NewsSevere weather, NASA mission rescue, and US Senate budget race. This is what happened in the news overnight
Severe weather, NASA mission rescue, and US Senate budget race. This is what happened in the news overnight
It happened while you were sleeping. Here's what global agencies reported on during the night 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 be in effect there on Saturday. Dozens of people have been evacuated from threatened areas. In Tuscany, flooding was reported in towns around Prato, Pistoia, Florence, Pisa, and Lucca. In many of these places, authorities decided to close schools on Saturday. In Emilia-Romagna, the weather alert was announced around Bologna, Ferrara, and Ravenna, where there were also local floods. Residents in 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 is the new crew for the International Space Station. On the return trip, the capsule will bring back two members of the previous crew and astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were stranded on the station due to a spacecraft failure. They were initially supposed to spend eight days on the ISS but have been there for nine months.
- Reuters reported that on Friday evening, a failure in Cuba's national power grid caused power outages in Havana and across the country. The previous blackout in Cuba occurred in November, when about half of the country was without power. Since October last year, the country has been experiencing an energy crisis, which was exacerbated a month later by Hurricane Rafael, which passed over the island.
- The US 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 have suspended the functioning of most federal agencies. Fifty-four out of 100 senators voted to extend the current budget until the end of the fiscal year, which is at the end of September, including two Democrats.
