ceremony as the students were taking an examination, wetting their faces and their answer sheets, the newspaper said.
"She said you'll study well after getting purified," student Rajat Washnik was quoted as saying by the CNN-IBN news channel. Students said they felt humiliated.
Hinduism reveres the cow, and its dung is used in the countryside as both a disinfectant and as fuel.
After reading comments for many days i cant stop myself from commenting about all u jobless guys who always comment watever the matter is. From few days u ppl r commenting that rediff shud stop publicing this marriage and cover smthing else. It not rediff, its u ppl pulicing that marriage by leaving ur comments and paining urslef, WHo cares abt ur comments, neither AB nor rediff will read it.
So guys please stop commenting on articles of rediff and showing how much frustrated u r in life, Instead do somthing that will make u happy n succeful in future.
RE:All u readers are jobless people
by nicholas disouja on Apr 22, 2007 06:24 PM
HEY WE ARE NOT HERE TO HEAR ADVICE WE ARE HAVING FUN OUT OF IT IN OUR VERY OWN WAY..AND REGARDING JOBLESS PEOPLE U SAID..TODAY IS SUNDAY..SO WE NEED SOME BREAK AND SO WE ARE HAVING FUN...YOU MSUT BE LIKE U SAID DOING SERIOUS BUSINESS ON SUNDAY ALSO:)
