United States space tourist Garriott blasts off in Russian rocket

US video game magnate Richard Garriott blasted off into space aboard a Russian rocket on Sunday watched by his father, a NASA astronaut who went into space at the height of the Cold War.

The Russian Soyuz TMA13 spacecraft lifted off in clear weather from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the Kazakh steppes just after 1.00 pm.

A video game developer from Texas, Garriott paid $35 million to fly into space alongside US astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov.

Garriott’s father, Owen, watched the blast off through binoculars on an observation platform and Garriott’s girlfriend, Kelly Miller, burst into tears.

“I am very happy for him. It is one of the things he really wanted to do,” Miller said as others opened Champagne to celebrate the successful launch. “I can see he is really enjoying it like a little kid in the candy shop,” Miller said.

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Delhi girl Tanya, 15, makes history on a Texas golf course

In a sport proud of its “Stay Quiet” placards, there is not much scope for making too much noise. But then Tanya Wadhwa anyway doesn’t quite fit into the outspoken, brash mould of India’s new, young sports stars. It’s the teenager’s strides on the golf course that are making people sit up take notice.

Last week, Tanya trumped a field of professionals, and the pressures of a last-hole playoff-like situation to chalk up the biggest win of her cub career. Tanya sank a last-hole birdie, as playing partner Adrienne McDonald missed hers, to claim the Texas Women’s Open, an event on the Northern Texas PGA, a section of the PGA of America. The 15-year-old is the youngest winner in the history of the tournament.

She doesn’t sound much like it though, her talk as much of a pro as her game. “I knew that if I just focus on one shot at a time, and not the outcome, I would be fine. In situations like that you can’t get ahead of yourself. You just have to stay in the moment and give your 100 per cent on every shot,” she says, describing that last hole in an email interview.

But she has always been a child prodigy. Having begun with chasing birdies in the Delhi Golf Club shadows, she won herself a scholarship to sunny stateside at the rather tender age of eight. She started at the David Lead better Academy in Texas, that her father Ravi had just looked up on the internet, her family moving along with her, but has now changed base to Florida.

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