Nasa has named the first woman and the first African American ever assigned as astronauts to a lunar mission, introducing them as part of the four-member team chosen to fly as early as next year on what would be the first crewed voyage around the moon in more than 50 years.
Christina Koch, an engineer who already holds the record for the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman, was named as a mission specialist, along with Victor Glover, a US Navy aviator, who was selected as the Artemis II pilot.
Glover, who was part of the second crewed flight of a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, would become the first astronaut of colour ever to be sent on a lunar mission.
Rounding out the four-member crew are Jeremy Hansen, the first Canadian ever chosen for a flight to the moon, serving as a mission specialist, and Reid Wiseman, an International Space Station veteran, named as Artemis II mission commander.
Tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated outside parliament and workers launched a nationwide strike on Monday, as a surging mass protest movement threatened to paralyze the economy in its efforts to halt Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 
Humans have filled the world’s oceans with more than 170 trillion pieces of plastic, dramatically more than previously estimated, according to a major study released Wednesday.
