Top News Stories –

Bartender finds $20 note then wins $1 million California lottery with it –
An American man who found a $20 note on a street outside San Francisco International Airport used it to play the California lottery and won $1 million, a lottery spokesman said on Monday. Hubert Tang used the lucky note to buy two scratch cards at a shop near the airport on Wednesday and won the top prize with one of them, lottery spokesman Greg Parashak said. “I scratched the ticket outside of the store. I told my friend who I was with that I didn’t know if it was real but, ‘I think I just won a million dollars,'” Tang said, according to Parashak. Tang said he did not yet have plans for the money, but joked that he might use it to place $20 bills in random places for other lucky players to find, according to the lottery. [Daily Telegraph]

Bear Grylls to test President Obama’s survival skills in special episode of Running Wild –
President Barack Obama is to appear on a television show with Bear Grylls in Alaska, where the British adventurer will give him a “crash course” in how to survive in the wild. The president is to trek through the Alaskan wilderness with the survival expert and former SAS soldier, for a special episode of “Running Wild”, a show in which celebrities are thrown back to nature and pushed to their mental and physical limits. The participation in the show, which is due to air on NBC later this year, is part of a three day trip by President Obama to the Arctic Circle – the first by any sitting president – which he hopes to use to illustrate the urgency of his climate change agenda. [Daily Telegraph]
Bear Grylls

Isil ‘blows up Temple of Bel’ in ancient Syrian city of Palmyra –
Violent jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) have partially destroyed the the most famous landmark in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. The Temple of Bel was damaged on Sunday, according to messages posted on the Twitter account of a local activist group, the Palmyra Co-ordination Council. Although the extent of the destruction was unclear, a Palmyra resident, Nasser al Thaer, said that a huge blast had echoed through the area on Sunday afternoon. [Daily Telegraph]
Temple of Bel in 2011

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Armed conflicts and attacks

• 2015 Bangkok bombing
  • Thai police say they have discovered bomb-making material in a raid in an apartment in an outer side of Bangkok. (AP)

• Destruction of cultural heritage by ISIL
  • Reports suggest that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has partially damaged the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Syria, by detonating an explosive within its walls. (CNN) (Al Jazeera English Online)

Arts and culture

• Denali, the highest mountain peak in North America, officially regains its original Alaska Native name through an executive order issued by American President Barack Obama. Previously, since 1917, it had been known as Mount McKinley. (The New York Times)

Disasters and accidents

• 2015 Atlantic hurricane season
  • Hurricane Fred hits Cape Verde causing flooding and the closure of airports. (AP via New York Times)

International relations

• Turkey–PKK conflict
  • Two reporters and a support worker for Vice News are charged with being members of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant by a judge in Turkey, following their arrest a few days prior. (Al Jazeera English Online)
• Minsk II implementation
  • Riot police clash with protesters armed with firecrackers and petrol bombs outside the parliament building, in Kiev, Ukraine, leaving one national guardsman dead and around 100 people injured. (Al Jazeera English Online) (The News Hub) (BBC)
• Syria–North Korea relations
  • A park in Damascus is named after the North Korean founding leader Kim Il-Sung. (Al Jazeera English Online)

Law and crime

• Kevin Dahlgren, who is suspected of killing four Czech family members, has been extradited from the United States to face trial. (Yahoo news) (Fox news)
• White supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr. (also known as Frazier Glenn Cross) is convicted of three counts of murder outside two Jewish centres in the American state of Kansas. (AP via Yahoo! News)
• At least three people are dead and three people injured in the Churachandpur district of India‘s Manipur State following riots after the passage of three bills in the Manipur Legislative Assembly yesterday. (NDTV)

Science and technology

• According to a new study, the Sumatran Rhino is now considered extinct in the wild in Malaysia. No new wild animals have been spotted since 2007, elsewhere fewer than 100 Rhinos remain in the wild. (MSN).

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