A lot has happened in the world over the past week. Let’s catch up on the major news headlines:
China’s newest space mission
China’s space team is launching its 14th crewed space mission. The space shuttle, dubbed Shenzhou-19, will carry three members: 2022 Shenzhou-14 veteran Cai Xuzhe, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, who will both be venturing on their first mission.
Reuters noted, “Wang is currently China’s only female spaceflight engineer and will be the third female Chinese national to be sent to space.” The crew plans to do numerous experiments at the Chinese space station, Tiangong.
Protests in Georgia over “stolen” election results
The country of Georgia saw thousands of citizens protest the results of the parliamentary elections on Monday. This election is widely viewed as one that can change the course of the nation’s future as there are opposing parties with differing views on the extent to which Georgia continues relations with Russia.
The seemingly winning party, the Georgian Dream, has deepened ties with its neighboring country, Russia, while the opposition has called for European integration. The Georgian Dream party received 54% of the votes, but large portions of the country allege that the election results don’t reflect their views, with the most notable supporter of such allegations being the current president, Salome Zourabichvili, who encouraged citizens to take to the streets and protest. Furthering such accusations, “monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said they registered incidents of vote-buying, voter intimidation and ballot-stuffing that could have affected the outcome, but stopped short of saying the election was rigged,” according to Reuters.
Fires set in drop boxes in WA and OR destroyed hundreds of ballots
On Monday, Oct. 28, combustible devices were placed in two different ballot drop boxes in the United States. A fire in the Portland, Ore. drop box was extinguished quickly due to its fire suppression system, saving all but three ballots. However, the fire suppression system in Vancouver, Washington’s affected drop box was not as efficient, destroying hundreds of ballots.
Voters in that area were urged to request a new ballot from the county’s auditor, Greg Kimsey. Kimsey considers this a “direct attack on democracy,” according to the Associated Press.
New regulations have been enacted to prevent further incidents, such as 24-hour monitoring of each drop box in Clark County, Wash. This follows a similar incident on Oct. 8, also in Vancouver, Wash., where fortunately no ballots were affected. According to officials, the three incidents appear to be connected.
Lost Mayan city accidentally found by PhD. student
Ph.D student Luke Auld-Thomas, currently studying at the United States’s Tulane University, recently found remains of an ancient Mayan city when he was analyzing a Lidar study on Google. Lidar maps objects and areas using lasers from a plane flying over said area. The found city, dubbed Valeriana, is second in size only to Calakmul, which is considered the largest ancient Mayan civilization in history. Valeriana is thought to have had between “30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.,” BBC reported. This lost civilization lies only a fifteen-minute hike from large Maya populations currently, and 62 miles from Calakmul.
jamabil3@ramapo.edu
Featured photos courtesy of Clark-County-Elections.jpg
