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Irish potato picture sells for £750,000 –
Yearning for starchy carbohydrates after a few drinks is nothing new – but a businessman has taken it to a new level. After a few glasses of wine, he bought a picture of an Irish potato for £750,000. “It’s not the first time that someone has bought the art right off my wall,” photographer Kevin Abosch told The Sunday Times newspaper. “We had two glasses of wine and he said, ‘I really like that.’ “Two more glasses of wine and he said, ‘I really want that.’ We set the price two weeks later.” Abosch took the picture of the organic Irish potato back in 2010 as part of a series, but he’s already known for snapping celebrities like Johnny Depp and Steven Spielberg. A starting price for one of his portraits will reportedly set you back around £200,000 at least. The artist had the spud delivered to him in a batch of organic vegetables, and says he understands how some people could see the price tag as being a little “absurd”. [BBC]

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Armed conflicts and attacks

• Boko Haram insurgency
  • Suicide bombers kill at least 32 people and injure 66 others in northern Cameroon, near the border with Nigeria. (Reuters Africa)
• Yemeni Civil War (2015–present)
  • A Saudi-led coalition airstrike kills a senior Yemeni judge and seven members of his family in Sana’a. The judge had previously presided over treason cases against ousted President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. (AFP via Yahoo! News) (RT)

Arts and culture

• Officials from the New York State parks system have proposed to temporarily “shut off” the American portion of Niagara Falls (also known as American Falls) within three years. The shut off will allow the replacement of two 115-year-old pedestrian stone bridges that are unsafe for the public. (Sky News)

Disasters and accidents

• January 2016 East Asia cold wave
  • At least eighty-five people are killed in Taiwan and tens of thousands stranded in airports as an unprecedented cold snap hits several Asian countries including China and South Korea. (Focus Taiwan),(CNN)
• January 2016 United States blizzard
  • The death toll from the blizzard in the Eastern United States rises to at least 30. (AP)
• British explorer Henry Worsley dies at the age of 55 while attempting to be the first person to cross Antarctica unaided. (BBC)
• A MiG-31 fighter jet crashes in the Krasnoyarsk Krai region in Siberia, Russia. The pilots were able to eject safely, according to the Russian Defence Ministry. (RT)

Health

• Zika virus outbreak in Brazil (2015 – present)
  • The World Health Organisation warns that the Zika virus could spread to most countries in the Americas. (BBC)

International relations

• European migrant crisis
  • Greece faces suspension or expulsion from the European Union‘s Schengen Area if it can not prevent waves of migrants from crossing over the country into Macedonia. (The Telegraph)

Law and Crime

• The United States Supreme Court ruled in Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016) that its prohibition of mandatory life sentences for juveniles convicted of murder (under Miller v. Alabama (2012)), had to be applied retroactively, potentially affecting 1300 to 2300 cases nationally.(New York Times)
• In Texas, a grand jury has cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing while it has indicted two anti-abortionists who were involved in making videos of the organization. (New York Times)

Politics and elections

• Bob Brown, former Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Greens, is arrested during a protest in the Tasmanian village of Lapoinya over proposed clear-fell logging of a nearby forest. (The Australian)

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