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Hairy panic sets in as homes are swallowed in masses of tumbleweeds –
Bizarre images have emerged of houses inundated with tumbleweeds in rural Victoria after extreme dry conditions cover homes in clouds of ‘hairy panic’. Residents have been left frustrated and exhausted trying to rid their properties of the ghost-like weed, which has engulfed front and back yards, gardens and garages. Named hairy panic, the weeds of Wangaratta are world-class, holding their own against Texas tumblers. Locals say the tumbleweed has been around for a couple of years but, with dry conditions, this summer is by far the worst. They suspect it’s coming from a nearby paddock that a farmer has failed to maintain. The council can’t help because the situation is not considered a fire risk, which has left homeowners to clean up indefinitely. [Yahoo News Australia]

‘Unauthorised trousers’ kill Canadian zoo’s otter –
A Canadian zoo is under scrutiny following the death of an otter which had been given a pair of trousers to play with in its enclosure. Logan, a 12-year-old American river otter, drowned at Calgary Zoo after being given the article of clothing as an “unauthorised enrichment item”, the Calgary Sun newspaper reports. The zoo’s general curator, Colleen Baird, says Logan got trapped in one of the trouser legs, and two employees have subsequently been disciplined following an investigation into the incident. “It was human error and we take animal deaths very seriously,” she tells the paper, but refuses to be drawn on who was responsible. “It’s irrelevant how exactly the pants got in there, it’s more that the pants got in there in the first place.” [BBC]

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Armed conflicts and attacks

• Kurdish–Turkish conflict
  • 2016 Diyarbakır bombing
    • A roadside bomb hits a military convoy, killing six Turkish Army soldiers in the southeast Diyarbakır Province. (ABC News) (Reuters)
  • Turkish Air Force jets bomb Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) bases in Iraqi Kurdistan just hours after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blamed Kurdish militants for the 2016 Ankara bombing.(Haaretz)
• Ethnic violence in South Sudan
  • Fighting occurs between Shilluk and Dinka youths at a United Nations peacekeeping compound in the city of Malakal which lasts around three hours. Médecins Sans Frontières reports at least 18 people are killed, including two MSF South Sudanese staff members, and dozens wounded. (Reuters) (Trend News Agency)
• Syrian Civil War
  • The Syrian Army, backed by the Russian Air Force, says it has captured the town of Kinsabba in the northwest Latakia Governorate. (Reuters)

Business and economy

• Venezuela, facing an economic crisis, raises the price of gasoline for the first time in 20 years. (BBC)

Disasters and accidents

• At least 71 people are killed in a head-on collision between a bus and a truck in Ghana. (Sky News) (BBC)

Health

• Zika virus outbreak
  • Pope Francis indicates that contraceptives could be allowed, as the “lesser of two evils” vis-à-vis the sin of abortion, in addressing the life-threatening problem the Zika virus presents. He noted that Pope Paul VI, “in a difficult situation in Africa, permitted nuns to use contraceptives in cases of rape”. (CNN) (The Washington Post) (AP)(Katholiek Nieuwsblad)(Patheos)

International relations

• North Korea–South Korea relations
  • South Korea‘s National Intelligence Service warns that North Korea is currently planning a “terrorist attack” on South Korea, saying Kim Jong-un himself gave the order to North Korea’s State Security Department to make preparations for attacks. The NIS warning covered a large number of possible targets, including “subways, shopping malls, exhibition centers, power plants” as well as possible cyber attacks. (CNN)
• Cuba–United States relations
  • The President of the United States Barack Obama announces that he will visit Cuba next month becoming the first American president to visit Cuba since 1928. (Yahoo!)

Law and crime

• A man sues an Oklahoma gun range after he is told to leave after identifying himself as a Muslim. The gun range owners though claim that the man was acting belligerent. (Associated Press via MSN)

Politics and elections

• Philippine Senate election, 2016
  • Nike, Inc. drops Manny Pacquiao as an endorser after his remarks about LGBT people. (BBC), (Forbes)
• Ugandan general election, 2016
  • Voters in Uganda go to the polls for a general election to elect a new President of Uganda as well as for parliamentary and local elections. The Presidential race with eight candidates including incumbentYoweri Museveni and seven challengers is tipped to be the closest in the nation’s history. (BBC)
  • The government shuts down social media at the request of the electoral commission which says it is a security matter. Many Ugandans access Twitter and Facebook via a Virtual private network (VPN) which masks a user’s location. (Daily Times) (Quartz)
  • Kizza Besigye, the main opposition presidential candidate, is “briefly” arrested after the polls close in Naguru, trying to get into a police command center in the capital Kampala. Besigye, who’s challenged President Musveni in the last three elections, has been repeatedly arrested, roughed up, or confined to house arrest during that time. (AP via Sky News Australia) (The Globe and Mail) (The New York Times)
• Łukasz Kamiński, head of the Institute of National Remembrance says a newly found document, seized this week from the house of Poland‘s last communist-era interior minister, Czesław Kiszczak, suggests that former Polish President Lech Wałęsa was an informant for the Polish People’s Republic‘s secret security service during the 1970-1976 period. (NBC News) (BBC)

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