The world - July 22, 2010

THURSDAY

U.S. military officials handed Iraqi officials control of the Camp Cropper detention center near the Baghdad airport, the last U.S. prison to be turned over to local authorities.

Workers at the World Trade Center construction site in New York City unearthed the decayed hull of a 32-foot long antique wooden ship. Archeologists at the site said the ship, which is more than 200-years old, was likely used to help fill the Hudson River when lower Manhattan was expanded.

Archeologists in Guatemala discovered a Mayan king’s 2,000-year old tomb packed with a well-preserved hoard of carvings, ceramics and children’s bones that cast fresh light on the vanished civilization.

FRIDAY

Operatives from La Linea, the armed wing of the powerful Mexican Juarez drug cartel, blasted off a cell-phone detonated car bomb that killed four people in Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Typhoon Conson made landfall across Vietnam and China, swelling rivers and worsening landslides that have killed 135 people this summer. Conson killed at least 38 people in the Philippines.

Roy Rogers’ stuffed horse Trigger was purchased for $266,500 bought by rural cable television station RFD-TV at an auction of memorabilia from the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum Collection. Roger’s stuffed German Shepherd Bullet, who was also the family pet, sold for $35,000, also to RFD-TV.

WEEKEND

A suicide bomber attacked government-backed Sunni militia on Sunday as they lined up to be paid on Baghdad’s southwestern outskirts, killing at least 39 and wounding 41.

At least 30 miners were killed and 13 more remained trapped in three separate coal mine accidents in China over the weekend.

A group of Swedish divers discovered several bottles of the oldest drinkable champagne in the world while exploring a Baltic Sea shipwreck. Dive leader Christian Ekstrom told Reuters the Veuve Clicquot bottled in the late-18th Century was fantastic, with a sweet taste and very small bubbles. The champagne was found in a ship bound for St. Petersburg, Russia.

Researchers at the Universities of Sheffield and Warwick in England say their computer models of the development of proteins in eggshells prove, once and for all, the chicken came before the egg.

MONDAY

Kansas officials say last week’s intense heat and humidity wave was responsible for killing more than 2,000 cattle in the nation’s third largest cattle state.

A speeding passenger train crashed into another waiting at a station in eastern India, killing at least 60 people and injuring more than 100 in India’s second major accident in as many months.

A Turkish court indicted 196 people, among them retired military commanders, for an alleged plot to overthrow the Islamic government. According to Turkish media the plot was said to involve bombing historic mosques and provoking Greece into shooting down a Turkish war plane to create a war-like situation and destabilize the AK Party government, in power since 2002.

TUESDAY

U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Jones approved a $550 million settlement between Goldman Sachs and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission related to civil fraud allegations. Goldman had been accused of creating and marketing a collaterized debt obligation without telling investors hedge fund Paulson & Co helped choose the underlying securities and was betting against them.

Hollywood starlet Lindsay Lohan checked into a Los Angeles County jail to serve a 90-day stint after being convicted for violating her probation on two 2007 drunk-driving and cocaine possession charges. L.A. officials say Lohan, 24, will likely serve just 14 days behind bars because of overcrowding.

WEDNESDAY

President Barack Obama was set to sign into law the most sweeping financial regulatory overhaul since the Great Depression. Among reforms in the bill are creation of a new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, which will regulate products ranging from credit cards to mortgages.

Astronomers said the Swift orbiting observatory was blinded June 21 by the brightest explosion of a star ever seen. X-rays from the explosion hit the satellite after a five billion year journey from beyond the Milky Way galaxy.

Massachusetts became the first state to ban surgery that devocalizes dogs and cats. Under the new law, anyone in the state who cuts or removes an animal’s vocal chords for nonmedical reasons may be punished by fines and up to five years in prison.

Compiled by the Gazette from a variety of sources.