Top News Stories –

Oliver Sacks, neurologist – obituary –
Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who has died aged 82, wrote perceptive accounts of intriguing neurological disorders in books such as Awakenings (1973) and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985); away from his work he was variously a biker, weightlifter and wild swimmer. Sacks’s writing fascinated and inspired writers and film directors and showed how patients who are isolated by disease can still retain their dignity and humanity. In his best-known book, Awakenings, Sacks told the extraordinary story of a group of patients at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx where he worked as a consultant neurologist. W H Auden declared Awakenings to be a masterpiece of medical literature. It inspired a play by Harold Pinter and an Oscar-nominated film starring Robin Williams as the dedicated doctor and Robert De Niro as a patient temporarily freed from years of catatonia. [Daily Telegraph] See Top Twitter Trends
Oliver Sachs in 2009

Video of the Day –

Los Angeles Hyperlapse/Timelapse Compilation from Vadim Tereshchenko on Vimeo.

Top Twitter Trends –

Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen
  • An air strike from a Saudi-led coalition kills 36 civilians working in a bottling plant in the northern Hajjah Governorate. (Reuters)

Arts and culture

• The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that ISIL has blown up the ancient Temple of Bel in Palmyra. (Fox News)

Disasters and accidents

• A fire at an Aramco housing complex in the Saudi Arabian city of Khobar kills at least two people and injures 105. (BBC)
• 2015 Atlantic hurricane season
  • Dominican Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit declares disaster status for nine local areas where access by road is impossible after flooding and mudslides from Tropical Storm Erika which killed at least 20 people and left more than 50 missing. Skerrit also appealed for international aid. (Fox News)
• 2015 Pacific hurricane season
  • Hurricane Ignacio, which has weakened to a Category 3 (115 mph) storm, is expected to side-step Hawaii this week though will still generate high surf, rain and powerful winds. The Big Island and Maui remain on a tropical storm watch. Ignacio may re-strengthen to a hurricane when he clears Oahu on Wednesday. (Inquisitr) (Reuters)
• European migrant crisis
  • Hungary makes a fifth arrest in relation to the death of seventy-one migrants in a truck in Austria. (CNN)
• 65 girls and young women traveling to an annual dance festival are killed after an open truck smashes into the back of a van near Mbabane, Swaziland. (RT) (The Telegraph)

Politics and elections

• 2015 Lebanese protests
  • Protestors in Beirut continue their protests against the government due to a lack of effective garbage collection in the city during one of the hottest summers on record. (NPR)
• 2015 Iglesia ni Cristo protests
  • Practitioners of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) Christian sect in the Philippines rally in the capital Manila against the Department of Justice for its ongoing investigation of INC leaders. (Channel News Asia) (Philippine Star)
• Bersih 4 rally
  • There is a second day of rallies in Malaysia calling on Prime Minister Najib Razak to resign over the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal. (BBC)
• Japanese anti-militarism protests
  • Students and activists protest in Tokyo against a proposal to amend Japan‘s pacifist constitution. (U.S. News and World Report)
• Egyptian parliamentary election, 2015
  • Voters in Egypt will go to the polls for parliamentary elections starting in October 2015. (Reuters via Mix Fargo)

News from Wikipedia – please support this valuable resource