Top News Stories –
Paris gunmen killed after 2 sieges –
The 2 gunmen who carried out the Charlie Hebdo massacre on January 7th 2015 have been killed by French police after a brief siege at a warehouse in Dammartin-en-Goele, 35km (22 miles) north of Paris. Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi were shot dead as they came out of a warehouse building firing at police. Two officers were injured. Simultaneously, Amedy Coulibaly, the man who killed a policewoman on 7th January, was shot dead at a kosher supermarket in Paris after he had killed 4 hostages – 15 hostages were rescued. Coulibaly knew one of the brothers and their respective partners had spoken on the phone more than 500 times. A total of 17 people plus the 3 gunmen have died in the 3 days.
Brand and Rascal to be studied –
The exam board Oxford, Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts (OCR) plan to include evidence given by Russell Brand to a Commons select committee inquiring into drugs and an interview between Dizzee Rascal and Newsnight’s Jeremy Paxman as part of the English A-level syllabus as from this September. The plans have been approved by exams regulator Ofqual amongst 37 new specifications for GCSEs and A-levels put forward by the exam board.
Dizzee Rascal
AirAsia tail section recovered –
The tail section of AirAsia flight QZ8501 that crashed while flying from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore has been recovered from the seabed using inflatable devices. Although the flight recorders are positioned in the tail it appears that the “black boxes” have been separated from it and the search continues.
The Indonesian navy has retrieved from the seabed the tail of the AirAsia plane that crashed two weeks ago.
Lucky he was a Dolphin –
Former Miami Dolphins running back Rob Konrad swam nine miles to shore after falling off his boat while fishing and his boat, which was on auto pilot, drifted away from him off the South Florida coast. Konrad, who played 82 games for the Dolphins between 1999-2004, was treated for hypothermia after it took 12 hours to swim to shore.
Saturn centre pinpointed –
Scientists have located the centre of the planet Saturn to within just 2 miles using ten antennae, known as the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), spread over an area from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands. The antenna assembly uses signals sent by the Cassini probe to monitor the position of the gas giant. Previously estimates of the positions of Saturn and its satellites used data received by tracking Cassini’s radio signal during its communications with Earth but the new calculations are about 20 times more accurate.
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Horsepower –