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The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, conceded defeat on Sunday in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government. It was a seismic political shift in the Balkan country where Vucic, who had been endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and who denounced the student movement as a foreign-led attempt to unseat him, led for 14 years.
Japan is set to launch a spacecraft on the world's first mission to bring back samples from Phobos, one of the two small, potato-shaped moons orbiting Mars. Scientists hope the mission, which is expected to take five years, will provide clues to how Phobos and its smaller sibling Deimos formed, and hopefully even shed light on the origins of life in the solar system. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's launch of the spacecraft Tuesday on a new Japanese mainstay H-3 rocket comes as the United States, China and others consider sending astronauts to Mars. Samples from Phobos will provide useful data for scientists to consider using a Martian moon as a base for a future manned mission to the planet, said MMX project manager Yasuhiro Kawakatsu. "Despite their potential importance, Martian moons have never been fully investigated," Kawakatsu said. "They are known as the most important unclimbed mountains in the solar system." Japan leads the international mission that includes ...