Top News Stories –

Barack Obama ‘flouted secret service rules’ for Bear Grylls challenge –
Bear Grylls has spoken of how President Obama flouted the protocol of his secret service to take up every challenge thrown at him, when he appeared on the survival guru’s television show last month. The British ex-SAS soldier and television host said Mr Obama’s security team were on tenterhooks, as he and the president spent the day trekking through the Alaskan wilderness filming a special episode of “Running Wild”. “We ended up doing everything and he loved it. Afterwards, I thought I was going to get a special telling off from the secret service guys, but they all laughed and had a good time.” Grylls said he was warned by Mr Obama’s protocol staff that he could not give the president any gifts. But at the end of the filming he gave him his knife and said that the president should keep it “as a last line of defence if anybody ever got through the secret service”. “I had a great email a few days later from his team saying that he absolutely loves the knife and he keeps playing with it! Boys love their toys,” he said. [Daily Telegraph]
Bear Grylls

Australia: Council seeks cash for kangaroo-proofing –
A drought-affected district in eastern Australia is asking for government help to protect its villages against a “plague” of thirsty kangaroos, it’s reported. The mayor of sparsely populated Barcoo Shire, in the state of Queensland, says hordes of kangaroos are causing concern among local people because they’re coming into residential areas looking for food and water, the Brisbane Times reports. “The sheer numbers, you can drive around and you’ll see a mob of kangaroos and you lose count after 120 or 130, they are in plague proportions,” says Mayor Julie Groves. The council has now applied for federal government funding to pay for about 55km (34 miles) of fencing to keep the animals out of villages, sports parks, cemeteries, and off the local air strip used by the flying doctor. [BBC]

Edward Snowden (@Snowden) joins Twitter –
American whistleblower Edward Snowden has joined Twitter, asking in his first tweet, “Can you hear me now?”. The 32-year-old immediately began following the National Security Agency’s (NSA) official account, the only organisation he has followed so far. Snowden, who is currently living at an undisclosed location in Russia after being granted asylum, links to Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Twitter account in his bio. The bio adds: “I used to work for the government. Now I work for the public.” He gained 100,000 followers within an hour of joining Twitter and has also been given a ‘verified’ blue tick. The former CIA contractor leaked tens of thousands of files from systems at the NSA in 2013 from which the techniques and methods of it and GCHQ were then exposed. He faces charges in the U.S. for leaking details of the once-secret surveillance programs. [Daily Telegraph]
Edward Snowden’s first tweet

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Do It For Mom (Do it for Denmark)

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Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Iraqi Civil War (2014–present)
  • At least four people are killed in a bombing attack on Baghdad. (Euronews)
• War in Afghanistan (2015–present), Battle of Kunduz
  • Afghan National Security Forces start efforts to recapture the city of Kunduz. (CNN), (The News Hub)
  • The U.S. Air Force launches air-strikes on Taliban forces within Kunduz. (The Washington Post)
• 2015 PKK rebellion
  • Two police officers are gunned down by suspected PKK militants on the streets of Adana, southern Turkey. (Middle East Eye)
• Gaza–Israel conflict
  • At least one rocket is intercepted over Ashdod by Israel‘s Iron Dome missile defense system, and is believed to have come from the Gaza Strip. (Haaretz)
• 2015 Burkinabé coup d’état
  • After a tense standoff, Burkina Faso’s military crushed the elite presidential guard and seized the coup’s abandoned headquarters. The former head of the guard, Gen. Gilbert Diendéré, had called on his men to lay down their weapons to avoid a bloodbath. Diendéré told Agence France-Presse (AFP) he feared “many deaths and injuries” in the operation. It is unclear whether there are casualties. (The New York Times) (BBC) (The Guardian)

Disasters and accidents

• 2015 Pacific typhoon season
  • Typhoon Dujuan hits mainland China in Fujian province after hitting Taiwan, where it caused two deaths and injured 300. (AP via ABC News)

International relations

• Amnesty International designates Cuban graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado Machado as a prisoner of conscience. (Reuters)

Law and crime

• All 500 of the prisoners escape from the Ngaraba jail in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. (Reuters), (The Guardian)

Science and technology

• Researchers discover a biofluorescent hawksbill sea turtle, glowing bright red and green, near the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. This is the first time scientists have found biofluorescence in a reptile in the wild. It is an critically endangeredspecies. (Live Science) (CNN)

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