Earth's unexpected postcard from a hurtling comet

June 15, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

The little spacecraft that landed on a comet seven months ago only to shut down has unexpectedly reestablished contact with Earth.

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The United States plans to store heavy military equipment in the Baltics and Eastern European nations to reassure allies made uneasy by Russian intervention in Ukraine, and to deter further aggression, a senior US official said on Saturday. "We will pre-position significant equipment," the official said, commenting on a New York Times report that the Pentagon was poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 troops. Poland and Lithuania both confirmed they were in talks with Washington on stationing heavy arms in warehouses in the region.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday to protest against electoral reforms approved by Beijing to choose the city's next leader, the beginning of several days of demonstrations before the reforms go to a vote. Beijing has proposed a direct vote for Hong Kong's next leader in 2017, but only pre-screened, pro-Beijing candidates will be allowed to stand. Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters say that makes a mockery of China's pledge to eventually grant universal suffrage in the territory.

Britain has pulled out agents from live operations in "hostile countries" after Russia and China cracked top-secret information contained in files leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, the Sunday Times reported. Security service MI6, which operates overseas and is tasked with defending British interests, has removed agents from certain countries, the newspaper said, citing unnamed officials at the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Home Office (interior ministry) and security services. Snowden downloaded more than 1.7 million secret files from security agencies in the United States and Britain in 2013, and leaked details about mass surveillance of phone and internet communications.

Seeking an army of volunteers, Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to build an organizational edge in Iowa as some of her lesser-known Democratic rivals clamor for attention in the state that tripped up her first presidential campaign. Clinton flew to Iowa on Saturday night after her high-profile New York kickoff, telling supporters at a Sioux City house party that her campaign would seek to rally the country around an agenda for the future. "Everybody has a role to play," Clinton said, urging supporters to sign up to join her campaign.

As the hunt for a pair of inmates who escaped from an upstate New York prison entered its ninth day on Sunday, new details emerged about how a female prison worker now under arrest promised to help them in a daring breakout. Sunday also marked the 35th birthday of David Sweat, the younger of the two convicted killers who broke out of Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora by cutting through a steel wall and slithering through a steam pipe to a manhole on the street outside the prison's walls.

Tampa Bay goalie Ben Bishop and his Chicago counterpart, Corey Crawford, both made atrocious mistakes less than a minute apart in Game 5 of this impossibly close Stanley Cup Final on Saturday night. The differences between the Blackhawks and the Lightning are so minuscule in this historically close Final that one mistake, one false stride, one flicker of fate has decided things. Chicago took advantage of one fewer mistake and took a 3-2 series lead on a 90-degree night in Tampa.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

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