Top News Stories –

Michel Platini: Uefa president to resign after ban appeal fails –
Uefa president Michel Platini will resign from European football’s governing body after failing to have a six-year ban from football overturned. A Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) panel reduced the ban to four years on Monday. Following the judgement, the 60-year-old said he would be stepping down. Platini and former Fifa counterpart Sepp Blatter, were last year found guilty of ethics breaches over a 2m Swiss Franc (£1.3m) “disloyal payment”. The pair, who deny wrongdoing, had their original bans reduced from eight to six years by the Fifa appeals committee. Platini had taken his case to Cas seeking to get the ban overturned, but a three-man panel said it “was not convinced by the legitimacy of the payment”. [BBC]
Michel Platini

Japan vagina artist cleared over kayak model but fined for data distribution –
A Japanese court has found an artist not guilty for displaying a kayak based on the shape of her vagina. The judge ruled that Megumi Igarashi‘s brightly-coloured kayak sculpture did not immediately suggest female anatomy. However, she was fined 400,000 yen ($3,700) after a judge ruled that she broke the law by sharing data from 3D scans of her genitalia, which could be used to recreate the shape of a vagina. Japan’s strict obscenity laws prohibit public displays of genitalia. [BBC]

Video of the Day –

TRIAL by The Brothers Lynch from The Brothers Lynch on Vimeo.

How the “Through the mirror shot” was done

ANATOMY OF A MIRROR SHOT – TRIAL short film from The Brothers Lynch on Vimeo.

Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• War in Somalia (2009–present)
  • A suicide car bomb targeting Mogadishu’s traffic police headquarters kills at least four. Al-Shabaab claims responsibility. (NY Times) (Reuters)
• Yemeni Civil War (2015–present)
  • Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen
    • Airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition kill at least 10 in Yemen. (NY Times)
• Iraqi Civil War (2014–present)
  • The Pentagon announces the death of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL) leader Abu Waheeb and three other militants in an airstrike near the town of Rutba, Iraq. (FOX News) (Reuters)
  • An ISIL car bomb kills at least 50 and injures 54 people in the eastern Iraq city of Baquba. (AAP via News Limited)

Business and economy

• Panama Papers
  • The Panama Papers go online at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists website. (BBC)

Disasters and accidents

• At least seven people are killed and 30 injured in a bus accident in Ranchi, the capital of the Indian state of Jharkand. (NDTV)
• The death toll from yesterday’s landslide in Taining County in China’s Fujian province rises to 14 with 25 still missing, (AP via Daily Mail)

International relations

• North Korea–United Kingdom relations
  • Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, the BBC‘s Tokyo correspondent, was detained in North Korea before being expelled by the government for “speaking very ill of the system”. (BBC)

Politics and elections

• Philippine general election, 2016
  • Filipino voters head to the polls for a presidential election with unofficial counts showing Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte with a commanding lead. (CNN), (AP)
• Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann resigns after seven and a half years in office; says he lost the backing of his Social Democrats party. (USA Today)
• Impeachment process against Dilma Rousseff
  • Waldir Maranhão, the acting President of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, says that the impeachment vote in that chamber should be annulled due to procedural irregularities and the voting process be held again. The Federal Senate is due to start voting on whether to impeach President Rousseff later this week. (Al-Jazeera)

Science

• A transit of Mercury occurs, visible from Africa, the Americas, Europe and most of Asia. (BBC), (Daily Mail), (New York Times)

Sport

• 2015 FIFA corruption case
  • UEFA President Michel Platini, who had been suspended by the FIFA Ethics Committee last fall, announces his resignation following the Court of Arbitration for Sport decision that let stand his ban, shortened to four years which corresponds to the duration of his remaining time in office. The court ruled that Platini was guilty of conflict of interest for taking a $2 million payment from FIFA approved bySepp Blatter in 2011. (USA Today)

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