Spacecraft buzzes Mercury’s north pole, beams back photos

A spacecraft has beamed back some of the best close-up photos yet of Mercury’s north pole.

The European and Japanese robotic explorer swooped as close as 183 miles above Mercury’s night side before passing directly over the planet’s north pole. The European Space Agency released the stunning snapshots Thursday, showing the permanently shadowed craters at the top of our solar system’s smallest, innermost planet.

Cameras also captured views of neighboring volcanic plains and Mercury’s largest impact crater, which spans more than 930 miles.

This was the sixth and final flyby of Mercury for the BepiColombo spacecraft since its launch in 2018. The maneuver put the spacecraft on course to enter orbit around Mercury late next year. The spacecraft holds two orbiters, one for Europe and the other for Japan, that will circle the planet’s poles.

The spacecraft is named for the late Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo, a 20th-century Italian mathematician who contributed to NASA’s Mariner 10 mission to Mercury in the 1970s and, two decades later, to the Italian Space Agency’s tethered satellite project that flew on the U.S. space shuttles.

Parliament elects army commander as president

Lebanon’s parliament voted Thursday to elect army commander Joseph Aoun as head of state, filling a more than two-year presidential vacuum.

The vote came weeks after a tenuous ceasefire agreement halted a 14-month conflict between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah and at a time when Lebanon’s leaders are seeking international assistance for reconstruction.

Aoun, no relation to former President Michel Aoun, widely was seen as the preferred candidate of the United States and Saudi Arabia, whose assistance Lebanon will need as it seeks to rebuild.

The session was the legislature’s 13th attempt to elect a successor to Michel Aoun, whose term ended in October 2022.

Hezbollah previously backed another candidate, Suleiman Frangieh, the leader of a small Christian party in northern Lebanon with close ties to former Syrian President Bashar Assad.

However, on Wednesday, Frangieh announced he had withdrawn from the race and endorsed Aoun, clearing the way for the army chief.

No initial reports of damage from magnitude 5.8 earthquake

A strong earthquake drove frightened residents of El Salvador’s capital into the streets Thursday morning, but there was no immediate report of damage or deaths.

The U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude at 5.8.

The epicenter was 5 miles east of Acajutla at a depth of 59 miles.

El Salvador’s Environmental Ministry reported preliminarily that the earthquake was centered along the Central American country’s Pacific coast, southwest of Santa Ana.

Videos posted on social media show items falling from shelves in a supermarket and throngs of people gathered in the street, but no immediate signs of major damage.

An army airstrike on a village has killed at least 40 people, reports say

An airstrike by Myanmar’s army on a village under the control of an armed ethnic minority group killed about 40 people and wounded at least 20 others, officials of the group and a local charity said Thursday.

They said hundreds of houses burned in a fire triggered by the bombing.

The attack occurred Wednesday in Kyauk Ni Maw village on Ramree island, an area controlled by the ethnic Arakan Army in western Rakhine state, they said. The military has not announced any attack in the area.

The situation in the village could not be independently confirmed, with access to the internet and cellphone service in the area mostly cut off.

Myanmar is wracked by violence that began when the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. After the army used lethal force to suppress peaceful demonstrations, many opponents of military rule took up arms and large parts of the country are now embroiled in conflict.

Khaing Thukha, a spokesperson for the Arakan Army, told The Associated Press that a jet fighter bombed the village on Wednesday afternoon, killing 40 civilians and wounding more than 20.

It was unclear why the village was targeted. The leader of a local charity group and independent media also reported the airstrike and casualties.

Judge in Ky. reverses expansion of protections for LGBTQ+ students

The Biden administration’s Title IX rules expanding protections for LGBTQ+ students have been struck down nationwide after a federal judge in Kentucky found they overstepped the president’s authority.

In a decision issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves scrapped the entire 1,500-page regulation after deciding it was “fatally” tainted by legal shortcomings. The rule already had been halted in 26 states after a wave of legal challenges by Republican states.

President-elect Donald Trump, whose inauguration is days away, previously promised to end the rules “on day one” and made anti-transgender themes a centerpiece of his campaign.

The Education Department did not immediately comment on the decision.

Some civil rights groups called the ruling a step backward. GLAAD, a leading LGBTQ+ advocacy group, said transgender and nonbinary students are among the most bullied and harassed.

“Protections for the most vulnerable students make the entire school safer and stronger for everyone,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD.

—Denver Post wire reports