Mariah Carey - The 2010s

December 5, 2014

Top News Stories –

Five Diana dresses sell for half a million dollars –
Five dresses designed for and worn by Britain’s late Princess Diana have been auctioned off by Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles for a total of nearly half a million dollars. British dressmaker Catherine Walker had made three of the gowns and all fetched within or just above their estimated price of between $60,000 and $80,000. The other two dresses were made by Caroline Charles and Zandra Rhodes.
Diana, Princess of Wales

Two-headed cat lives to be 15 years-old –
A cat that was born with two faces has died at the age of 15 in North Grafton, Massachusetts. Called Frank and Louie – ‘Frankenlouie’ the birth defect is known as a Janus cat, named for a Roman god with two faces and expected to die very young due to congenital defects. While blind in his center eye, both his outer eyes worked fine, and while he had two noses and mouths, Frankenlouie had only one brain.

Orion capsule successful first mission –
The US space agency’s new Orion crew capsule has completed its maiden, unmanned voyage with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico. Orion is designed to take humans to destinations such as the Moon and Mars. The flight was intended to test its critical technologies and took four and a half hours.
Orion capsule

Video of the Day –

AFTERGLOW – Lightsuit Segment from Sweetgrass Productions on Vimeo.

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December 1, 2015

Top News Stories –

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to give away 99% of shares –
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan say they will give away 99% of their shares in the company to good causes as they announce the birth of their daughter Max. Mr Zuckerberg made the announcement in a letter to Max on his Facebook page. He said they were donating their fortune to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to make the world a better place for Max to grow up in. The donation amounts to $45bn (£30bn) at Facebook’s current value. [BBC]
Mark Zuckerberg

Mariah Carey gets $300,000 for a one-hour store visit –
[Maria] Carey’s kicking off December with an appearance Tuesday night at a Pier 1 pop up store in New York, where Confidenti@l has learned she’s being paid a whopping $300,000 to attend the event for just one hour. “Let’s call it 45 minutes,” laughs our source, who adds that the “Hero” singer also had a few demands about her appearance. “She specifically wanted (it noted) that she was ‘appearing’ not ‘performing.’ They would have loved her to perform but just getting her is worth it.” Our insider adds that Carey gave final approval on the invite before it went out, requesting that she be called “The Queen of Christmas,” at the “Pier 1 Imports: Christmas Pop-Up Storybook” at 503 Broadway. [NY Daily News]
Mariah Carey

Video of the Day –

Amazon Prime Air

Top Twitter Trends –

	Worldwide	USA	UK
1	Rosa Parks	#WorldAIDSDay	1st of December
2	#GivingTuesday	Rosa Parks	#PipKnit
3	#DiaMundialSida	ITS DECEMBER	#WorldAIDSDay
4	#BienvenidoDiciembre	#BreakUpIn5Words	#GivingTuesday
5	#WorldAIDSDay	#SnowmanDatingProblems	#christmascountdown
6	トリプルスリー	David Price	#newsnight
7	#1MesProAnoAcabarEEu	#WeLoveYouNiall	#adeletickets
8	#جوري_الخالدي	#GivingTuesday	Yorkshire Ripper
9	#BreakUpIn5Words	#Force4Ham	#LHHHReunion
10	Cameron Dallas	Mark Zuckerberg	Public Enemy

Other News Stories –

Armed conflict and attacks

Azerbaijan law enforcement agencies launch a special operation against Islamists in Nardaran, a suburb in the capital Baku. (Tass)
Syrian Civil War spillover in Lebanon
- The Lebanese Army and the al-Nusra Front conduct a prisoner exchange with Saja Dulaimi, former wife of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, being one of the prisoners released. The exchange was brokered byQatar. (Al-Jazeera) (Reuters)
Iraqi Civil War, Military intervention against ISIL, American-led intervention in Iraq
- The Iraqi government, via state TV, requests all civilians leave the ISIL-held city of Ramadi in Anbar province, after several days of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes against ISIL. Observers speculate this request precedes major ground operations to retake Ramadi, which fell to ISIL in May. (Deutsche Welle)
- U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, the U.S. military is preparing to establish a new Special Operations task force of about 200 service members in Iraq to intensify pressure on Islamic State commanders and expand U.S. troops’ direct involvement in battling the militant group. There are now about 3,500 U.S. troops in Iraq, including some Special Operations forces who are advising Iraqi forces in northern and central Iraq. (The Washington Post) (The Hill)
Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen
- Dozens of Houthi fighters are reportedly killed, according to Saudi state television and residents, following a major push by Yemen-based Houthi forces into the kingdom’s southern Najran Region. The Houthi-run Saba News Agency said that Houthi fighters had seized three Saudi military outposts near the city of Najran, destroying several armored vehicles, including two U.S.-made M1 Abrams tanks and three Bradley vehicles. (Reuters)
Allied Democratic Forces insurgency
- U. N. attack helicopters launched strikes against positions of Allied Democratic Forces. This comes a day after a series of clashes between rebels and soldiers in a town in eastern Congo killed at least 30 people. (Yahoo news), (Reuters), (Press TV)
Five people are injured, says Bayrampaşa mayor Atilla Aydiner, when a pipe bomb explodes on an overpass near his city’s central metro station in suburban Istanbul, Turkey. (The Guardian) (The Atlantic) (BBC)

Arts and culture

So called “White Student Unions” begin springing up at several Australian universities, including the University of Queensland, University of Southern Queensland, University of Technology Sydney, Macquarie University, Western Sydney University,University of New South Wales and the University of Western Australia. The groups say they are defending the interests of white students who they say are becoming marginalized from on-campus life and politics. (News Corp Australia)

Business and economics

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announces the plan to donate 99 percent of the company stock he and his wife Priscilla Chan own over their lifetimes, shares today worth about $45 billion, to “advance human potential and promote equality for all children.” (The Washington Post)

Disasters and accident

Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501
- Indonesia releases a report into the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501 by the National Transportation Safety Committee. The report finds that crew error was responsible for the crash that claimed 162 lives. (Channel News Asia) (Sky News)

Health and medicine

The World Health Organization urges Ukraine’s health ministry to declare a state of emergency due to a polio outbreak, a move meant to prompt more action from the government in Kiev. Half of Ukraine’s children have not been vaccinated against polio, according to Dorit Nitzan, head of the WHO’s office in Ukraine. (AP via US News & World Report)
One of three people who contracted Legionnaires’ disease in Hannibal, Missouri, has died, according to health officials. Hannibal is about 20 miles from Quincy, Illinois, where a Legionnaires’ outbreak occurred earlier this year, contributing to 12 deaths and sickening dozens more. (AP via ABC News America) (ABC7 via WLS AM)
An American E. coli scare results in the recall of hundreds of thousands of products in a dozen states and covering major supermarket chains including Walmart, Safeway and Albertsons. (CNN)
The United States Centers for Disease Control announces the number of people newly diagnosed with diabetes declined in 2014 for the fifth consecutive year. Experts do not know whether efforts to prevent diabetes are finally started to work, or if the disease has simply peaked in the population. (NPR) (The New York Times)

International relations

European migrant crisis
- The U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement notifies all 50 states that if they deny services to any group of refugees, states may risk losing resettlement funding altogether. More than half of the nation’s governors have said they will not accept Syrian refugees in their states. (The Washington Post)

Law and crime

Death of Jennifer Laude
- A Philippine Olongapo City Regional Trial Court convicts U.S. Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton of homicide over the death of a transgender Filipina woman. (Rappler) (Buzzfeed) (BBC)
Chicago, Illinois Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked for and received the resignation of that city’s police superintendant Garry McCarthy. Emanuel spoke of the loss of the public’s confidence in the city police and announced a task force on police accountability. The change comes in the wake of protests over the release of police footage showing the October 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald. (CNN)

Science and technology

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports brains do not really fit into “male” or “female” categories. Tel Aviv University’s Daphna Joel’s research team, in analyzing the MRI scans of some 1,400 individuals, found only a very small number of the brains studied had features that were entirely male, female, or intermediate between the two. The vast majority had a mosaic. (The Washington Post) (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) (Daphna Joel)

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January 1, 2016

Top News Stories –

Rat on a plane: Air India flight returns to Mumbai after rodent spotted on board –
An Air India plane flying to London was forced to return to Mumbai after passengers spotted a rat on board, the airline said on Thursday. Though the rat was not found, the pilot returned to Mumbai on Wednesday keeping passenger safety in mind, Air India said in a statement. Passengers were later flown by a separate aircraft to London. The aircraft would be fumigated and checked before it is returned to service. Maintenance workers would have to make sure that the rat did not damage equipment or chew any wires and the plane is certified to be rodent-free, an airline official said. [Daily Telegraph]

China’s new two-child policy law takes effect –
Married couples in China will from Friday (Jan 1) be allowed to have two children, after concerns over an ageing population and shrinking workforce ushered in an end to the country’s controversial one-child policy. The change, which was announced in October by the ruling Communist Party, takes effect from Jan 1, 2016, Beijing’s official Xinhua news agency reported over the weekend. The “one-child policy”, instituted in the late 1970s, restricted most couples to only a single offspring through a system of fines for violators and even forced abortions. For years, authorities argued that it was a key contributor to China’s economic boom and had prevented 400 million births. [Channel News Asia]

Video of the Day –

Philips Presents: The Longest Night from T Brand Studio on Vimeo.

List of the Day –

100 Things we didn’t know last year – by the BBC (1-33)

1. It costs £300 to operate on a constipated goldfish.