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India’s tiger population rises to 3,000 despite cities expanding

India’s tiger population has grown to nearly 3,000 and has been described by the country’s prime minister as a “historic achievement”.

India estimates its tiger population every few years and the number for 2018 was released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.

The tiger population was 2,226 in 2014 and just 1,400 about 15 years ago.

Mr Modi said the number of protected areas for tigers rose from 692 in 2014 to 860 last year while the number of community reserves went from 43 to 100 over the same period.

“With around 3,000 tigers, India has emerged as of one of the biggest and safest habitats for them in the world,” he said.

Belinda Wright, founder of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, based in New Delhi, said India “still has a long way to go to secure a long-term future for wild tigers”.

But she also said India should, nevertheless, be pleased with the results of what was the largest and most thorough estimation of the tiger population.

(SKY News)

‘Definitely weird’: man bites snake

An Indian man who was bitten by a snake got his revenge on the reptile by biting it back and killing it, the man’s father said on Monday.

The man, Raj Kumar, was relaxing at home, enjoying a drink on Sunday, when a snake slithered into his house in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, and bit him, said his father.

“A snake bit him. So, in turn, he bit it and chewed it into pieces,” said the father, Babu Ram.

The man’s family took him to hospital where media said his condition was critical. The snake that bit him was reported to have been a rat snake, which experts regard as usually not venomous.

“This is definitely weird,” said Raj Kumar’s doctor, N.P. Singh.

“I’ve seen people coming in with snakebites, but never somebody who bit a snake and then brought it with him in a bag.”

(Reuters)

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• War in Afghanistan
  • An Afghan National Army soldier kills two U.S. service members in a suspected “insider attack” in Kandahar, Afghanistan. (BBC)
• Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen
  • Ten civilians, including children, are killed after a Saudi Arabian-led coalition air strike hits a market in northern Yemen. (The Washington Post)
• 2018–19 Sudanese protests
  • Five students are shot dead after security forces open fire in the city of El-Obeid during a protest. (Al Jazeera)

Arts and culture

• Billboard reports that Lil Nas X has broken the all-time record on the Billboard Hot 100 with his song “Old Town Road“, as it spends its seventeenth week atop the chart; the previous record-holders are Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men with “One Sweet Day“, and Luis Fonsi with “Despacito” featuring Daddy Yankee. (Billboard)

Business and economy

• International sanctions during the Venezuelan crisis
  • Venezuelan officials are accused of using the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in order to circumvent United States sanctions. (Yahoo Finance)
• Capital One announces that a major data breach occurred on July 19, 2019, by one individual who compromised the data of about 106 million people in the United States and Canada. The Federal Bureau of Investigation have a made an arrest after the alleged hacker, 33-year-old Paige Thompson from Seattle, boasted about her actions online. (BBC)

Law and crime

• An eight-year-old boy is killed and his mother injured after being pushed by a man into the path of an oncoming train at Frankfurt‘s main station, in Hesse, Germany. The attacker, a 40-year-old immigrant Eritrean man, also attempted to knock a third person onto the tracks. The suspect and the victims did not appear to have known one another. (Sky News)
• 2019 Altamira prison riot
  • At least 57 people are killed, including sixteen who were beheaded, during prison riots in Pará, Brazil, which saw rival gangs battle for five hours. (BBC)

Politics and elections

• After two FARC leaders go into hiding from drug trafficking charges in Colombia and the United States, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro makes a public statement saying they are welcome to take refuge in his country. He also welcomes other FARC rebels to Venezuela, calling them “leaders of peace”. (Reuters)
• 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests
  • The Chinese government‘s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office condemns protests in Hong Kong as “evil and criminal acts committed by the radical elements”, saying that Hong Kong’s top priority is to “punish violent and unlawful acts in accordance with the law”. Hong Kong legislators and journalists reject the statement from Beijing, expressing concern that this will worsen tensions. (BBC)

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Chinese vlogger who used filter to look younger caught in live-stream glitch

Fans of a popular Chinese video blogger who called herself “Your Highness Qiao Biluo” have been left stunned after a technical glitch during one of her live-streams revealed her to be a middle-aged woman and not the young glamorous girl they thought her to be.

The revelation has led to discussions about standards of beauty across the country’s social media platforms.

The blogger, who initially boasted a follower count of more than 100,000 on Douyu, is believed to have used a filter on her face during her appearances, and had been renowned for her “sweet and healing voice”.

China’s Global Times said she had been “worshipped” as a “cute goddess” by some members of her loyal audience with some fans even giving her more than 100,000 yuan ($14,533, £11,950).

However, live-streaming platform Lychee News says the incident happened on 25 July, during a joint live-stream with another user, Qingzi on the Douyu platform.

The Global Times reports that all was as normal and that her fans urged her to show her face and remove her filter but she refused, instead apparently saying: “I can’t show my face until I receive gifts worth 100,000 yuan ($11,950). After all, I’m a good-looking host.”

Followers began to send her donations with the largest reported to be 40,000 yuan ($5,813, £4,780) during the session.

However, at some point, it seems the filter being used by the vlogger stopped working and her real face became visible to her viewers.

She is reported to have noticed only when people who had signed up to her VIP access room started exiting en masse.

Many of her original followers – especially men – are said to have stopped following her and withdrawn their transactions after seeing her true identity.

(BBC)

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• War in North-West Pakistan
  • Four are killed and over 20 injured in a bomb blast near a police station in Quetta, Pakistan. (Al Jazeera)

Disasters and accidents

• At least 18 people, including thirteen civilians and five crew members, are killed and 12 others injured after a small military plane crashes into a residential area near the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi. (BBC)

Politics and elections

• Al-Sultan Abdullah is crowned as the 16th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia at Istana Negara, Kuala Lumpur. (Berita Harian)
• Romanian Interior Minister Nicolae Moga resigns just six days into office amid outrage and protests over the slow response by police to the disappearance, rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl near the city of Caracal. (RFERL)

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Milky Way galaxy is warped and twisted, not flat

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is “warped and twisted” and not flat as previously thought, new research shows.

Analysis of the brightest stars in the galaxy shows that they do not lie on a flat plane as shown in academic texts and popular science books.

Astronomers from Warsaw University speculate that it might have been bent out of shape by past interactions with nearby galaxies.

The new three dimensional map has been published in the journal Science.

The popular picture of the Milky Way as a flat disc is based on the observation of 2.5 million stars out of a possible 2.5 billion. The artists’ impressions are therefore rough approximations of the truer shape of our galaxy, according to Dr Dorota Skowron of Warsaw University.

“The internal structure and history of the Milky Way is still far from being understood, in part because it is extremely difficult to measure distances to stars at the outer regions of our galaxy,” she said.

(BBC)

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• Yemeni Civil War
  • At least 36 security forces, including Southern Movement commander Munir Al Yafi, are killed and scores wounded in a rocket attack on a military camp near the city of Aden, Yemen. In an earlier attack, 13 people are killed by a suicide bomber in Sheikh Othman. The rocket attack was claimed by Houthi movement, while the suicide bombing was claimed by Islamic State. (Anadolu Agency)
• Somali Civil War
  • Mayor of Mogadishu Abdirahman Abdi Osman dies from injuries he sustained during the 24 July 2019 Mogadishu bombing. (The New York Times)

Business and economy

• China–United States trade war
  • President of the United States Donald Trump announces in a tweet that the United States will impose import tariffs of 10% on US$300 billion worth of Chinese exports starting September 1. (CNBC)

Disasters and accidents

• The town of Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire, England, is evacuated after heavy rain and flooding causes structural damage to the nearby dam at the Toddbrook Reservoir amid fears the dam could collapse. A severe flood warning has been issued for communities situated along the River Goyt. (BBC)

International relations

• 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis
  • U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says that the United States has “a blueprint” to recover Venezuela’s economy if Nicolás Maduro leaves office as the nation’s disputed President. (Wall Street Journal)
  • U.S President Donald Trump says that he is considering a blockade of Venezuela as the U.S increases pressure on President Maduro to step down.(Reuters)

Science and technology

• List of nearest exoplanets
  • Astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy announce the discovery of red dwarf star GJ 357 and its three confirmed exoplanets in the Hydra constellation, one of which (GJ 357 d) is highly likely to be a super-Earth planet located in the system’s circumstellar habitable zone where life can exist. The discovery was made using NASA‘s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). (The Independent)

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