Top News Stories –

Philae comet lander wakes up, says European Space Agency –
The European Space Agency (Esa) says its comet lander, Philae, has woken up and contacted Earth. Philae, the first spacecraft to land on a comet, was dropped on to the surface of Comet 67P by its mothership, Rosetta, last November. It worked for 60 hours before its solar-powered battery ran flat. The comet has since moved nearer to the Sun and Philae has enough power to work again, says the BBC’s science correspondent Jonathan Amos. An account linked to the probe tweeted the message, “Hello Earth! Can you hear me?” On its blog, Esa said Philae had contacted Earth, via Rosetta, for 85 seconds on Saturday in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.

Artist’s impression of the Philae lander

Jurassic World takes $511m in record opening weekend –
The fourth instalment in the Jurassic Park series has become the first film to take more than $500m at the box office on its opening weekend. Jurassic World was the most popular screening in all 66 countries where it was released. The film made $204.6m (£131.4m) in the US, according to the firm Exhibitor Relations. It took $100m in China and $29.6m (£19m) in the UK and Ireland as part of the record global total of $511.8m. The Universal Pictures release had the second-highest grossing opening weekend in the US. The record is held by Marvel’s The Avengers, which took $207.4m in 2012. [BBC] See Video of the Day

Video of the Day –

Jurassic World – Official Global Trailer

List of the Day –

Biggest Worldwide film openings since 2002 [from Wikipedia]

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Other News Stories –

• Armed conflicts and attacks

  • War in Afghanistan (2015–present)
    • Fifteen Taliban militants, including the shadow governor for Kunar Province, are killed in a NATO airstrike. (IANS via Business Standard)
  • Syrian Civil War
    • Thousands of Syrians flee into Turkey as Kurdish fighters come closer to capturing the border town of Tell Abyad from Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. (AP)

  Disasters and accidents

  • 2015 Tbilisi flood
    • Flooding in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, destroys animal enclosures at a zoo resulting in the release of potentially dangerous animals and the death of three zookeepers and six other people. (AP), (USA Today), (Reuters, DPA via WA Today)

  Health

  • 2015 Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak in South Korea
    • A South Korean man is hospitalised in the Slovak capital Bratislava with symptoms of MERS as the death toll in Korea rises to 15. (Sky News Australia), (Al-Jazeera)

  International relations

  • Save The Children
    • Ministry of Interior, Government of Pakistan has suspended its order against the NGO Save the Children for closure of its working and allowed the international aid agency to resume its operation in Pakistan. (Express Tribune) (ARY Digital )
  • A South Korean official claims that North Korea is placing land mines in the Korean Demilitarized Zone to stop soldiers from defecting. The Korean DMZ already contains an estimated 1 million mines. (Yonhap)

  Law and crime

  • International Criminal Court investigation in Darfur
    • The International Criminal Court asks South Africa to arrest the President of Sudan Omar al-Bashir for alleged war crimes when he arrives at the African Union summit. (AFP via Straits-Times
    • The High Court in Pretoria grants an interim order preventing the President of Sudan Omar al-Bashir from leaving South Africa, and postpones the application for his arrest to Monday 15 June, 2015 to allow the government more time to prepare. (News24) (News24)

  Politics and elections

  • Thousands of people march in Hong Kong to demand the Legislative Council reject a China backed proposal for the naming of candidates forChief Executive be done by a nominating committee. (Bloomberg)

  Science

  • The European Space Agency‘s Philae spacecraft wakes up after six months in hibernation as comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko gets closer to the sun. (BBC)

  Sport

  • In motor sport, the Porsche 19 team of Earl Bamber, Nick Tandy and Nico Hulkenberg wins the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans. (Fox Sports)

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