Top News Stories –

‘Buy button’ to be added to Google search results –
Google has confirmed that it is to introduce a “buy button” to its search results imminently. The button would give Google Search users the option to purchase without needing to visit a separate website. The company’s chief business officer, Omid Kordestani, said he wanted to reduce “friction” for users so they buy more things online. Google faces significant competition from Amazon, where many people now begin their search to buy products. [BBC]

Hashtag is ‘children’s word of year’ –
Hashtag has been declared “children’s word of the year” by the Oxford University Press. OUP analysed more than 120,421 short stories by children aged between five and 13 years old, submitted to the BBC’s 500 Words competition. According to the OUP, new technology is increasingly at the centre of the children’s lives but how they are writing about it is changing fast. Words including email, mobile and Facebook are in decline, it said.
They are being replaced by the likes of Instagram, Snapchat and emoji. And the word television has now been superseded by phone. The report also notes a sudden new arrival in children’s sentences. The use of the hashtag symbol # to add an extra meaning or comment at the end of a sentence has become commonplace. #IblameTwitter #AndInstagram. [BBC]

Video of the Day –

The A-Z of YouTube: Celebrating 10 Years | #HappyBirthdayYouTube

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Other News Stories –

Arts and culture

• 88th Scripps National Spelling Bee
  • Vanya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas and Gokul Venkatachalam of Chesterfield, Missouri are declared co-champions of the Scripps National Spelling Bee held in National Harbor, Maryland. It is the second consecutive year that there have been two co-champions. (Sports Center via Twitter), (CNN)

Business and economy

• The Solicitor General of the United States sides with Oracle in a much-watched copyright dispute with Google over Java APIs. (IDG News Service).

Disasters and accidents

• The United States Air Force says that as many as 22 people have been inadvertently exposed to anthrax during a laboratory training exercise atOsan Air Base in South Korea. (AFP via Yahoo! News)
• Tornadoes of 2015 and 2015 Texas–Oklahoma flood and tornado outbreak
  • The death toll from the recent storms in the American states of Texas and Oklahoma rises to 21 with 11 people missing. Fourteen more people have been killed in northern Mexico. (AP via ABC News)
• 2015 Indian heat wave
  • The death toll from the Indian heat wave rises to over 1,400 with over 1000 dead in Andhra Pradesh state alone. (CNN)
• Seventeen students are killed and five injured when a truck carrying them to school overturns on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. (AFP via Abram Online)

International relations

• The Hellenic Coast Guard rescues 218 migrants off the coast of Greece who sailed illegally from Turkey making the total number of people arriving more than 1,500 in a week. (AFP via Daily Star)

Law and crime

• Former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Dennis Hastert is indicted for allegedly trying to evade banking reporting requirements and lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. (CNBC)
• Independent lawmaker Catherine Murphy raises fresh allegations in Ireland’s Dáil against billionaire Denis O’Brien, prompting criticism over the silence of the country’s media (much of it owned by O’Brien). (RTE) (Broadsheet) (UP Report)

Politics and elections

• Republican Party presidential primaries, 2016
  • Former Governor of New York, George Pataki, announces that he is seeking the Republican Party nomination for the 2016 presidential election. (CNN)

Science and technology

• NASA awards Boeing a commercial contract to build and fly the next passenger spacecraft, the CST-100. (Fin24)

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