Top News Stories –

Costa Concordia captain convicted of manslaughter –
The captain of the Costa Cordordia cruise ship that ran aground and capsized on January 13th 2012 off the island of Giglio has been convicted of manslaughter and given a 16-year jail sentance. Francesco Schettino was accused of taking the ship too close to the shore to impress his lover, Domnica Cemortan, who was with him at the helm. He then abandoned the ship with passengers and crew still on board. 32 people died in the accident but Costa Crociere, the company that owned the ship, avoided possible criminal charges by agreeing to pay a $1.3m (€1.1m; £860,000) fine in 2013.
The Costa Concordia after the accident

Korean Air nut rage ends with jail sentence –
A South Korean court finds Cho Hyun-ah (aka Heather Cho) a former executive of Korean Air guilty of breaking aviation law. She forced her Seoul-bound plane to turn back to the gate at JFK airport in New York and offload a steward because she did not like the way she had been served nuts. Cho, the daughter of Korean Air president, was found guilty of obstructing aviation safety and jailed for one year, much less than the possible maximum sentence of 10-years.

Smoking in private cars with child passengers banned in England –
The British government votes 342 to 74 to ban smoking in cars when there are children in the vehicle in England and Wales, but doesn’t apply to convertibles with the roof down. Anyone stopped for breaking the law can be fined £50 on the spot when it becomes law in October 2015 but Scotland is not included. Bans on smoking in cars when children are present already exist in some US states as well as in parts of Canada and Australia.

Video of the Day –

Raising the Costa Concordia: A Time Lapse

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Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Iraqi clashes and attacks kill at least 31 people. (AP)

Business and economy

• Rite Aid, one of the largest chains of pharmacies in the United States, announces that it is purchasing EnvisionRx, a pharmacy benefits manager, from TPG Capital, for $2 billion. (Reuters)

Disasters and accidents

• The Greek Coast Guard rescues all 22 crewmen from a Cyprus-flagged vessel Good Faith that ran aground on theGreek island of Andros during a storm in the Aegean Sea. (AP)
• A 106-car pileup occurs on Yeongjong Bridge in Incheon, South Korea, leaving two men dead and more than 65 people injured. (BBC)
• Costa Concordia disaster
  • A court in the city of Grosseto convicts the former captain of the Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino, of manslaughter for his part in the ship’s January 2012 sinking, and sentences him to 16 years in jail. (BBC)

International relations

• Yemeni Crisis (2011–present)
  • The United States, United Kingdom, and France close their Yemeni embassies and evacuate their staff due to terrorist activities and continued unrest. (USA Today)
• General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping will make his first state visit to the United States next September. (AP)
• War in Donbass
  • Leaders from Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine meet in the Belarusian capital Minsk for peace talks. (CNN)

Law and crime

• Police arrest a suspected shooter Craig Stephen Hicks for killing a Muslim family of three in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Police state that the shooting was motivated by a long-standing neighbor dispute over parking. (The Independent)(AP)
• A shooting at a wedding in Newtownbutler, Northern Ireland kills one and injuries one while another victim was injured by a knife. (BBC)

Science and technology

• SpaceX launches a weather observation satellite, Deep Space Climate Observatory, at 6:03 p.m. EST from Cape Canaveral, Florida (for the US Air Force/NASA/NOAA), but postpones making of a second attempt to land a Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket on a floating platform called the autonomous spaceport drone ship, following the January 10 failure during the SpaceX CRS-5 mission. SpaceX instead, attempts a “mock” soft-landing into the Atlantic ocean (AP)(AP)

Sports

• Little League Baseball strips Chicago’s Little League championship team Jackie Robinson West of their 2014 Little League World Series US title after an investigation revealed the team had falsified boundaries to field ineligible players. The league names Mountain Ridge Little League of Las Vegas, Nevada, the US champion due to the vacating of Jackie Robinson West’s wins. (AP)(Little League.org)

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