Top News Stories –

Demi Lovato Wishes Joe Jonas ‘Happy #420’ –
To honor 4/20 (See Top Twitter Trends), the day famously celebrated by weed connoisseurs, Demi Lovato decided to post a little message for her friend Joe Jonas. She took to Instagram to share a photoshopped image of herself with Jonas and Miley Cyrus. “In honor of our former escapades, I thought you’d like this to remember your first blaze.. Happy #420 @joejonas. #disneyhighclassof09,” she captioned the eye-popping image. [Billboard.com]

Russia: Police stage mayor’s disappearance to thwart killing –
Police in Russia have staged the disappearance of a city mayor to prevent his contract killing, it’s reported. Pavel Plotnikov, the mayor of Yoshkar Ola in central Russia, was reported missing on Saturday, after apparently failing to meet his wife as planned a day earlier. “All police patrols, criminal investigators – practically all police in Yoshkar Ola” were looking for the mayor, the city’s police spokeswoman Olga Plotnikova told the media at the time. But early on Monday, the mayor’s own website issued a statement saying that his disappearance had actually been staged. “The mayor’s ‘disappearance’ was necessitated by operational activities of Russia’s Interior Ministry staff,” the statement says. “They implemented measures to prevent a planned killing of the mayor and his family.” Later in the day, Mr Plotnikov gave a news conference to shed more light on what had happened. Because of his “principled position”, the mayor said, he was supposed to have been killed in a forest some time between Friday night and Saturday morning. Thanks to swift action by the security services, the would-be killers and those who took out a contract on the mayor have been arrested, Mr Plotnikov told the news conference, adding: “Many thanks to the police for saving my life.” The police have simply said that the mayor “has been found” and that “he’s alive and well, and is currently with his family”. [BBC]

U.S. Supreme Court rejects appeal over Arizona ‘fish pedicures’ –
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by the owner a Phoenix-area spa that ran afoul of Arizona state regulations that barred her from providing pedicures in which clients have their feet nibbled by small fish to remove dead skin. The high court’s action, made without comment by the justices, ends a years-long case over fish pedicures, which have become a popular alternative to exfoliation for some spa-goers in recent years but are banned in some U.S. states for health and safety reasons. In 2009, Vong was told by the Arizona Board of Cosmetology that the treatment violated the agency’s safety standards, and that she could face criminal charges. The board said any tool or equipment used in a pedicure must be stored and disinfected in a specific way, and that she could not disinfect the fish coming in contact with clients’ skin. [Reuters]
Garra Rufa – the pedicure fish species

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Armed conflicts and attacks

• War in Somalia (2009–present)
  • Nine people have been killed in a bomb attack on a convoy carrying food supplies to a United Nations compound in Garowe in the Somali region of Puntland. (Reuters)
• Sinai insurgency
  • A roadside bomb hits an armoured vehicle near the border town of Rafah in the northern Sinai Peninsula killing three people. (AP via ABC News America)
• Yemeni Civil War (2015)
  • An airstrike on a Scud missile base in Sanaa causes a huge explosion. (Reuters via Daily Star)
  • The United States sends aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and cruiser USS Normandy to block an Iranian convoy heading towardsYemen. (Fox News)

Arts and culture

• 2015 Pulitzer Prize
  • The Pulitzer Prize awards are presented with the The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina winning the prestigious gold medal for public service for a series on domestic violence in the US state of South Carolina. (New York Times)
  • Anthony Doerr‘s World War II novel “All the Light We Cannot See” wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. (CNN)

Disasters and accidents

• A strong 6.8 magnitude earthquake occurs off the east coast of Taiwan. (Reuters via Daily Mail)
• At least three people are dead after a boat carrying dozens of migrants runs aground on the Greek island of Rhodes. (The Independent)
• Two people are missing in the Hunter Region of New South Wales as an Australian east coast low causes widespread flooding, gale force winds and the loss of power to 140,000 properties. (ABC News Australia)

Health

• Blue Bell Creameries recalls all of its products in the United States due to a listeria outbreak. (CNN)

Law and crime

• A 13 year-old boy uses a home-made crossbow to kill a teacher and wound four other people at his school in the city of Barcelona. (BBC)
• List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, April 2015
  • Police officers in the city of Baltimore, Maryland are placed on leave while an investigation is held into the death of Freddie Gray. (Baltimore Sun)

Sports

• 2015 Boston Marathon
  • Runners in the American city of Boston take part in the annual Boston Marathon for the 119th time. Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia wins the men’s race while Caroline Rotich of Kenya wins the women’s race (CBS)(New York Times), (Boston Marathon)

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