International news brief: Russians rush for flights out amid partial reservist call-up and more

Washington, Sep 22: Large numbers of Russians rushed to book one-way tickets out of the country while they still could Wednesday after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization of military reservists for the war in Ukraine.

Flights filled up quickly and the prices of tickets for remaining connections skyrocketed, apparently driven by fears that Russia's borders could soon close or that Putin could later announce a broader call-up that might send many Russian men of fighting age to the war's front lines.

Putin's decree stipulates that the amount of people called to active duty will be determined by the Defense Ministry. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a televised interview that 300,000 reservists with relevant combat and service experience initially would be mobilized.

NASA fuels moon rocket in test, hit again with pesky leaks
NASA's new moon rocket sprouted more fuel leaks Wednesday in a test ahead of a possible launch attempt next week, but engineers managed to get them down to acceptable levels.

There was no immediate word on whether NASA would try for a liftoff Tuesday given the sporadic nature of the hydrogen leaks, which have bedeviled the launch team for months.

''Leaving a lot of folks scratching their heads on this one,'' said Launch Control's Derrol Nail.

The daylong demo had barely begun when hazardous hydrogen fuel began escaping at the same place and same time as before, despite new seals and other repairs. Engineers halted the flow and warmed the lines in hopes of plugging the leak, and proceeded with the test. But the leak persisted before dropping to acceptable levels. Hours later, another leak cropped up elsewhere.

Trump docs probe: Court lifts hold on Mar-a-Lago records
In a stark repudiation of Donald Trump's legal arguments, a federal appeals court on Wednesday permitted the Justice Department to resume its use of classified records seized from the former president's Florida estate as part of its ongoing criminal investigation.

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit amounts to an overwhelming victory for the Justice Department, clearing the way for investigators to continue scrutinizing the documents as they evaluate whether to bring criminal charges over the storage of of top-secret records at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House.

At UN, despite global morass, hope peeks through the gloom
The head of the United Nations had just warned of a world gone badly wrong - a place where inequity was on the rise, war was back in Europe, fragmentation was everywhere, the pandemic was pushing onward and technology was tearing things apart as much as it was uniting them.

''Our world is in big trouble. Divides are growing deeper. Inequalities are growing wider. Challenges are spreading farther,'' Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday morning as he opened the general debate at the 77th UN General Assembly. And he was, on all counts, incontrovertibly correct.