News Headlines - 08 August 2014

▽U.S. Launches Airstrikes in Iraq - WSJ

The U.S. military launched a series of airstrikes in northern Iraq on Friday as American forces returned to action in Iraq to fight a brutal Sunni extremist force accused of attempting genocide in its bid to create a hard-line Islamic state.

▽Russia arrests Ukrainian officers - CNN.com

A Russian court authorized Friday the arrest of five Ukrainian servicemen on what the state-run RIA Novosti news agency described as suspicion of war crimes.
The officers are suspected of bombing civilians in Donetsk and shelling Russian territory, the agency reported.
According to Ukraine's official Ukrinform news agency, the officers are wrongly accused.

▽Cameron in cash-for-peerages row | Mail Online

David Cameron is at the centre of a cash-for-peerages row following the appointment of two wealthy Tory backers to the House of Lords.
Financier and party co-treasurer Michael Farmer and businessman Ranbir Suri are among 12 new Conservative working peers announced today by the Prime Minister.

▽Royal Mail brings forward collection times to 3pm every day | Mail Online

Royal Mail said the changes will ensure it is able to maintain its estate of 115,000 post boxes, despite a 33 per cent drop in volumes since 2005.
Between 45,000 and 50,000 of its post boxes will move to the earlier collection time - typically between 9am and 3pm - although the company has pledged there will still be a late posting box within half a mile.

▽The Next Generation: origami robots that fold up and crawl away | Toronto Star

That vision of cheap, self-folding robots, based on the ancient Japanese paper art of origami, is still a long way off. But a team of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers published a proof-of-concept study Thursday that demonstrates such an approach can work. Their paper in the journal Science is accompanied by a fantastical video, in which a flat, thin sheet of paper and plastic that looks like a jigsaw puzzle piece suddenly stirs. Flaps fold up and creases form to reveal a crouching, buglike creature that scuttles out of view.