The Russian cosmonaut is accompanied by two Americans and a Japanese.

A rocket made by the American company SpaceX was launched Wednesday with Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina aboard to the International Space Station (ISS) from Florida in the United States, despite tensions between Washington and Moscow having peaked since the start of the war in Ukraine.

This is the fifth regular mission to the ISS operated by SpaceX on behalf of NASA, but the first to transport a Russian citizen. The crew of “Crew-5” also consists of the Japanese Koichi Wakata and the Americans Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann. The latter becomes the first Native American to fly into space.

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Two weeks ago, an American took off for the ISS on board a Russian Soyuz rocket. The long-planned astronaut exchange program has continued despite very high tensions between the two countries since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February. Ensuring the operation of the ISS has thus become one of the very few topics of cooperation between the United States and Russia.

Transporting another nation’s citizen is “a huge responsibility,” Kathy Lueders, deputy administrator at NASA, said during a news conference in late September.

When asked about the current relationship with the Russian space agency Roscomos, she said: “In operational terms, we very much appreciated the continuity of the relationship, even in a geopolitically very difficult time.” The head of the ISS at NASA, Joel Montalbano, also had the “excellent support by Roscosmos” for these joint flights.

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Anna Kikina, 38 and an engineer by training, will become the fifth Russian professional cosmonaut to go into space. “I hope that in the near future we will have more women in the bodies of cosmonauts,” she told AFP in August.

It is also the first spaceflight of American astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, but the fifth for Japanese Koichi Wakata. After a journey of around 30 hours, your ship will dock at the station, which is around 400 kilometers above sea level, on Thursday. Crew-5 members will join the seven people already on board (two Russians, four Americans and one Italian).

A few days of handover are planned for the four Crew 4 members before being sent back to Earth. Crew-5’s crew will have to spend about five months in orbit conducting more than 200 scientific experiments, including more than 70 new ones aboard the flying laboratory.

Anna Kikina is the first Russian to fly in a Falcon 9 rocket designed by billionaire Elon Musk’s company.

The latter intervened in the debate on the war in Ukraine on Monday, urging his Twitter followers to vote on his own proposal to settle the conflict between Kyiv and Moscow. In particular, this implied the surrender of Crimea to Russia. The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, still on Twitter, replied that he should “fuck off”.

floating future

Tensions between Moscow and Washington have increased significantly in the space arena after the announcement of US sanctions against the Russian aerospace industry in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Russia announced this summer that it intends to leave the ISS “after 2024” in favor of setting up its own orbital station – without setting an exact date for withdrawal.

The head of manned flights on Roskosmos, Sergei Krikaliov, told him on Monday “hope” that the Russian government would agree to an extension of participation in the ISS after 2024. The Americans have already stated that they intend to continue operating the station until 2030. As it stands, the ISS cannot function without one of the two segments that make it up, one American and one Russian. The latter ensures in particular its maintenance in orbit thanks to a propulsion system.

Between 2011 and SpaceX’s first flight to the ISS in 2020, Russia was the only country able to send astronauts there, making NASA pay for seats aboard its rockets. The loss of this monopoly means a significant deficit for the Russian space program. The exchange of astronauts this year, which will have to be renewed in the future, will take place without financial compensation.

SEE ALSO – SpaceX’s Crew 4 mission has arrived on the ISS

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On Tuesday, the Slovenian parliament approved a law allowing same-sex people to marry and adopt children: 48 MPs voted in favor, 29 against and one abstained. Slovenia is the first Eastern European country to have such a law: so far the country has recognized a form of registered same-sex partnership, giving access to certain rights such as pension and property rights, but it was still quite limited (e.g. it saw no adoption before).

In fact, marriages and adoptions for homosexual couples have been legal in Slovenia since last July, when the Constitutional Court ruled that previous bans on the subject were unconstitutional and discriminatory, based on the cases of two homosexual couples who had been subjected to them. The court had ordered Parliament to legislate within six months, but in fact the ruling immediately allowed same-sex people to marry because it overrode the articles of the Constitution that defined marriage solely as the union between a man and a woman .

The Constitutional Court’s decision came weeks after the country formed a liberal and progressive government led by current Prime Minister Robert Golob’s Freedom Movement Party, which surprisingly won the elections at the end of April. Golob’s government replaced the conservative and populist government of Janez Jansa from the Slovenian Democratic Party, whose representatives have sharply criticized the court’s decision and organized several protests in recent months.

In July, judges at the Constitutional Court said their decision did not diminish the importance of heterosexual marriage or the conditions under which people of the opposite sex marry. “It just means that two same-sex partners can now marry like straight people,” they said. The July decision covered marriage only, but the new law also included the possibility of adoption for same-sex couples.

Presenting the text in Parliament, Foreign Minister Simon Maljevac said: “With these changes, we are recognizing the rights that same-sex couples should have for a long time.”

Slovenia was created in 1991 after the dissolution of former Yugoslavia and has been part of the European Union since 2004. With this law, it is decidedly at the forefront of civil rights compared to neighboring countries with a similar history, but also compared to others in the European Union, including Italy: so far, same-sex marriages are legal only in 14 EU member states (including Slovenia) of 27

– Also read: Raising a non-traditional family in Italy

At a press conference in Santiago de Chile with Secretary of State Antonia Urrejola, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed the importance of taking action to hold the Cuban government accountable for the oppression of the Cuban people.

“And when it comes to Cuba, I think the longstanding views of the United States, including this administration, are well known,” Blinken said.

The Secretary of State recalled the actions taken by the Biden administration “to alleviate as much as possible the hardships facing the island’s people” and how the communist regime resorted to violence to quell the peaceful July 11, 2021 protests.

“We have recently taken steps, including remittances, travel and visas, to try to continue to help and empower the Cuban people. At the same time, we saw that a year ago the Cuban people tried again to defend their rights and that these protests, peaceful protests, were not only violently repressed, but people, including minors, were generally imprisoned with excessive prison terms 15 , 20 to 30 years just because they speak their mind,” said Blinken.

In this regard, the head of US diplomacy said that “we must hold the Cuban government responsible, like any other government, for denying the Cuban people these rights.”

“Again, we may have different approaches on how best to do this. And that’s a very important conversation that we always have, because we all make our judgments, and certainly no one is infallible when it comes to that, including us. And we try: we listen carefully and learn from our partners and friends, but the underlying principle is the same,” he said.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric was among Latin American leaders who criticized Washington’s decision in June not to invite Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela to the Americas Summit in Los Angeles.

Referring to the United States’ relationship with Latin America, Antony Blinken pointed out that “virtually all of the challenges facing our peoples simply cannot be dealt with on our own. We need alliances, we need cooperation, we need cooperation, and that starts with America’s closest partners, like Chile.”

Ahead of his meeting with Urrejola, Blinken met President Boric at the Palacio de la Moneda and both stressed the importance of the relationship between the two countries, shortly after 2023 will mark the bicentenary of bilateral relations.

Blinken and Boric discussed the importance of continuing to expand responsible trade and investment flows as the 20th anniversary of the US-Chile Free Trade Agreement approaches.

They also analyzed areas of cooperation that contribute to strengthening democracy in the region. They also agreed to continue to address the aftermath of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, which is being seen around the world, including in the Western Hemisphere.

(With a contribution by Michel Sagué for Radio Martí)

Status: 10.05.2022 12:51

Around 30,000 passengers are likely to be affected by the pilots’ strike at Eurowings. Lufhansa’s low-cost airline subsidiary assumes that only about half of the planned flights will start tomorrow.

The all-day strike scheduled for tomorrow by the pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) at Eurowings could paralyze every second flight and thus affect around 30,000 passengers. Lufthansa’s low-cost subsidiary announced today that it would be possible to implement around half of the normal program of around 500 flights.

However, the airline will do everything possible to minimize the impact of the strike on passengers. You can also turn to partners from the Lufthansa Group.

Passengers must be informed by the afternoon

Eurowings consists of two flight operations, he said. Only Eurowings Germany flights are affected by the planned 24-hour industrial action, not Eurowings Europe. The company asks passengers to stay informed about the status of their flight on the website www.erowings.com or through the Eurowings customer app. Travelers whose flight is canceled due to a strike must be informed of travel alternatives by this afternoon.

The Cockpit Association announced yesterday that negotiations on the overall salary agreement at the Lufthansa subsidiary had failed. Ten rounds of negotiations would not have led to any significant rapprochement. The shutdown is scheduled to start at midnight and end at 11:59 pm. Eurowings criticized the announced strike as disproportionate and irresponsible.

Union criticizes pilots’ workload

VC is concerned about the conflict for better working conditions. A core requirement is employee relief, for example by reducing maximum flight duty times and increasing rest times. There have been no readjustments since 2015. At the same time, the workload has increased significantly, the union said. “The employer regularly exhausts colleagues’ work time to the maximum allowed, which cannot be a permanent situation.”

The union regrets the restrictions on passengers. However, due to the lack of accommodation on the part of the management, the only option left at the moment is to enforce the demands with a labor dispute. Eurowings personnel manager Kai Duve criticized this as excessive “in a time when millions of people are afraid of a cold winter and the next heating bill”.

“The requirements would make 20% of our flights unfeasible and, therefore, would jeopardize the future of air operations and its employees”, warned the manager of the airline. Eurowings already offers employment conditions that are among the best among comparable European airlines.