NASA's first female astronaut candidate, pilot Jerrie Cobb, has died.

Cobb died in Florida at age 88 last month. News of her death came Thursday from journalist Miles O'Brien, serving as a family spokesman.

In 1961, Cobb became the first woman to pass astronaut testing. Altogether, 13 women passed the arduous physical testing and became known as the Mercury 13. But NASA already had its Mercury 7 astronauts, all test pilots and men. None of the Mercury 13 ever reached space.

Cobb served for decades as a humanitarian aid pilot in the Amazon jungle. She emerged in 1998 to make another pitch for space, as NASA prepared to launch John Glenn on shuttle Discovery at age 77. Cobb argued unsuccessfully that the research should include an older woman.

India's growth trajectory holds immense potential for global stakeholders to establish energy, infrastructure and technology collaboration with the country, a UN forum here has been told.

Counsellor in India's Permanent Mission to the UN Ashish Sinha stressed on Wednesday at the ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development Follow Up that India wanted to use growth as a mechanism to pull the maximum number of people out of poverty and improve quality of life in an inclusive manner.

"India has retained its position as the world's fastest growing major economy. Indian economy has been growing over 7 percent for several years and the forecast for the future is equally robust," he said.

Sinha noted that India improved its ranking by 23 positions in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings last year.

Former World Champion, Mirabai Chanu will spearhead India’s challenge at the Asian Weightlifting Championship, 2019 that begins at Ningbo, China today. Chanu will be competing in the 49kg category from 48kg following the International Weightlifting Federations’s rejig of weight categories. She has made a strong comeback after having suffered a lower-back injury that kept her out of action for nearly nine months.  She will have potent competitors. 

Among male weightlifters, India’s hopes will be on Jeremy Lalrinnunga, the gold medallist at the Youth Olympic Games. Commonwealth Games champion, Sathish Sivalingam has pulled out owing to performance troubles. Other Indians participating include Vikas Thakur, the silver medallist at the Commonwealth Games, and Ajay Singh, the bronze medallist at the Asian Youth Championship and the Junior Weightlifting Championship. Ajay had finished fifth in the 77kg category at the Asian Games in 2018. 

Nine days of competition will be played out at Ningbo Youngor Gymnasium from today onwards. Medals will be won across 20 categories, 10 for men and 10 for women.

China said on April 19 it was bracing to hold a Wuhan-style next summit with India this year despite India's reported decision to boycott Beijing's prestigious 2nd Belt and Road Forum to be held here next week to protest its sovereignty concerns over the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Addressing a media conference here ahead of the Belt and Road Forum (BRF) being held from April 25-27 to showcase China's trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made an impassioned appeal to India to shed its opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as it no way "undermined" basic position on the Kashmir dispute.

Wang said so far 37 heads of state and governments had confirmed their participation in the BRF. Representatives from over 150 countries and 90 international organisations' close to 5000 participants have confirmed their participation.

ifty-one eminent scientists were elected as Fellows of the Royal Society on April 16, along with 10 new Foreign Members and one Honorary Fellow for their exceptional contributions to science. Among the 2019 intakes is Dr Gagandeep Kang, who is purportedly the first woman scientist from India to have received this honour, while Mumbai-born Padma Bhushan awardee Dr Yusuf Hamied was elected as Honorary Fellow.

The Fellowship of the Society is an incredible honour in the scientific world, and Gagandeep Kang, along with the other new Indian Royal Fellows have now joined the ranks of Isaac Newton (1672), Charles Darwin (1839), Michael Faraday (1824), Ernest Rutherford (1903), Albert Einstein (1921), Dorothy Hodgkin (1947), Alan Turing (1951) and Francis Crick (1959) -- brilliant scientific minds who created history with their scientific work.

Mali’s Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga has resigned along with his whole goverment, following a motion of no confidence over its failure to handle violence in the West African country.

In a statement, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s office said the President accepts the resignation of the prime minister and that of the members of government. 

On Wednesday, legislators had discussed a possible motion of no confidence in the government because of last month's massacre and failure to disarm militias. Last month, some 160 Fulani herders were killed by an ethnic vigilante group.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a convention of traders at Talkatora stadium in New Delhi today.

The convention has been organised by traders supporting the BJP to express gratitude for various measures promised in the party manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls.

Union minister Vijay Goel said, traders want to express their gratitude to the Prime Minister for the BJP's Sankalp Patra promising measures like accident insurance of 10 lakh rupees, pension after 60 years, traders credit card, simplification of GST and also exemption from income tax up to 5 lakh rupees.

Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari claimed that only the saffron party can permanently solve the problems of traders.

New technology is being put to the test fighting floods this year as rivers inundate towns and farm fields across the central United States. Drones, supercomputers and sonar that scans deep under water are helping to maintain flood control projects and predict just where rivers will breach their banks.

Together, these tools are putting detailed information to use in real time, enabling emergency managers and people at risk to make decisions that can save lives and property, said Kristie Franz, associate professor of geological and atmospheric sciences at Iowa State University. The cost of this technology is coming down even as disaster recovery becomes more expensive.  

NASA astronaut Christina Koch is going to have her mission on the International Space Station (ISS) extended to 328 days. This would set a record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman.  

The US space agency and its ISS partners have set a new schedule and new crew assignments. Koch arrived at the space station on March 14 and now is scheduled to remain in orbit until February 2020. She will eclipse the record of 288 days set by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson in 2016-17. 

She will be part of three expeditions -- 59, 60 and 61 -- during her current first spaceflight. Her extended mission will provide additional data for NASA's Human Research Program and continue to support future missions to the Moon and Mars. The longest single spaceflight by a NASA astronaut is 340 days, set by former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly during his one-year mission in 2015-16.

Sri Lanka’s first satellite ‘Raavana-1’ was launched into space today from NASA’s Flight Facility on Virginia’s east shore. ‘Raavana 1’ weights around 1.05 kg and the lifespan of the satellite is around one and a half years.

The launch marks Sri Lanka’s entry into the global space age. The satellite was designed and built at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan by two Sri Lankan research engineers. Its camera mission is to capture images of Sri Lanka and its neighbouring countries.