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Russian actress Yulia Peresild spent 12 days on the International Space Station shooting scenes for the first movie in orbit - 

A Russian actress and director were set to return to Earth on Sunday (Oct 17) after spending 12 days in the International Space Station (ISS) shooting scenes for the first movie in orbit.

If the project stays on track, the Russian crew will beat a Hollywood project announced last year by "Mission Impossible" star Tom Cruise together with NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Actress Yulia Peresild, 37, and film director Klim Shipenko, 38, blasted off from the Russia-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan earlier this month, travelling to the ISS with veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov to film scenes for "The Challenge".

The movie's plot, which has been mostly kept under wraps along with its budget, centres around a female surgeon who is dispatched to the ISS to save a cosmonaut.

Shkaplerov, 49, and the two Russian cosmonauts who were already aboard the ISS are said to have cameo roles in the film.

The mission has not come without hitches.

As the film crew docked at the ISS earlier this month, Shkaplerov had to switch to manual control.

And when Russian flight controllers on Friday conducted a test on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft set to ferry the crew back to Earth, the ship's thruster fired unexpectedly and destabilised the ISS for 30 minutes, a NASA spokesman told the Russian news agency TASS.

But the spokesman said their departure is set to go ahead as scheduled.

Peresild and Shipenko will bid farewell to the ISS crew on Saturday evening, the spokesman said, and begin undocking at 0100 GMT.

They will be shepherded home by cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, who has been on the space station for the past six months, and are set to land in Kazakhstan on Sunday at 0436 GMT.

Their landing will be documented by a film crew and will also feature in the movie, Konstantin Ernst, the head of the Kremlin-friendly Channel One TV network and a co-producer of "The Challenge", told AFP.

If successful, the mission will add to a long list of firsts for Russia's space industry.

The Soviets launched the first satellite Sputnik, and sent into orbit the first animal, a dog named Laika, the first man, Yuri Gagarin and the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova.

But compared with the Soviet era, modern Russia has struggled to innovate and its space industry is fighting to secure state funding with the Kremlin prioritising military spending.

Its space agency is still reliant on Soviet-designed technology and has faced a number of setbacks, including corruption scandals and botched launches.

Russia is also falling behind in the global space race, facing tough competition from the United States and China, with Beijing showing growing ambitions in the industry.

Russia's Roscosmos space agency was also dealt a blow after SpaceX last year successfully delivered astronauts to the ISS, ending Moscow's monopoly for journeys to the orbital station.

In a bid to spruce up its image and diversify its revenue, Russia's space programme revealed this year that it will be reviving its tourism plan to ferry fee-paying adventurers to the ISS.

After a decade-long pause, Russia will send two Japanese tourists - including billionaire Yusaku Maezawa - to the ISS in December, capping a year that has been a milestone for amateur space travel//CNA

The Yasukuni shrine in central Tokyo honours 2.5 million war dead including convicted war criminals - 

Japan's new prime minister on Sunday (Oct 17) sent a ritual offering to the controversial Yasukuni shrine that honours war dead and is seen by neighbouring countries as a symbol of Tokyo's past militarism.

Fumio Kishida sent the "masakaki" tree offering under his name as prime minister to celebrate the shrine's biannual festival held in the spring and autumn, a spokeswoman for the shrine told AFP.

The shrine in central Tokyo honours 2.5 million war dead, mostly Japanese, who have perished since the late 19th century.

But it also enshrines senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes by an international tribunal.

Two of Kishida's ministers - health and labour minister Shigeyuki Goto and Kenji Wakamiya, minister in charge of the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka - also offered sacred trees.

Earlier this year, three top ministers paid their respects at the shrine on the anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender.

But a Japanese prime minister has not appeared there since 2013, when Shinzo Abe sparked fury in Beijing and Seoul and earned a rare diplomatic rebuke from close ally the United States.

Visits to the shrine by government officials have angered countries that suffered at the hands of the Japanese military during World War II, particularly South Korea and China.

Kishida, who became Japan's prime minister on Oct 4, does not plan to visit the shrine during the two-day autumn festival that runs through Monday, Kyodo News reported, citing unnamed people close to him//CNA

FILE PHOTO: An Iraqi woman shows her ink-stained finger after casting her vote at a polling station during the parliamentary election in Sadr city, Baghdad, Iraq October 10, 2021. REUTERS/Wissam Al-Okaili - 

Turnout in Iraq's parliamentary election earlier this month reached 43 per cent, the electoral commission said late on Saturday (Oct 16), a small increase from preliminary results but lower than that in the last election in 2018.

More than 9.6 million people cast their ballots in the Oct 10 vote, the commission said.

Populist Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said his movement secured the biggest number of seats in the parliament adding that he would not challenge the results.

"We will seek to form (a) non-sectarian and non-ethnic national coalition under the umbrella of reform," al-Sadr, who opposes all foreign interference and whose main rivals are Iran-allied Shi'ite groups, said in a statement on Saturday.

The electoral commission had previously said on Oct 10 that turnout was 41 per cent in preliminary results. In the last election in 2018, total turnout was 44.5 per cent.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi is not running for re-election, but negotiations after the vote could yet see him get a second term. Kadhimi, who is viewed as friendly to the West, has no party to back him.

At least 167 parties and more than 3,200 candidates are competing for parliament's 329 seats, according to the election commission//CNA

FILE PHOTO: A person receives a vaccine for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at Acres Home Multi-Service Center in Houston, Texas, U.S., October 13, 2021. REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare - 

The United States has administered 407,446,961 doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of Saturday (Oct 16)  morning and distributed 494,918,755 doses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Thee figures are up from the 406,570,875 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Oct 15 out of 493,139,295 doses delivered.

The agency said 218,562,924 people had received at least one dose while 188,902,483 people were fully vaccinated as of 6am ET Saturday.

The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson's one-shot vaccine.

Over 10.1 million people have received a booster dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine since Aug 13, when the US authorised a third dose of the vaccines for those with compromised immune systems. The authorisation for booster shots has since been broadened to a wider population//CNA