Top News Stories –
Man dies after blowing up condom machine, says German police –
A man died on Christmas Day in Germany after he was hit in the head by a flying piece of metal from a condom machine that he and two accomplices blew up in an apparent robbery attempt, police said on Monday. The 29-year-old man was taken to hospital in the western town of Schoeppingen, near the Dutch border, by the two other men who fled the scene of the explosion in a car, leaving behind condoms and money scattered around the gutted vending machine. The two men told hospital officials that their friend had fallen down the stairs, injuring his head. Suspicious of their story, the officials called the police. During questioning, police said, one of them admitted that the three had blown up the condom machine. Police said the three men apparently got into a car after triggering the explosion, but the 29-year-old did not close his door and was hit by debris when the machine exploded. [Daily Telegraph]
Lemmy, Motorhead frontman, dies aged 70 after cancer diagnosis –
Motorhead frontman Lemmy has died aged 70, two days after learning he had cancer, the British band has announced. Lemmy formed the rock group in 1975 and recorded 22 albums, including Ace of Spades, as he became one of music’s most recognisable voices and faces. The band said on its Facebook page: “Our mighty, noble friend Lemmy has passed away after a short battle with an extremely aggressive cancer.” Lemmy was born Ian Fraser Kilmister in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, in 1945. He lived in Anglesey, Wales, as a child and acquired the nickname Lemmy while at school, although he claimed to have had no idea where it came from. [BBC]
Lemmy in 2005
Game of Thrones tops list of 2015’s most pirated shows –
For the fourth year running, fantasy series Game of Thrones has topped a list of the most pirated TV shows. According to Torrentfreak, the season five finale was illegally downloaded 14.4m times. More than half of those came in the week after its US premiere. The Walking Dead and The Big Bang Theory rounded up the top three, with 6.6m and 4.4m downloads respectively. Earlier this year, Game of Thrones broke a record when more than 258,000 users shared the show simultaneously. The HBO drama was mainly downloaded on BitTorrent. [BBC] Last year Game of Thrones was only downloaded 8.1 million times.
Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones)
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Other News Stories –
- Armed conflicts and attacks
- Syrian Civil War
- At least 32 people are killed and 90 injured following a car bomb and suicide-bomb attack in the al-Zahra district of the Syrian city of Homs. (Reuters)
- Under a United Nations agreement, vehicles are set to ferry scores of insurgents from rebel-held Al-Zabadani to Turkey. Families from two besieged Shi’ite towns in the mainly rebel-held Idlib province are also headed to the border and will eventually fly on to Beirut. (Reuters) (Raidió Teilifís Éireann)
- War in Afghanistan (2015–present)
- A car bomb near Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, that was targeting a NATO convoy passing through the area, kills one civilian and injures 33 others. The Taliban claim responsibility. (AFP via Yahoo News) (Reuters via NBC News)
- Business and economics
- Whole Foods agrees to pay $500,000 to resolve a New York City Department of Consumer Affairs investigation that the supermarket chain charged too much for some prepackaged foods at its New York City stores. (NBC News) (CNN)
- Disasters and accidents
- Queensland, Australia, authorities say the estimated amount of sulphuric acid leaked from Sunday’s 26-carriage Aurizon freight train derailment near Julia Creek to 31,500 liters. The train was carrying 819,000 liters, not 200,000 liters as originally thought.Flinders Highway remains closed in both directions. (Sky News) (ABC Australia)
- 2015 Shenzhen landslide
- A Chinese official who sanctioned a dump of construction debris that led to a deadly landslide in the southern city of Shenzhen that killed at least 7 people and has left over 70 missing, kills himself by jumping from a building in the city’s Nanshan district, according to the South China Morning Post. (TIME)
- International relations
- Japan–South Korea relations
- Japan and South Korea agree to ‘irreversibly’ resolve a long-running dispute over Korean women the Japanese military used as sex slaves during World War II. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe will issue a formal apology to the so-called “comfort women.” Tokyo will set up an aid fund of about 1 billion yen ($8.3 million). (USA Today) (Reuters)
- European migrant crisis
- Germany recruits 8,500 teachers to provide special German language lessons for 196,000 Syrian child refugees. (The Independent) (CNN)
- Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
- Eleven tons of enriched uranium are on a ship heading from Iran to Russia, per the July 14th international agreement. Iran delivers 200 tons of Russian yellowcake in return. The International Atomic Energy Agency will decide when Tehran has complied with its obligations which would make dismantling of economic sanctions possible. (AP) (BBC) (Mehr)
- Law and crime
- A police officer storms the police headquarters in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico, and shoots dead three fellow officers, including a commanding officer. Authorities say Guarionex Candelario, 50, was arrested for the killings shortly afterwards and taken to hospital for minor injuries. (NY Daily News)
- A U.S. grand jury decides not to bring charges against a Cleveland policeman over the killing of 12 year old Tamir Rice. (BBC)
- Guatemalan Gustavo Alejos Cambara, once private secretary to former President Álvaro Colom, turns himself in to authorities on charges related to government medicine procurement corruption. (AP)
- Politics and elections
- Polish constitutional crisis, 2015
- The leader of Poland‘s Democracy Defence Committee, Mateusz Kijowski, says the government has “broken the country” after Polish President, Andrzej Duda, enacted a measure curbing the powers of the country’s highest legislative court, theConstitutional Tribunal, despite protests and warnings from the European Union. Kijowski further called for foreign intervention in the country from “Europe and the United States” to topple the Law and Justice (PiS) government, saying “they must help us, otherwise Poland will leave the community of democracies”. After news broke that Duda had signed into law the constitutional tribunal bill, he made a speech on television defending his move. Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza quoted U.S. sources saying Barack Obama had objections and had let it be known he would delay meeting Duda. The newspaper also suggested Poland’s hosting of the next NATO summit, planned for July 2016, was in the balance. (The Guardian)
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