NewsItaly's floods prompt evacuations; Falcon 9 launches new ISS crew
Italy's floods prompt evacuations; Falcon 9 launches new ISS crew
It happened while you were sleeping. Here's what global agencies reported on overnight from Friday to Saturday.
- Two Italian regions—Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna—are dealing with local flooding due to rivers and streams overflowing after severe downpours. A third-highest level weather alert will also be in effect there on Saturday. Dozens of people have been evacuated from threatened areas. In Tuscany, flooding was noted in towns around Prato, Pistoia, Florence, Pisa, and Lucca. In many of these places, schools were closed on Saturday. In Emilia-Romagna, the weather alert was announced around Bologna, Ferrara, and Ravenna, where local flooding also occurred. Residents of flood-threatened areas, including near Imola, have been evacuated.
- A Falcon 9 rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On board the Dragon capsule, it is carrying the new crew for the International Space Station. On the return trip, the capsule will bring back two members of the old crew and two astronauts—Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were stranded on the station due to a failure of their spacecraft. They were supposed to spend eight days on the ISS but have been there for nine months.
- On Friday evening Eastern Time, Reuters reported that a failure in Cuba's national power grid caused power outages in Havana and throughout the country. The previous blackout in Cuba occurred in November, leaving about half of the country without power. Since October of last year, the government has been experiencing an energy crisis, which was exacerbated a month later by Hurricane Rafael, which passed over the island.
- The U.S. Senate passed a six-month budget stopgap measure on Friday, just hours before the existing budget expires. This means there will be no government shutdown, which would suspend the functioning of most federal agencies. Fifty-four out of 100 senators voted to continue the current budget until the end of the fiscal year, which is the end of September, including two Democrats.
