Liftoff! Truly International Crew Launches to Space Station and other top stories.

• Liftoff! Truly International Crew Launches to Space Station

  

  A trio of space travelers from the U.S., Russia and France launched into space Thursday (Nov.17), to kick off a six-month mission to the International Space Station. The three-person Expedition 50/51 crew includes Russian cosmonaut and Soyuz commander Oleg Novitskiy, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and the European Space Agency's Thomas Pesquet, who will become the first French astronaut to live aboard the International Space Station. Tightly packed in a Soyuz MS-03 space capsule atop ..

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• UN climate meeting closes under Trump shadow

  

  Marrakesh (Morocco) (AFP) - A UN climate conference dominated by Donald Trump's threats to withdraw from a hard-won pact concludes in Marrakesh Friday amid fears that the goal of curtailing worst-case-scenario global warming may not be achieved without US backing.The first gathering of the UN's climate forum since last year's adoption of the Paris Agreement to curtail disastrous global warming, was tasked with drafting a roadmap for its execution.It has been overshadowed by uncertainty about US ..

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• Stephen Hawking just gave humanity a due date for finding another planet

  

  Stephen Hawking attends the launch of the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge. (Niklas Halle'n/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) If humanity survives the rise of artificial intelligence, the ravages of climate change and the threat of nuclear terrorism in the next century, it doesn't mean we're home free, according to Stephen Hawking. The renowned theoretical physicist has gone as far as providing humanity with a deadline for finding another p..

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• In graveyard of dead coral in Pacific, hope and life bloom

  

  WASHINGTON (AP) — In a ghost town of dead coral off a remote Pacific island, scientists have found a bit more life.In excursions a year ago and then last April, scientists examined the normally stunning coral reefs around the island of Kiritimati and pronounced it mostly a boneyard of dead coral. About 85 percent of the coral was dead, 10 percent was sick and bleached but still technically alive, and only 5 percent was doing OK.The same scientists returned this month and found that 6 to 7 perce..

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• Asteroid strike made 'instant Himalayas'

  

  Media captionThe model animation shows the action in one half of the crater Scientists say they can now describe in detail how the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs produced its huge crater.The reconstruction of the event 66 million years ago was made possible by drilling into the remnant bowl and analysing its rocks.These show how the space impactor made the hard surface of the planet slosh back and forth like a fluid.At one stage, a mountain higher than Everest was thrown up before co..

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• China delegate hits back at Trump's climate change hoax claims

  

  Trump in 2012 infamously claimed China had created the concept of climate change to make America's manufacturing sector less competitive, dubbing the global phenomenon "bulls**t" and "non-existent."During international climate change talks in Marrakech on Wednesday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin reminded reporters that climate change negotiations began with the UN's International Panel for Climate Change in the 1980s, supported by the US Republican-led administrations under Ronald Re..

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• The North Pole is an insane 36 degrees warmer than normal as winter descends

  

  Political people in the United States are watching the chaos in Washington in the moment. But some people in the science community are watching the chaos somewhere else — the Arctic. It’s polar night there now — the sun isn’t rising in much of the Arctic. That’s when the Arctic is supposed to get super-cold, when the sea ice that covers the vast Arctic Ocean is supposed to grow and thicken. But in fall of 2016 — which has been a zany year for the region, with multiple records set for low levels ..

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• China Astronauts Return From Monthlong Space Station Stay

  

  BEIJING — A pair of Chinese astronauts returned Friday from a monthlong stay aboard the country's space station, China's sixth and longest crewed mission and a sign of the growing ambitions of its rapidly advancing space program.Veteran mission commander Jing Haipeng and first-time space traveler Chen Dong were reported in good health after their Shenzhou 11 return vehicle landed on the frozen steppes of Inner Mongolia.They spent 30 days aboard the Tiangong 2 station conducting experiments a..

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• Surgeon general issues landmark report calling addiction a brain disease

  

  Nearly 21 million Americans were directly affected by drug or alcohol addiction last year — roughly the same amount of Americans who have diabetes, according to a new report from US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on addiction.Yet just one in every 10 of those people got treatment."We would never tolerate a situation where only one in 10 people with cancer or diabetes gets treatment, and yet we do that with substance-abuse disorders," Murthy told the Washington Post.RELATED: Opioid addiction reach..

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