Turkish men are shaving off their once-fashionable beards due to fears they might be mistaken for ISIL militants—much to their barbers’ satisfaction.
Wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who is serving 35 years in a military prison for disclosing government secrets, now faces indefinite solitary confinement for a series of minor infractions, including possession of a Vanity Fair issue featuring Caitlyn Jenner’s seminal interview, Malala Yousafzai’s memoir, and an expired tube of toothpaste, according to her lawyers and supporters.
US astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, could have a planet named after him. The International Astronomical Union, an organization responsible for naming cosmic bodies, has opened a public vote to name 32 exoplanets and 15 of their stars (h/t New Scientist).
During his announcement of the most sweeping reform to fight climate change last week (Aug. 2), President Obama mentioned how cartographers had to change their maps to reflect global warming’s effect on our planet.
A large explosion has taken place in Tianjin, a major city in northeastern China, with the shockwave felt several kilometers away, shattering windows and fish tanks.
America imprisons more people than any other nation in the world, and hands out harsher and longer sentences than most. As a result, its prisons are overcrowded and increasingly expensive, and its penitentiary policies, especially when it comes to the so-called war on drugs, are largely seen as a failure.
Swedish police say the two men suspected of fatally stabbing two people yesterday (Aug.10) at an Ikea store near Stockholm are immigrant asylum seekers from Eritrea. The men, who live in a facility for asylum seekers in a nearby town, are being held in custody. One of them sustained critical stab wounds and underwent two surgeries. It is unclear how he was injured, and many crucial details of the incident, including motive, are still unknown.
Investigators from a Dutch-led team say they have found fragments that may belong to a Russian BUK surface-to-air missile system at the site of the MH17 plane crash in Eastern Ukraine.
Los Angeles is “close to reaching an agreement,” with the US Olympic Committee to become America’s candidate to host the 2024 Olympics, the LA Times reports.
What to watch for today
A man and a woman were killed in a stabbing at an IKEA store in the city of Västerås, outside of Stockholm, and another man sustained life-threatening injuries, according to local news reports. Police took a suspect into custody, according to Swedish broadcaster SVT; an on-scene investigation is still underway.
Syrian refugees who arrived on the Greek island of Kos this weekend on a small dinghy celebrated by taking photos with a selfie stick. The moment of joy and relief after a risky journey from Turkey was captured by Reuters photographer Yannis Behrakis.
As the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination were skewering Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on stage during their first debates in Cleveland, Ohio, her campaign was making expert use of their past statements to troll them. As Business Insider notes, team Clinton had some choice decor in the press room set up at her campaign office in Brooklyn.
After Colorado’s Pueblo City-County health officials said an adult died as a result of the bacterial disease known as “the plague” on Wednesday (Aug. 5), California authorities are investigating a case of a child who contracted it during a camping trip to Yosemite National Park.
Russian hackers attacked the US Defense Department’s unclassified email system around July 25, sources tell NBC News, forcing the Pentagon to shut the system down for two weeks. The “sophisticated cyber intrusion” affected 4,000 civilian and military personnel of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
A fishing boat filled to the brim with migrants capsized off the coast of Libya yesterday (Aug. 5), in the latest tragedy in Europe’s ongoing migrant crisis. Despite the rescue efforts from the Irish navy, the Italian coast guard, and a vessel from Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF), 200 migrants, out of an estimated 600 on the boat, are feared drowned.
Iranian scientists say they have successfully cloned a mouflon—an endangered wild sheep, nearly extinct due to illegal hunting—which was born to a domestic sheep surrogate mother at the country’s Royan Institute. The baby mouflon is two weeks old and healthy, the leading biomedical researcher at the Institute told The Guardian. The creature’s name is Maral, traditionally a Persian name for new babies (and also reindeer).
The Russian Industry and Trade Ministry has proposed that condoms be added to a long list of imported products that the country should consider banning—part of its ongoing feud with the west over the conflict in Ukraine.
The family of Sandra Bland, the woman who was found hanging dead in a Texas jail after she was detained during a traffic stop, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit contending that she should never have been arrested in the first place, and that she did not receive the appropriate attention while in her cell. Friends and activists have questioned whether Bland did indeed commit suicide, but if the official autopsy was indeed correct, she was not alone: according to new data released yesterday (Aug. 4), hundreds of people take their lives in US jails every year, making it the top cause of death for people in jail detention.
Amazon may be getting ready to test drone deliveries, but some prison inmates in Ohio are already on it. A package containing drugs was dropped by a drone last week at the Mansfield Correctional Institution in Ohio, sparking a fight among the prisoners
Russia believes that it owns 1.2 million sq. kilometers (463,000 sq. miles) of the Arctic. The country has requested that the UN recognize the claim, which it first made in 2002. At the time the UN sent it back, asking for more supporting evidence.
A bill that would have cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood was blocked in the US Senate yesterday (Aug. 3), after a withering speech from Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren to her Republican colleagues:
In today’s hyper-connected world, hackers can remotely disable your car, play around with traffic lights, and change the target of a sniper rifle. Now we can add this to the list of terrifying hacks: the US government has found vulnerabilities in the infusion devices that hospitals use to administer intravenous drugs, which could enable hackers to change the dosage of critical medicines.
Shira Banki, a Jerusalem high school student who attended Friday’s gay pride parade to show solidarity for her LGBT friends, died on Sunday (Aug. 2) from the stabbing wounds she sustained.
