Body train arrives at base
The train carrying as many as 298 remains of the victims of flight MH17 arrives at an army base in Ukraine today. The remains will be unloaded and put on a plane to be flown to Netherlands.
Tinashe performs
Tinashe
Profit doubles
The company reports that its profits doubled due to an increase in both US and international subscribers. The recent price increase of $1 per month for US subscribers did not deter new users from signing up. The company added 570,000 U.S. customers in the second fiscal quarter, which ended June 30th, surpassing 50 million worldwide subscribers for the first time in the company’s history. It added 1.12 million customers in international markets.
Tops Forbes highest paid list again
Downey, Jr. returns from last year as the top earning actor on the Forbes list of Hollywood’s Highest Paid Actors. The 49-year old actor amassed $75 million between June 2013 and June 2014, which mostly came from his work in the Marvel film, Iron Man 3.
Earned $75 million over past year
Forbes estimates that between June 2013 and June 2014 Downey earned about $75 million, making him the highest paid actor in Hollywood for the second consecutive year. Downey stars in the Marvel movies Iron Man and Avengers, which have earned nearly $4 billion at the box office worldwide.
Others at the top of Forbes’ list of Top Earning Actors are Dwayne Johnson ($52 million), Bradley Cooper ($46 million), Leonardo DiCaprio ($39 million) and Chris Hemsworth ($37 million).
WebP speeds page load
Google is making web pages load faster with a new image format called WebP, which shrinks the size of graphic files by 35%. So far, Google has changed the Google Play store and Chrome Web store to the new format, while Facebook, Netflix, and eBay have begun supporting it. At its I/O developers conference last month, Google announced that it has converted most of YouTube’s thumbnail images to WebP, improving the site’s load time by 10%. Google says that alone has saved users a cumulative 140,000 hours each day.
Dutch forensics team arrives
Dutch forensics experts, accompanied by representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), arrive at the crash site. Wearing shirts bearing the insignia of the forensics unit of the Dutch national police and latex gloves and masks they conduct an inspection of bodies that lay in black bags piled on to three rail cars. Ukrainian Prime Minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, says pro-Russian rebels who control the area are preventing the trains from leaving.
Airline: $5,000 to victims’ families
Malaysia Airlines announces it will pay $5,000 to each victim’s family to “ease the immediate families of the passengers with their economic needs.” This payment will not be offset against any final compensation or affect families’ legal rights to any future claim. The airline says:
Funds have already been made available for this purpose.
Airline offers refunds
Malaysia Airlines announces it will offer full refunds to any passengers who wish to cancel their reservations. They are also waiving any fees involved for customers wanting to change their travel plans, including tickets specified as non-refundable. This is in response to the two recent incidents involving their planes, flights MH370 and MH17.
Our Enrich passengers will also receive fee waivers for any changes to their travel itinerary, as well as refunds of miles should they choose to cancel their redemption tickets.
This waiver is applicable for any travel booked between July 18th and December 31st of this year. The airline has already suffered losses amounting to $1.3 billion over the previous three years, before the tragedies occurred.
Flight number MH17 retired
In a statement from Malaysia Airlines, the company says out of respect for the passengers and crew who died when the plane was shot down the flight number MH17 will be retired next week. The new flight number for the planes that fly that route will be MH19. They add
Our thoughts and prayers remains with the families of our colleagues and passengers of MH 17.
Rebels find black boxes
Alexander Borodai, a Ukraine rebel leader, says the black boxes have been found at the crash site and will be handed over to the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Black box found at crash site
Reuters news agency releases a video showing what appears to be a rescue worker holding up an in-flight recorder, often referred to as a black box, at the crash site. The agency labels the video as being of one of the two flight data recorders from flight MH17. Reuters says the video was taken two days ago. It is unclear who is in possession of the black box at this time. The data contained in the black box will be crucial in determining what happened on the plane moments before it was shot down.
Dutch PM asks Putin to use his power
With almost two-thirds of the people killed in the crash of flight MH17 being Dutch, the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, urges President Vladimir Putin to use his power to influence the rebels to allow full access to the crash site. In a press briefing he says:
I want to see results in the form of unimpeded access and rapid recovery. This is now priority number one.
Lewis responds to Yogventures
Yogscast co-owner Lewis Brindley makes a post on Reddit saying he disagrees with the way Winterkewl Games is handling the Yogventures project. He says he regrets trusting them without verifying that they are capable of making such a large game:
I would just like to say that this project was started when The Yogscast was just me and Simon making videos out of our bedrooms. We met Kris and trusted his qualifications and assertions that we could trust him with our brand and even more importantly, our audience. Needless to say, I’m upset and embarrassed, but strongly believe the backers will end up getting far more value and a far better result than they originally anticipated when they backed this project.
Observers denied full access to crash site
For the second day in a row, international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are denied total access to the crash site by armed separatists. The team of monitors is only allowed to see one part of the large area containing wreckage and human remains. Alexander Hug, the chief of the OSCE special monitoring mission to Ukraine, says today the team is allowed “to see a bit more” of the sprawling crash site. President Petro Poroshenko says in a statement that he will “not tolerate interference” with the work of international investigators.
Will meet Central American leaders
The White House announces Obama will meet next week with President Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala, President Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras, and President Salvador Sanchez Ceren of El Salvador to discuss the immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border. Nearly 60,000 children, most unaccompanied, from Central America have crossed the U.S. border since the beginning of the year.
The four leaders and Vice President Biden will discuss how to reinforce our ongoing collaboration to stem the flow of undocumented migrants from Central America to Mexico and the United States. This will include discussion of how the United States and Central American governments are cooperating to promote safe, legal, and orderly migration between our countries in a spirit of shared responsibility, including with respect to the return of family units, which began this week for all three countries.
Malaysia Airlines releases manifest
The airline releases the full list of passengers and crew members that were aboard flight MH17 when it was shot down. The airline appeals to family and friends of the victims to contact them in an effort to find next of kin. A spokesman says Malaysia Airlines is assessing security in Ukraine before making a decision about possibly flying next of kin to the country where 298 passengers and crew lost their lives. He says family members are being cared for in Amsterdam while a team from the airline, including security officials, is on the ground in Ukraine. He said the team was trying to travel “500 kilometers (310 miles) through difficult territory” to reach the area where wreckage of the Boeing 777 landed. The full manifest is listed here.
Hardcore Justice announcement
TNA announces they will host a Hardcore Justice themed episode of Impact on August 5th.
Modifies application price categories
The European Comission announces that Google agrees to classify games that offer in-app purchases as paid instead of free, even if they do not require any payment upfront. This is done to comply with a European Commission guideline set to prevent children from accidentally making in-app purchases:
Google has decided on a number of changes. Implementation is underway and will be completed by the end of September 2014. These include not using the word “free” at all when games contain in-app purchases, developing targeted guidelines for its app developers to prevent direct exhortation to children as defined under EU law and time-framed measures to help monitor apparent breaches of EU consumer laws.
Airline releases nationalities of passengers
Although the passenger list is not being released at this time, Malaysia Airlines releases a breakdown of the nationalities of the passengers on board flight MH17. At least 189 were Dutch, 28 were Australians, 28 were Malaysians, 12 were Indonesian, 9 were from the United Kingdom, 4 were from Germany, 4 were from Belgium, 3 were from the Philippines, 1 was Canadian and 1 was from Hong Kong. Authorities are still trying to determine the nationalities of the other passengers.