Former astronaut Gene Cernan, the last person to walk on the moon who returned to Earth with a message of “peace and hope for all mankind,” died on Monday in Texas following ongoing heath issues, his family said. He was 82.
Cernan was with his relatives when he died at a Houston hospital, family spokeswoman Melissa Wren told The Associated Press. His family said his passion for lunar exploration never waned.
“Even at the age of 82, Gene was passionate about sharing his desire to see the continued human exploration of space and encouraged our nation’s leaders and young people to not let him remain the last man to walk on the Moon,” his family said in a statement released by NASA.
Cernan was commander of NASA’s Apollo 17 mission and on his third space flight when he set foot on the lunar surface in December 1972. He became the last of only a dozen men to walk on the moon on Dec. 14, 1972.
WASHINGTON – The International Monetary Fund on Monday raised its forecast for the U.S. economy over the next two years, saying President-elect Donald Trump’s policies should boost economic growth, particularly in 2018.
But officials warned that if Trump’s protectionist trade proposals set off a trade war, that could be “quite destructive” for the global economy.
The IMF also increased 2017 growth projections for a number of other countries including China, Germany, Japan and Britain, but warned that the global economy faced a number of downside risks from rising protectionism to a jump in interest rates.
The 189-nation global lending agency’s latest economic outlook took note of the significant impact Trump’s election has already had in giving a boost to U.S. stock prices, interest rates and the dollar.
The new outlook puts U.S. economic growth at 2.3 percent this year and 2.5 percent in 2018. That would be an improvement from lackluster U.S. growth around 1.6 percent in 2016.
ISTANBUL – A gunman who killed 39 people during an attack on a nightclub in Istanbul during New Year’s celebrations has been caught in a police operation, Turkish media reports said early Tuesday.
The suspect was caught in a special operations police raid on a house in a housing complex in Istanbul’s Esenyurt district, private NTV television said. The report said he had been staying in the house belonging to a Kyrgyz friend.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the nightclub massacre, saying the attack was in reprisal for Turkish military operations in northern Syria. The man identified as the suspect had been on the run since the attack.
Hurriyet newspaper and other media have identified the gunman as Abdulkadir Masharipov, an Uzbek national.
Associated Press
