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BEIJING (AP) — Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Monday after a six-month stay on the Tiangong space station, part of China’s effort to be a global leader in space exploration.

A parachute slowed their capsule’s nighttime descent to a remote landing area in China’s Inner Mongolia region. The crew emerged after touching down at 1:24 a.m. A Chinese national flag stuck in the ground near the capsule flapped in the wind.

In recent years, the country’s space program has brought back rocks from the moon and landed a rover on Mars. It aims to put a person on the moon by 2030, which would make China the second nation after the United States to do so.

The space station astronauts returned after welcoming a replacement three-person crew last week for the latest six-month mission. The new team of one woman and two men will conduct experiments, carry out spacewalks and install equipment to protect the station from space debris.

A space agency official said in April that Tiangong had maneuvered several times to avoid debris and had partially lost power when the solar wing’s power cables were hit by debris, according to a report from the official Xinhua News Agency.

China is among the countries that have created space debris, including the reported break-up of a rocket stage in August during the launch of the first 18 satellites for a global internet service similar to Starlink, the still-growing constellation of satellites operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Tiangong, which means Heavenly Palace, was completed two years ago and orbits the earth.

Only Chinese astronauts have gone to the space station so far, but a space agency spokesperson said last week that China is in discussions to select and train astronauts from other nations to join the missions, Xinhua reported.

Astronauts from several nations have traveled to the International Space Station, but China is blocked from that program mainly because of U.S. concerns over the military’s involvement in China’s space program.

China laid out an ambitious plan last month to become a leader in space science research by 2050 in conjunction with its advances in space exploration.

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LARNACA, Cyprus (AP) — From as far as Algeria, Iraq and Georgia, an assortment of senior government officials converge on this small facility for training by top U.S. experts to prevent the kinds of materials used to build weapons of mass destruction from crossing their borders.

In just its third year of operation, the U.S.-funded Cyprus Centre for Land, Open Seas and Port Security (CYCLOPS) has far exceeded expectations. From the dozen courses that officials were initially hoping to hold annually, demand has skyrocketed, with scheduled training sessions for next year expected to surpass 50, says the center’s director Chrysilios Chrysiliou.

So far, over 2,000 officials from 20 countries including Yemen, Libya, Armenia and Ukraine, have received training on radiological and nuclear detection for customs officers, methods of smuggling weapons of mass destruction, and chemical terrorism investigations among a host of other topics.

On Monday, a group of Cypriot and Egyptian officials started a two-day seminar on maritime cybersecurity led by the U.S.-based Sandia National Laboratories.

“This uniqueness has actually brought … a lot of success which could not had been foreseen when Cyclops was initially being created,” Chrysiliou told the Associated Press.

According to Chrysiliou, key to the center’s success has been the top-notch level of instruction participants receive from U.S.-based experts, including from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, that specialize in counter-proliferation programs.

The center also boasts an array of the latest in cutting-edge detectors able to sniff out radiological, chemical and biological agents and explosives that countries in the wider region don’t possess or have access to.

“Here, the participants have the opportunity to see the latest technology in in detecting all of the range of the threats,” said Chrysiliou. “It’s like a showcase of what exists out in the market.”

For instance, trainees are taught on how to detect and properly dispose of the radiological elements of discarded medical equipment that militants could use to fashion a weapon. Another emerging threat is the possible use of off-the-shelf drones to disperse chemical or biological agents over populated centers.

CYCLOPS has been the product of ever-closer Cypriot-U.S. defense and security ties, earning plaudits from U.S. officials all the way up to the White House. During Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides’ meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden last week, the center figured prominently as an example of enhanced bilateral security cooperation.

The center was built on a $7 million U.S. government grant, $2 million of which was for the purchase of border security equipment. The island nation’s proximity to the Middle East was seen as an asset to helping train officials from the region, whose options for such training would otherwise be very limited. The Cypriot government has secured another $5.6 million in European Union funding to expand the center and purchase additional high-tech equipment.

“There’s such a huge interest by different agencies of the U.S. and the U.N. too, because they have seen the value of utilizing CYCLOPS because of its proximity to their neighboring countries,” Chrysiliou said.

Another selling point for the center is that it’s situated a stone’s throw away from Cyprus’ main international airport of Larnaca and is close to top-flight accommodations that this tourism-reliant country is known for.

The center’s managers want to procure an expansive virtual reality system enabling officials to safely train on biological, chemical and radiological agents. Chrysiliou liaises daily with Kevin Keeler from the U.S. State Department’s Export Control and Related Border Security (EXBS) program, who called the VR system a “game-changer.”

Although the center does have small quantities of radiological and other dangerous substances for training, a virtual simulator would greatly enhance the center’s training capacity.

“We’ve already put the word out about this new virtual simulator and we have agencies like, okay, how can we get on the schedule next year when it’s not even been built yet? Yes, because it’s a big factor in today’s world,” said Keeler.

It’s still early days for the center to count on headline-grabbing cases where WMD materials have been seized at any given border. Chrysiliou said what’s equally important in acting as a potent deterrent is to send out the message that trained professionals “have the means and the ways to check and stop you.”

“So if we teach Iraqis or Yemenis or Libyans or from other countries to do a better job in controlling their borders, in controlling the dispersion of weapons of mass destruction … it makes their citizens much safer and more secure,” said Chrysiliou.

MAUMERE, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency said Monday that at least 10 people have died as a series of volcanic eruptions widens on the remote island of Flores.

The eruption at Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki around midnight spewed thick brownish ash as high as 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) into the air and hot ashes hit several villages, burning down houses including a convent of Catholic nuns, said Firman Yosef, an official at the Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki monitoring post.

He said volcanic material was thrown up to 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from its crater, blanketing nearby villages and towns with tons of volcanic debris and forcing residents to flee.

Rescuers were still searching for more bodies buried under collapsed houses, said Abdul Muhari, the National Disaster Management Agency’s spokesperson. Muhari said all the bodies, including a child, were found with a 4-kilometer (2.4 mile) radius of the crater.

He said at least 10,000 people have been affected by the eruption in six villages of Wulanggitang District, and four villages in Ile Bura district. Some have fled to relatives’ houses while the local government is readying schools to use as temporary shelters.

The country’s volcano monitoring agency increased the volcano’s alert status to the highest level and more than doubled the exclusion zone to a 7-kilometer (4.3-mile) radius after midnight on Monday as eruptions became more frequent.

A nun in Hokeng village died and another was missing, said Agusta Palma, the head of the Saint Gabriel Foundation that oversees convents on the majority-Catholic island.

“Our nuns ran out in panic under a rain of volcanic ash in the darkness,” Palma said.

Photos and videos circulated on social media showed tons of volcanic debris covering houses up to their rooftops in villages like Hokeng, where hot volcanic material set fire to houses.

Lewotobi Laki-laki is one of a pair of stratovolcanoes in the East Flores district of East Nusa Tenggara province known locally as the husband — “Laki-laki” means man — and wife mountains. Its mate is Lewotobi Perempuan, or woman.

About 6,500 people were evacuated in January after Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki began erupting, spewing thick clouds and forcing the government to close the island’s Frans Seda Airport. No casualties or major damage were reported, but the airport has remained closed since then due to seismic activity.

In a video conference on Monday, Muhammad Wafid, the head of Geology Agency at the Energy and Mineral Resources ministry said there was a different character between January’s eruption and Monday’s eruption due to a blockage of magma in the crater, which reduced detectible seismic activity while building up pressure.

“The eruptions that occurred since Friday were due to the accumulation of hidden energy,” Wafid said.

It’s Indonesia’s second volcanic eruption in as many weeks. West Sumatra province’s Mount Marapi, one of the country’s most active volcanos, erupted on Oct. 27, spewing thick columns of ash at least three times and blanketing nearby villages with debris, but no casualties were reported.

Lewotobi Laki-laki is one of the 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia, an archipelago of 280 million people. The country is prone to earthquakes, landslides and volcanic activity because it sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean. ___

Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini and Edna Tarigan in Jakarta contributed to this report.

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