Top News Stories –

Marion Bartoli: Former Wimbledon champion ‘fears for life’ over unknown virus –
Former Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli says she “fears for her life” after contracting an unknown virus that has caused her dramatic weight loss. France’s Bartoli was barred from playing in an invitational event at Wimbledon this week after doctors expressed fears over her health. Bartoli, who insists she is not anorexic, says the virus is so rare medical experts have no name for it. “This is not life. I am just surviving,” said the 31-year-old. Bartoli says she can only eat organic salad leaves and cucumbers without skins, and has to wash with mineral water rather than tap water. [BBC]
Marion Bartoli

The final image sent by doomed Japanese Hitomi satellite –
A doomed Japanese satellite managed to capture a view of a galaxy cluster 250 million light years away just before it died, scientists have revealed. Launched in February, the Hitomi X-ray satellite began tumbling out of control in March when contact was finally lost. Just before its demise, scientists managed to extract data measuring X-ray activity in the Perseus galaxy cluster. Hitomi, which translates as the pupil of the eye in Japanese, was meant to spend years studying the formation of galaxy clusters and the warping of space and time around black holes. It cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars – the research was an international collaboration involving the American space agency Nasa, and teams in Japan and many other countries, including one at Cambridge University in the UK. Hitomi was lost thanks to a sensor incorrectly detecting a roll in the spacecraft. In trying to correct it, on-board systems sent the craft into a spin until finally the solar panels that powered it are thought to have broken off. [BBC]
Hitomi Perseus image [HITOMI COLLABORATION/JAXA, NASA, ESA, SRON, CSA]

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Movie Credits from Alex Cline on Vimeo.

Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Terrorism in Bangladesh
  • A group of radical Islamists hurl homemade bombs at police officers in the Kishoreganj District in central Bangladesh killing at least one officer and injuring several others. (AP via ABC News)
• Colombian conflict
  • The Eastern Bloc of the FARC-EP, a unit of the FARC rebel group, announces its rejection of the recent ceasefire signed by its leader Timoleón Jiménez and the Colombian government of President Juan Manuel Santos, declaring it will not lay down its arms and demobilize and will continue to fight the government. (Reuters via The Guardian)
• Iraqi Civil War (2014–present)
  • At least 35 people are killed and 60 others injured in an attack on a Shiite mausoleum located in north of Baghdad. Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant have claimed responsibility. (Fox News), (Reuters)

Business and economy

• French food company Danone agrees to buy American company WhiteWave Foods for $10 billion. (The New York Times)

Disasters and accidents

• 2016 Pacific typhoon season
  • Taiwan and China brace for the impact of Typhoon Nepartak, the first major typhoon of 2016. Thousands of people have been evacuated in Taiwan while over 35,000 military personnel have been placed on standby to help with relief efforts. (CNN) (ABC News)
  • Typhoon Nepartak is expected to make landfall on mainland China on Friday and will make flooding worse. Nearly 200 people have died in flood waters in China in the past week with 41 people missing, 1.6 million relocated and almost 50,000 houses collapsed. (The Telegraph)
• At least five workers are killed after a wall collapses on them at a recycling plant in Birmingham, England. (BBC)
• A section of a Taiwanese commuter train car explodes near Songshan Station, injuring at least 21 people, some of them seriously. (AP via The New York Times) (CNA)

International relations

• Ukraine–United States relations
  • U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Kiev, Ukraine, where he is expected to discuss ways of ending the conflict in the east of the country. The visit, along with his visit to Georgia yesterday, comes ahead of the NATO summit in Warsaw that will take place tomorrow. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)
• Cuba–United States relations
  • The United States tentatively approves eight, of 12 that applied, airlines for flights from 10 U.S. cities to Havana as early as this fall: Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines,JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, Spirit Airlines, and United Airlines. Last month, flights were approved from five U.S. cities to nine other international airports. (Reuters) (US DOT)

Law and crime

• Human rights in the Philippines; Philippine Drug War
  • The Philippines House of Representatives seeks to investigate the rise in deaths of suspected drug dealers in the country. (GMA News)
• Rape in Germany
  • Germany’s parliament passes a new law saying that it is rape to have sex with a person who says “No” to the sex. Under the previous law, sex was not considered rape unless the victim fought back. The new law also classifies groping as a sex crime, makes it easier to deport migrants who commit sex offences, and makes it easier to prosecute assaults committed by a large group. (BBC)
• A French court sentences two former Rwandan mayors of the town of Kabarondo to life in prison on charges of crimes against humanity and genocide committed during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. During the genocide, Hutu extremists massacred over 2,000 Tutsi who sought refuge in the town. (BBC)
• Vatican leaks scandal, Journalistic freedom
  • In a so-called VatiLeaks case, a Vatican City Court dismisses charges of publishing confidential information against two Italian journalists stating it lacked jurisdiction in this case. Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi wrote books on the inner workings of the Vatican. The court did convict a Vatican priest to 18 months, and assessed a 10-month suspended sentence on an Italian communications expert, for conspiring to pass documents to the journalists; a fifth defendant was cleared of all charges. (AP) (The Guardian) (Catholic News)
• Shooting of Philando Castile
  • Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton requests a Justice Department investigation of last night’s fatal police shooting of Philando Castile (an African-American) during a traffic stop. Castile’s girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds, streamed the incident live over Facebook. It showed Castile had been shot several times and was slumped against Reynolds; he died in Minneapolis’s Hennepin County Medical Center. (The New York Times) (CBS News)
  • Gov. Dayton says, “Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white? I don’t think it would have. So I’m forced to confront, and I think all of us in Minnesota are forced to confront, that this kind of racism exists.” (NPR) (Wall Street Journal)
• Dallas police shooting
  • Eleven police officers are shot, with five dying of gunshot wounds in Dallas, Texas during a protest against two black men killed within a day of each other. Police kill the shooter with a bomb delivered on a bomb defusing robot. (New York Post)(KTLA)(NBC DFW), (ABC News Australia)

Politics and elections

• 2016 Zimbabwe protests
  • Zimbabwean authorities arrest dozens of protesters as anti-government protests spread across the country. (Al Jazeera)
• Australian federal election, 2016
  • Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal/National coalition, behind Bill Shorten‘s Labor Party in the first 48 hours following Saturday’s election, is now ahead of Labor in the Lower House, 74-71 seats; 76 seats are needed to form a government. Minor parties and independents have won five seats; mail-in and absentee votes are still being counted. Turnbull is on the road today seeking support from a small handful of independent and small party lawmakers. (Reuters) (The Australian) (Daily Mail)
• Conservative Party (UK) leadership election, 2016
  • Conservative Party members of parliament vote in a second ballot to choose the next leader of the party to replace outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron. The Home Secretary Theresa May secured the highest number votes with 199, while Department of Energy and Climate Change minister Andrea Leadsom received the second highest amount, with 84. The Secretary of State for Justice Michael Govereceived just 46 votes and is eliminated from the race, meaning a run-off contest will now take place between May and Leadsom, with the result to be announced on September 9. (AP via Daily Mail)(BBC)
• Hillary Clinton email scandal
  • The United States Department of State reopens an investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information by former Secretary of State and presumptive Democratic Party presidential nomineeHillary Clinton and her top aides. (AP via Seattle Times)

Science and technology

• Scientists manage to extract one last image from the Hitomi x-ray spacecraft, which broke up last March while orbiting Earth. Before it died, the spacecraft captured an image which measured the X-ray activity of the Perseus cluster. (BBC)

Sport

• Attorneys for 80-year old American pro football legend and Hall of Famer Paul Hornung, who has dementia, sue Riddell sports equipment manufacturer, stating its helmets failed to protect Hornung from brain injury. The suit says Hornung suffered multiple concussions as a player and his neurodegenerative disease has been linked to repetitive head trauma. (AP)

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