Day: November 5, 2013

India launched its first unmanned mission to Mars on Tuesday as it tries to join a select group of countries that have managed to land spacecraft on the Red Planet. As the rocket sped off towards space from Sriharikota, a small island near Chennai in the southern part of the country, it was a huge boost for the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), which started in the 1960s with a local church as its main office, a converted bishop’s house as its workshop and a cowshed as its laboratory. The organization launched India’s first rocket from the middle of a coconut plantation in the southern state of Kerala in 1963.

Tuesday’s launch is just the first stage of Mangalyaan, as the mission has been named. The 1,350-kilogram orbiter will travel 780 million kilometers before reaching the Red Planet in September next year. “The biggest challenge will be precisely navigating the…

November marks “Movember,” the month-long charity event in which men will attempt to grow mustaches to look like President William Howard Taft, Burt Reynolds or Nick Offerman (also a “Movember” spokesman), while raising money for men’s health causes like testicular and prostate cancers.

To help out rookies who are trying to grow good ‘staches for these good causes, NewsFeed talked to a few experts:

• Adam Paul Causgrove, 29, a grants administrator in the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics and the President and Chairman of the American Mustache Institute, an interest group for “mustached Americans.” He sports a classic handlebar mustache with ends that curl upwards.

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  Greg Anderson

  Patrick Fette at the National Beard and Moustache Championships in New Orleans on September 2013.

  Patrick Fette, 27, the Louisville, Ky., resident, who has only had a mustache for two years, but was crowned the new world champion in the

Updated at 4:47 p.m. ET. 

Embattled Mayor Rob Ford told a room of reporters “I have nothing left to hide” and reiterated he will not step down after admitting to smoking crack cocaine Tuesday.

“I love being your mayor,” he said in an apology to Toronto residents. “I was elected to do my job and that’s exactly what I’m going to continue doing.”

Ford also said he kept the truth from his brother and family members, his staff and council colleagues because he was “embarrassed and ashamed.” The Canadian mayor added that Toronto must continue moving forward, and said he plans to run for reelection next year.

“I want the people of this great city to decide whether they want Rob Ford to be their mayor.”

Earlier in the day Ford admitted to the drug allegation after months of denials,.

“Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine,” Ford said at a…

For centuries, it has been common for men in Russia’s southern regions to kidnap the woman they want to marry, a ritual known as “bride stealing.” And despite amounting to a major felony, the local custom is still widely tolerated. That tension between Russian law and local tradition was on display on Nov. 4, Russia’s National Unity Day, when the Kremlin-appointed leader of the region of Ingushetia called on his tiny, mountainous republic “to preserve its historic traditions and cultural values.” What President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov failed to mention was how much trouble the tradition of bride stealing has caused his region (or at least its women) over the past week and a half.

On Oct. 26, two prominent family clans in Ingushetia staged a shootout in broad daylight over the repeated kidnapping of 21-year-old Khagi Yevloeva. Over the course of this year, Yevloeva had been abducted three times by a…