Top News Stories –

Experiment ‘turns waste CO2 to stone’ –
Scientists think they have found a smart way to constrain carbon dioxide emissions – just turn them to stone. The researchers report an experiment in Iceland where they have pumped CO2 and water underground into volcanic rock. Reactions with the minerals in the deep basalts convert the carbon dioxide to a stable, immobile chalky solid. Even more encouraging, the team writes in Science magazine, is the speed at which this process occurs: on the order of months. “Of our 220 tonnes of injected CO2, 95% was converted to limestone in less than two years,” said lead author Juerg Matter from Southampton University, UK. “It was a huge surprise to all the scientists involved in the project, and we thought, ‘Wow! This is really fast’.” [BBC]

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Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• War in Somalia (2009–present)
  • Al-Shabaab says it has killed at least 60 Ethiopian soldiers in an attack on a AMISOM base in central Somalia. (BBC)
• Iraqi Civil War (2014–present)
  • Two separate car bombs explode in Baghdad, killing at least 20 people. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

Arts and culture

• Thailand celebrates the 70th anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s accession to the Thai throne. (BBC)

Disasters and accidents

• A bus plunges over a ravine in Brazil‘s São Paulo state, resulting in at least 18 people killed and 28 injured. (Globo.com)
• A Northrop F-5 of the Swiss Air Force crashes during an air show at the Leeuwarden Air Base in the Netherlands. (RTL Nieuws)
• Three people aboard a small plane are killed when the aircraft crashes into a parked car near the Houston, Texas, Hobby Airport. (AP)
• A 6.1 magnitude earthquake hits the northwestern coast of Nicaragua not far from the Honduran border. La Prensa reports the walls of a church collapsed in the city of Chinandega. There are no immediate reports of casualties. (AP)

Health

• 2015–16 Zika virus epidemic
  • The World Health Organization advises women in areas where the Zika virus is prevalent to delay pregnancies. (New York Times)

International relations

• Israeli–Palestinian conflict (2015–present)
  • Israel suspends 83,000 entry permits for Palestinians for Ramadan following a mass shooting in downtown Tel Aviv that killed four and injured 17 people. (AFP via Naharnet)
• China–Japan relations, Senkaku Islands dispute
  • Japan summons China‘s ambassador, Cheng Yonghua, to Tokyo after a People’s Liberation Army Navy warship sailed close to its territorial waters near the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Seafor the first time. (Reuters)
• 2016 Bilderberg Conference
  • The 64th annual conference of the secretive Bilderberg Group takes place at the Taschenbergpalais hotel in Dresden, Germany. (The Independent)
• Yemeni civil war
  • United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon temporarily removes the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen from a U.N. blacklist for violating children’s rights because its supporters threatened to stop funding many U.N. programs. (AP)
• Fiji–New Zealand relations
  • New Zealand Prime Minister John Key visits Fiji, the first time a Kiwi leader has done so since the 2006 coup d’état. Key is hoping to improve relations between the two countries though it’s clear their political tensions don’t have easy solutions. (AP)

Law and crime

• Papua New Guinea student protests
  • Papua New Guinea student protest leader Noel Anjo says demonstrations will continue despite the court order barring protests. “The students are not going to give up until and unless the prime ministerresigns or surrenders himself to police and is arrested and charged,” Anjo said. (BBC) (Reuters)
• The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules there is no Second Amendment protection for concealed weapons, upholding a California law that does not consider “general self-defense” sufficient for a license.(CNN)
• Venezuelan opposition lawmaker, Julio Borges, is left bloodied after being hit in the face with a pipe in downtown Caracas. He spoke at a press conference after the attack with blood streaming down from his nose and mouth, and bloody stains on his button-down shirt, accusing the attackers of being supporters of President Nicolás Maduro. (AP via ABC News)
• California’s right to die law, that allows physicians to prescribe medicines to terminally ill patients to hasten their deaths, goes into effect. California is the fifth state in America where this practice is legal. Opponents sue to overturn the law as unconstitutional because it denies terminally ill patients protections afforded other citizens. (Los Angeles Times)

Politics and elections

• 2016 United States presidential election
  • U.S. President Barack Obama endorses Hillary Clinton for President of the United States. (The Hill)
• Peruvian general election, 2016
  • Election officials announce all ballots have been processed and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski wins the closest presidential contest in five decades with 50.1 percent of the votes versus 49.9% for Keiko Fujimori. Fujimori has yet to concede defeat. As many as 50,000 ballots still need to be reviewed, but experts say Fujimori can not make up the difference of roughly 40,000 votes separating her from Kuczynski.(BBC News) (ABC News) (AP)

Science and technology

• Researchers in Iceland report, in the journal Science, that carbon dioxide emissions can be pumped into the earth and changed chemically to stone  — significantly faster than expected. (Phys.org) (Science)

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