Florida

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts departed the International Space Station late Saturday, aiming for a rare nighttime splashdown to end the company’s second crew flight.

It would be the first U.S. splashdown in darkness since Apollo 8′s crew returned from the moon in 1968.

NASA’s Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi, headed home in the same Dragon capsule that delivered them to the space station last November. The ride back was expected to take just 6 1/2 hours.

MIAMI (AP) — Six American oil executives jailed in Venezuela more than three years ago on corruption charges were granted house arrest on Friday in a gesture of goodwill toward the Biden administration as it reviews its policy toward the politically turbulent South American country.

The partial release of the six employees of Houston-based Citgo was confirmed to The Associated Press by family members of the men.

MIAMI (AP) — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government is intensifying efforts to court the Biden administration as the new U.S. president weighs whether to risk a political backlash in Florida and ease up on sanctions seeking to isolate the socialist leader.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The International Space Station’s population swelled to 11 on Saturday with the jubilant arrival of SpaceX’s third crew capsule in less than a year.

It’s the biggest crowd up there in more than a decade.

All of the astronauts — representing the U.S., Russia, Japan and France — managed to squeeze into camera view for a congratulatory call from the leaders of their space agencies.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX launched four astronauts into orbit Friday using a recycled rocket and capsule, the third crew flight in less than a year for Elon Musk’s rapidly expanding company.

The astronauts from the U.S., Japan and France should reach the International Space Station early Saturday morning, following a 23-hour ride in the same Dragon capsule used by SpaceX’s debut crew last May. They’ll spend six months at the orbiting lab.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s experimental Mars helicopter rose from the dusty red surface into the planet’s thin air on Monday, achieving the first powered flight on another planet.

The triumph was hailed as a Wright Brothers moment. The mini 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) copter named Ingenuity, in fact, carried a bit of wing fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer, which made similar history at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump staked his claim to the Republican Party in a closed-door speech to donors Saturday night, casting his populist policies and attack-dog politics as the key to future Republican success.

MIAMI, April 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Emergency crews in central Florida were working to prevent an environmental catastrophe at a leaking reservoir that risked sending millions of gallons of contaminated wastewater toward nearby homes and into the Tampa Bay.

More than 300 homes near the site of an abandoned phosphate mine and fertilizer-production facility in Manatee County were under mandatory evacuation orders, and Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency to free up funds to tackle the crisis.

MIAMI (AP) — The cyberattack crested just as finance officials from across Latin America were descending on Washington to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Inter-American Development Bank.

On Sept. 24, 2019, requests from more than 15,000 internet addresses throughout China flooded the bank’s website, knocking part of it intermittently offline. To unclog the network, the bank took the drastic step of blocking all traffic from China.

OCALA, Fla. (AP) — A man accused of setting a Florida church on fire last year is facing a federal hate crime charge, prosecutors announced Thursday.

A federal grand jury in Orlando returned an indictment Wednesday against Steven Shields, 24, of Dunnellon, according to court records. He’s charged with using fire to commit a felony and intentionally damaging religious property, a hate crime charge that falls under the Church Arson Prevention Act.