Top News Stories –

Taylor Swift buys .porn and .adult web domain names –
Taylor Swift has bought the web domain names TaylorSwift.porn and TaylorSwift.adult. The addresses are part of a public sale by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The web domain names go on sale to the public on 1 June but some stars and companies are being given the opportunity to buy them ahead of then. Microsoft Office has registered Office.porn and Office.adult. Domains can cost up to $2,500 (£1,674). However, .porn and .adult are $99 (£66). In January Taylor Swift applied to trademark five phrases from her latest album 1989 with the US government. [BBC]

Chinese state company agrees to buy Italy’s Pirelli –
China’s biggest state-owned chemical company said Monday it plans to buy Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli, adding to a string of high-profile Chinese corporate purchases in Europe. ChemChina said it has agreed to buy a 26.2 percent stake in Pirelli Tyre S.p.A. from its biggest shareholder, Camfin S.p.A., which is controlled by the family of Pirelli chairman Marco Tronchetti Provera. The company said it would offer to buy the remaining outstanding shares. [AP] The fate of the famous Pirelli calendar is unknown.
Pirelli Calendar November 2015 – Gigi Hadid [From Vogue.com]

French businessman awarded compensation after police mistook soap for cocaine –
Spain’s Ministry of Justice has awarded a French businessman €8,400 (£6,136) in compensation for doing jail time after Spanish police mistook his van-load of soap for a cocaine shipment. Jacques Benoit Fiocconi spent more than two months in a Spanish prison waiting for forensic scientists to correctly identify the fragrant cargo and clear his name. Mr Fiocconi had asked the Spanish Ministry of Justice for €83,000 to cover financial losses and moral damages resulting from his incarceration. The Corsica-based cosmetics entrepreneur was arrested in November 2012 when driving along the AP-7 motorway in Catalonia with his father, Laurent Fiocconi, himself a former drug trafficker who was at one time associated with Pablo Escobar. [Daily Telegraph]

Vin Diesel reveals he has named his daughter after Paul Walker –
Vin Diesel has named his new daughter after Paul Walker, his co-star in The Fast and the Furious series of action films, who died in a car crash in 2013. Diesel told Natalie Morales on the US programme, The TODAY Show: “I named her Pauline. There’s no other person that I was thinking about as I was cutting the umbilical cord. I knew he was there.” [Daily Telegraph]

Largest-ever meteorite crater found in Australian outback –
Scientists have discovered two deep scars in the earth’s crust in outback Australia that are believed to mark the remains of a meteorite crater with a 250-mile diameter – the largest ever found.The scars are each more than 120 miles in diameter and are believed to mark the spot where a meteorite split into two, moments before it slammed into earth. The impact is believed to have occurred more than 300 million years ago. Scientists discovered a scar from the meteorite five years ago – it was then thought to be from the third largest crater ever found – but now say there are two sets of remains. [Daily Telegraph]

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Lego Matrix Lobby Fight Scene

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Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Iraqi insurgency (2011–present)
  • Multiple bombings in Baghdad, Iraq kill at least nineteen people and wound another 36. (AP)

Business and economy

• China‘s biggest state-owned chemical company ChemChina acquires a 26% stake in Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli with an additional offer to buy the remaining outstanding shares. (AP)

Disasters and accidents

• A bus crashes into traffic in Peru leaving at least 37 people dead and dozens injured. (AFP via ABC news)

International relations

• The National Assembly of Armenia approves a declaration recognizing the Greek and Assyrian genocides by Ottoman Turkey between 1915 and 1923. (Armenpress)

Law and crime

• The South Gauteng High Court sitting in Palm Ridge, Katlehong, finds former doubles tennis champion Bob Hewitt guilty of two counts of rape and one of sexual assault of three former students that he coached in South Africa. (News 24)
• Former NFL player Darren Sharper pleads guilty in a Maricopa County courtroom to raping two women after spiking their drinks at a Tempe, Arizona apartment in November 2013, and the court sentences him to nine years in prison. Sharper has also been indicted on charges of sexually assaulting women in California, Louisiana, and Nevada. (Reuters)
• The U.S. Supreme Court affirms Wisconsin’s law requiring voters to present photo identification to cast a ballot.(Reuters)

Politics and elections

• Lee Kuan Yew, a founding father of Singapore as well as its first prime minister, dies at the age of 91 after a prolonged illness. (BBC)
• United States presidential election, 2016
  • Senator Ted Cruz (R–Texas) announces his intention to run for president. (NBC News)

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