Our daily flight around the world

🇷🇺 🚀 Russia launched its first Moon mission since 1976. Moscow’s Luna-25 spacecraft is currently in a race with India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission (which launched on July 14) to be the first probe to make a soft landing on the Moon's south pole. Russian officials say Luna-25, which was launched this morning, will take between 10 and 12 days to reach the Moon’s surface – a timetable that implies it’ll match or narrowly beat India’s attempt. If/when it reaches the lunar surface, Luna-25 will search for signs of frozen water that could determine the location of a future Moon base.

🇪🇨 An Ecuadorian presidential candidate was assassinated two weeks before an upcoming election. Fernando Villavicencio, a journalist-turned-politician who has been vocal about the link between organized crime and government officials, was shot and killed outside a high school in the capital city of Quito on Wednesday. Authorities arrested seven Colombian nationals yesterday in connection with the shooting, all of whom are known members of organized criminal groups, per officials. Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso said the killing was clearly an attempt to sabotage the election, but that voting will go ahead as planned on August 20 amidst a national state of emergency. Previous national polling placed the late Villavicencio in the middle of the pack of Ecuador’s eight candidates.

🇨🇳 One woman in Asia has lost more wealth than anyone in the world over the past two years ($28.6 billion), per Bloomberg. Yang Huiyan, chairwoman of property development company Country Garden Holdings Co., has seen her fortune drop by 84% since its peak of $34.1 billion in June 2021, including a drop of 8.2% on Tuesday alone. The 41-year-old executive’s wealth mainly comes from her stake in Country Garden, whose shares have dipped nearly 60% this year amidst falling home sales and rising refinancing costs in China.