CAPE CANVERAL, Fla. – NASA slowly inflated a new experimental room at the International Space Station on Saturday, with better luck than the first try two days earlier.
Astronaut Jeffrey Williams opened and closed a valve, allowing air to flow from the space station into the compartment, looking more and more like a giant marshmallow-y pod.
It was tedious work. Five hours into the operation, Williams had opened the valve 16 times and allowed a minute of air, all told, to rush in. Mission Control reported more than 3 feet of growth in the length of the structure, the first of its kind.
KARYES, Greece – Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived at the northern Greek peninsula of Mount Athos, on a visit to the autonomous Orthodox Christian monastic community here.
Putin flew from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki on Saturday morning, went by road near Mount Athos and then took a boat – the only means to reach the community.
At Karyes, the administrative center of Mount Athos, Putin was greeted by the 20 abbots of the monasteries and 20 representatives of the monks, as well as a representative of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Argentina’s last dictator and 14 other former military officials were sentenced to prison for human-rights crimes, marking the first time a court has ruled that Operation Condor was a criminal conspiracy to kidnap and forcibly disappear people across international borders.
The covert operation was launched in the 1970s by six South American dictatorships that used their secret police networks in a coordinated effort to track down their opponents abroad and eliminate them. Many leftist dissidents had sought refuge in neighboring countries and elsewhere.
An Argentine federal court on Friday sentenced former junta leader Reynaldo Bignone, 88, to 20 years in prison for being part of an illicit association, kidnapping and abusing his powers in the forced disappearance of more than 100 people. The ex-general who ruled Argentina in 1982-1983 is already serving life sentences for multiple human-rights violations.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – A black teenager says he was escorted out of his high school graduation ceremony in Sacramento by three deputies for refusing to remove his kente cloth, a traditional Ghanaian silk and cotton fabric.
Nyree Holmes said Saturday he wore the decorative cloth atop his graduation robes to have something that represented his culture during the ceremony at Sacramento’s Sleep Train Arena on Tuesday.
The 18-year-old student from Cosumnes Oaks High School in Elk Grove, California, says the school’s student activities director told him he was violating graduation dress requirements.
Associated Press
