China selects new astronauts - one third of them women

September 17th, 2009 BEIJING - China has selected 30 men and 15 women candidates in the second round of its space-training programme, officials said Thursday. All 45 candidates are air force pilots.

September 16th, 2009 China picks first female astronaut candidatesBEIJING — China's military-backed space program has selected 45 astronaut candidates, including its first women hopefuls, for a training program less than a year after the country completed its first spacewalk. The 30 male and 15 female candidates are part of a program to pick five men and two women astronauts to participate in three more manned missions planned before 2012.

August 12th, 2009 LONDON - A committee appointed by the White House to review NASA's aims has put forward the idea to send astronauts on progressively longer space trips to asteroids, in order to prepare them for a landing on Mars. According to a report in New Scientist, committee member Edward Crawley of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that the first mission would fly by the moon.

August 3rd, 2009 NEW DELHI - Reports indicate that the Chinese government wants all its future astronauts to be 'super human', in the sense that they should be close to perfection to meet the standards set for the men and women who will lead China into outer space. They have to be scar-free from head to toe, have no history of serious illnesses and be unmarred by bad breath or dental cavities, the reports add.

July 30th, 2009 Report says 13 million abortions a year in ChinaBEIJING — China performs about 13 million abortions every year, mostly for single young women who experts say know little about contraception, state media said Thursday in a rare disclosure of sensitive family planning statistics. The China Daily newspaper said the real number of abortions is believed to be even higher since the 13 million accounts for procedures in hospitals but many more are known to be carried out in unregistered rural clinics.

July 30th, 2009 LONDON - Nearly 13 million abortions are performed in China every year, mostly among young women who have little knowledge about contraception, according to a new report. However, the real number of abortions are believed to be even higher since the 13 million accounts for procedures in hospitals.

July 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Two astronauts have completed their fifth and final spacewalk installing two cameras on Japan's Kibo laboratory at the International Space Station (ISS), the US space agency NASA said. The spacewalk, conducted by Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn, lasted four hours and 54 minutes.

July 27th, 2009 WASHINGTON - US astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy installed video cameras Monday on the International Space Station's new Japanese porch. The work was the main task of a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk that began about an hour ahead of schedule at 11:33 GMT.

July 24th, 2009 WASHINGTON - US astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn Friday undertook an intense spacewalk to change batteries on a solar panel of the International Space Station (ISS). During seven hours and 12 minutes of work, the astronauts replaced four batteries that collect and store energy from the station's solar panels.

July 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - It's been decades since they set foot on the moon, but the pioneers of the Apollo programme remain committed to exploring space with the goal of sending a human to Mars. Seven astronauts from the Apollo programme talked with journalists Monday to mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon.

July 9th, 2009 BEIJING - China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, has revealed that Chinese women would soon be seen in space. During a web chat with the official Xinhua news agency, Liwei said: "The selection (of China's first woman astronaut) is underway I believe Chinese women will be seen in space in the near future." Yang, now 44, made history when he voyaged beyond the planet's atmosphere for 21 hours aboard the Shenzhou V spaceship in 2003.

June 20th, 2009 London, June 20 (ANI): Besides courage, determination and little bit of fear - American astronauts took soft porn pictures with them to the Moon! Steamy pages from Playboy magazine were smuggled by pranksters at NASA into ring-bound checklists attached to the wrists of two spacemen on the Apollo 12 second manned landing in November 1969, reports The Sun. But that was not all, shocked Pete Conrad and Al Bean found jokers had added captions to the naked girls, like: "Seen any interesting hills and valleys?" Mission commander Conrad recalled: "I didn't find them until we were on our first Moonwalk." (ANI)

June 4th, 2009 KUALA LUMPUR - Police in Malaysia have discovered that a restaurant was enjoying brisk business by offering more than just some delectable dishes on the menu-women from China. Cops got suspicious of the roaring business by the restaurant in the Puchong Utama Industrial Park, after they got tipped that patrons could also order sex on the menu.

June 4th, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA managers have completed a review of space shuttle Endeavour's readiness for flight and selected June 13 as the official launch date for the STS-127 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Commander Mark Polansky and his six crewmates are scheduled to lift off at 7:17 a.m.

June 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - After carrying out a study of 17 astronauts, scientists are calling for space headache to be established as a new secondary disorder. Their study jettisons the theory that astronauts' headaches are normally caused by space motion sickness, after showing that more than three-quarters of those studied had no connection.