Top News Stories –
Google Patents Sticky Car Hood to Trap Pedestrians in a Collision –
Google has a solution to help mitigate injuries in the event a pedestrian and a self-driving car collide: human flypaper. In a patent issued this week, the search giant describes a “system for protecting a colliding object from a secondary impact, after an initial impact with a vehicle.” The patent calls for a giant sticker to be placed on the front end of a vehicle, with a special coating over the layer that is only broken when something collides with the vehicle, exposing the adhesive and helping the colliding object to remain on the vehicle. [ABC]
Google car fly paper patent diagram
German churches to get wi-fi ‘Godspots’ –
Worshippers at Protestant churches in central Germany will soon be able to access the internet via free wi-fi hotspots – billed as “Godspots” by the church. Wi-fi is being installed at 220 churches across the Berlin and Brandenberg region, with plans to expand coverage to all 3,000 churches in the region, the RBB broadcaster reports. Among the first to get connected will be Berlin’s French Cathedral on the central Gendarmenmarkt square, and the city’s iconic Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. People will be able to access the “Godspots” both inside and outside, and the church is promising a secure network with no advertising. Users will first be greeted by a home page with information about the building, community and faith-related material, but then they’ll be free to browse the wider web. [BBC]
Video of the Day –
These Lizards Have Been Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors for 15 Million Years
Other News Stories –
- Armed conflicts and attacks
- Syrian civil war
- Syrian government forces and allies, including Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, retake a large area southeast of Damascus, including the key town of Deir al-Asafir. (BBC) (Al Arabiya)
- Fighting between Jaysh al-Islam and rival factions led by al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Ghouta, near Damascus, leaves more than 50 people dead. (Swiss Info) (Ara News)
- Arts and culture
- Oppenheimer Blue, a large and rare blue diamond, is sold for $57.6 million USD, the most expensive jewel ever sold at an auction. (Reuters) (Swiss Info)
- Business and economics
- German chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer bids to merge with American agrochemical and agricultural firm Monsanto. (Forbes) (Bloomberg)
- Google honors Asian American civil rights activist Yuri Kochiyama who held controversial views about racial harmony, terrorism and American power with a doodle. (Democracy Now) (The Washington Post)
- Disasters and accidents
- EgyptAir Flight 804
- EgyptAir Flight 804 between Paris and Cairo disappears with 56 passengers and 10 crew onboard. The plane was at 37,000 feet when it disappeared ten minutes before entering Egyptian airspace over the Mediterranean Sea. It is later reported to have crashed off the Greek island of Karpathos. Locals reported seeing a fireball. (Reuters) (The Telegraph) (The Guardian)
- 2016 Silk Way Airlines Antonov An-12 crash
- An Azerbaijani cargo airplane crashes during landing in southern Afghanistan, killing seven out of its nine crew members. (Washington Post) (Daily Sabah)
- Law and Crime
- A unanimous opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court finds that the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial does not guarantee a speedy sentencing hearing. (CNS)
- San Francisco Police Department Chief Greg Suhr resigns from his position several hours after a black woman is shot by police in San Francisco. (ABC News)
- International relations
- Accession of Montenegro to NATO
- Montenegro and NATO sign an accession agreement, paving the way for the country’s future entry into the military alliance. All of NATO’s members must now ratify the agreement, with Prime Minister Milo Đukanović expecting Montenegro to join by mid 2017. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)
- Politics and election
- Decommunization in Ukraine:
- Ukraine‘s Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, decides that the country’s third largest city, Dnipropetrovsk, be renamed Dnipro as part of the decommunization drive. (Kyiv Post), (Radio Free Europe)
- Philippine general election, 2016
- In the Philippine general election, the Liberal Party emerges as the party with a plurality of seats in the Philippine Senate election, 2016 and Philippine House of Representatives elections, 2016. (Xinhua)
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asks Yisrael Beiteinu party leader and former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to be Defense Minister. Current defense minister and former army chief of staffMoshe Ya’alon’s role in the future government is unclear. Leiberman is known for his hawkish and uncompromising views. (The Guardian) (Israel Hayom)
- Science
- A new species of horned dinosaur, Machairoceratops cronusi, thought to have lived about 77 million years ago, is discovered in southern Utah. (Huffington Post) (FOX News) (PLOS One)
- Google receives a United States patent for an adhesive for its self-driving cars, so-called human flypaper, designed to minimize injuries in a pedestrian accident by holding the person to the car rather than being thrown after impact. (The Verge) (ABC News)
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