Top News Stories –

Five Diana dresses sell for half a million dollars –
Five dresses designed for and worn by Britain’s late Princess Diana have been auctioned off by Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles for a total of nearly half a million dollars. British dressmaker Catherine Walker had made three of the gowns and all fetched within or just above their estimated price of between $60,000 and $80,000. The other two dresses were made by Caroline Charles and Zandra Rhodes.
Diana, Princess of Wales

Two-headed cat lives to be 15 years-old –
A cat that was born with two faces has died at the age of 15 in North Grafton, Massachusetts. Called Frank and Louie – ‘Frankenlouie’ the birth defect is known as a Janus cat, named for a Roman god with two faces and expected to die very young due to congenital defects. While blind in his center eye, both his outer eyes worked fine, and while he had two noses and mouths, Frankenlouie had only one brain.

Orion capsule successful first mission –
The US space agency’s new Orion crew capsule has completed its maiden, unmanned voyage with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico. Orion is designed to take humans to destinations such as the Moon and Mars. The flight was intended to test its critical technologies and took four and a half hours.
Orion capsule

Video of the Day –

AFTERGLOW – Lightsuit Segment from Sweetgrass Productions on Vimeo.

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Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Kashmir insurgency:
  • An attack on a military camp leaves 11 Indian soldiers and police dead near Uri. Eight militants and two civilians are killed in that and concurrent attacks in the state capital, Srinagar, and a part of southern Kashmir. (Reuters)
• Terrorism in Somalia
  • A suicide bomb attack kills at least 10 at a restaurant in Baidoa. (Al Jazeera)

Business and economy

• A judge in the Netherlands declares Dutch clothing company Mexx bankrupt. The bankruptcy ruling affects over 300 stores worldwide, including 95 locations in Canada. (CBC News)

Disasters and accidents

• Italian rescue crews discover 17 bodies in the hull of a migrant ship off Libya. (FOX News)

International Relations

• The British Museum announces that it will loan one of the Elgin Marbles in its collection, originally taken from Greece, to the Hermitage Museum inSaint Petersburg. Greece‘s Prime Minister Antonis Samaras calls the move “a provocation to the Greek people.” (CNN)

Law and Crime

• China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate arrests former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang on corruption charges and expels him from the Communist Party of China. (BBC)
• Bill Cosby files a counter-lawsuit against the woman who accused him of sexual assault, claiming she attempted to extort money from him. (BBC)
• Rolling Stone Magazine issues a partial retraction on Sabrina Erdely’s “A Rape on Campus” story after additional fact checking identifies “discrepancies” in the account of the University of Virginia young woman identified as “Jackie” who alleged that seven men raped her as she lay on broken glass during a party at U.Va.’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity in 2012. (Rolling Stone) (Washington Post) (TimesDispatch)

Science and Technology

• The first flight test of NASA‘s Orion spacecraft launches successfully at 7:05 EST (12:05 UTC) and splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean at 8:29 PST (16:29 UTC). (CNN)

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