Top News Stories –
Super Bowl gets super viewing figures –
Yesterday’s Super Bowl saw America’s highest-ever overnight ratings with New England Patriots late win over Seattle. The Nielsen ratings company said that 49.7 percent of the homes in the nation’s largest media markets were watching the game, up four percent over last year’s game which was seen by 111.5 million. Later information revealed viewing figures of 114.4 million on NBC, the largest audience for a U.S. television program in history.
Apple feeling a bit broke –
Apple is issuing bonds today which are expected to raise at least $5bn (£3.3bn) mainly to be used to help the company return more than $130bn to shareholders by the end of this year. Despite the company sitting on a cash pile of $142bn almost 90% of the cash is held outside the US, and it would have to pay a corporate tax rate of 35% if it returned the money from abroad, so it is borrowing the money instead.
The there’s muck there’s… gold –
Staff cleaning unused dirty lockers at a school in the city of Ahmedabad, western India, uncover 2kg in gold bars and 10m rupees in cash ($160,000; £108,000). The clean up was part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Clean India” campaign. Two unused lockers in the staff room had no keys, so staff broke into them and made the discovery. According to police, the solid gold is worth nearly 6m rupees. No-one has claimed ownership.
My BMW has a virus –
BMW patches a security flaw that meant 2.2 million cars fitted with BMW’s ConnectedDrive software, including Rolls Royces and Minis, were open to hackers. The software operated door locks, air conditioning and traffic updates and although no cars have actually been hacked, the flaw was identified by German motorist association ADAC.
Video of the Day –
Top 10 Superbowl commercials
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Other News Stories –
- Armed conflicts and attacks
- Moro insurgency in the Philippines
- Foreign investors withdraw “billions of pesos” from the Philippines after a deadly battle threatened to derail the March 2014 peace deal. (The Straits Times), (Agence France Presse via Yahoo! News)
- War in Donbass
- Artillery shelling of Donetsk leaves at least one civilian dead while five Ukrainian Army soldiers are killed in heavy fighting. (Reuters via LBC)
- A shootout between Lesotho Defence Force soldiers and two former bodyguards of Prime Minister Tom Thabane leaves at least one bystander killed and three others wounded. (Reuters)
- Islamist insurgency in Nigeria
- A female suicide bomber attacks minutes after the President of Nigeria leaves an election rally in the city of Gomberesulting in at least one death and eighteen people injured. (BBC)
- Arts and culture
- The four remaining original copies of the Magna Carta go on public display at the British Library in London to commemorate the 800th anniversary signing of the document in June 1215. (AFP via AsiaOne)
- Business and economy
- File sharing site Pirate Bay returns online after having been shut down by Swedish authorities in December 2014.(Sydney Morning Herald)
- Disasters and accidents
- 2014–15 North American winter
- A winter storm causes the cancellation of school in the midwestern United States and the cancellation of 1,000 flights. (Daily Mail)
- International relations
- Gaza–Israel conflict
- Canadian academic William Schabas resigns as the head of a United Nations committee investigating alleged Israeliwar crimes in an offensive in the Gaza Strip during 2014 due to Israel alleging bias due to consultancy work he did for the Palestine Liberation Organisation. (Reuters)
- Law and crime
- Former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn goes on trial in France on pimping charges. (BBC)
- Police in Tupelo, Mississippi, US arrest Thomas Jesse Lee for killing his wife and four other members of his family inLaGrange, Georgia. (Fox News)
- Science and technology
- Iran successfully puts the Fajr satellite in orbit using a Safir-B1 rocket. (Spaceflight Now)
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