Kepler telescope dead after finding thousands of worlds

Kepler telescope dead after finding thousands of worlds

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.

NASA’s elite planet-hunting spacecraft has been declared dead, just a few months shy of its 10th anniversary.

Officials announced the Kepler Space Telescope’s demise Tuesday.

Already well past its expected lifetime, the 91/2-year-old Kepler had been running low on fuel for months. Its ability to point at distant stars and identify possible alien worlds worsened dramatically at the beginning of October, but flight controllers still managed to retrieve its latest observations. The telescope has now gone silent, its fuel tank empty.

Brother: Couple died in Yosemite fall while taking a selfie

NEW DELHI

An Indian husband and wife who fell to their deaths from a popular overlook at Yosemite National Park in the western U.S. were apparently taking a selfie, the man’s brother said Tuesday.

Park rangers recovered the bodies of 29-year-old Vishnu Viswanath and 30-year-old Meenakshi Moorthy on Thursday about 800 feet below Taft Point, where visitors can walk to the edge of a vertigo-inducing granite ledge that doesn’t have a railing.

Viswanath, who Cisco India said was a software engineer at the company’s San Jose, Calif., headquarters, and Moorthy had set up their tripod near the ledge Tuesday evening, Viswanath’s brother, Jishnu Viswanath, told The Associated Press.

Park visitors the next morning saw the camera and alerted rangers, who “used high-powered binoculars to find them and used helicopters to airlift the bodies,” he said.

Authorities: Teen accused of raping girl, 6, on school bus

BELLEFONTAINE

Authorities say a 15-year-old Ohio boy accused of raping a 6-year-old girl on a school bus where he was a bus helper has been arrested on charges of rape and gross sexual imposition.

The Logan County Sheriff’s Office says the girl told her parents about the alleged abuse that reportedly occurred Oct. 24. The teen and the girl are both students in the Benjamin Logan Local School District in western Ohio’s Bellefontaine. The district says the teen served unofficially as a bus route aide who assisted younger students on the bus.

Schools Superintendent Dave Harmon says the district is working with authorities.

Sheriff’s officials said the teen was being held in the county’s juvenile detention center. The investigation is continuing.

Family wants answers after woman killed by vice officer

COLUMBUS

Family members of an Ohio woman shot and killed by a vice-squad officer say they’re waiting for answers almost two months after the shooting.

Columbus police say veteran officer Andrew Mitchell shot 23-year-old Donna Castleberry in August after she stabbed him in the hand while sitting in an unmarked police car.

Castleberry faced a single misdemeanor soliciting charge from a July 25 arrest. Cousin Mary Laile says Castleberry had struggled with drugs and was likely working the streets as a prostitute.

Laile says the family wants to know why the shooting happened, regardless of the life Castleberry was leading at the time.

The FBI is investigating the vice squad following Castleberry’s shooting and what critics call the politically motivated arrest of porn actress Stormy Daniels in July.

Associated Press