February 14, 2015

Top News Stories –

Cumberbatch upsets Cumberbitches by getting married –
Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch has married his fiancé Sophie Hunter at a private ceremony at the 12th century St Peter & St Paul Church, near Brighstone on the Isle of Wight.
Sophie-Hunter-and-Benedict-Cumberbatch

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Demonstrators in Tokyo have marched against capitalism, chocolates and St Valentine’s Day in a demonstration against the commercialisation of February 14 by men who are unable to find a partner. The protest was organised by a group called Kakuhido, which translates roughly as the Revolutionary Alliance of Men that Women Find Unattractive.

Michele Ferrero dies –
Michele Ferrero, whose chocolate product company made him Italy’s wealthiest man, dies aged 89. His company makes Ferrero Rocher chocolates, Kinder eggs, Tic Tac sweets and hazelnut Nutella spread. Mr Ferrero’s father, a pastry manufacturer, developed the forerunner to Nutella in 1946, called Giandujot, combining cocoa and hazelnuts to make a spreadable paste.
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October 19, 2015

Top News Stories –

Nasa predicts near-miss with asteroid on Halloween –
An asteroid is due to pass by Earth on Halloween and miss us by a whisker, according to Nasa. Well, if whiskers were 499,000km long, at any rate. The asteroid was spotted by Nasa a fortnight ago and is set to fly past the Earth on Halloween at over 78,000mph. It will cross by Earth at the closest it’s been since 2006. The space agency explained why they spotted it at such short notice, despite constantly monitoring the size. They said: “The asteroid is on an extremely eccentric and a high inclination orbit.” We won’t be able to see the asteroid with the naked eye, but anyone with access to a telescope will be able to see it as it passes by. “This is the closest approach by a known object this large until 1999 AN10 approaches within 1 lunar distance in August 2027,” said Nasa. [Daily Telegraph]

Q Awards 2015: Foals beat Ed Sheeran and Blur to win Best Act In the World Today –
The Oxford band Foals confirmed their elevation to music’s biggest stages after being voted Best Act In the World Today at the Q magazine awards. Foals, who combine indie rock with electronic beats and African-inspired rhythms, beat Blur, Noel Gallagher and Ed Sheeran to the award, previously won by the likes of Radiohead and Coldplay. Ed Sheeran beat Kanye West, Taylor Swift and Sam Smith to the Solo Artist award, capping a year in which the strummer sold out three nights at Wembley Stadium, performing with just his guitar and a loops pedal. However Sheeran lost out to the Brighton drums and bass rock duo Royal Blood for the Best Live Act prize. [The Independent] See List of the Day
The-FoalsThe Foals

Hundreds Of Apps Banned From App Store For Accessing Users’ Personal Information –
Hundreds of iOS applications have been pulled out of the App Store, following a report from analytics service SourceDNA, which uncovered a group of applications that were extracting users’ personally identifiable information, including email addresses associated with their Apple IDs, devices and peripheral serial numbers, as well as a list of apps installed on their phone. The applications in question had been using an SDK from a Chinese advertising company called Youmi which was accessing this information by way of private APIs, the report found. Nearly all of the developers were located in China so, for now, this appears to be an isolated incident. However, the larger concern here has to do with how long this activity had been taking place – and what that means in terms of Apple’s App Store review process, given that it hadn’t caught this suspect activity until being alerted to it by a third party. [Tech Crunch]

Video of the Day –

DRIVING from Nate Theis on Vimeo.

List of the Day –

The Q Awards 2015 Winners

Q Best New Act 

James Bay

Best Track 

The Libertines – Gunga Din (Winner)

Q Best Album

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Chasing Yesterday 

Q Best Video

Florence + The Machine – Ship To Wreck

Q Hero

Mark Ronson

Q Best Live Act 

Royal Blood

Q Classic Album

Soul II Soul – Club Classics Vol. One

Q Best Solo Artist 

Ed Sheeran

Q Innovation in Sound 

Gary Numan

Q Best Act In The World 

Foals

Gibson Les Paul Award

Tony Iommi

Q Outstanding Contribution to Music

New Order

Q Classic Single

Queen ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ 

Q Icon

Duran Duran

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3 Colts Anthony Mackie Foreign Office
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5 #MeGustaMuchoQue #MakeLifeBetterInAWord Jamie Oliver
6 #DemiNoBrasil #MyResumeDoesntMention #lufc
7 Boca #BoycottStarWarsVII Seahawks
8 LuanetesSupportBeliebers Weight Watchers Leeds United
9 #FourWordsToLiveBy Jay Carney Colts
10 #MasterChefMX Barry Zito Star Wars

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June 29, 2016

Top News Stories –

Facebook gives friends higher priority in News Feeds –
Facebook is to give posts by users’ friends and family greater prominence in their News Feeds. The social network said its members had expressed concerns that they were missing “important updates” from the people they cared about. The move reverses a trend towards giving more space to content posted by the news media and brands. One expert said it highlighted that newspapers and broadcasters’ interests did not always match those of the firm. Facebook said that in several surveys it had carried out, users had told it they wanted to see more “friend content”, and it was altering its algorithms to accommodate this. [BBC]

Vietnam capital sets target to ban motorbikes –
Officials in Hanoi are aiming to ban motorbikes from the city centre within 10 years, it’s reported. The local government wants streets to be motorbike-free by 2025 as part of efforts to tackle congestion, the Thanh Nien News website says. The Vietnamese capital has notoriously chaotic roads, with around five million motorbikes vying for space alongside half a million cars. That situation is forecast to get worse in years to come: the authorities estimate that by 2020 there will be seven million motorbikes, and the number of cars will double. “This means the traffic situation in Hanoi will become extremely complicated in the next four to five years, so we really need a timely solution to this,” says mayor Nguyen Duc Chung. The city’s transport authority wants to reduce the number of individual vehicles and boost public transport instead, and its chairman wants the number of buses to double. Construction of a new urban rail system is already under way. [BBC]

Video of the Day –

Watch NYers’ Hearts Break As They JUST Miss The Subway Train

Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks
Business and economics
Disasters and accidents
International relations
Law and crime
  • A prosecutor in Michigan, United States, is considering whether the words of an African grey parrot could be used to try the woman accused of killing the pet parrot’s owner. (The Guardian)
  • Luxembourg Leaks
    • Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet, two whistleblowers who revealed the Luxembourg Leaks financial scandal, are found guilty of leaking the documents and are given a 12 and nine month suspended sentence and fined 1,500 and €1,000 respectively, while Edouard Perrin, the journalist who was given the leaks, is acquitted of all charges. (BBC)
Politics and elections

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