Mars research crew leaves isolation

Mars research crew leaves isolation

HONOLULU

Six NASA-backed research subjects who have been cooped up in a Mars-like habitat on a remote Hawaii volcano since January emerged from isolation Sunday. They devoured fresh-picked tropical fruits, vegetables and fluffy egg strata after eating mostly freeze-dried food during their isolation.

The crew of four men and two women are part of a study designed to better understand the psychological impacts a long-term space mission would have on astronauts.

The data they produced will help NASA select individuals and groups with the right mix of traits to best cope with the stress, isolation and danger of a two-to-three year trip to Mars. The U.S. space agency hopes to send humans to the red planet by the 2030s.

Truck hits memorial

OXFORD, MISS.

A pickup truck hit and damaged a decorative extension of a Confederate memorial’s base, but campus police say it was apparently by accident.

University police tweeted the driver and passenger were taken to a hospital after the crash Saturday night. One tweet stated, “No indication it was a deliberate act.”

UK downgrades terror threat level

LONDON

British police made progress Sunday in their frantic pursuit of suspects and evidence connected to the bomb that partially exploded on a packed London subway, leading counter-terrorism officials to lower the country’s threat level because they no longer considered a fresh attack to be imminent.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced the downgraded terror threat level hours after London police said a second suspect was in custody and a second property was being searched in connection with Friday’s attack that injured 30 people.

Rudd cautioned that the investigation was ongoing and that Britain still faced a substantial threat even though the terror level had been reset to “severe” from “critical.”

France: Acid attack not seen as terror act

PARIS

Four American college students were attacked with acid Sunday at a train station in France, but French authorities so far do not think extremist views motivated the 41-year-old woman who was arrested as the purported assailant, the local prosecutor’s office and the students’ school said.

Boston College, a private Jesuit university in Massachusetts, said in a statement Sunday that the four female students were treated at a hospital for burns after they were sprayed in the face with acid in the city of Marseille. The statement said the four all were juniors studying abroad, three of them at the college’s Paris program.

Police in France described the suspect as “disturbed” and said the attack was not thought at this point to be terror-related, according to the university’s statement.

Maria strengthens, a threat to Caribbean

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic

The islands of the eastern Caribbean prepared Sunday to face another potential disaster, with forecasters saying newly formed and likely to strengthen Hurricane Maria was headed for a hit on the Leeward Islands by tonight.

Hurricane or tropical-storm warnings were posted for many of the islands, including those already coping with the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma, such as St. Barts and Antigua and Barbuda.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Maria was expected to gain power and could be near major hurricane strength while crossing through the Leeward Islands late Monday on a path aiming toward Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Associated Press