Russia's war on Ukraine latest: Two killed in strike on Ukraine's…

Russia has already accused the West of using its civilian space infrastructure to support the operations of the Ukrainian troops, including for combat strikes, and detecting the locations of Vladimir Putin’s army and its movements.

Russia forcibly annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 after a pro-Moscow president was toppled amid mass street protests.
Kyiv has vowed to recapture the Black Sea peninsula along with all other Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian forces.

March 11 marked the completion of an alignment stage called “fine phasing.” “At this key stage in the commissioning of Webb’s Optical Telescope Element, every optical parameter that has been checked and tested is performing at, or above, expectations,” NASA said.

The other semifinal match was suspended due to rain one hour and 56 minutes in, with No.
4 seed Belinda Bencic of Switzerland leading No. 1 seed Jessica Pegula of the U.S. 7-5, 6-6. Pegula was leading the tiebreaker 4-2. That match will resume Sunday before the final.

April 8 (Reuters) – A missile fired from Ukrainian-held territory was shot down over the Black Sea town of Feodosia in Russian-controlled Crimea, the Moscow-installed head of Crimea’s administration said on Saturday.

LONDON, April 9 (Reuters) – A 50-year-old man and his 11-year-old daughter were killed after Russian forces struck a residential building in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia early on Sunday, authorities said.

The star itself is beautiful to look at, but a highlight of the new image is the background and the array of galaxies and stars that appear there. It’s a testament to the telescope’s sensitivity that it can see so much in just this test image.

The Webb team will take the telescope through more alignment steps over the next six weeks. The observatory will then go through a two-month process of preparing its science instruments before it’s ready to tackle its mission in earnest. If all continues to go well, math program we could see Webb’s first full-resolution imagery this summer. 

* Russia threatened to bypass a U.N.-brokered grain deal unless obstacles to its agricultural exports were removed, while talks in Turkey agreed removing barriers was needed to extend the agreement beyond next month.

* More than 30 children were reunited with their families in Ukraine this weekend after a long operation to bring them back home from Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea, where they had been taken from areas occupied by Russian forces during the war.

military documents posted on social media that offer a partial, month-old snapshot of the war in Ukraine, three U.S. officials told Reuters on Friday, while the Justice Department said separately it was probing the leak.

NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen delivered a key message about the James Webb Space Telescope on Wednesday: It’s going to deliver on its promise to see the universe in unprecedented depth and detail. Webb is already sending back proof of its prowess with a new alignment evaluation image that shows a gleaming star against a background of galaxies.

* Pope Francis appeared to ask Russians to seek the truth about their country’s invasion of Ukraine in his Easter message to the world on Sunday and appealed for dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians following recent violence.

It’s been a long road, and the image marks a triumphant milestone. “More than 20 years ago, the Webb team set out to build the most powerful telescope that anyone has ever put in space and came up with an audacious optical design to meet demanding science goals,” said Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Today we can say that design is going to deliver.”  

Webb is a complex beast. It uses 18 hexagonal mirror segments that had to be folded up for launch and then unfolded and aligned in space. We’ve been following the process and seeing increasingly sharper and more focused views of the telescope’s target star leading up to this week’s image release.

* Ukraine’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova is due to visit India on Monday and will seek humanitarian aid and equipment to repair energy infrastructure damaged during Russia’s invasion, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

Kyiv estimates nearly 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea since Moscow invaded, in what it condemns as illegal deportations. Moscow says they have been transported away for their own safety.